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More "Accidental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite accidental, I know,' replied Gaston, leaning back lazily; 'but none the less ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... have done it," resumed Caranby, "often did I wish to speak to her on the subject, but I never did. And after all, the jury brought in a verdict of accidental death, so there was no ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... admit that it's an escapade—an accidental escapade," Barry qualified carefully. "But I don't know any way out of it—unless we all stand together," he said slowly, "and all pretend that you got lost alone and found alone. That's very simple, really, and I think perhaps it would ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... writer's nerves all night. A somewhat similar feeling comes over one who walks the narrow path down the centre of the machinery compartment of a submarine. He seems hedged about by mysterious apparatus a touch of which, or even an accidental jostle may release powerful and even ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... know: I am afraid it has been here somewhat too literally complied with. I hope—I believe they are safe, I am sure I gave orders; may I hope that when they are recovered, and put in proper order, you will do me the honour to accept them at my hand, as an atonement for their accidental derangement?" ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... silence and her hands went groping to her throat. It had been no chance affair then—no accidental meeting that the Arab chief had turned to his own account, but an organised outrage that had been carefully planned from the beginning. From the very outset she had been a dupe. She ground her teeth with rage. Her suave, subservient guide had been leading ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... and consternation produced at Rome by this letter were increased by the accidental burning of the Capitol. The Sibylline books, which held the secrets of the fate of Rome, were consumed. Such an event, it was believed, could only foreshadow the most direful calamities to ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... repeated what was said to Lurida, as a good subject for the art of the sculptor, and she felt all her maiden sensibilities offended by the proposition. Lurida could not understand her excitement, but she was startled by it. Natures which are complementary of each other are liable to these accidental collisions of feeling. They get along very well together, none the worse for their differences, until all at once the tender spot of one or the other is carelessly handled in utter unconsciousness on the part of the aggressor, and the exclamation, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... skill, as he learnt to his cost. One curly-headed person caught in the pressure for a space, looked steadfastly at him several times, almost as if she recognized him, and then, edging deliberately towards him, touched his hand with her arm in a scarcely accidental manner, and made it plain by a look as ancient as Chaldea that he had found favour in her eyes. And then a lank, grey-bearded man, perspiring copiously in a noble passion of self-help, blind to all earthly things save that glaring, bait, thrust between them in a cataclysmal ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... motive, and has compelled me to embrace a resolution, which I hope will not be disagreeable to you—that of sending him directly to Mr Barlow, provided he would take the care of him; and I think this accidental acquaintance with young Sandford may prove the luckiest thing in the world, as he is so nearly the age and size of our Tommy. I shall therefore propose to the farmer, that I will for some years pay for the board ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... the Nile it had been conveyed into the sea—For this reason therefore the Egyptians look upon children as endued with a kind of faculty of divining, and in consequence of this notion are very curious in observing the accidental prattle which they have with one another whilst they are at play (especially if it be in a sacred place), forming omens and presages from it—Isis, during this interval, having been informed that Osiris, deceived by her sister Nepthys who was in love with him, had unwittingly united with her instead ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... rather than General Oglethorpe, by their help, should gain the smallest degree of honour and reputation. Money, indeed, they voted for the service, and at length sent some ships, but, by coming so late, they proved useful rather from the fortunate co-operation of an accidental cause, than from the zeal and public spirit of the people. The Georgians with justice blamed their more powerful neighbours, who, by keeping at a distance in the day of danger, had almost hazarded the loss of both provinces. Had the enemy pursued their operations with vigour and courage, the province ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... accidental insertion of another clause in the constitution under consideration, Section 1, of Article VII., any foreign born woman, naturalized previous to January, 1870, was given the right to vote. So that Illinois was ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... for me to describe the gracious condescension of the Queen and the Princesse Elizabeth, in expressing their sentiments for the accidental discovery I had made. Amid their assurances of tender interest and concern, they both reproved me mildly for my imprudence in having, when I went to Brussels, hurried from Paris without my passport. They gave me prudential cautions with regard ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... unmeditated expressions of a psychical instant (e. g., clenching a fist in threatening). Generally they stand in no causal relation, so that explanations drawn from physiological, anatomical, or even atavistic conditions are only approximate and hypothetical. In addition, accidental habits and inheritances exercise an influence which, although it does not alter the expression, has a moulding effect that in the course of time does finally so recast a very natural expression as to make it altogether unintelligible. The phenomena, moreover, are in most cases ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... an accidental passion, for which the faculty indeed is unborn. In its nobler form and in its nobler motives it arises from love, and in its lower form it arises from the deepest and darkest Pit ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... he also heaved a sigh. "This was indeed," he observed, "a retribution in store for them! Their encounter was likewise not accidental; for had it been, how was it that this Feng Yuean took a fancy to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Mike, will be greater at dumb-show than it always is with your tongue," answered the young lady, the blood slowly returning to her cheek, the accidental use of the name of Willoughby removing the apprehension of anything immediately embarrassing; "what have you to tell me that ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... their flanks; the legions faced them in front; and the cavalry by a sudden manoeuvre had closed in on their rear. However, Suetonius Paulinus did not immediately give the signal for his infantry to charge. He was by nature dilatory, and preferred cautiously reasoned measures to accidental success. He kept on issuing orders about filling up the ditches, clearing the fields and extending the line, convinced that it was soon enough to play for victory when he had taken every precaution against defeat. This delay gave the Vitellians time to take refuge ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... coarse one, and returns to the back by the same hole, pulling the coarse thread with it, as in process in fig. 167. Taking it through by the aid of a thick needle would make too large a hole. Thread can be knotted into the eye of the needle if for any reason it is required to be quite safe from accidental unthreading. The neatest way of doing this is to pass the needle through the centre of the thread and draw it tight; this is a useful trick for any unskilled worker with needles and thread, for re-threading ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... said that the great fire of 1776 was the work of the patriots, who had resolved to burn New York, and drive the invaders from their safe resting-place. The question of its origin has never been decided. It may have been altogether accidental, or possibly the work of design. But it was followed by a singular succession of other fires, during the period of the British ascendency, that seem to show some settled plan to annoy and discourage the invaders. The newspapers ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... neither blushed nor bristled. Her skin kept its transparent whiteness, and her eyes looked into his with intent gravity. Indeed, he felt through her whole attitude the perfect frankness of good breeding—a frankness which discouraged familiarity while accepting with human simplicity an accidental contact of the highway. She was the better gentleman of the two. His renewed confusion set him to ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... chief duty of physicians was to wait patiently until disease had worked great and even fatal mischief. Their chief occupation now is to preserve the patient's health and prevent disease, and if, from any but accidental causes, any one fell ill, it would be a disgrace to them. They were formerly called by a name answering to "Disease Doctors," whilst they are now known by a term signifying ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... Those who have seen this very man creep into the mansion house at night and wander cautiously from room to room, as if to fix a plan of the dwelling in his mind, will understand that his visit, which seemed so purely accidental, had its object; but no one could have discovered, by look or movement, what ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... Sabbath day. Strange and bewildered looks repaid him for his courtesy. None, as on former occasions, aspired to the honor of walking by their pastor's side. Old Squire Saunders, doubtless by an accidental lapse of memory, neglected to invite Mr. Hooper to his table, where the good clergyman had been wont to bless the food, almost every Sunday since his settlement. He returned, therefore, to the parsonage, and, at the moment of closing the door, was observed to look back upon the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... his address to the jury did his best to persuade them that the death of Dyson was the accidental result of a struggle between Peace and himself. He suggested that Mrs. Dyson had left her house that night for the purpose of meeting Peace, and that Dyson, who was jealous of his wife's intimacy with him, had gone out to find her; ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... married my mother. She was the daughter of a Scotch couple who had come to England and settled in Alnwick, in Northumberland County. Her father, James Stott, was the driver of the royal-mail stage between Alnwick and Newcastle, and his accidental death while he was still a young man left my grandmother and her eight children almost destitute. She was immediately given a position in the castle of the Duke of Northumberland, and her sons were educated in the duke's school, while her daughters were ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... present day or his ideas as to its origin in the remote past, we must conclude that primitive man cannot reconcile himself to the notion of death as a natural and necessary event; he persists in regarding it as an accidental and unnecessary disturbance of the proper order of nature. To a certain extent, perhaps, in these crude speculations he has anticipated certain views of modern biology. Thus it has been maintained by Professor August ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... naval demonstrations made by Lord Exmouth in 1816, and by a combined English and French squadron in 1819, remained equally fruitless. But the result which the European powers in concert had been unable to achieve, was brought about by the accidental circumstances which led France to undertake alone an expedition ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... surprised the good people of Ruritania to know of the foregoing talk; for, according to the official reports, I had suffered a grievous and dangerous hurt from an accidental spear-thrust, received in the course of my sport. I caused the bulletins to be of a very serious character, and created great public excitement, whereby three things occurred: first, I gravely offended the medical faculty of Strelsau by refusing ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... the party, it will be murder. But if such mischievous intention doth not appear, which is matter of fact, and to be collected from circumstances, and the act was done heedlessly and inconsiderately, it will be manslaughter, not accidental death; because the act upon which death ensued ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... interest himself in my patient's case, and the result was that Alspaugh joined the regiment, and so far has found it difficult to get away from it. It's the unexpected that happens, the French say, and there is a bare possibility that he may do the country some service by the accidental discharge of his duty." ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... Pollution opened for signature - 17 February 1978 entered into force - 2 October 1983 objective - to preserve the marine environment through the complete elimination of pollution by oil and other harmful substances and the minimization of accidental discharge of such substances parties - (115) Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burma, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Cote d'Ivoire, Croatia, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... his getting up several times between that hour and the breaking of dawn Owen slept sounder than he had done for many a day; he seemed to feel a new confidence in himself, as if matters had taken a turn for the better, and in this accidental meeting with his benefactors his fortunes had begun to ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... in a peculiar position. The populace were becoming excited, and there was every probability that a collision, accidental or otherwise, might occur at any moment between the troops and the mob outside, if not between the troops and the State militia. The dilemma which confronted him was either to make a disgraceful surrender of his command, or take the other alternative, ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... inward voice cried out: "It is not in vain that Providence permitted you to see Fledermausse contemplating the agonies of her victim. It is not in vain that the soul of the poor young man came in the form of a butterfly of the night to awake you. No, no; all this was not accidental, Christian. The heavens impose upon you a terrible mission. If you do not accomplish it, tremble lest you fall yourself into the hands of the old murderess! Perhaps, at this moment, she is preparing ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... implies a refinement of juridical conception equally foreign to Rome before the Lex Aquilia, and to England when trespass took its shape. I do not know any very satisfactory evidence that a man was generally held liable either in Rome /4/ or England for the accidental consequences even of his own act. But whatever may have been the early law, the foregoing account shows the starting-point of the system with which we have to deal. Our system of private liability for the consequences of a man's own ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... scientist, an authority on the subject of heredity. You doubtless know something of the subject, how certain traits appear in families generation after generation. Accidental traits, if repeated for two or three generations, often become inherent traits. To show you to what a strange extent this is true, I will call your attention to the case of the ducal house of Bethune in France, where three ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... no doubt, if she thought it would flatter, would tell, a beautiful young girl that her destiny was to be a queen; but there is in this prediction a minuteness of detail, that cannot be accounted for on the ground of accidental coincidence. It is a brief history of her life. Unless we are prepared to believe that an ignorant old mulatto woman was gifted by divine Providence with supernatural power, constituted a second Witch of Endor, and ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... annexed cut. The accumulator contains four Plante positives, having a wide surface, and three negatives constructed of smooth sheets of lead covered with zinc by the electrolysis of the acidulated solution of zinc sulphate in which the couple is immersed. Accidental contact with the interior of the pile is prevented by glass tubes fixed to the negatives by means of leaden bands. The seven electrodes are carried by as many distinct crosspieces of paraffined wood, which rest upon the edges of the trough and hold the plates at a certain distance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... of Capt. Butler, whose anxiety, steadiness, and gentlemanly conduct on this and every other occasion, were too well known to leave a doubt on the minds of the opposite party, that Lieut. Finch's pistol going off was ENTIRELY ACCIDENTAL. A reconciliation, therefore, immediately ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... to Manchester, which led to this, was quite accidental," said Coningsby. "I am bound for the other division of the county, to pay a visit to my grandfather, Lord Monmouth, but an irresistible desire came over me during my journey to view this famous district ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... has usefully summarized the various types of second-sight as expounded by the very credulous Macleod of Hamera: (1) The seer is aware of a phantom winding-sheet enwrapping the doomed person; (2) he may see the corpse of some one still in life; (3) he may behold a drowning or accidental death; (4) he may hear noises as of a coffin being hammered; (5) he may see a living person dwindle to the size of a child, and anon expand to normal bulk. As Johnson remarks, many of the seers declared themselves poignantly afflicted ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... added that, (to repeat), he owned, adjacent to this latter institution, many blocks of land the increased value of which, after the establishment of the University, more than recouped him for his gifts. This might have been either accidental or it might have been cold calculation; judging from Field's consistent methods, it ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... the first he owed the choice of his road; to the second, the manner of traversing it. His six great works of art are all tragedies. Rudin dies a needless death on a barricade; Insarof dies before he even reaches the land he is to liberate; Bazarof dies from accidental blood-poisoning and Nezhdanof dies by his own hand. Here again critics are at hand with an explanation which does not explain. Turgenef, the artist, the poet, the creator, does not know, they say, how to dispose of his heroes at the end of his stories, and he ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... proceed to see whether this biting satire be founded upon truth, or not. Accidental variations from the common impressions of a work form what are called TRUE EDITIONS: and as copies, with such variations (upon the same principle as that of Prints; vide p. 501-2, ante) are rare, they are of course sought after with avidity by knowing bibliomaniacs. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... story that when, on one occasion, the city of Athens was at the mercy of her Spartan foes, and it was proposed to destroy it, the thought was rejected upon the accidental quotation, by some one, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... in my heart against this man. It was the first great passion I had nurtured, and had received no other provocation than the empty sounds of his footfalls. But antipathies are not accidental merely; they are organic; and my quick sense took alarm even from his tread. One's character may be defined in his gait, but I knew from the tramp of this person that his nature was averse to mine. Why had he followed my affianced across the seas? Why had his crashing ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... make a fresh start. On one hand, to keep on in chase of the monkey with so little chance of reaching him was madness. On the other, to accept as definite this accidental interruption to all his plans, to be not only conquered, but cheated and hoaxed by a dumb animal, was maddening. And in the meantime Torres had begun to think that when the night came the robber would disappear without trouble, and he, the robbed one, would find a difficulty ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... is in the mere observation of what takes place. Nothing which the child notices correctly need be rejected, no matter how far removed from the chief event on the object of the experiment. Care that the pupil shall see all, and separate the essential from the accidental, is all that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... Murty, except what is purely accidental, or brought on by the improvidence of individuals. In the very best regulated society there must, of necessity, be poverty less or more," said the priest, by way ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... the sentiments and secret motives which actuate the conduct of men. By connecting moral effects with their probable internal and external causes, it tended to establish a systematic consistency in the concatenation of transactions apparently anomalous, accidental, or totally independent ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... forms and phases of one force. Just as doctors will tell you that there are types of disease which slip from one form of sickness into another, so if we have got the infection about us it is a matter very much of accidental circumstances what shape it takes. And no man with a human heart is safe in pointing to any sin, and saying, 'That form of transgression ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... de Fleury and Mrs. Gilmer,—an accidental and not very welcome encounter of the fashionable belligerents; though since Mrs. Gilmer had received the much-desired invitation to Madame de Fleury's ball, she had affected to lay down her arms, and Madame de Fleury pretended ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... smile, and give out words that melt into a vain man's heart like lumps of maple-sugar, and that is about all that is expected from the female women who perform Society in Washington, and real pretty, smart women most of them are; but after all, they are only accidental females, and get there just because their husbands happen to be elected to a place, and wouldn't even be heard of if some smart man hadn't given them his name—more than as like as not—before he knew himself how much ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... was not included in Berthier's list among the captains of engineers whom he recommended to the rank of chef de bataillon; but Napoleon himself inscribed Bernard's name before all the rest. However, the Emperor forgot him for some time; and it was only an accidental circumstance that brought him to his recollection. I never had any personal acquaintance with Bernard, but I learned from Rapp, how he afterwards became his colleague as aide de camp to the Emperor; a circumstance which I shall now relate, though it ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... drifted and was drifting still; Harry had begun to plan at fifteen and still was busy planning. One result of this difference was that whereas she was hardly touched or affected in character he had been immensely influenced. In her and to her the whole thing seemed almost accidental, a worry, as she put it, and not much more; with him it was the governing fact in life, and had been the force most potent in moulding him. The trouble came into her head when something from outside put it there; it never left his brain. And she ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... railway in South Africa was a single line between Cape Town and Wynberg. It was said, but I do not know with how much truth, that the building of this line was due to the accidental circumstance that a ship, bound for Australia with railway material, was wrecked in the ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... so far. He explained however that his curiosity was not excited by Mr. Powell exclusively. It originated a good way further back in the fact of his accidental acquaintance with the Fynes, in the country. This chance meeting with a man who had sailed with Captain Anthony had revived it. It had revived it to some purpose, to such purpose that to me too was given the knowledge of its origin and of its nature. It was given ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... her. It was a lameness of both the fore-feet; the knees were bent, and it seemed to walk on the very edge of the hoof—on tip-toe, if I may venture such an expression. My young friend thought that the lameness proceeded from original malformation, I am rather of opinion that it was accidental, and that the poor creature was wretchedly foot-sore. However that might be, the pain and difficulty with which it took every step were not to be mistaken; and the distress and fondness of the mother, her perplexity ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... brother's absurd pride, indeed, which made him every where declare, he would never marry but to quality, gave a disgraceful preference against ours: but that were I to be assured, that Mr. Lovelace was capable of so mean a pride as to insult us or value himself on such an accidental advantage, I should think as despicably of his sense, as every body else did ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... a good deal. There was a glass of flowers standing near her, and just as she came to an end her arm moved and the glass was in a moment on the floor, shivered into twenty pieces. I happened to be watching her, and felt perfectly sure that the movement of her arm was not accidental, and that her intention was to conceal, by the apparent mishap, an emotion which was increasing and becoming inconvenient. At any rate, if that was her object it was perfectly accomplished, for the recitation was abruptly terminated, there was general commiseration ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... remarks that "the Swedes may claim the honor of having been the first missionaries among the Indians, at least in Pennsylvania."[36] "It was, in fact, the Swedes who inaugurated the peaceful policy of William Penn. This was not an accidental circumstance in the Swedish policy, but was deliberately adopted and always ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... the provinces separately we find great variations from this average. In five provinces the serfs were less than three per cent., while in others they formed more than seventy per cent. of the population! This is not an accidental phenomenon. In the geographical distribution of serfage we can see reflected the origin ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of Honfleur at the mouth of the Seine, for multiplying the connections with us, is at present an object. It meets with opposition in the ministry; but I am in hopes it will prevail. If natural causes operate, uninfluenced by accidental circumstances, Bordeaux and Honfleur, or Havre, must ultimately take the greatest part of our commerce. The former by the Garonne and canal of Languedoc, opens the southern provinces to us; the latter, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... seems to me that he and Mr. van Buren and Mr. Starr are three friends worth having, not just the accidental sort of friends ("friendines" Nell calls that kind) who happen to be your friends because you were thrown with them somewhere, and you would not miss them dreadfully if by-and-by you drifted apart. They seem ones you were destined to meet, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... young de Buxieres noticed that covers were laid for five people; he began to wonder who the fifth guest could be, when an accidental remark of the clerk showed him that the unknown was no other than Claudet. The fact was that Manette could not bear the idea that her son, who had always sat at table with the late Claude de Buxieres, should be consigned ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... distinguished myself in any other way, it would have been a different thing. It was the fussy, sentimental, inconsiderate interest in one thrown into purely accidental and necessarily painful prominence—the vulgarization of an unspeakable tragedy—that my soul abhorred. I confess that I regarded it from my own unique and selfish point of view. What was a thrilling matter to the world was a torturing memory to me. The ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... and the former element has also been detected in some of the lower animals, and in land plants. Manganese, Lithium, Caesium, Rubidium, and a few others of the simple bodies, occasionally occur in plants and animals, but I believe their presence therein is always accidental. ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... to support the Church where it is weakest. Moreover, as related, the settlements in Mexico offer a haven of retreat should any tempest of prosecution beat upon the Utah polygamists through some slip of policy or accidental Gentile strength. ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... shots. It was the same sort of thing; he found a disused target in a deserted yard and couldn't resist indulging in a little secret shooting, like secret drinking. You thought the shots all scattered and irregular, and so they were; but not accidental. No two distances were alike; but the different points were exactly where he wanted to put them. There's nothing needs such mathematical precision as a wild caricature. I've dabbled a little in drawing myself, and I assure you that to put ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... another cigarette and went for a long stroll in the streets of London. As he was walking in the streets and squares beyond Victoria, he paused suddenly and stood. It was a quaint, quiet square, very typical of London, full of an accidental stillness. The tall, flat houses round looked at once prosperous and uninhabited; the square of shrubbery in the centre looked as deserted as a green Pacific islet. One of the four sides was much higher than the rest, like a dais; and the line of this side was broken by one of London's ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... American subterranean activity: this connection appears to be exceedingly vague. I have during the past year seen it stated that a severe shock in the northern parts of S. America coincided with one in Kamstchatka. Believing, then, that such coincidences are purely accidental, I neglected to take a note of the reference; but I believe the statement was somewhere in "L'Institut" for 1839. (479/2. "L'Institut, Journal General des Societes et Travaux Scientifiques de la France et de l'Etranger," Tome ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... my friends and fellow laborers, J. and M. Candler, who had gone with a party in the same direction. I need not describe a route so often traversed by Europeans. One of its agreeable incidents was an accidental meeting with John Curtis, of Ohio, on his way, on a free trade mission, to Great Britain, from motives which I believe to be disinterested and philanthropic. His labors, which are principally intended to show the evils of our taxes upon food, will not be in vain; though he will find ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a meal, the under or the over dressing of a dish, the incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and obviating the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... When the widest and wildest violations of that divine right of Property, the only divine right now extant or conceivable, are sanctioned and recommended by a vicious Press, and the world has lived to hear it asserted that we have no Property in our very Bodies, but only an accidental Possession and Life-rent, what is the issue to be looked for? Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and baited fall-traps, keep down the smaller sort of vermin; but what, except perhaps some such Universal Association, can protect us against whole meat-devouring and man-devouring ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... this may at least appear, in that they tell me there are no less than two hundred coaches kept by the inhabitants within the circumference of these few villages named above, besides such as are kept by accidental lodgers. ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... Our accidental meeting in the street after a long separation was a pleasing surprize to us both. He stepped aside with me into Falcon-court, and made kind inquiries about my family, and as we were in a hurry going different ways, I promised to call on him next day; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... supposed that Sir Bale reported all that was in his memory respecting his strange vision, if such it was, at Cloostedd. He made a selection of the incidents, and threw over the whole adventure an entirely accidental character, and described the money which the old man had thrown to him as amounting to a purse of five guineas, and mentioned nothing of the passages which bore on the ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... USA (Retired), the man responsible for the discovery, was the principal guest of honor. Obviously moved by the acclaim from virtually every member nation, Gen. O'Reilly made a brief speech recapturing for a moment the accidental circumstances of 25 years ago that ...
— The Golden Judge • Nathaniel Gordon
... his daily rounds, and gave Lee that occasion for unaided exercise with an extempore crutch on the veranda which allowed Mrs. Hale to pursue her manifold duties without the necessity of keeping him company. Kate also, as if to avoid an accidental meeting with Falkner, had remained at home with her sister. With one exception, they did not make their guests the subject of their usual playful comments, nor, after the fashion of their ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... Bible into a vernacular tongue who lived nearly five centuries ago—of an Anti-pope—of a Charlemagne or a Gregory the Great still further removed from himself. The recent events he looks upon as accidental and unessential: but in the great enemies, or great founders of the Romish temporal power, and in the history of their actions and their motives, he feels that the whole principle of the Romish cause and ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... wounds and hard services, precluded the probability of his long surviving the battle of Trafalgar, had he fortunately escaped the Enemy's shot: but the Writer of this can assert that HIS LORDSHIP'S health was uniformly good, with the exception of some slight attacks of indisposition arising from accidental causes; and which never continued above two or three days, nor confined him in any degree with respect to either exercise or regimen:[29] and during the last twelve months of his life, he Complained only three times in this way. ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... to his hackney-coach; but he stopped suddenly, and started with pleasure and surprise, when he saw, at some distance, Marshall Simon and his father advancing towards one of the wings of the Common Dwelling-house; for an accidental circumstance had so far delayed the interview of the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... be endured, and, indeed, could not have been written in England,' there are many passages of which any country might naturally be proud. Truly this is an illustration of Jeffrey's fundamental principle, that taste has no laws, and is a matter of accidental caprice. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Lecture, of Newman's own, in which he says that, after fifty years, he read 'Richard's Story of his Boyhood,' in the Tales of the Hall, with the same delight as on its first appearance, and he considers that a Poem which thus pleases in Age as it pleased in Youth must be called (in the 'accidental' sense of the word, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... everything ranged itself round the sovereign—what was next to be greatest, and what was farthest least. The idea that the head of the Government is the head of society is so fixed in the ideas of mankind that only a few philosophers regard it as historical and accidental, though when the matter is examined, that conclusion is ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... away to spread the news. With the greatest difficulty the body was recovered, and conveyed to Shut-up Dubarry. The inquest that sat upon it rendered the simple verdict, 'Found Dead'; for whether the death were accidental or suicidal, or whether it resulted from the fall upon the rocks, or from the waters of the cascade, the Dogberries of ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... compensated Fevrier for the detection. The Germans had come down into Vaudere with their rifles unloaded, lest an accidental discharge should betray ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... Jackson. Though more than threescore, he had been a conspicuous party chief only three or four years. He had moved forward to unchallenged personal supremacy with a vigor and rapidity which in the political life of the United States have seldom been equaled. His sudden elevation was not the result of accidental circumstances of which he was the fortunate beneficiary. He was the conscious and masterful creator of his position. The sceptre of power in the Democratic party did not drop into his hands; he seized ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... same in cars, boats or vessels of any description for a longer period than twenty-eight consecutive hours, without unloading the same for water, rest and feeding, for a period of at least five consecutive hours, unless prevented from so unloading by storm or accidental causes." ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... that of Australia, the selection of farmland depends solely on the direction of streams, for it is only in the beds of watercourses, that any ponds can be found during dry seasons. The formation of reservoirs has not yet been resorted to, although the accidental largeness of ponds left in such channels has frequently determined settlers in their choice of a homestead, when by a little labour, a pond equally good might have been made in other parts, which few would select from the want of water. In ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... this, only one of two theories is possible. The affair was not accidental; James did not fall into a panic and bellow 'Treason!' out of the window, merely because he found himself alone in a turret—and why in a secluded turret?—with the Master. To that theory the locked door of the gallery ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... have not been misinformed, elections under the former government were septennial. This particular example is brought into view, not as a proof of any peculiar merit, for the priority in those instances was probably accidental; and still less of any advantage in SEPTENNIAL elections, for when compared with a greater frequency they are inadmissible; but merely as a proof, and I conceive it to be a very substantial proof, that the liberties of the people can be in no danger from BIENNIAL elections. The ...
— The Federalist Papers
... How infinitely is the knowledge increased in interest, when we consider the probability of such being the materials of the whole of the bodies of space, and the laws under which these everywhere combine, subject only to local and accidental variations! ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... plan totally distinct from any thing previously in use. Instead of being, as in ordinary cases, a large vessel closed on all sides, with the exception of the valves and steam conductors, which a high pressure or accidental defect may burst, it is composed of a succession of welded iron pipes, perhaps forty in number, screwed together in the manner of the common gas-pipes, at given distances, extending in a direct line, and in a row, at equal distances from a small reservoir ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... result in such a performance as this varies from day to day, and is accidental, or whether it is constant and fundamental, can be determined by repeating the experiment from day to day. This repetition will also show whether ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... indignation that blazes and burns, as when Carlyle exclaims, in the presence of selfishness and wrong: "Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice but an accidental one, here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is as sure as death! In the center of the world-whirlwind, verily now as in the oldest days, dwells ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... was not with them when Jesus came.' No reason is assigned. The absence may have been purely accidental, but the specification of Thomas as 'one of the Twelve,' seems to suggest that his absence was regarded by the Evangelist as a dereliction of apostolic duty; and the cause of it may be found, I think, with reasonable probability, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... house either to the physical or mental size of his family, but must accept what is possible with much the same feeling with which a family of robins might accommodate themselves to a wren's nest, or an oriole to that of a barn-swallow. But the fact remains, that all these accidental homes must, in some way, be brought into harmony with the lives to be lived in them, and the habits and wants of the family; and not only this, they must be made attractive according to the requirements of cultivated society. The effort ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... to lend his moral support to his ministers so long as no constitutional question was involved, or until there had been the expression of the will of the nation, deliberately formulated, and not by the accidental votes which in the Italian Chamber are oftener the result of conspiracies or panics than of any question involving a political measure. Parliamentary government in Italy is a caricature of the form, demanding for its ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... is standing candidate for the City of London on an accidental vacancy; but his premature alarm last year has had a sinister effect. In short, those riots have made mankind sick of them, and give him ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... the box-like summit cap by a shelf trail which sometimes has terrors for the unaccustomed. Several hundred persons make the ascent each summer without accident, including many women and a few children. The one risk is that accidental snow obscure the trail; but Longs Peak is not often ascended ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... originally, as also why you were connected with them. There was, however, one circumstance, a purely fortuitous one, and which need not now be mentioned, which aroused my suspicions. From these reports and accidental circumstances, the same conclusion became evolved for me. I make this statement in all sincerity, for it was I who first implicated you with the matter. I do not in any way notice, the particulars notified on the articles found at the old woman's. That, and several ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... not make it mean champion or advocate or defender, has no right whatever to any of those meanings, and almost certainly owes them to the mistaking of the first syllable (representing Greek [Greek: pr[^o]tos] "first") for [Greek: pro] "on behalf of"—a mistake made easy by the accidental resemblance to antagonist. "Accidental", since the Greek [Greek: ag[^o]nist[^e]s] has different meanings in the two words, in one "combatant", but in the other "play-actor". The Greek [Greek: pr[^o]tag[^o]nist[^e]s] means the actor ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... the Accidental Accompaniments of the Empire was a clever man—keen, genial, subtle, two-edged, a gentlemanly and not thorough disciple of Machiavel; able to lead parliamentary forlorn hopes and plant flags on breaches, or to cover retreats with brilliant skirmishing; deft, ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... for the purchase of this uncertainty, I must sacrifice all the remaining comforts of my life. I believe Mr. Falkland to be virtuous; but I know him to be prejudiced. He would never forgive me even this accidental parley, if by any means he should come ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... as you do, Chebron, that the accidental killing of a cat is a deadly offense against the gods, I should say denounce yourself at once, but I do not so ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... this be true of a stanza, a line, a word here or there, inserted as an afterthought, is there use or sense in printing a number of trifling or, apparently, accidental variants? Might not a choice have been made, and the jots and tittles ignored ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... with Chief Big Bill," he suggested. "No, I wouldn't make that move if I was you, Mr. Macy. This old gun is liable to go off accidental in your direction and she spatters like hell. That's the idee. Be reasonable. Not that I give a hoot, but a man hadn't ought to let his impulses run away with his judgment, as the ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... of triumph came sooner than he expected. It arose out of an accidental circumstance. The beautiful Queen happening to be travelling, came one night to one of the royal castles, and demanded to be lodged and entertained there until morning. The governor of this castle, who was one of the enraged lords, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... this from their proximate causes. Some of their names in common language are taken from the remote cause, as worms, stone of the bladder; others from the remote effect, as diarrhoea, salivation, hydrocephalus; others from some accidental symptom of the disease, as tooth-ach, head-ach, heart-burn; in which the pain is only a concomitant circumstance of the excess or deficiency of fibrous actions, and not the cause of them. Others again are taken from the deformity occasioned in consequence of the unnatural fibrous motions, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... after this accidental dialogue, chance made me auditor of what passed between my ancestor and Sir Joseph Job, another celebrated dealer in the funds, in an interview that took place in the house of the former in Cheapside. As the difference was so PATENT, as the French express it, I ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... want you to become a coward, for I as much abhor a dastardly spirit as any boy in your school can possibly do; but I would wish you to convince them that you merited not that appellation, by showing through the whole of your behaviour, a resolution that despised accidental pain, and avoided revenging an affront for no other reason than because you were convinced it shewed a much nobler spirit to pardon than to resent. And you may be assured, my dear, few are the days that pass without ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... to him was the fretful, querulous voice of an old, bedridden woman as he lifted the latch and opened the door of a poor house upon the ramparts, which had no entrance into the street; and where he lived alone with his mother, cut off from all accidental ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... named Benyowski, seized a small vessel and put to sea. Touching at Japan and Loo Choo to obtain water and provisions, the party reached the Portuguese colony of Macao in safety. There were no nautical instruments or charts on the ship, and the successful result of the voyage was more accidental than otherwise. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... much alike as peas in a pod; all except John Moore, who's the only exception in all the male tribe I ever met! His marrying once was just accidental and must be forgiven him. She fell in love with him while he was attending her when she had typhoid, when his back was turned as it were, and it was simple kindness in him that made him marry her when he found out how it was with the poor thing. There's not a woman in this town who could ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... way. This afforded time for the fugitives, racing their swift mules at full speed, to reach the opening of the valley, when Velasquez wheeled and halted, for the pursuers were close at hand. A conflict ensued in which many of the horsemen were slain, and the young kaana received an accidental wound of which he retains the scar. It must suffice to say, that the party eventually secured their retreat without loss of life; and by break of day they were on a mountainous ridge many leagues from Iximaya. In about fourteen days, they reached ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... possibility of grief. He had himself gone through labours and adventures that would have killed a dozen men, and had never been conscious even of alarm about himself; and the idea of a life quenched in its beginning by so accidental a matter as a draught in a nursery seemed to him something incomprehensible. When he had heard of a child's death he had been used to say that the mother would feel it, no doubt, poor thing; but it was a small event, that scarcely ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... of Windsor was killed by the accidental discharge of a gun in the hands of Thomas Allyn, also of Windsor. An inquest was held, and Thomas was indicted in the following December. He plead guilty, and at the trial the jury found the fact to be "homicide by misadventure." Thomas was fined L20 ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... met the pair daily, and the meetings were no longer accidental; he waited on the hill-side till he saw them ascending from the town, and then made his way to the bench. He enjoyed the quiet friendliness of their manner. The old gentleman talked willingly enough, though with ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... irksome and improper to be in a room at all, but to have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible. He cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his business, careful as he went not to inflict any accidental injury on the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... such a trial as hardly any slender contrivance, excepting always the valves of the heart, was ever subjected to. It has rattled for years over the cobble-stones of a rough city pavement. It has climbed over all the accidental obstructions it met in the highway, and dropped into all the holes and deep ruts that made the heavy farmer sitting over it use his Sunday vocabulary in a week-day form of speech. At one time or another, almost every part of that old wagon ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... drowned, and his box of papers, including his precious journal, was lost. Undoubtedly his daily record of the voyage would have been very valuable, for he was a man of scholarship as well as of practical ability. But its accidental loss gave the greater fame to Marquette, whose account was printed. In recent years, however, he has been recognized as an equal partner with the noble priest ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... "May have been accidental. Anyway, better take my lead as long as you're doubtful. Rolfe is looking after him now, and we'll keep him in view between us. But my advice is, show him that we trust him. Won't do to anticipate trouble ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... way on indifferent subjects, never once alluding to Olive's departure. He did so now, however, but carelessly, as if with an accidental thought. ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... gleam of revelation granted by any authorized prophet to speculative curiosity, whether pointing to science, or to the mysteries of the spiritual world. And the true argument on this subject would show that this abstinence was not accidental; was not merely on a motive of convenience, as evading any needless extension of labors in teaching, which is the furthest point attained by any existing argument; but, on the contrary, that there was an obligation of consistency, stern, absolute, insurmountable, which ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Something about this accidental spelling awakened his interest very sharply—it was an odd coincidence. He lit some candles, and hurriedly examined the line. The first thing which struck him was that the four letters which went to make up the word "dead" were about ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... some exhausting illness. With slow difficulty she rose to her feet, and, setting her hands to her sides, gasped out, "My coals are done." He made a note, and said, I'll send you some more." Her other wants were regularly seen to on a certain day every week. Ours was an accidental visit. We now turned up to another nook of the court, where my companion told me there was a very bad case. He found the door fast. We looked through the window into that miserable man- nest. It was cold, gloomy, and bare. As Corrigan says, in the "Colleen Bawn," "There was nobody in—but ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... which the Europeans have entailed upon some of the natives of the South Seas, is the accidental introduction among them of that enemy of all repose and ruffler of even tempers—the Mosquito. At the Sandwich Islands and at two or three of the Society group, there are now thriving colonies of these insects, who promise ere long to supplant altogether the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... of some of these giants of the forest are eighteen feet in circumference at the height of a man from the ground, and their lower branches would of themselves form trees such as many a trim and well-kept park could never boast of. At other times the original tree will have met with an accidental fracture when young, and after going up twenty or thirty feet from the ground, as an immense wooden column, will throw out three or four other trees from its summit, which will all shoot up parallel to each other into the air and form a little forest of themselves. Very frequently, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... cows, held out the right hand of fellowship to the pig, and even hinted that a pair of pink-eyed Himalayan rabbits might arrive—unexpectedly—from town some day. We were just considering whether in this fertile soil an apparently accidental remark on the solid qualities of guinea-pigs or ferrets might haply blossom and bring forth fruit, when our governess appeared on the scene. Uncle George's manner at once underwent a complete and contemptible change. His interest in rational topics seemed, "like a fountain's sickening pulse," ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... movements. Those who have seen this very man creep into the mansion house at night and wander cautiously from room to room, as if to fix a plan of the dwelling in his mind, will understand that his visit, which seemed so purely accidental, had its object; but no one could have discovered, by look or movement, what ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... tribe, who are now supposed to be in league with the Druses, against the Government. Including this party, only six persons have succeeded in reaching Palmyra within a year, and two of them, Messrs. Noel and Cathcart, were imprisoned four days by the Arabs, and only escaped by the accidental departure of a caravan for Damascus. The present party was obliged to travel almost wholly by night, running the gauntlet of a dozen Arab encampments, and was only allowed a day's stay at Palmyra. They were all disguised as Bedouins, and took nothing with them but ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... to be a mere fling or freak, what is to be thought of a man who evidently sets Cicero, as a writer, if not as a thinker, above Plato? It would be not only possible but easy to follow this up with a long list of critical enormities on De Quincey's part, enormities due not to accidental and casual crotchet or prejudice, as in Hazlitt's case, but apparently to some perverse idiosyncrasy. I doubt very much, though the doubt may seem horribly heretical to some people, whether De Quincey really cared much for poetry as poetry. He liked philosophical poets:—Milton, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... persisted in passing the dark hours so near to the Whately home my burden of anxiety and responsibility was doubled. In silent faithfulness he kept sentinel watch. I dared not tell Marjie, for I knew it would fill her nights with terror, and yet I feared her accidental discovery of his presence. Jean was doing more than this, however. His promise to be good seemed to belie Father Le Claire's warning. In and out of the village all that winter he went, orderly, at times even affable, quietly refusing every temptation to ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... lust] Gypsy is here used both in the original meaning for an Egyptian, and in its accidental sense ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... things were purely accidental I felt sure, yet I did not care to have them repeated. And for a long while there was neither sound nor sun-glitter from him. Then, without even a glance or a word for me, the Mohican quietly dropped back from the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... into despair. From this despair arises an awakening of the soul. From such awakening proceeds study of the Scriptures. From contemplation of the import of the scriptures, O king, one sees the value of penance. A person possessed of the knowledge of what is essential and what accidental, O king, is very rare,—he, that is, who seeks to undergo penances, impressed with the truth that the happiness one derives from the possession of such agreeable objects as spouses and children leads ultimately to misery.[1533] Penances, O child, are for all. They are ordained for even the lowest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... stillness that had settled while we gazed and the file of warriors, reining, gazed, gripped and fairly hurt. I cursed the youth. Would to God he had stayed at home—God grant that mangy wolf died by trap or poison. Our one chance made the sport of an accidental view-halloo, when all the wide ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... sentinel till the carriage should arrive; then she could run down and prepare her uncle for his innocent and accidental visitor. It would not be prudent to let him receive the information from a servant, or without the accompanying explanation. This it was that made her so unnaturally firm when the little idle B pressed her to waste ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... that time, for somebody happened to scrape the floor with his chair just then; which accidental sound, as all must have noticed, has the instantaneous effect that the cutting of the yellow hair by Iris had upon infelix Dido. It broke the charm, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... chance—or mischance—the artist, in depicting the disagreeable man, drew a portrait of the actual original that was positively startling in its likeness. No one who knew him opened the magazine without saying at once, "Why, here's a portrait of So-and-so." And yet the likeness was absolutely accidental. Black assured me that the artist knew nothing of the original disagreeable man, and had never even seen him. It was all a freak of ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... and looking both sheepish and gratified, Tom suddenly bolted, leaving the elder lady to enlighten the younger at length, and have another laugh over this new sort of courtship, which might well be called accidental. Nan was deeply interested, for she knew Dora, thought her a nice little thing, and predicted that in time she would make Tom an excellent wife, since she admired and 'appreciated' ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... in which I can express it is that in consciously trying to work with God, not man, as our employer, things happen to us which, to the best of our foresight, would not have happened otherwise. Often they seem accidental, and possibly we ascribe them to accident till the coincidences become too numerous to explain by coincidence and nothing more. It constantly happens to myself, for instance, to find the whole solution of some tangled financial ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... at the moment the gun was discharged and could hardly believe his own eyes. He knew the success was accidental, and hoped it would not encourage Tim to ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... in any other way, it would have been a different thing. It was the fussy, sentimental, inconsiderate interest in one thrown into purely accidental and necessarily painful prominence—the vulgarization of an unspeakable tragedy—that my soul abhorred. I confess that I regarded it from my own unique and selfish point of view. What was a thrilling matter to the world was ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... "The accidental digging up of a skeleton, and the unwary and emphatic declaration of Aram's accomplice that it could not be that of Clarke, betraying a guilty knowledge of the true bones, he was wrought to a confession of their deposit. The learned homicide was seized and arraigned, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Carolyn Wells. All the Way by Water. Elizabeth Stancy Payne. Altar of Friendship, The. Blanche Upright. Amateur Gentleman. Jeffery Farnol. Amateur Inn, The. Albert Payson Terhune. Anabel at Sea. Samuel Merwin. An Accidental Accomplice. William Johnston. Ancestor Jorico. William J. Locke. And They Lived Happily Ever After. Meredith Nicholson. Angel Esquire. Edgar Wallace. Angel of Terror. Edgar Wallace. Anne of the Island. L. M. Montgomery. Anne's House of Dreams. L. M. Montgomery. Annihilation. Isabel Ostrander. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... it had come into his possession. It was as if Fate had thrust that clue into his hands. And after the manner of the average man, whose ambition is to command events, he began to mistrust such a gratuitous and accidental success—just because it seemed forced upon him. The practical value of success depends not a little on the way you look at it. But Fate looks at nothing. It has no discretion. He no longer considered it eminently ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... misfit. In him, as in all of us, there is an infinite complexity—good and ill together. No one who has faithfully examined his own life can doubt how trifling a weight turns the scales for or against us. An accidental meeting, a casual friendship, a phrase in a book—and the current of life takes a definite direction this way or that. There are no doubt people in whom the elements are so perfectly adjusted that the balance is never in doubt. Their character is superior to circumstance. But they are ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... violet-coloured domino is easily understood: being in a sky-blue domino I was mistaken for the Count d'Ossore. I was myself led into the mistake by the Marquis Albert having the same Christian name as my English friend. The second meeting with the Count Rodolph, in the black domino, was accidental. The next walk had been appointed as the place of meeting with the Carbonari Felippo and his companions; but Count Rodolph, perceiving me examining my stiletto by the light of the lamp, presumed that ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the Palmer tire, and we see what that has led to. The other is the bicycle with the patched Dunlop. Before we start to investigate that, let us try to realize what we do know, so as to make the most of it, and to separate the essential from the accidental." ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Orchids,' in which I showed how perfect were the means for cross-fertilisation, and here I shall show how important are the results. I was led to make, during eleven years, the numerous experiments recorded in this volume, by a mere accidental observation; and indeed it required the accident to be repeated before my attention was thoroughly aroused to the remarkable fact that seedlings of self-fertilised parentage are inferior, even in the first generation, in ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... some one who had been living in Palo Duro Canon with the outlaws? Or was this meeting an accidental one? The odd thing about it was that there was no sign of her horse. She had come on foot, in a country where nobody ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... It will be said that entails exist in Scotland and in England. Yes; but this Session a law has passed, or is passing, to modify the system as it has heretofore existed in Scotland; and in England many of its evils have been partially overcome by the extraordinary, and, to some degree, the accidental extension of manufacturing industry among the people. In Ireland there are no such mitigations; a code of laws exists, under which it is impossible for the land and the people to be brought, as it were, together, and for industry to live in independence and comfort, instead ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... with Mr Keswick at Midbranch was entirely accidental. When I arrived there, a few days ago, I had no reason to suppose that I should meet him. But I must ask you to excuse me from giving my reasons for wishing to find your cousin, and for coming to see him here. The matter between us ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... Concord carefully and correctly defines: "Everything that is must be either substantia, that is, a self-existent essence, or accidens, that is, an accidental matter, which does not exist by itself essentially but is in another self-existent essence and can be distinguished from it." "Now, then, since it is the indisputable truth that everything that is, is either a substance ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... missing kinsman; he remembered how this protector—whom he had at once instinctively loved—transferred him to the house of this new-found relation, who treated him kindly and sent him to the Jesuit school, but who never awakened in him a feeling of kinship. He dreamed again of his life at school, his accidental meeting with Susy at Santa Clara, the keen revival of his boyish love for his old playmate, now a pretty schoolgirl, the petted adopted child of wealthy parents. He recalled the terrible shock that interrupted this boyish episode: the news of the death of his ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... slumberer, as the loiterer had been before, was the subject of observation to the accidental passengers. Two men entered the porch in company. One was a somewhat slight made, but alert-looking man, by name Lysimachus, and by profession a designer. A roll of paper in his hand, with a little satchel containing a few chalks, or pencils, completed his stock in trade; ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... honour of his own talents and his country's benefit [Footnote: See Mr Knight On the Apple-tree.]. It is well known to gardeners that the cabbage tribe are liable to sport thus in their progeny; and to some accidental occurrence of this nature we are indebted for the very ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... put his father right as to his riding with the butcher's boy being entirely accidental; but his sobs prevented his speaking articulately, and they had nearly arrived at home before Mr. and Mrs. Danvers could exactly understand how the ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... of the words "common defense" and "general welfare" in this admirably written paragraph could hardly have been accidental, or have been due to any other cause than a juxtaposition of those ideas in the minds of the Constitution's framers. And what more natural connection can there be between any two ideas than between those of ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... nature of their work. In London, in the relatively lucid air of Campden Hill, they dwell together, and their beautiful studios are side by side. However, there is a reason for commemorating Mr. Parsons' work which has nothing to do with the accidental—the simple fact that that work forms the richest illustration of the English landscape that is offered us to-day. Harper has for a long time past been full of Mr. Alfred Parsons, who has made the dense, fine detail of his native land familiar in far countries, amid scenery ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... asked him for a new copy of Horace, that the translation of "Poeta nascitur non fit" was "a nasty poet for nothing fit"—a remark which I took in high dudgeon. His repugnance to "the humanities" had, also, much increased of late, by an accidental bias in favor of what he supposed to be natural science. Somebody had accosted him in the street, mistaking him for no less a personage than Doctor Dubble L. Dee, the lecturer upon quack physics. This set him off at a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... containing his Gaelic is very remarkable, and is much founded on by Mr Campbell. But the history of literature affords various instances of the preservation of a book depending on one solitary MS. The case of the great Niebelungen-Lied—unknown for centuries, and brought to light through the accidental discovery of a MS.—is quite in point; and to come nearer home, two years ago, only one perfect copy of the first Gaelic book ever printed, Bishop Carewell's translation of John Knox's liturgy, was in existence. It may ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... the coach, quite accidental, with this gentleman,' said Mrs. Wishaw, fanning a cheek and nodding at Mr. Goren. 'I'm an old flame of dear Mel's. I knew him when he was an apprentice in London. Now, wasn't it odd? Your mother—I suppose I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... are absolutely transparent when in the water, and one can only know of their presence by accidental ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... farewell of me was peculiar: she took my hand in her two, turned it palm upwards, and spat on it. I do not know whether this is a constant form of greeting among the Fan; I fancy not. Dr. Nassau, who explained it to me when I saw him again down at Baraka, said the spitting was merely an accidental by- product of the performance, which consisted in blowing a blessing; and as I happened on this custom twice afterwards, I feel sure from observation ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the avoidance of what is to its disadvantage, neither does it hand down the modification leading to the adoption of what is to its advantage. However lively the impression made upon the mother, the accidental leaves no trace in the offspring. Chance plays no part in the genesis of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... and in better facilities for internal communication, he declared, had rapidly brought these two systems into close contact, and collision was the result. "Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... real difference between success and failure is that success succeeds. This being frankly admitted at the outset, I will allow myself to assert that there are three sorts of success. Success A is the accidental sort. It is due to the thing we call chance, and to nothing else. We are all of us still very superstitious, and the caprices of chance have a singular effect upon us. Suppose that I go to Monte Carlo and announce to a friend my firm conviction that red ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... lifting a whole city home to supper, is a giant with a falsetto voice. The large-sounding, the poetic-sounding, is not characteristic of the modern spirit. In so far as it exists at all in the modern age, either in its machinery or its poetry, it exists because it is accidental or left over. There was a deep bass steamer on the Mississippi once, with a very small head of steam, which any one would have admitted had poetry in it—old-fashioned poetry. Every time it whistled ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... due weighing of its consequences. It has assuredly led to unexpected results. The statesmen who meant merely to give Home Rule to Ireland have stumbled into the making of a new constitution for the United Kingdom. What wonder that their workmanship betrays its accidental origin. It has no coherence, no consistency; nothing is called by its right name, and words are throughout substituted for facts; the new Parliament of Ireland is denied its proper title; the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is nominally saved, and is really destroyed; and ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... individual variations will occasionally occur, having a distant resemblance to groups which are the objects of mimicry, and which it is therefore advantageous to resemble. Such a variety will have a better chance of preservation; the individuals possessing it will be multiplied; and their accidental likeness to the favoured group will be rendered permanent by hereditary transmission, and each successive variation which increases the resemblance being preserved, and all variation departing from the favoured ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... change which then traversed the continent of Europe. But on a closer examination this view is scarcely borne out by facts, and the coincidence of the two epochs of change appears to be little more than accidental. The general unity that runs through the history of the more advanced continental states is indeed stronger than appears to a superficial reader of history; but this correspondence of tendency does not always ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... many that the first three-color printing press ever built was expressly designed and built for Arbuckle Bros. Then there is a sunny first-aid hospital on top of the Pearl Street warehouse where a physician is ever ready to relieve sudden illness and accidental injuries. On the eleventh floor there is a huge dining room where the Brooklyn clerical forces get their noonday lunches. This feeding of the inner man (and woman) is matched by the power-house where twenty-six large steam boilers must be fed their quota of coal. In ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... from the Kenton, New York, Chronicle, an upstate weekly, and the news story told how Judge Sam Baker had vanished on a fishing trip to a nearby lake. Accidental drowning had been the verdict but, as yet, the body ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... weigh a resolution in the two balances, and examine an idea under the two lights, if we wish to minimize the chances of error by taking the average of our daily oscillations. Our inner life describes regular curves, barometical curves, as it were, independent of the accidental disturbances which the storms of sentiment and passion may raise in us. Every soul has its climate, or rather, is a climate; it has, so to speak, its own meteorology in the general meteorology of the soul. Psychology, therefore, cannot be complete so long as the physiology of our planet is itself ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... entirely destroyed, and there was an immense loss in plate, jewels, costly stuffs, and sumptuous armor of the luxurious nobles. The fire at first had been attributed to treachery, but on investigation it proved to be entirely accidental. The queen on retiring to her prayers had ordered her lady in attendance to remove a light burning near her couch, lest it should prevent her sleeping. Through heedlessness, the taper was placed in another part of the tent near the hangings, ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... your urine, and the hypostasis, [303] Thick and obscure, doth make your danger great: Your veins are full of accidental heat, Whereby the moisture of your blood is dried: The humidum and calor, which some hold Is not a parcel of the elements, But of a substance more divine and pure, Is almost clean extinguished and spent; Which, being the cause of life, imports ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... which each such unit measures. The origin of the pendulum is traced to Galileo's observation of a hanging lamp in a church at Pisa continuing to vibrate long and with singular uniformity, after any accidental cause of disturbance. Hence he was led to investigate the laws of the phenomenon, and out of what, in some shape or other, had been before men's eyes from the beginning of the world, his powerful genius extracted the most important results. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... what the idea of progress through the scientific control of life is likely to mean and ought to mean to Christianity. If this modern idea is not intelligently guided in its effect upon our faith and practice, it will none the less have its effect in haphazard, accidental, unguided, and probably ruinous ways. If one listens, for example, to the preaching of liberal ministers, one sees that every accent of their teaching has been affected by this prevalent and permeating thought. The God they preach no longer sits afar like ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... added to sacred literature, and this is the accidental discovery by Nicolas Notovich of a Buddhist history of a phase of Christ's life left blank ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... at rare intervals, some glimpse into the inner sanctuary does reach the eyes of ordinary mortal men without; some slight accidental peep into those mysteries from whence all corruption has been so thoroughly expelled; and then, how delightfully refreshing is the sight, when, perhaps, some ex-member, hurled from his paradise like a fallen peri, reveals the secret of that ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... assembled, was called [Greek: basileios stoa], and it is an accredited theory, though it is by no means proved, that we have here the origin of the later basilica. It is difficult to see why this was called "royal" except for some special but accidental reason such as can in this case be divined. There are other instances in which a term that becomes specific has been derived from some one specimen accidentally named. "Labyrinth" is one case in point, and "basilica" may be another. It is true that we do not know what was the shape of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... meeting with his cousin after his return to Paris was accidental. He had rather put off visiting her, and one night, entering a crowded room, he found himself standing behind a girl's light figure and staring at an abundance of reddish-brown hair. When, almost immediately ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to try and get at the reason for this wide-spread, deep-rooted, fear of beauty: for some reason there must surely be. Such instinctive feelings, on so broad a scale, are not accidental. And so soon as one begins to analyse the attitude of religion towards beauty, the reason is not far ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... impression, or make such wild and reckless statements, I am utterly unable to imagine. As a matter of fact, the fleet never tried or intended to injure the castle, and all the damage done to it was probably accidental. I have no doubt that Admiral Sampson might have reduced the fortress to the condition that the correspondent so graphically describes,—I saw him destroy the stone fort of Aguadores in a few hours, with only three ships,—but he discovered, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... than appears from experience in the conduct of men." Indeed, his fundamental position of the Deity's benevolence is rested upon this foundation, that "pleasures only were intended, and that the pains are accidental consequences, although the means of producing pleasures." The same recourse to accident is repeatedly had. Thus, "the events to which we are exposed in this imperfect state appear to be the accidental, not natural, effects of our frame and condition." Now can any ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... her face As sunlight masks the barren sea; A fitful, accidental grace Which time shall ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... It may have been accidental but it is interesting to note that the first public statement of Mr. Byron Newton, appointed by the Administration to succeed Mr. Malone as Collector of the Port of New York, was a bitter denunciation of all woman suffrage whether by ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... gathering up a trick he judges whether the person taking it can make another in the suit. He recognises what is played through feint, by the air with which it is thrown upon the table. A casual or inadvertent word; the accidental dropping or turning of a card, with the accompanying anxiety or carelessness in regard to its concealment; the counting of the tricks, with the order of their arrangement; embarrassment, hesitation, eagerness or trepidation—all afford, to his apparently intuitive perception, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to the human mind unless they can be traced to their causes, and thus a chain of events followed link by link to see why some happening was so fruitful in results, and to search for the relation of apparently isolated and accidental incidents. ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... dinner was an accidental gathering. Rahal knows well that I have no will to dine with Mistress Brodie. Dost thou want her here, as ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... be defended if I should say that I do suppose God has given to all mankind equal gifts and capacities, in that He has given them all souls equally capable; and that the whole difference in mankind proceeds either from accidental difference in the make of their bodies, or from ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... either for the calf or the family. She is sent where she should have gone years before—to the butcher. The disappointed owner in future buys the cheapest animals that come to hand. If pedigree be ignored, and the sire be of doubtful antecedents, except in an accidental case, the progeny will be at the best of medium quality; but by ordinary precaution such loss ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... helped the orphan out of his accidental and very unwelcome bath, which, though it had drenched him, had ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... left openings.' He further said, 'that from the density of the smoke they could see nothing, and that the first intimation they had (the Barfleur) of passing through the enemy's line was, from receiving fire on both sides.' He gave another reason for supposing it was altogether accidental, which was, that no attempt was made or order given by signal to double on the enemy, and that the advantage gained by passing through the line was never made use of when my father took possession of the Ville de Paris, and received Count de Grasse's sword, and afterward conveyed ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... exposed, that entitles a colour to the character of permanency; and it is the not-so-enduring which attaches to it rightly the opposite character of evanescence: while a pigment may obtain a false repute for either, by accidental preservation or destruction under unusually favourable or ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... taste will not account for the entrance of animal-feeding crustaceans. Perhaps small aquatic animals habitually try to enter every small crevice, like that between the valve and collar, in search of food or protection. It is not probable that the remarkable transparency of the valve is an accidental circumstance, and the spot of light thus formed may serve as a guide. The long bristles round the entrance apparently serve for the same purpose. I believe that this is the case, because the bladders of some ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... enormous stones, as if by some giant's hand; but at one time the expulsive force was greater than usual, and this block, like the falling keystone of a ruined arch, has slipped down to the ground and blocked up the way. It is only an accidental obstruction, not met by Saknussemm, and if we don't destroy it we shall be unworthy to reach the ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... man who wins his wealth in this way is increasing at the same time the wealth of his State. His money merely represents the abundance of goods at his disposal. In Turkey the coin itself is the thing of value, and wealth is nothing but the accidental accumulation of money within the possession of an individual. The very high rate of interest, which is here legally 20 per cent, is far from indicating any great activity of capital. It only indicates ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... The coroner and the press call it accidental death, but I—may God forgive me for saying it—I know better! He left word where none could find it but me, that you knew the truth, and he bade me ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... containing which other acts are rescued from utter passivity and unconsciousness. Impure feeling ranges between two extremes: absolute want and complete satisfaction. The former limit is reached in anguish, madness, or the agony of death, when the accidental flux of things in contradiction has reached its maximum or vanishing point, so that the contradiction and the flux themselves disappear by diremption. Such feeling denotes inward disorganisation and a hopeless conflict of reflex actions tending toward dissolution. The second limit is reached ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Weezee village," he tells us, "there are few sounds to disturb the traveller's night rest. The horn of the new-comers, and the reply to it from a neighbouring village, an accidental alarm, the chirping of crickets, and the cry from a sick child occasionally, however, broke the stillness. At dawn the first sounds were the crowing of cocks, the lowing of cows, the bleating of calves, and the chirruping of sparrows (which might have reminded ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... was only too glad to take orders from the other chum at such a time as this, although he too knew considerable about caring for gunshot wounds, broken bones, and such accidental happenings as are apt to occur ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... doubtless in perfect good faith, as being those to which the writer alludes. But Miss Browning has recognized them as her father's own impromptu epigrams, well remembered in the family, together with the occasion on which they were written. The substitution may, from the first, have been accidental. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Barclay has, probably in part, from accidental circumstances, come to be relegated to a position among the English classics, those authors whom every one speaks of but few read. That modern editions of at least his principal performance have not appeared, can only be accounted for by the great expense ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... dining-room, young de Buxieres noticed that covers were laid for five people; he began to wonder who the fifth guest could be, when an accidental remark of the clerk showed him that the unknown was no other than Claudet. The fact was that Manette could not bear the idea that her son, who had always sat at table with the late Claude de Buxieres, should be consigned to the kitchen in presence of these ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... interview with Field-Marshal Hindenburg and General Ludendorff brought about by any particular person or persons—either by yourself, by the Imperial Chancellor, or by the Foreign Office; or was it purely accidental? ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... been but one specimen of the familiar countenance, he might have passed over the resemblance as accidental; but a repetition meant more. Knight thought anew of Smith's hasty words earlier in the day, and looked at the ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... how he had grappled with Isom in an endeavor to prevent him turning the gun against him; told of the accidental discharge of the weapon; ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... without flinching and then his eyes shifted and sought the floor. "I'll bet," said Gilmore's cool voice, "I'll bet you what you like I could put my hand on the man who did the murder!" and as he spoke he reached out and by an apparently accidental gesture, rested his hand on Langham's shoulder. "You wouldn't like to risk any money on that little bet, eh, Marsh?" He sank back in his chair and applied himself to his cigar in silence, but his eyes ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... a prodigy. She was vastly superior to the men who surrounded her, most of whom were pedants, or sophists, or bigots; dignitaries indeed, but men who exalted the accidental and the external over the real and the permanent; men who were fond of quibbles and sophistries, jealous of each other and of their own reputation, dogmatic and positive as priests are apt to be, and most positive on points ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... and the frogs chanting their good-night song, through the gathering twilight shades, across the main road and up the lighthouse lane. Kyan, his mind filled with fearful forebodings, was busily trying to think of a reasonable excuse for the "accidental" imprisonment of his sister. John Ellery was thinking, also, but his thoughts ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Soc., 1864, p. 29. It was in later years moved to the west bank. The grandfather whom I, for short, call Wakawa, died the death of a brave in battle against the Ojibways (commonly called Chippeways)—the hereditary enemies of the Dakotas. Wakinyan Tanka—Big Thunder, was killed by the accidental discharge of his own gun. They were both buried with their kindred near the "Wakan Teepee," the sacred Cave—(Carver's Cave). Ta-o-ya-te-du-ta, the last of the Little Crows, was killed July 3, 1863, during ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... resolved that we will look for human perfection neither exclusively in the Old World nor exclusively in the New—neither among Catholics nor Protestants, among Whigs or Tories, heathens or Christians—that we have laid aside accidental differences, and determined to recognise only moral distinctions, to love moral worth, and to hate moral evil, wherever we find them;—even supposing all this, we have not much improved our position—we cannot ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... were matured, one of which had to be abandoned because the British had timely notice of it by the treachery of an American general, a second because the other generals disapproved the attempt, and, on the authority of Humphreys, "the accidental intervention of some vessels prevented [another] attempt, which was more than once resumed afterwards. Notwithstanding this favorite project was not ultimately effected, it was evidently not less bold in conception or feasible in accomplishment, than ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... that Fortune is a cause. Now of causes, some are causes by themselves, and others by accident. Thus for example, the proper cause by itself of an house or a ship is the art of the mason, the carpenter, or the shipwright; but accidental causes are music, geometry, and whatever else may happen to be joined with the art of building houses or ships, in respect either of the body, the soul, or any exterior thing. Whence it appears, that the cause by itself must needs be determinate and one; but the causes by ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... you for this magnificent reception, and while I cannot take to myself any share of the compliment thus paid, more than that which pertains to a mere instrument, an accidental instrument, perhaps I should say, of a great cause, I yet must look upon it as a most magnificent reception, and as such most heartily do thank you for it. You have been pleased to address yourself to me chiefly in behalf of this glorious ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... extinguishers in the real sense of the word," went on the other man behind the screen. "It must have been some accidental combination of them. But in spite of that we put it all over Josephus Baxter ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... heathen forefathers of the European peoples the most popular and widespread fire-festival of the year was the great celebration of Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day. The coincidence of the festival with the summer solstice can hardly be accidental. Rather we must suppose that our pagan ancestors purposely timed the ceremony of fire on earth to coincide with the arrival of the sun at the highest point of his course in the sky. If that was so, it follows that the old founders of the midsummer rites had observed the solstices ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... into trouble; and consequently he was always in some scrape or other. He was old enough, certainly, to know better, and pleasant enough, in other respects, to be liked very much by all who knew him. He was full of fun, perfectly fearless, and bore an accidental scratch or tumble like a man. But, dear me! what a heedless, careless little scamp! That very morning, before school began, his mother had sent him into the garden to gather vegetables. He cut the ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... pain of loss and the pain of sense constitute the very essence of the punishment of Hell, theologians teach that there are other sufferings called accidental. The reprobate never experience v.g. the least real pleasure nor are they ever free from the hideous presence of one another. After the Last Judgment the lost souls will also be tormented by union with their bodies, a union bringing about a fresh increase of punishment. ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... This encounter must appear purely accidental, for Madame Orme is very peculiar, very suspicious; and if she imagines we planned this excursion to meet her, or left Naples with the intention of joining her party, the chances are that I as well as ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the accidental encounter with Martin outside of the Academy of Music. Rufus began to hope that he had gone out of the city, though he hardly expected it. Such men as Martin prefer to live from hand to mouth in a great city, rather than go to the country, where they would have less difficulty in earning ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... usen to talk about how fer they could kill a deer; now it's how fer they kin kill a man. I hev knowed the time when a man would 'a' been druv out o' the county fer drawin' a knife ur a pistol; 'n' ef a feller was ever killed, it was kinder accidental, by a Barlow. I reckon folks got use' to weepons 'n' killin' 'n' bushwhackin' in the war. Looks like it's been gittin' wuss ever sence, 'n' now hit's dirk 'n' Winchester, 'n' shootin' from the bushes all the time. Hit's wuss 'n stealin' ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... it secret until it is safe to give, until mankind has expanded to the stars and has new worlds to populate, or until, even without that, he has reached a state of civilization where he can avoid overpopulation by rationing births to the number of accidental—or voluntary—deaths. ...
— Hall of Mirrors • Fredric Brown
... concerned. Impromptu meetings were held at every house in turn to discuss the coming event, and the latest bits of information regarding it were retailed with embellishments proportionate to the imagination of the accidental narrator. Not a soul in Joppa but knew every proposed feature of the entertainment better than the hosts themselves. The old people said it would be damp and rheumatic and would certainly be the death of them. The young people said it would be divine, and quite worth dying for. The people who ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... manufactory of the beads called Roman Pearl, which is well worth seeing once. The beads are cut from thin laminae of alabaster, and then dipped into a composition made of the scales of a fish (the Argentina). When a perfect imitation of pearl is intended, they can copy the accidental defects of colour and form which occur in the real gem, as well as its brilliance, so exquisitely, as to deceive ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... undefinable sense of some unrecognized quality in the woman he loved. He had once or twice detected it in a tone of her voice, in a remembered and perhaps even once idolized gesture, or in the accidental lapse of some bewildering word. With the generosity of a large nature he had put the thought aside, referring it to some selfish weakness of his own, or—more fatuous than all—to a possible diminution ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... own country." Those most familiar with great men usually are least able to appreciate their greatness; "Familiarity breeds contempt," because men are so apt to judge one another by false standards and by that which is accidental and external and because so frequently men do not know those whom they think they know the best. This same stupid lack of appreciation shadows human lives to-day, and makes us fail to realize the worth of our friends and the value ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... that the servant was guilty, but I knew, too, that for accidental wounding he would have been punished by indefinite confinement in a Turkish prison, as if he had shot the boy intentionally. The refusal of the pasha to permit me to judge the case, as I had a right to do, he being my protg, left me only the responsibility of the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... diseases the organisms are carried to the joint in the blood-stream, and they lodge either in the synovial membrane or in one of the bones, whence the disease subsequently spreads to the other structures of the joint. Organisms may also be introduced through accidental wounds. It has been shown experimentally that joints are among the most susceptible parts of the body to infection, and this would appear to be due to the viscid character of the synovial fluid, which protects organisms from bactericidal ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... once a thing's done, no one ever knows how it happened. Oh! dear me, the mystery of life; The inaccuracy of thought! The ignorance of humanity! To show how very little control of our possessions we have—what an accidental affair this living is after all our civilization—let me just count over a few of the things lost in one lifetime, beginning, for that seems always the most mysterious of losses—what cat would gnaw, what rat would ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... Accidental causes have given frequent occasions to mistakes, which, when we consider, we cannot be surprised if sometimes good men have been deceived by false memoirs. As to authors of wilful forgeries, we have no name harsh enough to express, nor punishment equal to their crime. But the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... engineer's apprentice. Even the boss at the top is mechanical, for it is just like an ordinary hexagon nut. Then, notice the dimensions, as shown on my drawing. The parts A and B, which just project beyond the blade, are exactly similar in diameter—and such exactness could hardly be accidental. They are each parts of a circle having a diameter of 10.9 millimetres—a dimension which happens, by a singular coincidence, to be exactly the calibre of the old Chassepot rifle, specimens of which are now on sale at several shops in London. Here ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... clothed; but it is a significant fact that the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are quite naked, like the inferior surfaces of all four extremities in most of the lower animals. As this can hardly be an accidental coincidence, the woolly covering of the foetus probably represents the first permanent coat of hair in those mammals which are born hairy. Three or four cases have been recorded of persons born with their whole bodies and faces thickly covered with fine long hairs; and this strange condition ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... comprehended since then by various soi-disant defenders—became in effect the 'occasional cause' (in the phrase of the logicians) of the entire subsequent philosophic scheme of Kant—every section of which arose upon the accidental opening made to analogical trains of thought, by this memorable effort of scepticism, applied by Hume to one capital phenomenon among the necessities of the human understanding. What is the nature of Hume's scepticism ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... whispering to one another words something after this style: that it is a general fact that, owing to the present frantic exploitation of the scholar in the service of his science, his education becomes every day more accidental and more uncertain. For the study of science has been extended to such interminable lengths that he who, though not exceptionally gifted, yet possesses fair abilities, will need to devote himself exclusively to one branch and ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... with her desire any distant spectator might well have fancied the meeting accidental, though he poured forth a flood of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... merely accidental, we look at the essential characteristics of the Whig and the Tory, we may consider each of them as the representative of a great principle, essential to the welfare of nations. One is, in an especial manner, the guardian of liberty, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for instance, lie more or less in the same plane, they revolve round the Sun and rotate on their own axis in the same direction—a series of coincidences which cannot be accidental, and for which the theory would account. Again the rate of cooling would of course follow the size; a small body cools more rapidly than a large one. The Moon is cold and rigid; the Earth is solid at the surface, but intensely hot within; Jupiter ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... My own accidental cut across the knuckles was a flea-bite. Doctor Livesey patched it up with plaster, and pulled my ears for me into ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not in the fine arts alone that this false correctness is prized by narrow-minded men, by men who cannot distinguish means from ends, or what is accidental from what is essential. M. Jourdain admired correctness in fencing. "You had no business to hit me then. You must never thrust in quart till you have thrust in tierce." M. Tomes liked correctness ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Minerva-like, complete, and highly developed, in the Nile Valley. In this sheltered, fertile spot, neolithic man first raised himself above his kindred races of the Mediterranean basin, and it is suggested that by the accidental discovery of copper Egypt "forged the instruments that raised civilization out of the slough of the Stone Age" (Elliot Smith). Of special interest to us is the fact that one of the best-known names of this earliest period is that of a physician—guide, philosopher and ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... every Southern man should be true to his section. Thus the way has been prepared through three generations of instruction, for the precise event which is now upon us, flaunting its pretensions as a new and accidental occurrence. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... that the boy left to himself would go more rapidly through Burke than through Thucydides, might not his pace be retarded by a well-directed cross-examination; with this advantage, that the length of attention might be graduated according to the importance of the subject, and not according to the accidental difficulty ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... coincidence, I could hardly think it purely accidental, Mrs. Hepburn and her niece came up to the table upon which ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... of these books, one after another, there has been some departure from the traditional canons of romance; but taking each separately, one would have feared to make too much of these departures, or to found any theory upon what was perhaps purely accidental. The appearance of "Quatrevingt-treize" has put us out of the region of such doubt. Like a doctor who has long been hesitating how to classify an epidemic malady, we have come at last upon a case so well marked that our uncertainty is at an end. It is a novel built upon "a sort of enigma," which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my accidental lot, though not born a Highlander (which may be an apology for much bad Gaelic), to reside, during my childhood and youth, among persons of the above description;—and now, for the purpose of preserving some idea of the ancient manners of which I have witnessed the almost ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... the lake and caught the little canoe on the crest of a wave, right under the garboard streak. I went overboard like a shot; but I kept my grip on the paddle. That grip was worth a thousand dollars to the "Travelers' Accidental" and another thousand to the "Equitable Company" because the paddle, with its line, enabled me to keep the canoe in hand and prevent her from going away to leeward like a dry leaf. When I once got my nose above water and my hand on her after stem, I knew ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... Arthur Twemlow had suggested this change of plan to the girls? Or had the girls already noticed with the keen eyes of youth that she and Arthur Twemlow enjoyed each other's society, and naively wished to give her pleasure? Would Arthur Twemlow, but for the accidental encounter on the Marsh, have passed by her home without calling? If she remained, what conclusion could not be drawn? If she persisted in going, might not he want to come with her? She was ashamed of the preposterous ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... and taught his sovereign an important lesson, that he might command the obedience of a subject, but that he must deserve the attachment of a friend. The sophists of every age, despising, or affecting to despise, the accidental distinctions of birth and fortune, [25] reserve their esteem for the superior qualities of the mind, with which they themselves are so plentifully endowed. Julian might disdain the acclamations of a venal court, who adored the Imperial purple; but he was deeply flattered by the praise, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... my attendance, I was merely treated as if an accidental visitor. Sweet queen !,;z-she seems as fearful of employing me as I am myself of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... mentioned by its technical—or even by its exact name; no clear picture was to be raised before the inner eye; nothing was to be left definite or vivid. We shall make a very great mistake if we suppose this conventional vagueness to have been accidental, and a still greater if we attribute it to a lack of cleverness. When Pope referred to the sudden advent of a heavy shower at a funeral ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... characters of the species, flexibility, (non-elasticity, etc.,) but of individuality and definite character in the case immediately observed, and are consequently most important and necessary ideas. So in a man, to be short-legged or long-nosed or anything else of accidental quality, does not distinguish him from other short-legged or long-nosed animals; but the important truths respecting a man are, first, the marked development of that distinctive organization which separates him as man from other animals, and secondly, that group of qualities which ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... formal. But one day Alfred was surprised by a letter beginning My dear Mr. Stanby. He asked himself if the my was intentional or accidental, and, after some reflection, began his letter 'My dear Miss Lawson.' A fortnight later he received a letter without the first line of usual address. This seemed to him significant, and he too omitted the first line, and in signing ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... ordered under the comprehensive system of the (never to be experienced) universe, and regard all things as the work of a supreme (unknowable) intelligence. These Ideas are necessary concepts; not accidental products nor mere fancies, but concepts sprung from the nature of reason; their use is legitimate so long as we remember that we can have a problematical concept of objects corresponding to them, but no knowledge of ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... sessions were held in the first year, one in 1570, and one in 1571. After its dissolution, no Parliament sat in Ireland for fourteen years—so unstable was the system at that time, and so dependent upon accidental causes for its exercise. The first sittings of Sidney's Parliament were as stormy as those of Sussex. It was found that many members presented themselves pretending to represent towns not incorporated, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... And, what is a wiser and better thing, Can keep the living from ever needing Such an unnatural, strange proceeding, By showing conclusively and clearly That death is a stupid blunder merely, And not a necessity of our lives. My being here is accidental; The storm, that against your casement drives, In the little village below waylaid me. And there I heard, with a secret delight, Of your maladies physical and mental, Which neither astonished nor dismayed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... breakfast and remained for two or three hours, when she returned, a servant bringing the baby with her. My daughter had packed up everything, and in half-an-hour they were on the road back, the baby with them in my daughter's arms. Now, you see, if it had not been for the accidental remark of the doctor's in your aunt's presence, she would have been completely deceived by Miss Barbara, and never would have known whose child it was; but your aunt kept her own counsel; indeed, she was afraid ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... purpose. On which account the Creator will neither appear to be unjust in distributing (for the causes already mentioned) to every one according to his merits; nor will the happiness or unhappiness of each one's birth, or whatever be the condition that falls to his lot, be deemed accidental; nor will different creators, or souls of different natures, be believed ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... been explaining how it was to us, and he tells me it was all accidental. He says we left him behind, and that he searched for us for long enough afterwards, till he was quite lost. It is an awkward place to miss your ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... honour of forming an acquaintance with this grand personage. He was of the middle height, between forty and forty-five years of age, rather inclined to corpulency, and had features strikingly like those of the Bourbons. It is very probable that this accidental resemblance may have led him to assume the character he did, and play so melancholy ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... necessary growth of a sense and love of the ludicrous, and a morbid sensibility of the assimilative power,—an inflammation produced by cold and weakness,—which in the boldest bursts of passion will lie in wait for a jeer at any phrase, that may have an accidental coincidence in the mere words with something base or trivial. For instance,—to express woods, not on a plain, but clothing a hill, which overlooks a valley, or dell, or river, or the sea,—the trees rising one above another, as the spectators in an ancient theatre,—I know no other ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... had done was a one-hundred-per cent failure. He had managed to come up with a few basic improvements, patented them, and licensed them out to various manufacturers. But these were purely an accidental by-product. Malcom Porter was interested in "basic research" and not much else, ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Jaw he went to Regina, which he reached that afternoon. Regina is the capital of Saskatchewan, but an accidental capital. Somewhere about 1880 it was decided to start itself in quite another place. Qu'Appelle, where there was a Hudson Bay Fort and the country was attractive, was the site chosen. And Qu'Appelle opened its mouth too wide—or, anyhow so the ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... llanos of Cumana, Barcelona, and the Apure. It is a curious fact, that the isolation of several of these parties was so complete, that, for many months, they did not know of any other than themselves being in arms for the delivery of their country. It was only by their coming into accidental contact that they discovered that there was more than one patriot guerilla in existence.[3] Bolivar supplied some of them with arms, and at the same time augmented his own force to a thousand men. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... Florence; never again, he said to himself, would he see Valentine Charteris—Valentine, who had been the witness of his humiliation and disgrace. Sooner anything than that. He would leave the villa and go somewhere—he cared little where. No quiet, no rest came to him. Had his misfortunes been accidental—had they been any other than they were, the result of his boyish folly and disobedience, he would have found them easier to bear; as it was, the recollection that it was all his own fault drove ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... continued the colonel, "not to risk his life in another advance. An accidental shot might injure him, and I ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... moments of unpleasant reflection, supremely happy, thrilling to that accidental contact, paling at the narrow margins whereby her hair escaped conferring on him a delirium. He could stand at a window all day pretending interest in the monotonous hills and empty sea, only that he might keep her there too and indulge ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... in the furnace were all melted, to find them converted into a mass of solid gold, which proved, on assay, to be of the purest quality. Every one was questioned as to what he had cast into the furnace, when there appeared no reason to suppose the transmutation could have been effected by such an accidental mixture of metals. At length it was remarked, that a dervish, accompanying the barber's son, had cast in a lump of ore, and immediately disappeared. Upon this the sultan summoned the youth to his presence, and inquiring after his companion, was informed of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... glass of flowers standing near her, and just as she came to an end her arm moved and the glass was in a moment on the floor, shivered into twenty pieces. I happened to be watching her, and felt perfectly sure that the movement of her arm was not accidental, and that her intention was to conceal, by the apparent mishap, an emotion which was increasing and becoming inconvenient. At any rate, if that was her object it was perfectly accomplished, for the recitation was abruptly terminated, there was ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... should be none in the translation. Professor Blackie has, it is true, pointed out the "assonances, alliterations, and rhymes," which are found in more or less abundance in Ionic Greek.[A] These may of course be purely accidental, like the hexameters in Livy or the blank-verse lines in Mr. Dickens's prose: but accidental or not (it may be said) they are there, and ought to be recognised. May we not then recognise them by introducing similar assonances, etc., here and there into the ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... torture-chambers.[12] Yet, though the self-complacent magistrate has been the butt of the ages, Aristophanes and Shakespeare, and perhaps Flaubert, have alone revealed his essential nullity, because they alone have looked for something essential beneath the accidental. Nothing could be simpler than the character of Polonius; nothing could be more subtle. A rap here, a stab there, and the soul of a minister is exposed. We have come to see, we scarcely know how, that, if he ever had one, he has lost it. Some idea of the simplicity and subtlety ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... intelligence. Others have supposed that the ice might not be equally strong on both sides of the river, and might even be generally insecure for the treading of heavy and heavily-laden animals such as camels. But the prevailing notion is, that some accidental movements on the 3d and 4th of January of Russian troops in the neighborhood of the Western Kalmucks, though really having no reference to them or their plans, had been construed into certain signs that all was discovered; and that ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... awakening of the soul. From such awakening proceeds study of the Scriptures. From contemplation of the import of the scriptures, O king, one sees the value of penance. A person possessed of the knowledge of what is essential and what accidental, O king, is very rare,—he, that is, who seeks to undergo penances, impressed with the truth that the happiness one derives from the possession of such agreeable objects as spouses and children leads ultimately to misery.[1533] Penances, O child, are for all. They are ordained ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... tell the truth, in the same rooms in which the thousand and one things he was continually buying were piled up in vast heaps. There was no fixed place for his bed even. He slept where he could, or, rather, wherever an accidental sale had cleared a space for the time,—one night in a costly bed of the days of Louis XIV., and the next night on a lounge that he would have sold for a few francs. Just now he occupied a little closet not more ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... of Bowyer; but his name does not even appear in the index; being probably reserved for the second forth-coming enlarged edition. Meanwhile, it may not be uninteresting to remark that, like Magliabechi, (vide p. 86, ante) he imbibed his love of reading and collecting from the accidental possession of scraps and leaves of books. The fact is, Mr. Ratcliffe once kept a chandler's shop in the Borough; and, as is the case with all retail traders, had great quantities of old books brought to him to be purchased at so much per lb.! Hence arose his passion for collecting ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... his defence, to argue the thing out. And Tregellan sat for a long time without speaking, appreciating his purpose. It seemed more monstrous the closer he considered it: natural enough withal, and so, harder to defeat; and yet, he was sure, that defeated it must be. He reflected how accidental it had all been: their presence there, in Ploumariel, and the rest! Touring in Brittany, as they had often done before, in their habit of old friends, they had fallen upon it by chance, a place unknown of Murray; and the merest chance had held them there. They had slept at the Lion ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... the marine environment through the complete elimination of pollution by oil and other harmful substances and the minimization of accidental discharge of ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... witness the Lapps at their religious exercises. Pastor Hvoslef was ill, and the service consisted only of the reading of some prayers by the Lapp schoolmaster; added to which, the church is never warmed, even in the coldest days of winter. One cause of this may, perhaps, be the dread of an accidental conflagration; but the main reason is, the inconvenience which would arise from the thawing out of so many antiquated reindeer garments, and the effluvia given out by the warmed bodies within them. Consequently, the temperature inside the ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the follies of well-known fashionable women. What will be forgiven to Mrs. Well Known Uptown will never be forgiven to Miss Kansas. Society in this respect is very unjust—the world is always unjust—but that is a part of the truth of etiquette which is to be remembered; it is founded on the accidental conditions of society, having for its background, however, the eternal principles of kindness, politeness, and the ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... circumstance as well as associated in the nature of their work. In London, in the relatively lucid air of Campden Hill, they dwell together, and their beautiful studios are side by side. However, there is a reason for commemorating Mr. Parsons' work which has nothing to do with the accidental—the simple fact that that work forms the richest illustration of the English landscape that is offered us to-day. Harper has for a long time past been full of Mr. Alfred Parsons, who has made the dense, fine detail of his native land familiar in far countries, amid scenery of ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... for a moment deny that Martin must have shared in the common belief of his time; but such things were not of the essence of his teaching, only the accidental accompaniments thereof. The prominent feature of the preaching of the early Franciscans was, as was that of St. Paul, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And in a book intended primarily for young readers ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... beauty and nobility, the members of which were rather to be generally noticed than particularly observed, there was, however, one individual who, both by the solitary occupation he had chosen and his accidental position in the room, was personally remarkable among the listless ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... ragged masses of life torn from their setting; he selects. And upon these trophies he sets to work with the full force of his imagination; he detects their significance, he disengages and throws aside whatever is accidental and meaningless; he re-makes them in conditions that are never known in life, conditions in which a thing is free to grow according to its own law, expressing itself unhindered; he liberates and completes. And then, upon all this new life—so like the old and yet so different, ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... upon the practice of artists. It is, put shortly, that the artist has no concern with the public whatever, nor the public with the artist. There is no kind of necessary relation between them, but only an accidental one; and the less of that the better for the artist and ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... copulation. If persons perform not that act with all the bent and ardour that nature requires, they may as well let it alone; for frigidity and coldness never produces conception. Of the cure of this we will speak by and by, after I have spoken of accidental barrenness, which is occasioned by some morbific matter or infirmity in the body, either of the man or of the woman, which being removed they become fruitful. And since, as I have before noted, the first and great law of creation, was to increase and multiply, and barrenness is ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... Lawrence, "my meeting with Mr Keswick at Midbranch was entirely accidental. When I arrived there, a few days ago, I had no reason to suppose that I should meet him. But I must ask you to excuse me from giving my reasons for wishing to find your cousin, and for coming to see him here. The matter ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... and it together, and have no right to complain afterwards that it will not acknowledge better-grounded claims. But if every painter of real power would do only what he knew to be worthy of himself, and refuse to be involved in the contention for undeserved or accidental success, there is indeed, whatever may have been thought or said to the contrary, true instinct enough in the public mind to follow such firm guidance. It is one of the facts which the experience of ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... following: adultery of one of the married parties, and the detection in the fact of the guilty party by mutual agreement, and failing such agreement, accidental detection. It must be admitted that the latter case is rarely met with in practice," said the lawyer, and stealing a glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch he paused, as a man selling pistols, after enlarging on the advantages of ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... are," replied Tremayne; "such a resemblance cannot be accidental. I remember in that queer double life of mine, when I was your unconscious rival, I used to interchange them until they almost seemed to be the same identity to me. There is some little mystery behind the likeness which we shall have cleared up before very long now. Natas told ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... all-alone-stone.' Every other moment, while you and Mr. Dobson were talking, she would cry 'oh! oh! o—o—oh!' and pull out her note-book, which was the cork-box in which she pinned her butterflies. She must have had a whole museum of ideas! The most accidental resemblance between words would suffice to start one: after it she would go, catch it, pin it down, and call it a correspondence. Now and then a very pretty notion would fall to her net, and often a silly one; but all were equally ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... two of his secretaries at the disposal of Baron de Nostitz to prepare under his direction the pamphlets with which Germany is flooded; but I cannot too often repeat," continued M. Gentz, "that the hatred against the French avowed by these various societies is simply an accidental thing, a singular creation of circumstances; since their prime object was the overthrow of the government as it existed in Germany, and their fundamental principle the establishment of a system of absolute equality. This is so true that the question has been earnestly debated amongst ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... it was written, Providence should bring to my hands (as it has done within these few days) what I assuredly believe to be a genuine copy of that very letter, which I had not the least reason to expect I should ever have seen, when I learned from his own mouth, amidst the freedom of an accidental conversation, the occasion and circumstances of it. It is dated from London, July 21, 1722, and the very first lines of it relate to a remarkable circumstance which, from others of his letters, I find happened several times; I ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... in common, because the separate bodies or grains, which before belonged to one or the other of you in severalty, have by consent on both sides been made your joint property. If, however, the mixture was accidental, or if Titius mixed the two parcels of corn without your consent, they do not belong to you in common, because the separate grains remain distinct, and their substance is unaltered; and in such cases the corn no more becomes ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... bringing such favourable accounts as greatly to lessen the distress of the family at Deane, though it will probably be a long while before Mrs. Harwood can be quite at ease. One most material comfort, however, they have: the assurance of its being really an accidental wound, which is not only positively declared by Earle himself, but is likewise testified by the particular direction of the bullet. Such a wound could not have been received in a duel. At present he is going on very well, but the surgeon will not declare him to be in no danger. . . . James ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... Valley Forge, on the west side of the Schuylkill between twenty and thirty miles from Philadelphia, was selected for that purpose, and some time before day on the morning of the 11th of December (1777) the army marched to take possession of it. By an accidental concurrence of circumstances Lord Cornwallis had been detached the same morning at the head of a strong corps on a foraging party on the west side of the Schuylkill. He had fallen in with a brigade of Pennsylvania militia ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... buoyancy of youth and the almighty optimism of early love prevailed; she comforted herself with the fond illusion that this man was different from all others, that his regard was equal to her own, and that his love would rise above such accidental things as blood or breed or birth. And so she was in a happier frame of mind when the little company made their ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... fraud in a situation of trust which he had held in a French nobleman's family, he was in destitute and desperate circumstances, it occurred to Montreuil to provide for him by placing him in our family. Some accidental and frivolous remark of yours which I had repeated in my correspondence with Montreuil as illustrative of your manner, and your affected pursuits at that time, presented an opportunity to a plan before conceived. Desmarais came to England in a smuggler's vessel, presented himself ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one of two theories is possible. The affair was not accidental; James did not fall into a panic and bellow 'Treason!' out of the window, merely because he found himself alone in a turret—and why in a secluded turret?—with the Master. To that theory the locked door ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... naturally secondary haemorrhage is a too frequent result. Wounds of these great vessels generally result in so rapid death from haemorrhage as to give no time for surgical interference. One case, however, is recorded,[5] in which the external iliac was cut in a lad of seventeen by an accidental stab, and in which Drs. Layraud and Durand, who were almost instantly on the spot, succeeded in stopping the bleeding by compresses, till Velpeau arrived, who tied the vessel ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... near Dublin, were distinguished playwrights, who began their respective careers in the seventeenth century. Farquhar left Trinity College, Dublin, as an undergraduate and became an actor, but owing to his accidental killing of another player he left the stage and secured a commission in the army. He soon turned his attention to the writing of plays, and was responsible in all for eight comedies. He has left us some characters that are very humorous and ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... no longer," she returned. "It reached me yesterday—roundabout and accidental, but by a person who had had it from one of the young man's own people—as a thing quite settled. I was only keeping ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... out-of-doors; in the park, it was, and he took us both to the Zoological Gardens, and gave us tea there. (Yellowish cake with white sugar icing over it has ever since suggested to me the pungent smell of monkey-houses and lions' cages.) The meeting was purely accidental, I believe. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... the person of the useful and ornamental domestic animal who is popularly supposed to furnish the material for sausages. The accidental discovery of a suspender-button, or the claw of a kitten, in the sausage, gave rise to some doubt as to the composition of this favorite edible; but statisticians usually admit that hogmeat forms the staple. Doctor KANE speaks in glowing terms of the excellence ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... few agreements, and there is very little evidence in support of a connection of any one of these dialects with its neighbours. The following correspondences may be purely accidental. ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... to drop heavily into place again, like curtains over a masterpiece. It was so that they rose and fell before Strange, her eyes meeting his in a look that no Argentine beauty could ever have bestowed, in that it was free from coquetry or intention, and wholly accidental. ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... immediately upon The Dreamer's return to Fordham, and when he was still under the spell of the night at Providence, that the identity of the lady of the garden was revealed to him, in a manner seemingly accidental, but which he felt to be but another manifestation of the divinity that shapes our ends. Some casual words concerning the appearance and character of Mrs. Whitman, spoken by a casual visitor, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... of him, but his importance was Archducal, dynastic, purely accidental. Can there be in the world of real men anything more shadowy than an Archduke? And now he was no more; removed with an atrocity of circumstances which made one more sensible of his humanity than when he was in life. I connected that crime with Balkanic plots and aspirations ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... but wasn't quite sure. Such a master as Kloster, and one of their own flesh and blood, is always applauded, but I think the irregularity, the utter carelessness of the music, its apparently accidental beauty, was difficult for them. Germans have to have beauty explained to them and accounted for,—stamped first by an official, authorized, before they can be comfortable with it. I sat in a corner and cried, ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... while he was with Maggie. That would have been a little triumph for Angus, which Allan did not intend to give him. So he determined to remain where he was until they had either parted or gone away together. He was undoubtedly angry. It never struck him that the meeting might be an accidental one. He was certain that, for some reason or other, Maggie had an appointment with her well-known admirer; and he said bitterly to himself, "Like to like, why should I ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... Dr. Anster, "because the accidental mention of Toddington seems to authenticate the book: the name of Lady Henrietta Wentworth does not occur in it, and the persons in whose hands the book has been since it was purchased in Paris do not seem to have noticed the name of Toddington, ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... emphatic than in asserting that the individual as such has no value at all. "Our individualities," he says, "are but bubbles and clusters of foam upon the great stream of the blood of the species." "The race is the drama, and we are the incidents." "In so far as we are individuals . . . we are accidental, disconnected, without significance." And when we ask for what we should strive and labour, if not for the good of individual men and women, his answer is that we ought to work for the Species, for the Race, for what he calls a great physical and ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... two. It was hardly an English point of view, but—for his family had long been one of station—there was a hint of pride that struck her as rather fine about this renunciation. It was a risky thing to insist on being taken at one's intrinsic value, stripped of all accidental associations that might enhance it, but she thought he need not shrink from the hazard. Now and then he spoke with slightly injudicious candor, and sometimes too vehemently, but in essential matters he displayed an admirable delicacy of feeling and ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... divided into two classes. In one we shall place accidental and passing ideas created by the influences of the moment: infatuation for an individual or a doctrine, for instance. In the other will be classed the fundamental ideas, to which the environment, the laws of heredity and public ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... the student will recollect and apply the rule that the objective point (the heart, so to speak) of each motive is the first primary accent it contains; counting from these points, all irregularities of melodic extent become purely accidental and harmless. For illustration (the ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... Hamlet is brought back to Denmark by the chance of the meeting with the pirate ship. This incident has been therefore severely criticised as a lame expedient,[84] but it appears probable that the 'accident' is meant to impress the imagination as the very reverse of accidental, and with many readers it certainly does so. And that this was the intention is made the more likely by a second fact, the fact that in connection with the events of the voyage Shakespeare introduces that feeling, on Hamlet's part, of his being in the hands of Providence. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... according to his sensations, to his own peculiar experience, or to his suppositions, that he judges of things either well or ill; but whatever way be his judgment, it depends necessarily on his mode of feeling, whether habitual or accidental, and the qualities he finds in the causes that move him, which exist in despite ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... instant. You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a meal, the under or the over dressing of a dish, the incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and obviating the aim of this institution; ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... have been a more unaccountable proceeding on the part of Stanley Lake, and a more romantic situation, if Rachel and his lordship had not had before two or three little accidental rambles together in the grounds and gardens of Brandon. There was nothing quite new in the situation, therefore; and Rachel was for a moment indescribably ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... The media from the store-flasks are placed in glass test-tubes or small flasks, protected from contamination by cotton-wool plugs, and are sterilized by heat. For most purposes the solid media are to be preferred, since bacterial growth appears as a discrete mass and accidental contamination can be readily recognized. Cultures are made by transferring by means of a sterile platinum wire a little of the material containing the bacteria to the medium. The tubes, after being thus inoculated, are kept at suitable temperatures, usually either at 37deg ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... different frame of mind. Hewet was staring at the roof with his legs stuck out in front of him, for as he had never tried to make the service fit any feeling or idea of his, he was able to enjoy the beauty of the language without hindrance. His mind was occupied first with accidental things, such as the women's hair in front of him, the light on the faces, then with the words which seemed to him magnificent, and then more vaguely with the characters of the other worshippers. But when he suddenly perceived Rachel, all these thoughts ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... but a pretty little accidental impediment of speech like that, accompanied with a little graceful bob of the head, is ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... up, not rock, not an accidental formation. It was round, a circle of dots, white pellets on the dead skin of the planet. A city? Buildings ...
— The Gun • Philip K. Dick
... the two symbolic pillars, from right to left, the two words [Symbols] and [Symbols] [Hebrew: יהו] and [Hebrew: בעל], IHU and BAL: followed by the hieroglyphic equivalent, [Hieroglyphic: ] of the Sun-God, Amun-ra. Is it an accidental coincidence, that in the name of each murderer are the two names of the Good and Evil Deities of the Hebrews; for Yu-bel is but Yehu-Bal or Yeho-Bal? and that the three final syllables of the names, a, o, um, make A.U.M. the sacred ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Catriona know James well; information as to his villanies is extant in Additional MSS. (British Museum). This is probably the latest ballad in the collection. It occurs in several variants, some of which, copied out by Burns, derive thence a certain accidental interest. In Mr. Stevenson's Catriona, the heroine of that name takes a thoroughly Highland view of the abduction. Robin Oig, in any case, was "nane the waur o' a hanging," for he shot a Maclaren at the plough-tail, before the Forty-Five. The trial of these sons of Alpen ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... object of our search. Down we sat at all events to sketch it, and meeting by good fortune a communicative young officer on the road, we learnt that this castle, called[12] Chateau la Serve, had in reality been the residence of the lords of St. Vallier; that many years ago it had been reduced by an accidental fire to its present state, and was finally wrested from the family at the Revolution. Of the present Chateau St. Vallier, and the estate annexed, they have remained in uninterrupted possession; and all admirers of the Gothic must rejoice that the ruin has been purchased by the commune ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... School rendered important service in educational progress by demonstrating the practicability of cultivating the habit of attention. The teachers in all classes and in all lessons throughout the school made ceaseless efforts to win and hold attention. This was not incidental or accidental, but was an integrate part of the educational plan, intelligently designed and deliberately pursued, with intent to train the pupils in the practice of concentrating their minds on the one thing before them until it ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... before Ball's murder was accidental, but the savageness of his temper led him to a quick compliance with that wicked proposition; but after the commission of that fact, he with his companions before mentioned went over in the packet ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... and I were thus estranged, Red Shirt and I continued friendly relations and associated together. On the day following my accidental meeting with him near the Nozeri river, for instance, Red Shirt came to my desk as soon as he came to the school, and asked me how I liked the new boarding house. He said we would go together for fishing Russian literature again, and ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... subterranean activity: this connection appears to be exceedingly vague. I have during the past year seen it stated that a severe shock in the northern parts of S. America coincided with one in Kamstchatka. Believing, then, that such coincidences are purely accidental, I neglected to take a note of the reference; but I believe the statement was somewhere in "L'Institut" for 1839. (479/2. "L'Institut, Journal General des Societes et Travaux Scientifiques de la France et de l'Etranger," Tome VIII. page 412, Paris, 1840. In a note on some earthquakes ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... unfortunate woman (being near the hour of confinement,) and the entire helplessness of the child, were hindrances to a rapid retreat; and fearing pursuit, the Indians thus inhumanly rid themselves of those incumbrances to their flight and left them to accidental discovery, or to become food for the beasts ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Goddess of Light above, combined massiveness with lightness. Other buildings were strikingly quaint and pleasing, especially those suggesting the old Southern Missions. All blended into the general scheme with scarcely a discord. This harmony was not accidental, but resulted from combined effort, each architect working at a general plan, yet not sacrificing his individual taste. It was an object lesson in massive architecture, showing how easily public edifices may be made beautiful each in itself, and to increase each other's ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... operated at this time to produce this great difference are shown in the reports and documents and in the detailed estimates. Some of these causes are accidental and temporary; while others are permanent, and, aided by a just course of administration, may continue to operate beneficially upon ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... to come, as it now probably would, in crashes of tins and bursting of bovril bottles. Again she had intended to have opened that door quite casually and innocently while she was being dummy, so that everyone could see how accidental the exposure was, and to have gone poking about the cupboard in Elizabeth's absence was a shade too professional, so to speak, for the usual detective work of Tilling. But the fuse was set now. Sooner or later the explosion must come. She wondered as they went out to commune ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... of the Long Vacation, in June, 1794, Coleridge went to Oxford on a visit to an old school-fellow, intending probably to proceed afterwards to his mother at Ottery. But an accidental introduction to Robert Southey, then an under-graduate at Balliol College, first delayed, and ultimately prevented, the completion of this design, and became, in its consequences, the hinge on which a large part of Coleridge's after ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... having a distant resemblance to groups which are the objects of mimicry, and which it is therefore advantageous to resemble. Such a variety will have a better chance of preservation; the individuals possessing it will be multiplied; and their accidental likeness to the favoured group will be rendered permanent by hereditary transmission, and each successive variation which increases the resemblance being preserved, and all variation departing from the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... could not be helped; perhaps there might occur some other occasion. Besides, there was his companion. She might possibly be alive; and if such should be the case she would doubtless be anxious to escape; she had, in an accidental way, come under his protection, and he must do everything he ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... elapsed since the accidental meeting, and Isabella was in doubt as to who the lady was that Henry was with in the carriage. Little, however, did she think that it was his wife. With a smile, Isabella met the young man as he entered her little dwelling. Clotelle had already gone to bed, but ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... route which brought us to the verge of the city, amid regions very different from those we had hitherto traversed. It was the most noisome quarter of London, where every thing wore the worst impress of the most deplorable poverty, and of the most desperate crime. By the dim light of an accidental lamp, tall, antique, worm-eaten, wooden tenements were seen tottering to their fall, in directions so many and capricious that scarce the semblance of a passage was discernible between them. The paving-stones lay at random, displaced from their beds by the rankly-growing grass. Horrible ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... main passage, waiting the result. At one time Mulford thought the channel would bring him out into open water again, on the northern side of the reef, and more than a mile to the eastward of the point where the ship-channel in which the Swash was plying commenced; but an accidental circumstance prevented his standing in far enough to ascertain the fact. That circumstance ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... was abundantly supplied, stock appearing to thrive extremely well; and we had an unusual luxury in a present of fresh butter, which was, however, by no means equal to that of Fort Hall—probably from some accidental cause. During the day we remained here, there were considerable numbers of miserable, half-naked Indians around the fort, who had arrived from the neighboring mountains. During the summer, the only subsistence of these people is derived from the salmon, of which they are ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... incredibly valuable, and he could not defend himself from astonishment at the casual manner it had come into his possession. It was as if Fate had thrust that clue into his hands. And after the manner of the average man, whose ambition is to command events, he began to mistrust such a gratuitous and accidental success—just because it seemed forced upon him. The practical value of success depends not a little on the way you look at it. But Fate looks at nothing. It has no discretion. He no longer considered it eminently desirable all round to establish publicly the ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... entered the dining-room, young de Buxieres noticed that covers were laid for five people; he began to wonder who the fifth guest could be, when an accidental remark of the clerk showed him that the unknown was no other than Claudet. The fact was that Manette could not bear the idea that her son, who had always sat at table with the late Claude de Buxieres, should be consigned ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is in his chameleonship that his greatest good fortune lies. He has only to change his habitat—his ASSOCIATIONS. But the impulse to do it must come from the OUTSIDE—he cannot originate it himself, with that purpose in view. Sometimes a very small and accidental thing can furnish him the initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a new idea. The chance remark of a sweetheart, "I hear that you are a coward," may water a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish, and ended in producing a surprising fruitage—in the fields ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is undoubtedly better to pay a pretty good price for budded trees of the kind you desire rather than incur the delay and the irregular growth of young trees budded or grafted in the field. There is also danger of an irregular stand from accidental injuries to new growth started in the field without the protection which it finds ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... this Wells party had been sort of a partner of Pyramid's back in the early days. Some sort of a buyers' pool for Eastern coal deliveries, I believe it was, that Hackett had got into accidental and nursed along until he found himself dividin' the cream of the profits with only half a dozen others. Then along came Pyramid with his grand consolidation scheme, holdin' out the bait of makin' Mr. Wells head of the new concern and freezin' out ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... physician who keeps such patients as do not wish to go to the hospital. I did not care to have him go to the hospital, because I was afraid the newspapers would get hold of the incident, and make a sensation of it. The whole thing was accidental; the young fellow realized that, and so, I thought, did the girls; at least, I never noticed anything in their behaviour to ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... importance of accidental wounds of joints—such, for example, as result from a stab with a penknife or the spike of a railing—lies in the fact that they are liable to be followed by infection of the synovial cavity. The infection may involve only the synovial layer ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... insight into human nature. There is no trace—nor is there, again, in the 'Duchess of Malfi'—of that development of human souls for good or evil which is Shakspeare's especial power—the power which, far more than any accidental 'beauties,' makes his plays, to this day, the delight alike of the simple and the wise, while his contemporaries are all but forgotten. The highest aim of dramatic art is to exhibit the development of the human soul; ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... Greek temple, built about thirty feet below the level of the street, and down to which we had to go as if we were entering a cellar. The house was full of columns, statues, flowers, paintings, candelabra, and servants in black dress-coats and short breeches; but everything about the place looked so accidental and ephemeral that the Comte de Saint-Brice, a very witty frequenter of the house, used to say,—"Whenever I visit the place, I am always afraid of finding the horses sold, the servants dismissed, the husband run away, the drawing-room closed, and the house razed." The Comte de Saint-Brice's fears ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... limited depth below the surface. The central parts of the stalactites retain their ordinary structure, and are after a time exposed to a general temperature rather above than below the freezing point; and thus they come to melt, the water escaping either by accidental fissures between some of the prisms, or by the extremity of the stalactite, or by some part of the surface which has chanced to escape the prismatic arrangement, and has itself ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... practice in order to make sure of the action, to proportion and adjust the parts of their machine, and to eliminate hidden defects. Experimental flight, he suggested, should be tried over water, in order to break any accidental fall; when a series of experiments had proved the stability of a glider, it would then be time to apply motive power. He admitted that such a process would be both costly and slow, but, he said, that 'it greatly diminished the chance of those ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... blight a Chinese-Japanese hybrid chestnut, 13 yrs. old, infected toward base with Chinese type of blight, i.e. in outer bark only. Right: sucker inarched in spring of 1946; left, inarched spring of 1950. (The black figure resembling an arrow, about half way up, is accidental, being a cluster of labels.) b. Grafted tree (the large tree of Japanese-American chestnut on Japanese stock); graft made in 1937 where finger is pointing; left: inarch of 1947, itself inarched near base in 1950; right, inarch of 1949. c. Japanese-American hybrid chestnut ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... fail to be born, or perish), in obstetrics, the premature separation and expulsion of the contents of the pregnant uterus. It is a common terminology to call premature labour of an accidental type a "miscarriage,', in order to distinguish "abortion', as a deliberately induced act, whether as a medical necessity by the accoucheur, or as a criminal proceeding (see MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE); otherwise the term "abortion'' would ordinarily be used when ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... allayed, and my weight was too much for her to endure longer. I rose, but again buried my face in the wide gash of that glorious cunt, and before rising completely, I licked up the delicious foam, and even ventured to give, as it were, an accidental lick to her little knob of a clitoris, for she was not much distinguished in that way; she shivered with excitement, when I touched it, and even pressed my head down upon it, when she ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... had much to do with the press will sympathise with MR. CHARLES KNIGHT in all that he has stated ("NOTES AND QUERIES," Vol. iii., p. 62.) respecting the accidental—but not at first discovered—substitution of modern for moderate. If that word modern had not been detected till it was too late for an explanation on authority, what strange conjectures would ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... had ceased to care for; if it were to begin again, it must try to find out what the mass of mankind did care for, and why. Religion, politics, statistics, travel had thus far led to nothing. Even the Chicago Fair had only confused the roads. Accidental education could go no further, for one's mind was already littered and stuffed beyond hope with the millions of chance images stored away without order in the memory. One might as well try to educate ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... at the mayor's house, our accidental meeting under the arch, my discovery of the corpse some hours afterwards on my return from my patient, my professional belief that the deed must have been done a very short time, perhaps but a few minutes, before I chanced upon its victim. But, in that case, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... then, of what is classical in art or literature is that of the well-known tale, to which we can nevertheless listen over and over again, because it is told so well. To the absolute beauty of its form is added the accidental, tranquil charm ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Orinoco and the Nile, contrary to the direction of the Ganges, the Indus, the Rio de la Plata, and the Euphrates, flow alike from the south toward the north; but the sources of the Orinoco are five or six degrees nearer to the equator than those of the Nile. Observing every day the accidental variations of the atmosphere, we find it difficult to persuade ourselves that in a great space of time the effects of these variations mutually compensate each other: that in a long succession of years the averages of the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... that by travelling two days and nights you are in the heart of Italy. Accidental villas among olive trees appear; and men-servants watering the cactuses. Black victorias drive in between pompous pillars with plaster shields stuck to them. It is at once momentary and astonishingly intimate—to be displayed before the eyes of ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the form and size of the breasts may be the result of causes unconnected with pregnancy. They may enlarge in consequence of marriage, from the individual becoming stout and fat or from accidental suppression of the ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... in the Times that Lord Beauvayse was under orders for South Africa, mentioned his accidental discovery when writing to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... account he also heaved a sigh. "This was indeed," he observed, "a retribution in store for them! Their encounter was likewise not accidental; for had it been, how was it that this Feng Yuean took ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... radicalism."[105] That is, the "reformist" Turati denied that there is anything Socialistic about Bissolati's "ultra-reformist" faction. To this Bissolati answered that compromise and the political collaboration of the working people with other classes, was not to be reserved, as Turati had said, for accidental and extraordinary cases, but was "the very essence of the reformist method."[106] The revolutionaries, of course, agree with Bissolati that, if the Socialists hold that their prime function is to work for reforms favored by a large part of the capitalists, compromises and the habit of fighting with ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... will, that it suited them so to submit, and that in reality they were still quite independent. But in the peculiar eye of the Barnacle gander, who was leading, an observer with sufficient fancy might have deciphered a mild revolt against this triumph of the absurd, the accidental, and the futile; a passive yet Promethean spiritual ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... monuments and embellishments of Paris are executed from the plans of men of talent, yet some owe their origin to circumstances merely accidental. Of this ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... as a foreign and external Creator, working as a Potter on his clay; but it is irrational to "explain" a steadily unfolding movement, an ever-heightening procession of life, by "fortuitous variations," by "accidental" shifts of level, or even by a blind elan vital. If there is an increasing purpose and a clearly culminating drama unfolding in this moving flood of life, then there is some Mind that sees the way, and some Will that directs the ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... neither limited nor extended his individuality. Now he found himself completely taken possession of and made a part of something larger than himself, a carefully correlated and guarded system of ranks and rules and traditions. In retrospect the former school seemed as accidental and fleeting as a street crowd, while the new one was an institution with a jealously preserved and deeply revered history to which each new pupil was expected to add more lustre. But most remarkable of all seemed the fact that this collective body added ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... nineteen inches, and is still falling. The meteorological character of the present season, as compared with that of several previous seasons, clearly shows the cause of the rise and fall of the lakes not to be periodical, as has heretofore been asserted, but entirely accidental. For several years the summers have been cloudy and cold, with a prevalence of easterly winds and rainy weather. The last summer has been excessively warm for the whole season, and of exceeding drought. When it ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... swept away the groundwork of his passion, had stirred into new life all the slumbering pride of race and ancestry which characterized his caste. How much of this sensitive superiority was essential and how much accidental; how much of it was due to the ever-suggested comparison with a servile race; how much of it was ignorance and self-conceit; to what extent the boasted purity of his race would have been contaminated by the fair ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... that of the ass's ear. The aperture, through which the light now enters from its further end, and from a height of one hundred and twenty feet, was till lately not known to exist; it not being supposed that the Ear had any meatus internus corresponding with the external one. The accidental removal of a quantity of loose stones from above, revealed a narrow passage of from twenty to thirty feet in length, and opening directly into the cave. This internal opening is situated almost immediately over the amphitheatre, one hundred and twenty feet above the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... would distribute over chronological periods the voyages of discovery, both accidental and of set purpose, made by the Netherlanders on the mainland coast of Australia, it might be desirable so to adjust these periods, that each of them was closed by the appearance in this field of discovery and exploration, of ships belonging to ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... the exact position," he said. "In the first place this whole affair is accidental, resulting from the death of the junior senator. No one could foresee this event. We had arranged to put in John Harrington at the regular vacancy next year, and we are now very busy with a most important business here in London. If we were on the spot, as one of us could have been had we known ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... by the way of Aunce de Mere, under Cape Diamond. The first barrier to be surmounted was at the Pot Ash. In front of it was a block-house and picket, in charge of some Canadians, who, after making a single fire, fled in confusion. On advancing to force the barrier, an accidental discharge of a piece of artillery from the British battery, when the American front was within forty paces of it, killed General Montgomery, Captain McPherson, one of his aids, Captain Cheeseman, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... the nerves, the discharging of the muscles, and all the subsequent mechanical motions of the organism. But we can present to our minds no picture of the process whereby consciousness emerges, either as a necessary link or as an accidental by-product of this series of actions. Yet it certainly does emerge—the prick of a pin suffices to prove that molecular motion can produce consciousness. The reverse process of the production of motion by consciousness is equally unpresentable to the mind. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... after-gun, he inquired after Captain Porter's health; the latter returned the inquiry, but warned Hilyar not to fall foul. The British captain then braced back his yards, remarking that if he did fall aboard it would be purely accidental. "Well," said Porter, "you have no business where you are; if you touch a rope-yarn of this ship I shall board instantly." [Footnote: "Life of Farragut," p. 33.] The Phoebe, in her then position, was completely at the mercy of the American ships, and Hilyar, greatly agitated, ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... both are described as one of three notable prisoners of Britain, and both are called fathers of Cordelia or Creiddylad.[341] Perhaps the two were once identical, for Manannan is sometimes called son of Alloid ( Lludd), in Irish texts, as well as son of Ler.[342] But the confusion may be accidental, nor is it certain that Nodons or Lludd was a sea-god. Llyr's prison was that of Eurosswyd,[343] whose wife he may have abducted and hence suffered imprisonment. In the Black Book of Caermarthen Bran is called son of Y ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... subject of slavery; and that then it would be of the last importance that every Southern man should be true to his section. Thus the way has been prepared through three generations of instruction, for the precise event which is now upon us, flaunting its pretensions as a new and accidental occurrence. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... that shocked the world. A disaster in which it is impossible not to suspect the element of treachery. A disaster which if purely accidental, occurring to a hated ship in a port surrounded by men who were enemies at heart, was the most extraordinary coincidence in history. The story is brief. Not until this war is ended and the authority of the United States is ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Hungary; but seeing the clothes of sixteen crusaders, who had been empaled on the walls of Semlin. he attacked and stormed the city. He then marched to Nissa, where, at first, he was hospitably received: but an accidental quar rel taking place, he suffered a great defeat. Wilken, vol. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... was drowned. I was foreman of the jury at the inquest, and after hearing the evidence, which amounted to no more than the finding of the body soon after the event, the coroner expressed his opinion that it was a case of accidental death, with which I at once concurred. With some reluctance, the other jurymen agreed; they had, I imagine, as usual, made up their minds for a more sensational verdict, but scarcely liked to suggest it, and a verdict of accidental death was accordingly returned. Afterwards ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... in history than the unmistakable signs and proofs of preadaptation. Our life-occurrences are not disjecta membra—scattered, disconnected, and accidental fragments. In God's book all these events were written beforehand, when as yet there was nothing in existence but the plan in God's mind—to be fashioned in continuance in actual history—as is perhaps suggested in Psalm cxxxix. ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... out that the nebula occurs in a region rich in stars, and if it is not, like the great nebula in Argo, clustered around a remarkable star, it is found associated in a manner which I cannot look upon as accidental with a set of small-magnitude stars, and notably with the trapezium which surrounds that very remarkable black gap within the nebula. The fact that the nebula shares the proper motion of the trapezium appears inexplicable if the nebula is really far out in space beyond the trapezium. ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... in spite of the darkness, I thought I made out somebody following me. I stopped short, and some persons passed me. In two or three minutes I went on again, and I saw the same people, whom I could not have caught up if they had not slackened their pace. It might all be accidental, but I wanted to be sure about it. I left the road without losing my reckoning, feeling quite sure of finding my way when I ceased to be followed; but I soon felt sure that my steps were dogged, as I saw the same shadowy figures at a little distance off. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... appointed house of her husband—he was extremely intelligent and had honorably passed the examination for licentiate, one of only two hundred successful bachelors out of twenty thousand—and the period following his accidental drowning wheeled quickly through ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that he had heard the intonation of Miss Wycliffe's voice, or had imagined it. He would doubtless have thought it mere imagination, some accidental resemblance to which his ear had given identity, had not Cardington's manner registered a sudden emotional disturbance. He paused in his narration, like one smitten with mental atrophy and searching for the word that was about to reach his lips. His position on the inside of the walk offered a ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... which to lie, the other very convex. Usually with two handles, sometimes loops, and sometimes studs or knobs. Occasionally ornamented white ware, but most generally unadorned brown or red ware. The latter showing, on some pieces, at least, a slight, perhaps accidental, glazing. They vary in size from six or seven gallons down to less than ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... To an accidental association may be ascribed some of the noblest efforts of human genius. The Historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire first conceived his design among the ruins of the Capitol; and to the tones of a Welsh harp are we indebted for the Bard of Gray.—GIBBON'S ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... Methuen had had a slightly stronger force under his command, the course of the campaign on the north-west frontier might have been changed, and Mafeking relieved by pressure from the south. After my accidental discovery of the Boer laager near Spitz Kop there was a long discussion by Lord Methuen and his staff of the possibilities of surrounding and attacking the enemy. It was plain that this large force, ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... origin the direct result of the confused welter of conflicting forces, which was the legacy of Leicester's rule. As a preliminary to a right understanding of the political system, which was now, more by accidental force of circumstances than by design, developing into a permanent constitution, it will be necessary to trace the events of the years which immediately followed the departure of Leicester, and which under the influence and by the co-operation of three striking personalities were ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... full diameter of the pipe to be ventilated. Stationary wash-tubs of wood are apt to get soaked up with organic matter and filth. Stationary washstands in bedrooms should have small traps; underneath each should be a leaden tray to protect ceilings in case of leakage, breakage or accidental overflow. This tray should have an overflow, and this overflow should be trapped, if connected with the foul-pipe system (which it should not be if possible to arrange it otherwise). Flues should have a smooth parging or lining, or they will be apt to draw with difficulty. Gas pipes of insufficient ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... the community that all power was to be exercised. In Homer's time popular assemblies existed, and claimed the right of conferring privileges on rank. The nobles were ever jealous of the prerogative of the prince, and ever encroaching on his accidental weakness. In his sickness, his age, or his absence, the power of the state seems to have been wrested from his hands—the prey of the chiefs, or the dispute of contending factions. Nor was there in Greece ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... feet 3 inches; tail, 1 foot; height at withers, 3 feet; circumference of chest, 5 feet; face to insertion of horns, 9-1/2 inches; horns measured on curve, 16 inches. Twelve rings on horns, and one had a ridge behind, 1/2 inch broad, 1/2 inch high, and tapering up the horn; probably accidental. Colour: reddish-yellow, dark points in front of foot and on the ears, belly nearly white. The shell went through from behind the shoulder to the spleen, and burst on the other side, yet he ran 100 yards. I felt very thankful ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... their having come together in the way they had done seemed something more than accidental. It looked less like mere accident than that they had been favoured by the hand of Providence; and even the rude seaman, and the still ruder sea-cook, were only too glad to give way to the fancy that Providence was ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... Loth-to-stoop again, 'But, sir, may not my master, and great Lord, by letters, by passengers, by accidental opportunities, and the like, maintain, if he shall deliver up all unto thee, some kind of old friendship with ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... filtration during the summer, when algae are likely to develop in the reservoir. The filter was installed after an epidemic of typhoid which was apparently caused by an infection of the water supply. Normally, the water has been little contaminated, but the supply is subject to accidental contamination at any time, among other possible sources of infection being the camps of workmen now engaged in constructing the Catskill ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy
... a little long house with a verandah and a garden in front of it with flint-edged paths; the room in which they sat and ate was long and low and equipped with pieces of misfitting good furniture, an accidental-looking gilt tarnished mirror, and a sprinkling of old and middle-aged books. Some one had lit a fire, which cracked and spurted about cheerfully in a motherly fireplace, and a lamp and some candles got lit. Mrs. Wilder, Amanda's aunt, ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... who had been playing an important part in the Netherlands' drama lost his life. Count Moeurs and Niewenaar, stadholder of Utrecht, Gelderland, and Overysael, while inspecting some newly-invented fireworks, was suddenly killed by their accidental ignition and explosion. His death left vacant three great stadholderates, which before long were to be conferred upon a youth whose power henceforth was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... justice,' Lord Montbarry persisted. 'There are not half a dozen lines more that I can make out! The accidental breaking of his jar of acid has burnt the Baron's hands severely. He is still unable to proceed to the destruction of the head—and the Countess is woman enough (with all her wickedness) to shrink from attempting to take his place—when the first news is received of the coming arrival ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... queer look. She was learning to think fast and decide quickly. But the news editor was quite right. Not a word of the disgraceful attempt to pervert justice appeared in either the local or any other paper. MacDonald's death was briefly recorded as accidental and the coroner's verdict given in a four line paragraph. Do not ask me the why of this, dear reader; or I shall ask you the why of a hundred other equally mysterious silences. Don't forget, as Wayland has ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... later in the meal that he anticipated, in an admirably accidental manner, the casual remark she had intended to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... should run at all, until he had been deserted by his companions, and had even afterwards exchanged blows with his assailants;—and thus, a just distinction is kept up between the natural Cowardice of the three associates and the accidental Terror of Falstaff. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... less to place one of them at the head of that commission, and with a casting vote in case of an equality. The persons who could not be liable to that charge were, indeed, three to two; but any accidental difference of opinion, the death of any one of them or his occasional absence or sickness, threw the whole power into the hands of the other two, who were Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell, one the President, and the other high in the Council ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the anterior tibial artery for such haemorrhage three-quarters of the whole lumen of the vessel had been devitalised. The resemblance of some cases of secondary haemorrhage of this class to those occasionally observed after amputation, and due to accidental non-perforative injury of the artery at the time of operation above the point of ligature, ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... been made, seeming to imply that I was a candidate "for the Presidency of the Confederate States; that my election was the result of a misunderstanding, or of accidental complications"; and also that I held "extreme views," and entertained at that period an inadequate conception of the magnitude of the war probably to be waged, information on the subject has been contributed by several distinguished members of the Provisional ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... had grappled with Isom in an endeavor to prevent him turning the gun against him; told of the accidental discharge of the weapon; the ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... fond, tender parents, who were both carried off by the small-pox, within a few days of each other; my father dying first, and thereby by hastening the death of my mother: so that I was now left an unhappy friendless orphan (for my father's coming to settle there, was accidental, he being originally a Kentisrman). That cruel distemper which had proved so fatal to them, had indeed seized me, but with such mild and favourable symptoms, that I was presently out of danger, and what then I did not know the value of, was entirely ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... Was your interview with Field-Marshal Hindenburg and General Ludendorff brought about by any particular person or persons—either by yourself, by the Imperial Chancellor, or by the Foreign Office; or was it purely accidental? ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... not such a great city as this London, at least in its present amorphous, unorganised state, having grown up, and growing still, any how and any whither, by the accidental necessities of private commerce, private speculation, private luxury—is it not, I ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... the Holy Grail Story of which Galahad is hero run about as follows: Galahad is the son of Launcelot and Elaine, the latter's nurse having, by means of enchantment, made her to appear as Guinevere—whom Launcelot loved. Deserted by the accidental father of her coming child, this Elaine—daughter of King Pelles—took refuge in a nunnery, where she gave birth to Galahad, whom when dying she entrusted to the nuns. Brought up by those holy women and strengthened in early infancy by frequent glimpses of the Holy Grail,—whose light ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... started to crawl along so as, if possible, to get out of the course of the beaters before they should arrive on the spot. Grasping his carbine so that his hand covered the trigger-guard—in order to avoid any accidental discharge in consequence of the trigger becoming caught in some trailing twig—he began to creep forward, making as little noise as possible, and being particularly careful to avoid disturbing the bushes any more than he could ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... subjects; but he beheld at the same time other nations launching forth into competition, emulous for a share of the golden world which he was eager to monopolize. The expeditions of the English, and the accidental discovery of the Brazils by the Portuguese, caused him much uneasiness. To secure his possession of the continent, he determined to establish local governments or commands, in the most important places, all to be subject to a general ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... which lately in England has been called Political Economy is in reality nothing more than the investigation of some accidental phenomena of modern commercial operations, nor has it been true in its investigation even of these. It has no connection whatever with political economy, as understood and treated of by the great thinkers of past ages; and as long as its unscholarly and undefined statements are allowed to pass ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... there," mused Clif, "or they would not have been so easily taken by surprise. Why were they there? Their capture of the Cuban courier was accidental, I'm sure. They were on some ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... extraneousness &c. 57; accident; appearance, phenomenon &c. 448. Adj. derived from without; objective; extrinsic, extrinsical[obs3]; extraneous &c. (foreign) 57; modal, adventitious; ascititious[obs3], adscititious[obs3]; incidental, accidental, nonessential; contingent, fortuitous. implanted, ingrafted[obs3]; inculcated, infused. outward, apparent &c. (external) 220. Adv. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... remarkable as the ironical spirit in which he goes about doing good only in vindication of the credit of the oracle, and in the vain hope of finding a wiser man than himself. Yet this singular and almost accidental character of his mission agrees with the divine sign which, according to our notions, is equally accidental and irrational, and is nevertheless accepted by him as the guiding principle of his life. Socrates is nowhere represented to us as a freethinker or sceptic. There is no reason to doubt his ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me," said he. "But, tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor's stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the man by ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... as it were, the terminations of the effect. The great point of distinction and power (if it have any) in the theory is, the making the dielectric of essential and specific importance, instead of leaving it as it were a mere accidental circumstance or the simple representative of space, having no more influence over the phenomena than the space occupied by it. I have still certain other results and views respecting the nature of the electrical forces and excitation, which are connected with ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... picture of the school of Rubens, which was owned by one of his artist friends, produced a study which he afterward seems to have developed into his well-known Boy and Bird; a Cupid-like figure, holding a bird closely against its breast. These exercises, however, seem to have been, as it were, accidental, and had little or no effect in leading him to the practice in which he afterward ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... provinces, I marv'lling not at him, nor he at me. But, if thou must go gaping, let it be That One who could make Michael should make thee. O, foolish Man, meting things low and high By self, that accidental quantity! With this conceit, Philosophy stalks frail As peacock staggering underneath his tail. Who judge of Plays from their own penny gaff, At God's great theatre will hiss and laugh; For what's a Saint to them Brought up in modern ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... of polarized condition which the molecules of the dielectrics concerned acquire (1503. 1600.). Thus, for instance, the relation of our atmosphere and the earth within it, to the occurrence of spark or brush, must be especial and not accidental (1464.). It would not else consist with other meteorological phenomena, also of course dependent on the special properties of the air, and which being themselves in harmony the most perfect with the ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... they are," replied Tremayne; "such a resemblance cannot be accidental. I remember in that queer double life of mine, when I was your unconscious rival, I used to interchange them until they almost seemed to be the same identity to me. There is some little mystery behind the likeness which we shall have cleared up before very long now. Natas told me to ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... than by the regular and healthy regime, the strengthening of my soul and body was helped by the wonderful, yet natural, peculiarity of our prison, which eliminates entirely the accidental and the unexpected from its life. Having neither a family nor friends, I am perfectly safe from the shocks, so injurious to life, which are caused by treachery, by the illness or death of relatives—let my indulgent reader ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... returning to the Northern Light, with the possibility of Madge coming off in the interval and discovering the murder for herself. No, the risk of that appalled him. Besides, whatever happened, he had another reason for keeping the truth from Madge. The fact of Horble's death, even if she thought it accidental, would shock her to the core. It was inconceivable that she would feel anything but horror stricken, whether she judged her former lover innocent or not. She might even undergo a terrible remorse. At such a moment how little likely she would be to give way to him! Of course she ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... celebrated French scientist, an authority on the subject of heredity. You doubtless know something of the subject, how certain traits appear in families generation after generation. Accidental traits, if repeated for two or three generations, often become inherent traits. To show you to what a strange extent this is true, I will call your attention to the case of the ducal house of Bethune in France, where three successive generations ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... An accidental circumstance cemented the intimacy between Steerforth and me, in a manner that inspired me with great pride and satisfaction, though it sometimes led to inconvenience. It happened on one occasion, when he was doing me the honour of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... hospitalities of many of the principal citizens of Copenhagen; the visits to the tomb and museum of the works of Thorwaldsen, and to the room in which the immortal Oersted made his brilliant electro-magnetic discovery; the casual and accidental introduction and interview with a daughter of Oersted,—all created a train of reflection which prompted me to devise some suitable mode of showing to these hospitable people my appreciation of their friendly attentions, and I proposed to ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... to Lord Melbourne about coming to the Castle, but in his answer he had made no allusion to it; she did not know whether this was accidental or intentional, for he very often gave no answer to questions ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... knowledge, and only between the good; hence it is not possible for anyone to have many real friends. Of the conventional forms, that which is born of intellectual sympathy is more enduring than what springs from sexual attraction; while what comes of utility is quite accidental. The former may develop into genuine friendship if there be virtue in both parties. Companionship is a ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... which may be called accidental, had nearly done more than repay the Austrians for all their reverses. The left of their line, stationed still further down the Mincio,—at Puzzuolo, no sooner learned from the cannonade that the French were at Borghetto, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... attention closely to every circumstance in the case, and after a considerable amount of evidence had been given without much result, so far as implicating both prisoners in the actual murder was concerned, an accidental discovery revealed the whole of the facts of the tragedy as plainly as if I ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... words of M. Blanqui, "he showed that labor is the universal and invariable measure of values, and proved that everything has its natural price, toward which it continually gravitates amid the fluctuations of the market, occasioned by ACCIDENTAL CIRCUMSTANCES foreign to the venal ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... slightest consequence to her whether this man remembered their brief acquaintance of the railway-carriage. And yet she would have been wounded, ever so little, if he had forgotten her. She knew so few people, that this accidental acquaintance seemed almost a friend. He had known her brother, too; and there had been something in his manner that implied ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... description of an unknown, outcast sailor, whom one may never see again, and whom no one may care to hear about; but so it is. Some people we see under no remarkable circumstances, but whom, for some reason or other, we never forget. He called himself Bill Jackson; and I know no one of all my accidental acquaintances to whom I would more gladly give a shake of the hand than to him. Whoever falls in with him will find a handsome, hearty fellow, and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... notice to Neipperg of everything the Prussian Army undertakes, and the Postscript always, "Come and deliver us, your Excellency." Of these latter Documents, I have heard of some with Syndic Guzmar's and other Official hands to them. Generally such things can, through accidental Pandour channels, were there no other, easily reach Neipperg; though they do not always. Enough, could Neipperg appear at the Gates of Breslau, in some concerted night-hour, or push out suitable Detachment on forced-march ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sweeping Phoebe with her, intercourse with the mill stopped almost entirely. Annie never pretended to any liking for the helpless Phoebe, who could not even answer her back when she insulted her, as she frequently did all timid people. Never since that accidental touch of quaintness on the first evening had Ishmael discovered any kindred habit of mind in Phoebe, and she, in her sweetly-obtuse way, sometimes wondered that Ishmael did not want to be ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... curiously, for he wondered if the choice of a soft cloak which could more easily be wrapped round the burning woman than an overcoat was accidental, or whether it was the product of a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... unremitting attention her continual change of posture, and heard the frequent but inarticulate sounds of complaint which passed her lips, was almost wishing to rouse her from so painful a slumber, when Marianne, suddenly awakened by some accidental noise in the house, started hastily up, and, with feverish wildness, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... day passed without incident. The duke, to avoid any accidental indiscretion, waited until after dinner to tell Hyacinthe to pack a trunk and a portmanteau. Hyacinthe was to accompany them, as ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... that owing to the jostling (possibly accidental, but none the less actual) of an Imperial officer—Field-Lieutenant Schmidt—at the entrance to Brooklyn Bridge, the bridge is declared closed to the public until further notice. We are proud to state the Field Lieutenant at once cut down his cowardly assailant with his saber. ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... progress of this affair the distinctive character of the inhabitants of the several great divisions of this Union has been shown more in relief than perhaps in any national transaction since the establishment of the constitution. It is, perhaps, accidental that the combination of talent and influence has been the greatest on the slave side. The importance of the question has been much greater to them than to the other side. Their union of exertion has been consequently closer and more unshakable. They ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... looking both sheepish and gratified, Tom suddenly bolted, leaving the elder lady to enlighten the younger at length, and have another laugh over this new sort of courtship, which might well be called accidental. Nan was deeply interested, for she knew Dora, thought her a nice little thing, and predicted that in time she would make Tom an excellent wife, since she admired and 'appreciated' ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... 'astral body' has been applied to a certain semblance of the human form, fully inhabited by its higher principles, which can migrate to any distance from the physical body—projected consciously and with exact intention by a living adept, or unintentionally by the accidental application of certain mental forces to his loosened principles by any person at the moment of death. For ordinary purposes, there is no practical inconvenience in using the expression 'astral body' for the appearance so ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... sez he, "it is a great rise for her, I have hearn that she hain't worth much, as I count wealth, and as we are speakin' in confidence, I will say that there is a rich widder here who has hopes of me, and mebby I've gin her some encouragement, kinder accidental, as you may say, but I ort to know better. Widdowers can't be too careful; they do great harm, let 'em be as careful as possible. They tromple right and left over wimmen's hearts do the best they can. But ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... was always possible, of course, that he might have been taken in somewhere. There are many who would have no compassion on man or woman, and would yet shrink from turning out a little child to perish. And he was a very attractive child. Still, do not hope too much, Ermine; it may be merely an accidental likeness." ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... all. So the Romans on beholding the eclipse looked for no evil to come from it, but it made an impression of terror upon the Macedonians and they thought that the prodigy had a bearing on the cause of Perseus. While each side was in this frame of mind an entirely accidental occurrence the next day threw them into a fierce conflict and put an end to the war. One of the Roman pack-animals had fallen into the water from which a supply was being drawn, and the Macedonians laid hold of him, while the water-carriers ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... other motives than the one she acknowledged? She had insisted, almost unfeelingly as it might have seemed, on the abstract rightness of what she had done, on the fact that, ideally speaking, her act could not be made less right, less justifiable, by the special accidental consequences that had flowed from it. Because these consequences had caught her in a web of tragic fatality she would not be guilty of the weakness of tracing back the disaster to any intrinsic error in her original motive. Why, then, if this was her real, her proud attitude toward the past—and ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... staying much longer in Chellaston, and he replied that as soon as Bates would go and his brother was on his feet again he intended to leave for the West. Then he begged her to lose no time in seeing Eliza, for Bates had taken to hobbling about the roads, and he thought a sudden and accidental meeting with the girl might be the death ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... feeling about him—and made his way by degrees, pausing now and then to look at a picture, though he knew them all by heart. Thus he arrived at last at the piano, in what he flattered himself was an accidental way. ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... his head. "It isn't really," he said. "After all, we can't figure it's the work of one person: it's too widespread for that. And it's silly to assume that everything's accidental." ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... together under like climatic and political conditions indicates a stronger tenacity on the part of the Jewish part of the nations to life, a greatly less liability to disease, and a stronger resistance to epidemic, endemic, and accidental diseases. By some authorities it has been held that the occupations followed by the Jew are such as do not compel him to risk his life, as he neither follows any labor requiring any great and continued exertion, nor any that ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... worth hearing." I leaned my arms on the table in front of me. "This Blue Disease is not an accidental thing. It was deliberately planned, by two scientists. I was one ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... objectiveness, non ego; extraneousness &c 57; accident; appearance, phenomenon &c 448. Adj. derived from without; objective; extrinsic, extrinsical^; extraneous &c (foreign) 57; modal, adventitious; ascititious^, adscititious^; incidental, accidental, nonessential; contingent, fortuitous. implanted, ingrafted^; inculcated, infused. outward, apparent &c (external) 220. Adv. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... stepped lightly just inside and to the left—as de Spain stood—of the door and faced him, the encounter seemed to de Spain accidental. While Sandusky was not a man he would have chosen to meet at that time, he did not at first consider the incident an eventful one. But before he could speak, a second man appeared in the doorway, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... that I would recall in these notes a few of the many hostelries I have rested at in the course of my journeys; and, indeed, I had taken up my pen for the purpose, when I was baffled by an accidental circumstance. It was the having to leave off, to wish the owner of a certain bright face that looked in at my door, 'many happy returns of the day.' Thereupon a new thought came into my mind, driving its ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... he was again made a prisoner by our troops because of his looks. Pike got some clothes, cleaned up, and I used him afterward to communicate with Wilmington, North Carolina. Some time after the war, he was appointed a lieutenant of the Regular, Cavalry, and was killed in Oregon, by the accidental discharge of a pistol. Just before his death he wrote me, saying that he was tired of the monotony of garrison-life, and wanted to turn Indian, join the Cheyennes on the Plains, who were then giving us great trouble, and, after he had gained ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... have expressed a desire to travel, and have requested me to give you my permission. I accede to your request, but only upon the following conditions: You must procure for me a skin of every variety of bear known upon the earth. I do not mean such varieties as are termed 'accidental,' arising from albinism or like circumstances, but every species or variety known to naturalists and acknowledged as 'permanent.' The bears from which these skins are to be taken must be killed in their native haunts, and by your own hands—with no other ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... improvisatore Sgricci, and Rosini, the author of "La Monaca di Monza", have to be recorded. It will be seen from this enumeration that Shelley was no longer solitary; and indeed it would appear that now, upon the eve of his accidental death, he had begun to enjoy an immunity from many of his previous sufferings. Life expanded before him: his letters show that he was concentrating his powers and preparing for a fresh flight; and the months, though ever productive ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... what to think, Ruth," answered Jack. "One thing is certain: If the first explosions weren't accidental, then they must have been due to ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... important words in the document, the words that represented—together with the Needle—the essential stations on the road to be followed: the Chambre des Demoiselles and Fort Frefosse: D for Demoiselles, F for Frefosse: the connection was too remarkable to be a mere accidental fact. ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... widespread legend.[49] The resemblance of the catastrophe—presumably the appearance of Satan in the form of Lucifer—to the scene in Mickle's Sorcerer, which was published among Lewis's Tales of Wonder (1801), is vague enough to be accidental. There are blue flames and sorcery, and an apparition in both, but that is all the two scenes have in common. The tyrannical abbess may be a heritage from The Romance of the Forest, but, if so she is ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... and no doubt, if she thought it would flatter, would tell, a beautiful young girl that her destiny was to be a queen; but there is in this prediction a minuteness of detail, that cannot be accounted for on the ground of accidental coincidence. It is a brief history of her life. Unless we are prepared to believe that an ignorant old mulatto woman was gifted by divine Providence with supernatural power, constituted a second Witch of Endor, and able by "examining the ball of ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... Wakefield.—Whoever has had much to do with the press will sympathise with MR. CHARLES KNIGHT in all that he has stated ("NOTES AND QUERIES," Vol. iii., p. 62.) respecting the accidental—but not at first discovered—substitution of modern for moderate. If that word modern had not been detected till it was too late for an explanation on authority, what strange conjectures would ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... memorable night of her first grand opera Norma and Chris dined at Mrs. von Behrens's. It was Alice who urged the arrangement, urged it quite innocently, as she frequently did the accidental pairing of Norma and Chris, because her mother was going for a week to Boston, the following day, and they wanted an evening ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... earns its right to a new name only when it has lifted its head above the waters of oblivion, you must agree. For 'you saw at once,' said Narcissus, in reference to that poet, 'that his writing was so delightful because he was more so.' His writings, in fact, were but the accidental emanations of his personality. He might have given himself out to us in fugues, or canvases, or simply, like the George Muncaster of whom I am thinking, in the sweet breath and happy shining of his home. Genius is a personal quality, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... sure their father would not believe it; and that their mother, if ever she should return to her home and family, would bring a very different account—that the whole misfortune would turn out to be accidental. So they felt assured: but the fact was as Roger had said. The Snow-sewer sluice had been pulled up, by the orders of the Committee of the Parliament, then sitting at Lincoln: and it was done to destroy the king's new ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... This interview was accidental. I never went to the levee; for having seen the courts of Mussulman and Catholic sovereigns, my curiosity was sufficiently allayed; and my politics being as perverse as my rhymes, I had, in fact, "no business ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Neighborville twenty miles away is worth more space than a trip made by Mrs. Astor to Europe. Whenever possible, the good reporter seeks to localize his story and draw it close to the everyday lives of his readers. Even an accidental acquaintance of a man in town with the noted governor or the notorious criminal who has just been brought into the public eye—with a brief quotation of the local man's opinion of the other fellow, or how they ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... pity your first visit should be spoiled by anything so dreadful as the accidental death of this young girl. It seems to have frightened you both ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... dearest, calm yourself. Recollect that all we have to go upon in this matter is a resemblance, which, after all, may be accidental. But leave it all to me, and be assured that now I have some clue to this affair, I will not lose sight of it, or of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... another world, commissioned it would appear, by heaven, demands vengeance for a monstrous enormity, and the demand remains without effect; the criminals are at last punished, but, as it were, by an accidental blow, and not in the solemn way requisite to convey to the world a warning example of justice; irresolute foresight, cunning treachery, and impetuous rage, hurry on to a common destruction; the less guilty and the innocent are equally involved in the general ruin. The destiny of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... that's all the business. I have been rather sick and have had two small hemorrhages, but the second I believe to have been accidental. No good denying that this annoys, because it do. However, you must expect influenza to leave some harm, and my spirits, appetite, peace on earth and goodwill to men are all on a rising market. During the last week the amanuensis was otherwise engaged, whereupon I took up, pitched into, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... meeting on Thorpe Peak, the surgeon became a constant visitor at Raynham. Sir Oswald was delighted with the young man's talents and accomplishments; and Victor contrived to win credit by the apparently accidental revelation of his early struggles, his mother's poverty, his patient studies, and indomitable perseverance. He told of these things without seeming to tell them; a word now, a chance allusion then, revealed the story ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... is not accidental. Not only does it occur at every step, but the universal historians' accounts are all made up of a chain of such contradictions. This contradiction occurs because after entering the field of analysis ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of unknown lands in his clothes and conversation. Of his education we know nothing, except that he was a great reader. His father was a wine merchant, purveyor to the royal household, and from this accidental relation between trade and royalty may have arisen the fact that at seventeen years Chaucer was made page to the Princess Elizabeth. This was the beginning of his connection with the brilliant ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the Anglo-Saxons rase to the ground the early churches, that, until a few years ago, but few traces of these early buildings were thought to exist. An accidental discovery, however, in the year 1835, brought to light an undoubted relic of an early British church in the west, this being the remains of a little church which had been until the date above mentioned completely buried in the sand ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath
... probability of his long surviving the battle of Trafalgar, had he fortunately escaped the Enemy's shot: but the Writer of this can assert that HIS LORDSHIP'S health was uniformly good, with the exception of some slight attacks of indisposition arising from accidental causes; and which never continued above two or three days, nor confined him in any degree with respect to either exercise or regimen:[29] and during the last twelve months of his life, he Complained only three times in this way. It is true, that HIS LORDSHIP, about the meridian of life, had ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... Sunday was merely retailing some knowledge recently acquired by chance. He knew all the Sunday's tones of voice; and he also was well aware that the Sunday's brain was not on the whole better stored than his own. Further, the Sunday was satisfied with his bit of accidental knowledge. Edwin was not. Edwin wanted to know why, if the clay for making earthenware was not got in the Five Towns, the Five Towns had become the great seat of the manufacture. Why were not pots made in the South, where the clay came from? He could not think of any answer to this enigma, nor of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the clouds and the mountains, covered with their immense, mute attestation what the old city murmured beneath them; they confirmed in silence the sombre truths: heaven empty as the churches are, serving for accidental phantasmagoria, and uninterrupted times rolling their flood, wherein thousands of lives, like insignificant nothings, are, one after another, dragged and drowned.—A knell began to ring in that ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... Ward, 'at least everything is quite right now. I had just a little trouble, but it was really accidental, and Mrs. Caryll's coming this afternoon was such ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... and diamonds in my hand. If you get in, I'm down one. As it was, I made an overtrick. The only penalty for a renege is two tricks. The rule book does not differentiate between deliberate and accidental ...
— Competition • James Causey
... appearance for yourself. I fell in love with her at first sight, and having been fortunate enough, as I then thought, to favourably impress the old uncle, her only relative, with whom she was living, I followed up my first accidental introduction to the inmates of the chateau until it had ripened into a close intimacy. And if I was attracted toward your mother in the first instance by her beauty, I was still more powerfully attracted afterwards by ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... you, young ladies, that I have been requested this year, as on previous occasions, to allow some of my young people to attend in the ante-chamber of the assembly-room with sandal ribbon, pins, and such little matters, and to be ready to repair any accidental injury to the ladies' dresses. I shall send four—of the most diligent." She laid a marked emphasis on the last words, but without much effect; they were too sleepy to care for any of the pomps and vanities, or, indeed, for any of the comforts of this world, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... act as its purveyors. It is for their interest to send something; and their judgment of what is important is not only biased, but is formed by purely local standards. Our news, therefore, is largely set in motion by telegraphic operators, by agents trained to regard only the accidental, the startling, the abnormal, as news; it is picked up by sharp prowlers about town, whose pay depends upon finding something, who are looking for something spicy and sensational, or which may ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... It was not accidental that the movement of the French workers for emancipation emphasized a desire for control of industry. The syndicalism of France has expressed the workers' interest in production as the labor movements of other countries have laid stress exclusively on its economic value to them. The ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... if not on my side to you?—But, to avoid these comparisons, let us talk of nothing henceforth but equality; although, if the riches of your mind, and your unblemished virtue, be set against my fortune, (which is but an accidental good, as I may call it, and all I have to boast of,) the condescension will be yours; and I shall not think I can possibly deserve you, till, after your sweet example, my future life shall become nearly ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... first impulse is to condemn her malicious falsehood, much more severely than if she had merely told a few lies about some one else. Yet it is quite evident that if we were to estimate the doings of men with perfect justice, we should fix solely on the moral element in their doings; and the accidental circumstance of the offence or injury to ourselves would be neither here nor there. The primary vulgar error, then, in this case is, undue and excessive disapprobation of misconduct from which we have suffered. No one but a very stupid person would, if it were ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
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