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More "Peculiarity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remained there, upon that Mount of Vision, and himself stood before us as only a transfigured form of glory? Where then would be the peculiarity of his work, and ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... peculiarity of the request from a stranger, he was unable to see how harm could result from his ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... One peculiarity in connection with the floor, marks a wide departure from the ordinary arrangements of a nursery or kindergarten school. Six feet distant from the washboard, a depressed railway track, equipped with long platform ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... To answer Sipa.] He denotes Bologna by its situation between the rivers Savena to the east, and Reno to the west of that city; and by a peculiarity of dialect, the use of the affirmative sipa ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the plain, practical common-sense which distinguished him, that it signifies "an exaggerated resemblance in drawings," and this expresses exactly what it does mean. Any distinguishing feature or peculiarity, whether in face, figure, or dress, is exaggerated, and yet the likeness is preserved. A straight nose is presented unnaturally straight, a short nose unnaturally depressed; a prominent forehead is drawn unusually bulbous; a protuberant jaw unnaturally underhung; a fat man is depicted ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... A peculiarity which may have helped keep it in mind was that it consisted of two parts, the summons, and the response; the first part differing slightly from the second, to distinguish friend answering friend from the stranger merely imitating sounds accidentally or incidentally heard. Just ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... The peculiarity of construction, which is a consequence of the watery site of Venice, gives the same general character to all the superior dwellings of that remarkable town. The house to which the thread of the narrative now leads us, had its water-gate, its vestibule, its ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the legislative chambers; the privileges and powers of the executive; the adjustment of disputes and the punishment of offenses against the national authority; the process of constitutional amendment. It is a peculiarity of the German constitution, however, that it contains elaborate provisions relating to a variety of things concerning which constitutions, as a rule, are silent. There is an extended section upon customs and commerce; another upon ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... amplexicaulis in part surround the stalk at their base, whence its trivial name; in colour they differ from most others of the genus, being of a greyer or more glaucous hue, which peculiarity joined to the delicate whiteness of the flowers, renders this species a very desirable one to add to a collection of hardy, ornamental, herbaceous plants, more especially as it occupies but little space, and has no tendency to ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... countenance, and it excited in his heart an undefinable and uncontrollable interest. We have already said that Isabella inherited her mother's beauty, which had not one of the usual characteristics of a Spanish female countenance; and it was this peculiarity that struck the young seaman forcibly, and probably increased the interest he felt towards her, and the curiosity to know something more of her history, as he had only understood vaguely that ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... difficulties which I anticipated. I assured the officers that the money was Government (U. S.) money, which I did not intend, and was not instructed to take home with me; but which I should use in London in redeeming bonds and coupons, and should leave in the bank on deposit unless by the peculiarity of their rules, I should be obliged to withdraw it. They objected to taking the money as a Government deposit, or as an official deposit in my name, having some vague idea that if they took it and opened an official Government account they should be liable for the appropriation ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... not to dwell on the literary excellence of the Breviary during the recitation of the Office. It is a useful thing that priests should recognise the authorship of the psalms recited, their probable dates, the circumstances of their composition, the sublimity of their thought, the peculiarity of their Hebrew style, the rhythm and poetry of the Hebrews. But the dwelling on these thoughts leads to distractions. Again, some priests, like the clerics of the Renaissance and post-Renaissance times, despise and dislike the Breviary for its ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... a feeling of austere satisfaction that he was leaving a good deal of trouble behind him. He had been badly used, he had been righteously angry. It was right that they who had thus used him badly should be punished. As for him, if his grief did not trouble him much, that was a happy peculiarity of his temperament which did not lessen their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... I know they are not. Can it be because boys are less sensitive, and more sufficient for themselves? or is it because they are less intense, less confidential, and move along more slowly and suspiciously? Does it ever come from peculiarity of temperament in the case of both boys and girls, there being girl-boys and boy-girls? I am inclined to think that, because a boy is a boy, and a girl is a girl, the characteristics of both are required to make a perfect ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... on his reader, we know the causes of his anger or his love. And, as an original thinker creates a style for himself, from the circumstance of not attending to style at all, but to feeling, so Anthony Wood's has all the peculiarity of the writer. Critics of short views have attempted to screen it from ridicule, attributing his uncouth style to the age he lived in. But not one in his own time nor since, has composed in the same style. The austerity and the quickness of his feelings vigorously stamped all their roughness ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... forenoon, and lingered awhile to see the sports. The greatest peculiarity of the crowd, to my eye, was that they seemed not to have any best clothes, and therefore had put on no holiday suits,—a grimy people, as at all times, heavy, obtuse, with thick beer in their blood. Coarse, rough-complexioned ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we came to a large open space fronting a beautiful piece of water, which I was told was the Alster. As I walked through the narrow streets, I was struck with the peculiarity of the gables of the tall houses being all turned towards the thoroughfare, and with the stupendous size of the churches. We halted for a moment, in the porch of one of the latter, and my notions of decency were not a little outraged, by seeing it filled with a squadron of dragoons, the men ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... with short moss that had gathered there through the centuries, and instead of being flat as we had surmised there was a noticeable slope, so that the part that was directly behind the camp was fully two feet higher than the rear. This was the only peculiarity in its construction, and although we sat in silence, staring at its moss-covered surface, we were utterly unable to put forward the slightest supposition that would account for the disappearance of the ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... who soon learned the peculiarity of every tree, the song of the different birds, and the season of bloom for wild flowers, and could listen for hours to the incidents of the past, that seem of more vital importance to middle-aged people than the matters of every day, was a veritable treasure to Mr. Winthrop Adams. He did not ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... failed to appeal to one or the other, and he, in his turn, has seldom failed to give a lively if not a very exact or critical account of his subject. But it is in his way of giving this account that the peculiarity, glanced at above as making a parallel between him and Voltaire, appears. It is, I have said, almost original, and what is more, endless as has been the periodical writing of the last eighty years, and sedulously as ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... indeed a marked peculiarity, and innumerable stories are told of his dancing pirouettes, singing impromptu songs, and rhyming a whole company to their infinite amusement. Each one of his personal friends, in talking of him, says, "But if you ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... Now, this is a peculiarity of the English hotel system that is apt to embarrass travellers from other countries, especially from America, where no such custom could be introduced. I do not know how old the custom is in Great Britain. Doubtless it originated in the almost ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... individual Hohenzollern, we find the most obvious differences between them. No dynasty more strikingly illustrates that psychological and political peculiarity of royal houses, which may be called the law of opposites, and which has almost the regularity of a universal law according to which each ruler is the living contrast of his predecessor. The successor of the Great Elector, Frederick I. (1688-1713), ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... journeys to some spot or spots unknown, and, returning, deposit their passengers before the porch of Hillside. The limousine used by Ormuz Khan, upon its second appearance had partaken of the same peculiarity as the others: there were blinds drawn ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... uncle Crabtree, and Mrs. Candor, though contributing abundantly to the animation of the dialogue, have hardly anything to do with the advancement of the story; and, like the accessories in a Greek drama, are but as a sort of Chorus of Scandal throughout. That this defect, or rather peculiarity, should have been observed at first, when criticism was freshly on the watch for food, is easily conceivable; and I have been told by a friend, who was in the pit on the first night of performance, that a person, who sat near him, said impatiently, during the famous scene at Lady Sneerwell's, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... draughtsman, at least how such a critic as M. Rio, can look at the early Italian painters without tracing everywhere in them the classic touch, the peculiar tendency to mathematic curves in the outlines, which is the distinctive peculiarity of Greek art. Is not Giotto, the father of Italian art, full of it in every line? Is not Perugino? Is not the angel of Lorenzo Credi in Mrs. Jameson's woodcut? Is not Francia, except just where he is stiff, and ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... power of this voice is greatly dependent on cultivation and management, and experiments have proved that more depends on cultivation than on natural peculiarity. Much care and labour are necessary for acquiring this improved condition of the speaking voice, the lungs must be kept well supplied with breath, there must be a full expansion of the chest, causing the abdomen gently to protrude, the throat and the mouth must ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... that as they progressed further this peculiarity would for the most part gradually vanish, and the river, growing wider and deeper, act ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... to a gradual progression through the points of space and time, we have another peculiarity in our method of thinking, which concurs in producing this phaenomenon. We always follow the succession of time in placing our ideas, and from the consideration of any object pass more easily to that, which follows immediately after it, than to that which went before it. We ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Stephens' work, is shown the form of the triangular ceiling common in all the edifices in Yucatan and Chiapas. It is a triangular arch above the line of the exterior cornice, without a keystone, and with the faces of the stones beveled, and forming a perfect vault over each apartment. But it has this peculiarity, that a space a foot or more wide in the center is carried up vertically about two feet, and covered with a cap of stone, so that the side walls which form the vaulted ceiling do not come together so as to rest against each other. The ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... A very odd peculiarity in the French, and which Bonaparte has penetrated with great sagacity, is, that they, who are so ready to perceive what is ridiculous in others, desire nothing better than to render themselves ridiculous, as soon ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... life as disclosed to us in these pages has been called joyless, by that sect of religious partisans whose peculiarity is to mistake boisterousness for unction. Was the life of Christ himself, then, so particularly joyful? Can the life of any man be joyful who sees and feels the tragic miseries and hardly less tragic follies ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... one peculiarity of the marriages of the first century and a half of colonial and provincial life which should be noted—the vast number of unions between the members of the families of Puritan ministers. It seemed to be a law of social ethics that the sons of ministers ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... this peculiarity, that all of its constituent volumes are independent of one another, and therefore each story is complete in itself. OLIVER OPTIC is, perhaps, the favorite author of the boys and girls of this country, and he seems destined to enjoy an endless popularity. He ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... before the junction, the large bed of the Suttor contracts into one deep channel, filled in its whole extent by a fine sheet of water, on which Charley shot a pelican. I mention this singular contraction, because a similar peculiarity was observed to occur at almost every junction of considerable channels, as that of the Suttor and Burdekin, and of the Lynd and the Mitchell. I named the river, which here joins the Suttor, after Mr. Cape, the obliging commander of the Shamrock steamer. The bed of the united rivers is very broad, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... architectural mind, peeping acutely into recondite motives and half-accomplished purposes in such matters, could detect the circumstance which had determined that so noticeable peculiarity of ground-plan. Its kernel was not, as in most similar buildings of that date, [3] a feudal fortress, but an unfortified manor-house—a double manoir—two houses, oddly associated at a right angle. Far back in the Middle Age, said a not uncertain tradition, here had been the one ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... taken in coffee or tea, might, however, by continued use become injurious, if it were in all cases necessarily exerted; that is to say, if by caffein the muscles and nerves were directly spurred on to increased activity. This is not the case, however, and just in this lies the peculiarity of the effect in question. The muscles and the simultaneously-acting nerves only under the influence of caffein respond more easily to the impulse of the will, but do not develop spontaneous activity; that is, without ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... every standard, every shrine, every peculiarity of the music and singing, was familiar to the Queen. Even the changing colours of the lights referred to the course of growth and decay in the universe and in human life, and the magnificent close of the chant of homage which represented the reception of the royal soul into the essence of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... half-smothered laughter of the others in the class. The teacher wishing to get over the matter in some way, at length said, "I am surprised, Edward, that you should give so senseless an answer to so simple a question." Now, one very striking peculiarity in Ned's character was his unwillingness to acknowledge himself in the wrong, however ridiculous his answer might be; and he was disposed to argue his point up on this occasion. "Any way," said he, "the Pyramids are large, and so is Australia; and I ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... Londoner of some fashion, partly by its neatness and simplicity, with just so much of a peculiarity of style as served to show that, although he belonged to the order of metropolitan beaux, he was not altogether a common one ... His physiognomy was prepossessing and intelligent, but ever and anon his brows lowered and gathered—a habit, as I then thought, with a degree of affectation in it, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... forgotten trick or incident during childhood or to some pet name which even in the beginning meant nothing. Nearly every man and boy has his contranome by which, and by which alone, he is known in his village; the women seldomer, unless they are conspicuous by some peculiarity, such as A'Sbirra (the spy), or A'Paponnessa (the fat one)—whose counterpart, in the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... labours very quietly—he enjoys his days, and a good cigar. He divides his talents between the stage and the brush. His pencil and palette have been with him in far-off places, and there is always a corner in his bag for them if he only travels twenty miles from Harley Street. His peculiarity of painting—so to speak—lies in the fact that he never fails to chronicle the view obtained from any hotel where he may be staying. He showed me a book full of these hasty impressions—all of which were most beautifully done—many of them he could only give ten minutes ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the growing wonders of her situation. Mrs. Goddard was still dressed in black, as when John Short had seen her five months earlier. There was something a little peculiar in her mourning, though Mrs. Ambrose would have found it hard to define the peculiarity. Some people would have said that if she was really a widow her gown fitted a little too well, her bonnet was a little too small, her veil a little too short. Mrs. Ambrose supposed that those points were suggested by the latest fashions ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... Harcourt. She is still in her summer, even if it be waning, a lady of fresh complexion and light hair, a Jewish nose (to which her descent entitles her), a kind and generous expression of face, but an officer-like figure and bearing. There seems to be a peculiarity of manner, a lack of simplicity, a self-consciousness, which I suspect would not have been seen in a lady born to the rank which she has attained. But, anyhow, she was kind to all of us, and complimentary to me, and she showed us some curious things which had formerly ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... questioned whether anything can be conscious of its own flavor. Whether the musk-deer, or the civet-cat, or even a still more eloquently silent animal that might be mentioned, is aware of any personal peculiarity, may well be doubted. No man knows his own voice; many men do not know their own profiles. Every one remembers Carlyle's famous "Characteristics" article; allow for exaggerations, and there is a great deal ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Lindsay took it very hard, I believe; but she bore up, and bears up now as if misfortune had never crossed her path; though the death of Mr. Lindsay's wife and son was another great blow. I don't believe there is a grey hair on her head at this moment. There is some peculiarity about them perhaps, some pride too; but that is an amiable weakness," he added, laughing, as he rose to go. "Mrs. Gillespie, I am sure, will not find fault with ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... England was engaged in a war, by which she was, in a degree, isolated from most of Christendom. This insulated condition, sustained by a consciousness of wealth, knowledge, and power, had served to produce a decided peculiarity of manners, and even of appearance. In the article of dress I could not be mistaken. In 1806 I had seen all the lower classes of the English clad in something like costumes. The Channel waterman wore the short dowlas petticoat; the Thames waterman, a jacket and breeches ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the commonest things frequently exposed him to ridicule, than which he dreaded nothing more. The unfortunate prejudice which attached to his native country appeared to him a challenge to overcome it in his own person. Besides this, there was a peculiarity in his character; he was offended with every attention that he thought was paid him on account of his rank rather than his personal qualities. He felt this humiliation principally in the company of persons who shone by their abilities, and triumphed, as it were, over ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... be its supremacy? If the people cannot control and look down peculiarity, or anything they dislike, one might as well ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... A singular peculiarity of the betel-nut is that of its staining the saliva of a deep red colour, so as to resemble blood. Ossaroo, who possessed a large share of intelligence, and who had travelled to the great city of Calcutta and other parts of India, narrated a good anecdote connected with this fact. ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... the curious method of trellising orchards of pear trees with bamboo poles. The trellis supports the upper branches and this prevents them from breaking down under the weight of fruit, while it also makes easy the picking of fruit. Agriculture at its best is seen in this fertile Japanese valley. One peculiarity of this country, as of other parts of rural Japan, is that one sees none of the scattered farmhouses which dot every American farming section. Instead of building on his own land the farmer lives in a village to which he returns at night ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... any reader who can recall the position of my Connie's room, that the nearest way to the breakwater should be through that room; but so it was. I mention the fact because I want my readers to understand a certain peculiarity of the room. By the side of the window which looked out upon the breakwater was a narrow door, apparently of a closet or cupboard, which communicated, however, with a narrow, curving, wood-built passage, leading into a little wooden hut, the walls of which were by no means impervious ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... The appearance of the country about Calais does not differ materially from that in the immediate neighbourhood of Dover, which is much less fertile than the greater part of Kent; but the cottages are decidedly inferior to the English. The first peculiarity that struck us was the grotesque appearance of the Douaniers, who came to examine us on the coast; and when we had passed through the numerous guards, and been examined at the guard-houses, previously to our ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... constructive imagination united with the sleepless critical spirit which shrank from no test of audacity; there was the most powerful impulse to generalization coupled with the sharpest faculty for descrying and distinguishing the finest shades of phenomenal peculiarity; there was the religion of Hellas, which afforded complete satisfaction to the requirements of sentiment, and yet left the intelligence free to perform its destructive work; there were the political ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... a veritable colossus, was well known for one peculiarity. When about to lead his troops in a charge against the enemy, it was his custom to shout "Let's go! I'll put on my animal dress." Then he took off his uniform, his jacket and shirt and retained only his plumed hat, his leather breeches ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Vidushaka is evidently the buffoon and jester. Wilson says of him that he is the humble companion, not the servant, of a prince or man of rank, and it is a curious peculiarity that he is always a Brahman. He bears more affinity to Sancho Panza, perhaps, than any other character in western fiction, imitating him in his combination of shrewdness and simplicity, his fondness of good living and his love of ease. In the dramas of intrigue he exhibits some of the talents of ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... distinguished by one peculiarity which immediately strikes a student whose views of language have been formed upon the examples afforded by the inflected languages of ancient and modern Europe. With the exception of a change of termination in the ablative case of the noun, and five ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... as arranged. This is a peculiarity which is very striking in connection with this Royal fixture. We are informed that several certainties were upset, but by whom and why has not been stated. Candidly speaking, such a brutal method as "upsetting" consorts ill with the softer manners of our ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... informs him, that Hydrogen mixed with Atmospheric air, in the proportion of two to five, will explode; but he does not mean to exhibit this peculiarity of Hydrogen. He shows us how the lime-light is obtained, and requests that the room may be darkened. Milburd and Layder, turn down the gas, and remove ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... two widely separated compositions are identical requires more proof than that the term "golden hilt" is used in connection with both of them; and in the two compositions in question there is nothing else than this term, and the peculiarity of the one sword that it can be wielded only by a man of unusual strength, of the other that it can be wielded only by a brave man, on which to base an identity. The fact of the matter is that it is the requirement of the plot that has supplied both the name and ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... plentiful. At one point the tops of a group of tall trees were covered with yellow- white blossoms. Others bore red blossoms. Many of the big trees, of different kinds, were buttressed at the base with great thin walls of wood. Others, including both palms and ordinary trees, showed an even stranger peculiarity. The trunk, near the base, but sometimes six or eight feet from the ground, was split into a dozen or twenty branches or small trunks which sloped outward in tent-like shape, each becoming a root. The larger trees of this type looked as if their trunks were ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... painting. He died on October 26, 1821, to his brother's great grief, leaving Charles everything. He married late in life a Mrs. Dowden. Probably she had her own money and needed none of her second husband's. Hence the peculiarity of the will. Mrs. John ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... still greater refinement and elegance than the other two, and was introduced toward the end of the Peloponnesian war. Its peculiarity is columns with foliated capitals, and still greater height, about ten diameters, with a more ornamented entablature. Of this order, the most famous temple in Greece was that of Minerva at Tegea, built by Scopas of Paros, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... not in arid definitions, inaccessible to most people, intelligible only to specially instructed men, but in a concrete symbol, addressing itself not only to the understanding, but still more to the sentiments of the ordinary man. Art has, therefore, this peculiarity, that it is at once elevated and popular, that it manifests that which is often most recondite, and that it ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... forms to be observed, that you may not commit any mistake. At Vienna men always make courtesies, instead of bows, to the emperor; in France nobody bows at all to the king, nor kisses his hand; but in Spain and England, bows are made, and hands are kissed. Thus every court has some peculiarity or other, of which those who go to them ought previously to inform themselves, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... 1831, a memorable and dreadful series of storms passed over some of the India Islands, and caused terrible havoc, especially in the island of Barbadoes. The peculiarity of these hurricanes was that they ravaged the different islands at different dates, and were therefore supposed to be different storms. Such, however, was not the case. It was one mighty cyclone, or circular storm,—a ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... themselves, you find that, without being English it is somewhat like it. Woman is the word which sounds strangest to both the German and the Dane, and, it is generally the first instance given of the peculiarity of the Frisian language. "Why can't they speak properly, and say Kone?" says the Dane. "Weib is the right word," says the German. "Who ever says woman?" cry both. The language has not been reduced to writing; indeed, the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... strange, their stretching themselves thus successively; but I had observed farm cattle do the same, and I was at that time but little acquainted with the habits of the buffalo. Some of them appeared to toss about on the ground and kick violently. I had heard of a peculiarity of these animals ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... lessons of this kind, and the interpretations given to ancient works of art by the erring pencil of the modern artist are responsible for many an ingenious theory which the original would never have suggested. It may well be that future investigations will show that the one peculiarity which distinguishes the so-called Elephant Mound from its fellows is really susceptible of a much more commonplace explanation than has hitherto been ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... be followed too closely, still less should a singularity of style be affected; the prevailing mode should be modified and adapted to suit individual peculiarity. The different effect of colours and the various forms of dress should be duly considered by every lady, as a refined taste in ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... purpose of inculcating war in those distant regions, on Jacobin principles, and of forming Jacobin clubs, which they actually succeeded in establishing, and which in most respects resembled the European model, but which were distinguished by this peculiarity, that they were required to swear in one breath, hatred to tyranny, the love of liberty, and the destruction of all kings and sovereigns—except the good and faithful ally of the ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... while, but I have found that just simply living salvation before people is a great work." Now, that sister has learned a wonderful lesson. She has found a truth so great that most people do not recognize it as truth when they do find it. It is one of those truths that have the peculiarity of seeming small and insignificant though they are the very ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... he looked at me through sleepy eyes, turned himself over and stretched up for the old caress. As nobody ever gave him that but me, I take this as conclusive proof that he not only knew me, but remembered my one peculiarity. ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... between earth and heaven, were celestial indicators of the gods' commands. But omens and auguries were but the outward symbols, and the Romans, like all serious peoples, went to their own hearts for their real guidance. They had a unique religious peculiarity, to which no race of men has produced anything like. They did not embody the elemental forces in personal forms; they did not fashion a theology out of the movements of the sun and stars or the changes of the seasons. Traces may be found among them of cosmic traditions and superstitions, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... is the peculiarity in that case which you wish to point out?-The peculiarity in that case is, that I should wish the people to be placed in such circumstances that an appeal of that kind would not ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... drive, curiously, by reason of one of those strange psychologic intuitions which so often precede a human difficulty of one sort or another, he had been thinking of Aileen. He was thinking of the peculiarity of his relationship with her, and of the fact that now he was running to her father for assistance. As he mounted the stairs he had a peculiar sense of the untoward; but he could not, in his view of life, give ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... to send a sufficiently provocative challenge to Viola, he suggests to him that he "taunt him with the licence of ink; if thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss". To keep this in mind will throw much light on one peculiarity of the Quakers, and give a certain dignity to it, as once maintained, which at present it is very far from possessing. However needless and unwise their determination to 'thee' and 'thou' the whole world was, yet this had a significance. It was not, as now to us it seems, and, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... the sides are compressed, so that, seen in profile, the outline of the Star-Fish is that of a slightly convex disk, instead of a sphere, as in the Sea-Urchin. But when we come to the Crinoids, we find that the great preponderance of the ab-oral region determines all that peculiarity of form that distinguishes them from the other Echinoderms, while the oral region is comparatively insignificant. The ab-oral region in the Crinoid rises to form a sort of cup-like or calyx-like projection. The plates forming it, which in the Star-Fish or the Sea-Urchin are movable, are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... close formation at the head of the infantry, could bear unscathed the most accurate and overwhelming fire, and thus shelter their weaker brethren in the rear. This was offset by his "Old Guard," whose unfortunate peculiarity of carrying their weapons at the charge often involved whole regiments in a common ruin. On my side there was a multitude of flimsy Swiss, for whom I trembled whenever they were called to action. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... words of quotation is proved by the three following considerations:—First, that Clement in the very same manner, namely, without any mark of reference, uses a passage now found in the epistle to the Romans;[9] which passage from the peculiarity of the words which compose it, and from their order, it is manifest that he must have taken from the book. The same remark may be repeated of some very singular sentiments in the epistle to the Hebrews. Secondly, that there are many sentences of St. Paul's epistle to the Corinthians ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... her a puzzled look. "You remain with our kinsfolk whose guests we are. Since when have you become so anxious for protection? That is a peculiarity which I had never observed in you until now. I don't understand you, Adelheid; it's a most singular caprice which you have taken into your head, this desire to ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... sleep, didn't I? No wonder I feel well this morning. A peculiarity of my illness is that one day I'm down, ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... and very interesting peculiarity of certain castes is their totemistic aspect. This characteristic has only recently been discovered. "At the bottom of the social system, as understood by the average Hindu, we find, in the Dravidian region of India, a large body of tribes and castes each of which ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... they said, the universal Christian faith. They enjoined the children to honour, but not worship, the Virgin Mary and the Saints, and they warned them against the adoration of pictures. If the Brethren had any peculiarity at all, it was not any distinctive doctrine, but rather their insistence on the practical duties of the believer. With Luther, St. Paul's theology was foremost; with the Brethren (though not denied) it fell into the background. With Luther the favourite court of appeal was St. Paul's Epistle ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... were in total ignorance of the number in the herd, as they had merely heard them roaring in the distance. They could not approach nearer, as a notoriously vicious rogue elephant was consorting with the herd. This elephant was well known to the natives from a peculiarity in having only one tusk, which was ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... flesh-eating animals, Bears take the first place; for their characters and habits link them in some degree with the preceding order, the Insectivora. Both principally live on fruit, grains, and insects, and only eat flesh from necessity, or some peculiarity of life, such as confinement, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... returned the gentleman. 'But, Mr Pecksniff, the whole thing resolves itself into an instance of the peculiarities of genius. Every man of true genius has his peculiarity. Sir, the peculiarity of my friend Slyme is, that he is always waiting round the corner. He is perpetually round the corner, sir. He is round the corner at this instant. Now,' said the gentleman, shaking his forefinger before his nose, and planting his legs wider apart ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... imbricating manner, so as to communicate a certain amount of flexibility to the shell; whereas in the ordinary living forms these plates are firmly articulated together by their edges, and the shell forms a rigid immovable box. The Carboniferous Sea-urchins which exhibit this extraordinary peculiarity belong to the genera Lepidechinus and Lepidesthes, and it seems tolerably certain that a similar flexibility of the shell existed to a less degree in the much more abundant genus Archoeocidaris. The Carboniferous Sea-urchins, like the modern ones, possessed movable spines of greater or ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... is not in bloom; and therefore it is rational to conclude that their changed appearance proceeds from some other cause, perhaps from some other insect, perhaps from the assaults of the weather, or some peculiarity in its soil or situation, or from a combination of these and other causes; in exemplification whereof it is worthy to be remarked, that a gardener in the Brickfields planted a number of seed sixteen years ago, all from the same tree; of which forty-four ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... between a waddle and a seaman's roll; her hands were discolored with tar, and had got to be full of knuckles, and even her feet had degenerated into that flat, broad-toed form that, perhaps, sooner distinguishes caste, in connection with outward appearances, than any one other physical peculiarity. Yet this being had once been young—had once been even fair; and had once possessed that feminine air and lightness of form, that as often belongs to the youthful American of her sex, perhaps, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... their erection was at Pepeekeo, Hilo, the peculiarity of the work being that the stones had been brought together by the residents of that part of the district, by direction of the chief, but that in one night, the Menehunes gathered together and built it. The chief and his people were surprised on coming the next morning ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... has another peculiarity which arrests the attention. It apparently comprises all the towns of the League, but these are divided among only three clans, those of the Wolf, the Tortoise and the Bear. The other clans of the confederacy are not once named ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... is necessary to refer again to Ambrose. Apart from having brought the first four authentic modes into church music, he composed many hymns which had this peculiarity, namely, that they were modelled more on the actual declamation of the words to be sung than had hitherto been the case. We are told that his chants—to use the phrase of his contemporary, Francis of Cologne—were "all for sweetness and melodious sound"; and St. Augustine (354-430 ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... one side, so flat on the other. There is an unconscious recognition of this in the arrangement of all collections of Mollusks; for, though the collectors do not put up their specimens with any intention of illustrating this peculiarity, they instinctively give them the position best calculated to display their distinctive characteristics, and to accomplish this they necessarily place them in such a manner as to show the sides. In ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... what he wanted from England. The peculiarity of the Batavian polity threw some difficulties in his way; but every difficulty gelded to his authority and to the dexterous management of Heinsius. And in truth the treaty could not but be favourably regarded by the States ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that careful fashion—a habit which he had inherited from his father and his grandfather before him, and of which he was entirely unconscious. Filtering down through so many generations, the mannerism had ceased at last to be merely a physical peculiarity, and had become strangely spiritual in its suggestion. The craving for possession, the singleness of desire, the tenacity of grasp, the dread of relinquishment, the cold-blooded determination to keep intact the thing which ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... a delightful peculiarity of this wonderful dance, that couples could withdraw without breaking up the figure. The bride and groom, acting upon this privilege, slipped out of the flying circle, and sought, unaccompanied, the solitude of the vine-covered ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... historical; it was built by Brandeis on a mortgage, and is now occupied by the chief justice on conditions never understood, the rumour going uncontradicted that he sits rent free. I do not say it is true, I say it goes uncontradicted; and there is one peculiarity of our officials in a nutshell,—their remarkable indifference to their own character. From the one house to the other extends a scattering village for the Faipule or native parliament men. In the days of Tamasese this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... having any show of claim to respectful consideration is that of Rev. Morgan Jones, made in 1686, in a letter giving an account of his adventures among the Tuscaroras. These Tuscarora Indians were lighter in color than the other tribes, and this peculiarity was so noticeable that they were frequently mentioned as "White Indians." Mr. Jones's account of his experiences among them was written in March, 1686, and published in the Gentleman's Magazine for ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... largest that had drawn our attention. Indeed, though the smaller trees bore a general resemblance to this one—so that you could tell they were of the very same kind—yet they differed very considerably from it, both in form and aspect; and, but for the peculiarity of the leaves, one might have taken them for trees of altogether distinct species. The leaves of both, however, were exactly alike, and from this and other indications it was evident that both were trees of the same kind, only that a difference of age had created ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... There remains, however, this peculiarity, that according to the prints the main aisle windows were uniform throughout, and with Geometrical tracery. The vaulting differed from the nave in this, that the diagonals, where they met the longitudinal rib, had bosses, and three single cross ribs alternated instead ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... But the water gradually deepens as you go forward, and the pool ends in a deep pot under each bank. Then to recover your ground becomes by no means easy, especially if the water is heavy. You get half-drowned, or drowned altogether, before you discover your danger. Many of the pools have this peculiarity, and in many, one step made rashly lets you into a very uncomfortable and perilous place. Therefore expeditions to Tweedside were apt to end in a ducking. It was often hard to reach the water where trout were rising, and the rise was always capricious. There ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... depression in the morass, of a livid green in color from some lichen which festered in it, will always remain as a nightmare memory in my mind. It seems to have been a special nest of these vermins, and the slopes were alive with them, all writhing in our direction, for it is a peculiarity of the Jaracaca that he will always attack man at first sight. There were too many for us to shoot, so we fairly took to our heels and ran until we were exhausted. I shall always remember as we looked back how far behind we could see the heads and necks of our horrible ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cloud covered the scudding moons, 'I do hope you may see her, and somehow I think, too, you will. But, Dodd,' the moons emerged, and the lower one was in transit across the face of the upper, 'I must call your attention to this strange peculiarity of our bodies, that we undergo extremes of temperature with almost no noticeable sense of the great heat or cold. This region we are traversing is about the latitude of Christ Church, as I told you, and it is the period of harvests, and the heat is ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... doubt, as well as inanimate. Or take the first Teutonic Emperor of Rome—conqueror, arbitrator, legislator, and what not. In those middle ages, you know, it was the custom to name monarchs from some peculiarity of person or habitude—and I put it to any reasonable soul; Was this mere Yarman Brince likely to have become the central figure of the 10th century, but for such rigid abstinence from external application of water as is implied in ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... sentence comprises 7, 8 and the first line of 9. I have followed the exact order of the original. The peculiarity of the Sanskrit construction is that the Nominative Pronoun is made to stand in apposition with a noun in the objective case. The whole of this Section contains ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... One other marked peculiarity in the character of the bishop's wife must be mentioned. Though not averse to the society and manners of the world, she is in her own way a religious woman; and the form in which this tendency shows itself in her is by a strict observance of Sabbatarian rule. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... with the spectroscope, and their results were received with deepest interest. They concluded that the light of the new star had two different sources, each giving a spectrum peculiar to itself. One of the spectra had dark lines and the other bright lines. It will be remembered that a similar peculiarity was exhibited by the new star in Auriga in 1893. But the star in Corona did not disappear. It diminished to magnitude nine and a half or ten, and stopped there; and it is still visible. In fact, subsequent examination proved that it had been catalogued ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... suffered long confinement; on the other, her fecundation had been extremely retarded. You know, Sir, that queens generally receive the males about the fifth or sixth day, and this queen had not copulated until the thirty-sixth. Little weight could be given to the supposition, that the peculiarity could be occasioned by confinement. Queens, in the natural state, leave their hives only once to seek the males. All the rest of their life they remain voluntary prisoners. Thus, it was improbable that captivity could produce the effect I wished ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... my bread, methinks I should less regard this peculiar species of deprivation, The necessary communication of master and servant would be at least a tie which would attach me to the rest of my kind—as it is, my very independence seems to enhance the peculiarity of my situation. I am in the world as a stranger in the crowded coffeehouse, where he enters, calls for what refreshment he wants, pays his bill, and is forgotten so soon as the waiter's mouth has pronounced his 'Thank ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... for many long years had carried Rube over the mountains and prairies, was a creature that scarce yielded to himself in peculiarity. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... speechless, motionless, meeting his glance without a twitching of an eyebrow, nor a tremor of the hand, I imagine that he began to consider me with an even closer intentness than before. And that the—to say the least of it— peculiarity of my appearance, caused him to suspect that he was face to face with an adventure of a peculiar kind. Whether he took me for a lunatic I cannot certainly say; but, from his manner, I think it possible he did. He began to move towards me from across the room, addressing me ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... difficult of access. The ascent of 300 feet has to be made over a track at some places so steep that holes have been cut for the feet, to enable a person to climb up. On reaching the top I found a spacious cave, which had been used as a kind of cemetery, but unfortunately the peculiarity of the cave had attracted treasure-seekers, whose destructive work was everywhere to be seen. Still I could see that the corpses had been placed each by itself in a grave in the floor of the cave. The graves were oblong or circular ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... as fond of all their children as people in other and more civilised countries, where male children are also eagerly desired to preserve the family from extinction. The excess in value of the male over the female is perhaps more strongly marked among the Chinese, owing of course to the peculiarity of certain national customs, and not to any want of parental feeling; but, on the other hand, a very fair share both of care and affection is lavished upon the daughters either of rich or poor. They are not usually taught to read as the ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... thrill to be had from the memories of the American Revolution, but the American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation, and the duty laid upon us by that beginning is the duty of bringing the things then begun to a noble triumph of completion. For it seems to me that the peculiarity of patriotism in America is that it is not a mere sentiment. It is an active principle of conduct. It is something that was born into the world, not to please it but to regenerate it. It is something that was born into the world ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... the brown linen host of the Roach House, who was intently gazing at him with the appreciative expression of one who beholds a comic ghost,—"landlord, after you have finished looking at my head and involuntarily opening your mouth at some occasional peculiarity of my whiskers, I should like to have something to eat. As you tell me that woodcock is not fit to eat this year, and that broiled chicken is positively prohibited by the Board of Health in consequence of the sickly season, you may bring me some pork and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... Of some, such as "Thorgeir Craggeir," and "Thorkel foulmouth," the Saga itself explains the origin. In a state of society where so many men bore the same name, any circumstance or event in a man's life, as well as any peculiarity in form or feature, or in temper and turn of mind, gave rise to a surname or nickname, which clung to him through life as a distinguishing mark. The Post Office in the United States is said to give persons in the same district, with similar names, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... level with the surface, and sufficient to break the force of the wild currents, which boiled as they rushed by a short distance out. This cavern appeared as if, at some distant period, it had been eaten out of soft or half-decayed strata by the waves; and its peculiarity was the great extent of low, fairly level roof, which in places the lads could touch by tiptoeing and extending their fingers. It ran in at least a hundred feet; and apparently, from the state of the sand, was never invaded by the ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... incongruity as he was compelled to set down to poverty. Besides, what reason in which poverty bore no part, could a lady have for being alone in a poor country lodging, without even a maid? Indeed, might it not be the consciousness of the peculiarity of her position, and no dislike to him, that made her treat him with such impenetrable politeness? Might she not ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... Its peculiarity was its unusual size; in circumference it was as large as a man's body. The general asked the Indians how they knew it was the thigh-bone of a man. They replied that a great many years ago, living on the plains, there was a race ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... and boggy ground which such heavy falls leave. A species of banksia was seen to-day under the same meridian as on the Macquarie. It would seem that particular productions of the vegetable as well as of the mineral kingdom run in veins nearly north and south through the country. This peculiarity has been remarked of other plants, besides the species ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... remarkable race of beings, denominated, from their colour, Albinos. Mention is made of some of them in the article Complexion, in the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, to which the reader is referred. After all, however, it remains very doubtful whether the peculiarity of the beings in question is to be attributed to disease, or to some distinct constitution of animal economy, which may be considered as sufficient to characterize a species of our nature. The writer of this note inclines to the former opinion. This place, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... get caught by a steam-engine, is natural enough. His dislike to the ultra-Liberals in the Peninsula is also very natural, because they uphold principles of Government which render Monarchy impossible, and the application of which to France would be the ruin of the King. England, from the peculiarity of its position, can do many things which in France would upset everything.... I must close my letter, and shall answer yours to-morrow. God bless you! Ever, my ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... melodious and full of feeling. She seems to thoroughly understand how to bring out the meaning of the words of her composition, the melody of one of them, "Ein Duerres Blatt" furnishing a particularly striking illustration of this peculiarity; they left a very lasting impression upon my mind. Among her collections is an English ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... I say: and by what divination? By a test more searching than any mere peculiarity of manners, dress, or speech; by a touchstone able to divide the gold of essential character from the alloy of superficial characteristics; by a standard which disregarded alike Franklin's fur cap and Putnam's old felt hat, Morgan's leather leggings and Witherspoon's black silk gown and John Adams's ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... but mention another peculiarity in this language which gives equal force and brevity to its ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the reasoning faculty itself, unworthy of a sensible person, and is generally exhibited only by those who, while boasting of exemption for themselves, have really little or nothing else to boast of. It is the infirmity of small minds, not a peculiarity of great ones. Prejudices are like household vermin, and the human mind is like the traps we set for them. They get in with the greatest facility, but find it impossible to get out. Beware of entertaining them yourself, Lizzie. Shun everything like repining at what you call your position as a sewing-girl. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... wonderfully clear, but that quality was less remarkable than the unhuman intelligence in them—fawn-like eyes that gazed steadily at you as one may gaze through the window, open back and front, of a house at the landscape beyond. This peculiarity was a little disconcerting at first, when, after making his acquaintance out of doors, I went in uninvited and sat down with him at his own fireside. The busy old wife talked of this and that, and hinted as ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... series has this peculiarity, that all of its constituent volumes are independent of one another, and therefore each story is complete in itself. OLIVER OPTIC is, perhaps, the favorite author of the boys and girls of this country, and he seems destined to enjoy an endless popularity. He deserves his success, for he makes ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... these things, and knowing also the peculiarity of the circumstances which surrounded me on that Sabbath evening, the reader will not be surprised, that when I saw the dense multitude surrounding the house of Mr. Porter, I at once came to the conclusion ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... singular ones which he had borne so long in his memory, and on which he was now acting in so strange a manner; but [though] there was a good deal of variety of incident in them, there never was any combination of incidents having the peculiarity of this. ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the funniest instance of this peculiarity of hers was one that happened in the Grosvenor Gallery on a certain occasion. She had been busy with her catalogue, doing the pictures conscientiously, and not talking at all, when suddenly ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... that although Greaves pretended to be an Englishman, he was evidently no such thing; for on more than one occasion, he gave utterance to expressions that were not only purely Irish, but tinged with a genuine Irish accent and native peculiarity, that no mere accident could account for, and which was, without doubt, the genuine thing itself peeping out at the elbows of a foreign dress. This idea seemed to find favor with O'Brien, although Barry was not impressed with its correctness, from the fact, no doubt, of his constant intercommunication ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... is the victim of a craze. Society is subject to crazes, as you know very well. They are not reprehensible in themselves, but the worst of my wife is that her crazes are never like those of the people with whom she naturally associates. They generally run counter to them. This peculiarity has given me some anxiety, you understand, in the position we occupy. People will begin to say that she is eccentric. Do you see ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... where political interests interfered family arrangements went to the wall. As to the general rule Walpole was quite right. We have seen the fact illustrated over and over again even in our {34} own days. But Walpole appears to have overlooked the important peculiarity of this family compact; it was an engagement in which the political interests and the domestic interests of the families were at last inextricably intertwined; it was a reciprocal agreement for the protection of common ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... eloquence; the twinkling stars of humble village spheres shun him for an ominous comet, whose very trail robs them of light, or as paling glow-worms hide away before some prying lantern; and all who have in one way or another prided themselves on some harmless peculiarity, avoid his penetrating glance as the eye of a basilisk. Then, again, those casual encounters of witlings in the world authorial, so anticipated by a hostess, so looked-forward-to by guests! In most cases, how forlorn they be! how dull; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... but the American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation, and the duty laid upon us by that beginning is the duty of bringing the things then begun to a noble triumph of completion. For it seems to me that the peculiarity of patriotism in America is that it is not a mere sentiment. It is an active principle of conduct. It is something that was born into the world, not to please it but to regenerate it. It is something that was born into the world to replace systems ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... Sometimes they had children with them, but these were very few; the most I saw with any one family was three, and many seemed to possess none at all. Both the women and the children, like the men, were decently clothed in long, white garments, another peculiarity which showed that these natives were ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... resolutions was by the unanimous order of the convention, transmitted to congress in a letter subscribed by the president, in which it was said to be, "the result of a spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession, which the peculiarity of their political ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... peculiar essence, and that of the beings who act upon him. The object of all his institutions, all his reflections, all his knowledge, is only to procure that happiness toward which he is continually impelled by the peculiarity of his nature. All that he does, all that he thinks, all that he is, all that he will be, is nothing more than what Universal Nature has made him. His ideas, his actions, his will, are the necessary effects of those properties infused ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... the theatre, or the diversions which others follow, would have other than countenances that were grave. Their discipline also, which calls them so frequently to important duties, and the dispatch of serious business, would produce the same feature. I may observe also, that a peculiarity of gait, which might be mistaken for awkwardness, might not unreasonably be expected in those, who had neither learned to walk under the guidance of a dancing, master, nor to bow under the direction of the dominion of fashion. If those and ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... she send for me herself, the moment I go she will take refuge in the fact that she did not send for me. I know your wife's peculiarity ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... word Ronicky Doone was a dandy, but he had this peculiarity, that he seemed to dress to please himself rather than the rest of the world. His glances never roved about taking account of the admiration of others. As he leaned there in the door of the hotel he was the type of the young, happy, genuine and carefree ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... it, our church was a church of failures. They sent us the old gray preachers worn out in other fields. Such a succession of them I remember, each with some peculiarity, some pathos. They were of the old sort, indoctrinated Presbyterians, and they harrowed well our barren field with the tooth of their hard creed. Some thundered the Law, some pleaded Love; but of all of them I remember best the one who thought ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... and see the sunrise, and some are so well-mailed that even that experience would leave them unaffected and unsoftened. The 'hair and eyes of several complexions' was a trait taken from myself; and I do not bind myself to the opinions of Sir John. In this case, perhaps - but no, if the peculiarity is shared by two such pleasant persons as you and I (as you and me - the grammatical nut is hard), it must be a very good thing indeed, and Sir John must be ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... these gorges and cliffs abound in better things also. They are rich in unexploited coal measures and they contain also many mines of the purest copper ore. The river that washes its borders here bears the name of Kinsha, the river of "golden sands." Some of its rivers have the curious peculiarity of flowing the reverse way, that is, to the west and south instead of toward the eastern sea. The Chinese accordingly call the province "Tiensheng" the country ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... this question, it is necessary to examine one peculiarity of feeling which manifests itself among the European nations, so far as I have noticed, irregularly,—appearing sometimes to be the characteristic of a particular time, sometimes of a particular race, sometimes ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... read the service. His manner had been extremely reverent and devout, but Malcolm found his delivery unpleasing. The peculiarity in his speech was very noticeable in the reading-desk, and there was ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... question of the points that help and hinder legibility and that should therefore be considered in reforming the shapes of letters. Enlargement of size and increase of differences are obvious aids to clearness. Simplicity of outline and concentration of peculiarity upon one feature are important elements of legibility. Even a letter of small size, like v, is brought into the first group by a combination of these two qualities. Serifs are necessary to prevent irradiation, or an overflowing of the ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... quality; thus, an excess of phlegm made a person phlegmatic, or dull; or an excess of black bile, melancholy. In the Elizabethan idiom, therefore, 'humor' came to mean a mood, and then any exaggerated quality or marked peculiarity ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... have been already observed, that to Grizzie came not unfrequently an odd way of riming what she said. She was unaware of this peculiarity. The suggestion of sound by sound was as hidden from her as it was deep-seated in her and strong. And this was not all: the riming might have passed unperceived by others too, but for the accompanying tendency ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... reason to know the doctor's peculiarity in this respect, and took care to give his friend a few hints about starting work, which otherwise he might never have evolved ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... or anything else once become customary and it will be practised by people to whom it is not at all natural, but whose rule of life is simply to do only what everybody else does, and who would lose their employment and starve if they indulged in any peculiarity. A respectable man will lie daily, in speech and in print, about the qualities of the article he lives by selling, because it is customary to do so. He will flog his boy for telling a lie, because it is customary to do so. He will also flog him for not telling a lie if the boy ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... author that it would require a veritable effort to remember the throng of characters which exists in his books; and it is more than difficult not to confuse their individual doings and achievements. This abundance is connected with a peculiarity in the author's talent. He does not exhaust his subject; the psychology of his characters is emphasized by two or three expressive traits only, and this epitome is enough to make the theme of a story, the simplicity and naturalness of which demand, nevertheless, a high degree of art. The author ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... and to nearly every name Mr. Sidney gave the marked character or peculiarity of the man. One was very nervous, another very tall and lean; this one was penurious, that one stubborn; this was a farmer, and that a clergyman; this name was written in a frolic; this was a genuine name, though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... miserable, and their possessions limp and moldy, and insect life revels, and human existence spent in a vapor bath becomes burdensome. But the city is healthy to those who live temperately. It has, however, a remarkable peculiarity. Standing in and on rock, one fancies that fever would not be one of its maladies, but the rock itself seems to have imprisoned fever germs in some past age, for whenever it is quarried or cut into for foundations, or is disturbed in any way, fever ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the buck-board, and says to the little man: "I greatly regret that this unfortunate incident should have occurred while you are with us. From every point of view the event is lamentable. Brother Green, known familiarly among us because of his facial peculiarity as Nosey Green—the gentleman piled up over there on the other side of the road—was as noble-hearted a man as ever lived; so was Brother Michael, whom you met in all the pride of his manly strength only this morning at the Forest Queen bar. ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... wearisome production, in which Justin endeavours to convince a Jew that Christ is the Messiah, by quotations from the Jewish Scriptures (which, by the way, include Esdras, thus placing that book on a level with the other inspired volumes). A noticeable peculiarity of this Dialogue is, that any alleged incident in Christ's life is taken as true, not because it is authenticated as historical, but simply because it was prophesied of; Justin's Christ is, in fact, an ideal, composed out of the prophecies of the ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... small cone which is very pretty and often brought to this country by travelers for their friends at home. In The Land and the Book there is a picture of small branches with cones, and the author says of the cedar: 'There is a striking peculiarity in the shape of this tree which I have not seen any notice of in books of travel. The branches are thrown out horizontally from the parent trunk. These again part into limbs, which preserve the same horizontal direction, and so ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... as a loving dog might, to await her time. It was devotion, not coolness. To remain standing before her would have seemed a demand on her attention; to lie down was to withdraw and wait. But Florimel, although pleased, was only the more inclined to torment—a peculiarity of disposition which she inherited from her father: she bowed her face once more over her book, and read though three whole stanzas, without however understanding a single phrase in them, before she spoke. Then looking up, and regarding for a ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... own excesses at an early age; or their conduct makes them unattractive as mates; or they give so little care to their children that the latter die from neglect, exposure or accident. As these drunkards would tend to hand down their own inborn peculiarity, or weakness for alcohol, to their children, it must be obvious that their death results in a smaller proportion of such persons in the next generation. In other words, natural selection is at work again here, with alcohol as its agent. By killing off the worst drunkards in ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... microcosm, or epitomized mirror of that same Universe; or, rather, is not that Universe even Himself, the reflex of his own fearful and wonderful being, "the waste fantasy of his own dream?" No wonder that man, that each man, and James Boswell like the others, should resemble it! The peculiarity in his case was the unusual defect of amalgamation and subordination: the highest lay side by side with the lowest; not morally combined with it and spiritually transfiguring it; but tumbling in half-mechanical juxtaposition with it, and from time to time, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... 'Therein consists the peculiarity of your situation. You are at the mercy of the inevitable. You cannot retard by one day the catastrophe, any more than you can prevent one of the planets from returning to a given point in its orbit. He will return—let ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... better one knows his surroundings, the more clearly one begins to perceive that his chief peculiarity, when compared with his contemporaries, was a somewhat sluggish avoidance of needless invention. When anyone else had done a popular thing, Shakspere was pretty sure to imitate him and do it better. But he hardly ever did ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... of the opposition interposed a negative, or even a doubt, in favor of him or his opinions. If an idea consonant to the doctrine of his book, or favorable to his conduct, lurks in the minds of any persons in that description, it is to be considered only as a peculiarity which they indulge to their own private liberty of thinking. The author cannot reckon upon it. It has nothing to do with them as members of a party. In their public capacity, in everything that meets the public ear or public eye, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Navy scientific project recently found that strange radio signals are constantly being sent out from a "hot spot" in the Milky Way; other nebulae or "hot" stars may be similarly identified by some peculiarity in their radio emanations. If so, these could be used as check points in ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... schools where incompetent teachers preside three months in the year. One of these students says that for years he worked on alone, puzzling over books by himself, occasionally trying to find some one who could help him, only to be thrown back on his own resources. A peculiarity of his is, that he will not profess to understand what he does not see clearly. This trait, in connection with his practical, unselfish plans for the benefit of his people, seems likely to make this unassuming young man ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 3, September, 1898 • Various
... think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in 1854 most men were christened anew. Sometimes these appellatives were derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of "Dungaree Jack"; or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in "Saleratus Bill," so called from an undue proportion of that chemical in his daily bread; or for some unlucky slip, as exhibited in "The Iron Pirate," a mild, inoffensive man, who ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... you Yankees seldom think of, that Englishmen can't endure to live in America. Well, that peculiarity is just as active after they "shuffle off the mortal coil." They must have their little England, ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... but it is a birth-mark, and not a witch-mark. It is a simple curving line of red," and the girl blushed crimson at being compelled to such a reference to a personal peculiarity. But she faltered not in her speech, though her tones were more indignant than before. "It is not a peculiarity of mine, but of my mother's family. Some say that a distant ancestor was once frightened by a large snake coming into her chamber; and her child was born with this mark upon her breast. ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... built up by a layer of thin stone externally, and the soil of the garden has been heaped up against it and the whole south wall to the depth of several feet, it is difficult to make out its full relations and character. There is a peculiarity, however, about the head of this entrance which deserves special notice. The top of the doorway, as seen both from within and from without the building, is arched, but in two very different ways. When ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... two hours before he reappeared, and the landlord, who met him with the news that the missing suit-case had been awaiting him in his room since twenty minutes past ten, was struck by a certain peculiarity in his manner. It was nothing very much beyond a suggestion of suppressed excitement and that rather wild look which lingers in a man's eyes when he is just fresh from a dispute or has experienced a narrow escape from danger. Then Gifford ordered a stiff glass ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... already been written of Shakespeare that it would seem as if nothing remained to be said; yet it is the peculiarity of a great mind ever to stimulate other minds. This time I propose to consider Shakespeare from more than one point of view—first as a poet in general, then as compared with poets ancient and modern, and finally, as a strictly dramatic poet. I shall endeavor to show what effect ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... rising not ungracefully, as you enter the inner harbor; it looks the better for being almost windowless, though beauty was not the aim of the omission. A curious stranger is said to have asked one of our city fathers the reason of this peculiarity. "No use in windows," said the experienced official sadly; "the boys would only break 'em." It seems very unjust to assert that there is no subordination in our American society; the citizens show deference to the police, and the police to ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... little island of Montserrat has one peculiarity. The negroes all speak with the strongest of Irish brogues. Cromwell deported to Montserrat many of the "Malignants" from the West of Ireland, who acquired negro slaves to cultivate their sugar and ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... confronted Julian on the top of the flight of steps which led down the rock from the Castle court. We ought to observe, that as Julian's manner to the unfortunate girl had been always gentle, and free from those teasing jests in which his gay friend indulged, with less regard to the peculiarity of her situation and feelings; so Fenella, on her part, had usually shown much greater deference to him than to any of the household, her mistress, the Countess, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... it may be seen, that the complex and divisible structure of the English moods and tenses, produces, when verbs are connected together, a striking peculiarity of construction in our language, as compared with the nearest corresponding construction in Latin or Greek. For we can connect different auxiliaries, participles, or principal verbs, without repeating, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... victory. He was too much the child of his time not to be at times tempted by that happiness which the Middle Ages regarded as the supreme bliss of the elect in paradise—peace. Beati mortui quia quiescunt! His distinguishing peculiarity is that he ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... flesh undergoes very considerable changes. For instance, when the animal is young, the fluids which the tissues of the muscles contain, possess a large proportion of what is called albumen. This albumen, which is also the chief component of the white of eggs, possesses the peculiarity of coagulating or hardening at a certain temperature, like the white of a boiled egg, into a soft, white fluid, no longer soluble, or capable of being dissolved in water. As animals grow older, this peculiar animal matter gradually decreases, in proportion to the other constituents of the juice ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... passed his time at the club, his wife, a fair-complexioned nerveless woman, helped to ruin the Rougon business by her inordinate passion for showy gowns and her formidable appetite, a rather remarkable peculiarity in so frail a creature. Angele, however, adored sky-blue ribbons and roast beef. She was the daughter of a retired captain who was called Commander Sicardot, a good-hearted old gentleman, who had given her a dowry of ten thousand francs—all his savings. Pierre, in selecting ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... I knew to be very true. Had it not been for this peculiarity of Mr. Hinckman, I might have been more willing to talk to him ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... number of spots which he has discovered, and he finds that some of these spots in about 27 deg. north latitude indicate rotation in a period of 10 hrs. 14 mins. to 15 min., while equatorial spots require no more than 10 hrs. 12 min. to 13 min. There is, however, the peculiarity that spots in the same latitude, but at different parts of the planet, rotate at rates which differ by a minute or more, while the period found by various groups of spots seems to ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... Diffusion of the chansons. Their authorship and publication. Their performance. Hearing, not reading, the object. Effect on prosody. The jongleurs. Jongleresses, &c. Singularity of the chansons. Their charm. Peculiarity of the geste system. Instances. Summary of the geste of William of Orange. And first of the Couronnement Loys. Comments on the Couronnement. William of Orange. The earlier poems of the cycle. The Charroi de Nimes. The Prise ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... trains and pages suggests the fact that in old times the heroes and heroines of tragedy always wore, either in peculiarity of dress or pomp of surroundings, the badge of greatness. Nowadays a few bars of romantic music, to usher these characters on the stage, will suffice. But things were different then; our ancestors insisted that the aforesaid dramatis personnae should ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... had handled many curious cases in the past, many that had been notable for their intricacy, their complexity of motive and detail. But here, he felt, was a case of a very different sort, the peculiarity of which lay in its astonishing lack of clues of any sort. Usually in the past there had been motives, evidence, traces of some kind or other, upon which to build a case. Here there was nothing, except the three mysterious letters, the one ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... material, and it is only because the whole serves the parts that the parts adapt themselves to the end. The political artist has to treat his material—man—with a very different kind of respect than that shown by the artist of fine art to his work. He must spare man's peculiarity and personality, not to produce a defective effect on the senses, but objectively and out of consideration ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the placentals, which diverges most from that of the amphioxus, the primitive form, is reduced to the original type, the invagination of a modified blastula. Its chief peculiarity is that the folded part of the blastoderm does not form a completely closed (only open at the primitive mouth) blind sac, as is usual; but this blind sac has a wide opening at the ventral curve (opposite to the ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... of peculiarities about this intruder. To begin with, she was hatless, quite as if she were a habitue; of the house, and was costumed in a prim lilac-colored lawn of the style of two decades past. But a greater peculiarity was the resemblance this lady bore to a faded daguerrotype. If looked at one way, she was perfectly discernible; if looked at another, she went out in a sort of blur. Notwithstanding this comparative ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... the effects which this monopoly of education by women is having on the curriculum of the schools we must first agree on what constitutes the peculiarity of women's minds as compared with men's minds.[29] In our first chapter, it was asserted that women are more interested in the concrete, human, personal, conserving and emotional aspects of life; while men more easily turn ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... surprising, for the local mixtures (either Italian stuff which is dumped down in shiploads at Nice, Marseille, Cette, etc., or else the poor though sometimes aromatic product of the Var) are not gratifying to the palate. One imbibes them, none the less, in preference to anything else, as it is a peculiarity of what goes under the name of wine hereabouts that the more you pay for it, the worse it tastes. If you adventure into the Olympic spheres of Chateau Lafite and so forth, you may put your trust in God, or in a blue pill. Chateau Cassis ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... three cars perform each two journeys to some spot or spots unknown, and, returning, deposit their passengers before the porch of Hillside. The limousine used by Ormuz Khan, upon its second appearance had partaken of the same peculiarity as the others: there were ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... disadvantages, I am able to keep above water, in the esteem of mankind, I shall feel myself happy; but if, from the unknown peculiarity of my circumstances, I suffer in the opinion of the world, I shall not think you take the freedom of a friend, if you conceal the reflections that may be cast upon my conduct. My own situation is so irksome to me at times that, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... each one of the eight, for there was not one of them without his peculiarity. First, there was an Englishman—a genuine type of his countrymen—full six feet high, well proportioned, with broad chest and shoulders, and massive limbs. Hair of a light brown, complexion florid, moustache and whiskers full ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... water,' as he remembers (and he is always careful to remember) how his dearest friend, who has been so successful in life, can no more read Miss Austen than he can read the Moabitish stone." The same peculiarity is noticeable in the more ardent lovers of Charles Lamb. They seem to want him all to themselves, look askance upon any fellow-being who ventures to assert a modest preference for their idol, and brighten visibly when some ponderous critic ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... proportions, scarcely to be surpassed by those of any other Norman building; that the capitals of the pillars throughout the church are destitute of sculpture; and that the walls of the clerestory are altogether without buttresses. This last peculiarity is likewise observable in the nave of the church at Tollevast, an edifice of the plainest and earliest architecture. At Than, the clerestory is externally decorated with twenty-nine arches, of which ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... it was proposed that I should go to school, that was a remedy I could not listen to with patience for a moment. The peculiarity of my education had separated me entirely from the girls around, except that when they were playing at active games, I would sometimes go out and join them. I liked violent bodily exercise, which always relieved ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... characteristics, each province has its own, founded on the government, climate, mode of husbandry, customs, and peculiarity of circumstances. Europeans submit insensibly to these great powers, and become, in the course of a few generations, not only Americans in general, but either Pennsylvanians, Virginians, or provincials under ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... Providence," answered John Girdlestone, with an earnestness which showed that his mind still retained its habitual peculiarity. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... robbery, murder and covetousness, but always exerted itself to the fullest extent of its power in attacks upon chastity. All other visions were absent in the hair-shirted, and self-scourgings brought out nothing but sexual idealities, sensual temptations. The reason for this peculiarity is not far to seek. What is dominant in the minds always finds egress when a favorable opportunity is presented, and the very thought of unchastity as something to be avoided, leads to its contemplation, or its creation in the form of temptation. The virtue of ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... lands. It was the romantic vision of a boy; yet he lived to realize it. The dream became a passion, rooted in his very life; and he pursued his determination through youth up to manhood, with that calm but indomitable force of will which was the most striking peculiarity of his character. The orphan boy became one of the most powerful men of his time; he retrieved the fortunes of his line; bought back the old estate, and rebuilt the family mansion. "When, under a ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a small silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument being several years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... for speaking of Watteau's mannerisms, the mannerisms that proclaim his originality. Only your academic, colourless painter lacks personal style and always paints like somebody he is not. Watteau's art is peculiarly personal. Its peculiarity—apart from its brilliancy and vivacity—is, as Mauclair remarks, "the contrast of cheerful colour and morbid expression." Morbidezza is the precise phrase; morbidezza may be found in Chopin's art, in the very feverish moments when he seems brimming over with high spirits. Watteau was not ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... home and my slave-merchants abroad have orders to send to my villa in Sicily all women who are born most beautiful in the Empire, or can be brought most beautiful from the nations around. I will have them displayed before me, of every shade in complexion and of every peculiarity in form! At the fitting period I shall commence my investigations, undismayed by difficulty, and determined on success. Never yet has the true Venus been personified! Should I accomplish the task, how exquisite will be my triumph! My work will be the altar at which thousands ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... not on the wonderful tapestries of which Spain has always had a collection to make envious the rest of Europe. He might forget his two poor little boys who were left as hostages on his release, but he forgot not whatever contributes to the pleasure of life. That peculiarity was one which was yielding luscious fruit, however, for Francis was the bearer of the torch of the Renaissance which was to illumine France with the same fire that flashed and glowed over Italy. This is a fact to remember ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... successively higher groups of organisms are severally characterized, not only by greater differentiation of parts, but also by greater differentiation from the surrounding medium in sundry other physical attributes. It would seem that this peculiarity has some necessary connexion with superior vital manifestations. One of those lowly gelatinous forms which are some of them so transparent and colourless as to be with difficulty distinguished from ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... animal products, as well as a few vegetable products, especially honey, strawberries and buckwheat, were most likely to be the cause of these violent disturbances. More recently it has been found that cow's milk very often shows the same peculiarity. It is now known that this remarkable phenomenon is due to the fact that the body sometimes becomes sensitized to certain proteins which thereafter act as most violent poisons and may cause death. Sensitization to animal proteins is much the more frequent. In such cases nut products ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... followed, not a system of the science itself. But, at the same time, it marks out and defines both the external boundaries and the internal structure of this science. For pure speculative reason has this peculiarity, that, in choosing the various objects of thought, it is able to define the limits of its own faculties, and even to give a complete enumeration of the possible modes of proposing problems to itself, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... mental juxtaposition, a peculiarity different in each person, and depending upon each one's own experiences. Thus, "St. Charles" suggests "railway bridge" to me, because I was vividly impressed by the breaking of the Wabash bridge at that point. "Stable" and "broken leg" come near each other in my experience, as do "cow" ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... he was a little satiated with Society's nervous wrecks. You cannot hold your nose for long over any kind of smoke without being nauseated; but the fumes which men and women have tried to consume themselves, and failed, have this peculiarity, that they are perhaps more foetid, more unsavoury, more asphyxiating, than any that can be produced by the combustion of the ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... recommended, is somewhat different from what is commonly pursued. I contemplate the continued exercise of a most curious and prying, as well as a most vigilant and observing eye. No difficulty is to be neglected; no peculiarity of expression is to be disregarded; no minute detail is to be overlooked. The hint let fall in an earlier chapter is to be compared with a hint let fall in the later place. Do they tally or not? ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... or had a little play acted, our critics were in the habit of flying into an ungovernable passion and behaving as if the publication of the book or the performance of the play were a mortal insult to themselves and the newspapers in which they wrote. As already remarked, I puzzled long over this peculiarity. At last I got to the bottom of the matter. Whilst reading the Danish Monthly Journal of Literature I was struck by the fact that old State-Councillor Molbech was invariably seized with a fit of rage when a young author published a book or had ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... the atmosphere around, quivering in a summer haze in the valley beneath, and stirred to the faintest summer wind-sighs as it moved among the pines and birches overhead. Its lightness was its most striking peculiarity. You felt as if your lungs could never weary of inhaling deep breaths of such an air. Warm without oppression, cool without a chill. I can find nothing but paradoxes to describe it. As for fatigue, one's muscles might get tired, and need rest, but the ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... of the Ranunculus amplexicaulis in part surround the stalk at their base, whence its trivial name; in colour they differ from most others of the genus, being of a greyer or more glaucous hue, which peculiarity joined to the delicate whiteness of the flowers, renders this species a very desirable one to add to a collection of hardy, ornamental, herbaceous plants, more especially as it occupies but little space, and has no tendency to injure the ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... premises in a velvet jacket and a pair of black kid gloves with one little white button; as also, that she should apply a thick coating of powder to her face, which had a charming oval and a sweet weak expression, like that of most of the Venetian maidens, who, as a general thing—it was not a peculiarity of the land- lady's niece—are fond of besmearing themselves with flour. You soon recognise that it is not only the many-twinkling lagoon you behold from a habitation on the Riva; you see a little of everything Venetian. Straight across, before my windows, rose the great pink ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... of this voice is greatly dependent on cultivation and management, and experiments have proved that more depends on cultivation than on natural peculiarity. Much care and labour are necessary for acquiring this improved condition of the speaking voice, the lungs must be kept well supplied with breath, there must be a full expansion of the chest, causing the abdomen gently to protrude, the throat ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... personalities is the peculiarity of the timid, which their fitful efforts of will only heighten, alienating from them the sympathy which might be of ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... one, for he does not know what it is to die. There is the same insensibility in his heart as in his manners. Indifferent, like every child, to every one but himself, he takes no interest in any one; his only peculiarity is that he will not pretend to take such an interest; he is less ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... John no concern, for he knew this peculiarity of Fayette's; so he walked quietly away toward the old shed where he had tied his horses, to give them their food and secure his own. Before he reached them, however, he heard a loud shout, and, turning, ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... the general peculiarity should always be remembered, that the barometric column usually stands higher with easterly than it does with westerly winds; and with winds from the polar regions higher than with those from the direction of the equator. Hence the highest ...
— Barometer and Weather Guide • Robert Fitzroy
... about Calais does not differ materially from that in the immediate neighbourhood of Dover, which is much less fertile than the greater part of Kent; but the cottages are decidedly inferior to the English. The first peculiarity that struck us was the grotesque appearance of the Douaniers, who came to examine us on the coast; and when we had passed through the numerous guards, and been examined at the guard-houses, previously to our admission ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... as here, in the "Tain be Cuailnge," and several other Irish romances, though it is by no means common to all of them. It may be noted that the Irish version of the "Tale of Troy" shows this feature, and although it is possible that the peculiarity is due to the great clearness and sharpness of detail that characterises much of the early Irish work, it may be that this is a case of an introduction into ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... a friend of Fielding, the Reverend William Young. Like Adams, he was a scholar and devoted to AEschylus; he resembled him, too, in his trick of snapping his fingers, and his habitual absence of mind. Of this latter peculiarity it is related that on one occasion, when a chaplain in Marlborough's wars, he strolled abstractedly into the enemy's lines with his beloved AEschylus in his hand. His peaceable intentions were so unmistakable that he was instantly released, and politely ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... of his nature. Although I had frequently seen him in the progress of the Revolution and had corresponded with him from France in 1781 and 1782, this was the first occasion on which I had contemplated him in his private relations. I observed a peculiarity in his smile which seemed to illuminate his eye; his whole countenance beamed with intelligence, while it commanded confidence and respect. The gentleman who had accompanied me from Alexandria left in the evening, and I remained alone in the enjoyment of the society of Washington for two ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the eyes of the lieutenant. He was greatly relieved, however, at finding that neither of the three meant or understood more than was simply expressed. As for his uncle, he had not the smallest intention of making any allusion to the peculiarity of his nephew's birth; and the other two, in common with the world, supposed the reputed heir to be legitimate. Gathering courage from the looks of those around him, Tom answered with a steadiness that prevented his ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... diameter. Round it are cellars and chambers for domestic purposes. Others are accessible from the gallery that leads to the court. One of them, the Cave-Noire, possesses a chimney bored upwards through the rock to the level of the surface. Another peculiarity of this cavern is that along one side, throughout its length, 120 feet, are rings cut in the rock showing tokens of having been fretted by usage. They are at the height of four feet above the soil, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... pages of the Chronicle was usually devoted to literature. Extracts were frequently given from the works of Johnson, Smollett, and other popular writers, and a column was often occupied by an essay from a contributor to the paper, generally treating of some social evil or peculiarity, but never intermeddling with local or general politics. These effusions displayed a very respectable amount of ability, and the general getting-up, or what would now be termed the sub-editing of the paper, was also performed with care and ability. The scraps of news were ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... roads. No man of English blood then regarded the aboriginal Irish as his countrymen. They did not belong to our branch of the great human family. They were distinguished from us by more than one moral and intellectual peculiarity, which the difference of situation and of education, great as that difference was, did not seem altogether to explain. They had an aspect of their own, a mother tongue of their own. When they talked English ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be frightened, Leo; I have been far from well lately, and my illness seems to have slightly affected my brain; sometimes I detect myself saying things which I had not the remotest intention of saying a moment before. If you should observe any little peculiarity of that kind in me, take no notice of it, let it pass. And now, if your boxes are all ready—as I suppose they are—let them be brought down and put on the chaise; we shall sleep in Poole to-night, and we ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... somewhere in view of the Lone Mountain Cemetery; ran for a term across that rather windy Olympus of Nob Hill, or perhaps just skirted its frontier; passed almost immediately after through a stage of little houses, rather impudently painted, and offering to the eye of the observer this diagnostic peculiarity, that the huge brass plates upon the small and highly coloured doors bore only the first names of ladies—Norah or Lily or Florence; traversed China Town, where it was doubtless undermined with opium cellars, and its blocks pierced, after the similitude of rabbit-warrens, with a hundred doors ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... worshipped before the new ikons as devoutly as they had done before the old. The son in old age refused to eat meat and imposed upon himself the rule of silence, considering all conversation as sin; it was the peculiarity of the grandsons that they interpreted the Scripture not simply, but sought in it a hidden meaning, declaring that every sacred word ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Now the first broad characteristic of the building, and the root nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its confessed incrustation. It is the purest example in Italy of the great school of architecture in which the ruling principle is the incrustation of brick with more precious materials; and it is necessary before we ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... this account, Sulla, who disapproved of his conduct, never employed him again in any public business. However, Crassus was most expert in gaining over everybody by flattery; and, on the other hand, he was easily taken in by flattery from any person. It is further mentioned as a peculiarity in his character, that, though very greedy of gain,[23] he hated and abused those most who ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... have far exceeded in public utility, the pittance of income to the treasury, which used to be wrung out by the tax upon letters. The same examination will also show, that there is no substantial reason, either in the system itself, or in any peculiarity of our circumstances, why the same system is not equally practicable and equally applicable here, nor why we should not realize at least as great benefits as the people of ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... applies (in books) to the Damascus-plain because "it abounds with water and fruit trees." The Ghutah is one of the four earthly paradises, the others being Basrah (Bassorah), Shiraz and Samarcand. Its peculiarity is the likeness to a seaport the Desert which rolls up almost to its doors being the sea and its ships being the camels. The first Arab to whom we owe this admirable term for the "Companion of Job" is "Tarafah" one of the poets of the Suspended Poems: he likens (v. v. 3, 4) the camels ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... all skilled in magic, and to some extent are able to command or propitiate even the gods. A peculiarity of Finnish magic is what is called ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... in the face of a good man, and Dr. Morrison had this peculiarity in a remarkable degree. His face seemed to radiate light; moreover, he was a man anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, and John no sooner felt the glow of that radiant countenance on him than his heart ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... can receive its first chaplet. All our literature teaches this unquiet and discontented spirit as to the present, and this rash and impatient determination to achieve immediate success. Now, this is a peculiarity of our country, the land of all others which should cherish a disposition to be gratefully contented with the unequaled blessings with which it is endowed. There is no necessity for this forcing system to expand properly and in due ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the soft tread which was his peculiarity, he surprised her with her face in her hands in an attitude of such abandonment that he drew back hesitating. But, suddenly aware of him, she sprang up swiftly, with no sign ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... personality to the front of the cathedral, which has none of its own. Shabby, rusty, unfinished, this front has a romanesque portal, but nothing in the way of a tower. One sees from without, at a glance, the peculiarity of the church—the disparity between the romanesque nave, which is small and of the twelfth century, and the immense and splendid transepts and choir, of a period a hundred years later. Outside, this end of the church ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... little Grayson villa we found two large eyed detectives and a very angry woman waiting impatiently. Heaped up on a table in the living room was a store of loot that readily accounted for the ocular peculiarity of ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... a certain amount of flexibility to the shell; whereas in the ordinary living forms these plates are firmly articulated together by their edges, and the shell forms a rigid immovable box. The Carboniferous Sea-urchins which exhibit this extraordinary peculiarity belong to the genera Lepidechinus and Lepidesthes, and it seems tolerably certain that a similar flexibility of the shell existed to a less degree in the much more abundant genus Archoeocidaris. The Carboniferous Sea-urchins, like the modern ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... perfectly familiar to every student of comparative folk-lore, but the modifications which they have undergone, the changed forms in which they reappear, are all new, and every such change or modification points to some peculiarity in the character of the people who originated it. The variations of a story, therefore, are so many "Fraunhofer's lines" which reveal to us the nature of the intellectual medium through which it has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... "mutilated and putrefying." Our reflex to those who would say that, in the climate of India, it would not take long for fishes to putrefy, is—that high in the air, the climate of India is not torrid. Another peculiarity of this fall is that some of the fishes were much larger than others. Or to those who hold out for segregation in a whirlwind, or that objects, say, twice as heavy as others would be separated from the lighter, we point ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... one, as you shall see presently," replied Jack. "It is called the aoa here, if I recollect rightly, and has a wonderful peculiarity about it. What an enormous one ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... DEAR MRS. LILLY,—I send you a little book for your sick child, and some medicine for her poor broken back. The peculiarity of this medicine is that in order to produce any good effect it must be taken by the nurse. This is rather hard upon the nurse; but if she is a good nurse she will not mind ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... harder surfaces, which at times is very serious, is that the ball is very much more liable to skid off them than off others, and thus the golfer may often blame himself for shots that look like a mixture of foozle and slice when the fault is not his at all, but that of the peculiarity of the club with which he is so much in love. On the other hand, it must be admitted that he scores over his opponent with the leather-faced club when the weather is wet, for the leather is then liable to soften and ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... fond of fishing, and it is a remarkable coincidence that Daniel Webster, and many other famous men, have manifested a decided passion for this exciting sport. No doubt a fondness for angling is a peculiarity of genius; and if being an expert fisherman makes a great man, then our hero was ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... was little in life worth living for. Notwithstanding this, it was observed that she had a good appetite. Indeed, Miss Harding appeared to thrive on her gloomy views of life and human nature. She was, it must be acknowledged, perfectly consistent in all her conduct, so far as this peculiarity was concerned. Whenever she took up a newspaper, she always looked first to the space appropriated to deaths, and next in order to the column of accidents, casualties, etc., and her spirits were visibly exhilarated when she encountered a familiar ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... exhibited. The rest being reserved for future sport, were either dragged out of the ring in the manner above described, or, when supposed to be too strong to be mastered by the men of the fork, were tamely driven out among a flock of oxen introduced into the area as a decoy. Another peculiarity of the Lisbon bull-fights is the presence of a buffoon on horseback called the Neto, who first enters the ring to take the commands of the Inspector, and occasionally bears the shock of the bull, to the no small diversion of the lower class of spectators. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... Protoplasm.—What is this material, protoplasm? As disclosed by the early microscope it appeared to be nothing more than a simple mass of jelly, usually transparent, more or less consistent, sometimes being quite fluid, and at others more solid. Structure it appeared to have none. Its chief peculiarity, so far as physical characters were concerned, was a wonderful and never-ceasing activity. This jellylike material appeared to be endowed with wonderful powers, and yet neither physical nor microscopical study revealed at first anything more than a uniform homogeneous mass of jelly. ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... is that the power of crowds being on the increase, and this power being less and less counterbalanced, the extreme mobility of ideas, which we have seen to be a peculiarity of crowds, can manifest itself ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... connected in parallel with others between the two leads of the primary circuit. The term refers to the connection only and not to any peculiarity of the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... another step and notice a frequently occurring fracture that is caused by the constant pressure and tuning up of the A peg, at a part which in many violins, owing to the peculiarity of design, is a very weak one, the grain of the wood above the peg being short and liable to overstraining by impetuous performers. Being one of the most inconvenient positions on the instrument for working upon, if the repairing ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... and in similar situations it is so in some degree with us; but on our flower-borders, where it is usually sown, it grows so luxuriantly, that the stalks becoming juicy and tender, are generally destroyed by our frosts; hence it is an annual from peculiarity of circumstance; as such, it is very generally cultivated; the flowers exhibit a pretty, innocent appearance, and strongly diffuse an agreeable honey-like smell. They continue to blow through most of ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 3 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... precious thoughts to writing; and these thoughts were to antiquity what the "Imitation of Christ" was to the Middle Ages,—accepted by Christians as well as by pagans, and even to-day regarded as one of the most beautiful treatises on morals ever composed by man. The great peculiarity of the "Manual" and the "Discourses" is the elevation of the soul over external evils, the duty of resignation to whatever God sends, and the obligation to do right because it is right. Epictetus did not go into the dreary dialectics of the schools, but, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
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