"Circumstantial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unlikely that the finding of fossilized animals played any leading role in the development of these beliefs, beyond affording corroborative evidence in support of them after other circumstances had been responsible for originating the stories. The more circumstantial Oriental stories of the splitting of stones giving birth to heroes and gods may have been suggested by the finding in pebbles of fossilized shells—themselves regarded already as the parents of mankind. But such interpretations were only possible because all the predisposing circumstances ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... kneels the image thus addresses him: "Thomas, thou hast written well concerning me; what price wilt thou receive for thy labour?" The myth-making faculty of the people at large was also brought into play. According to a widespread and circumstantial legend, Albert, by magical means, created an android—an artificial man, living, speaking, and answering all questions with such subtlety that St. Thomas, unable to answer its reasoning, broke it to pieces ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... in short, consisted in writing a long and circumstantial story of the discovery of new evidence against the ladies' poolroom, which so far had been scarcely mentioned in the case. As Garrick laid it out, the story was to tell of a young gambler who was said to be in touch with the district attorney, ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... led by Coleridge during the six years next ensuing is difficult to trace, even in the barest outline; to give a detailed and circumstantial account of it from any ordinarily accessible source of information is impossible. Nor is it, I imagine, very probable that even the most exhaustive search among whatever imprinted records may exist in the possession of his friends would at all completely supply the present lack ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... This circumstantial account, which was in every point exactly as the affair happened, and many other questions concerning the family which the captains asked him, and he as readily answered, (having got every particular ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... sensation. It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, &c., of the former—that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but they might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... Ghaneshyam Babu's aid, the complainant proved it up to the hilt, and all concerned were heavily fined. Soon afterwards Sadhu himself appeared before the Deputy Magistrate to answer a charge of murder. The circumstantial evidence against him was so strong that he was committed to the Sessions Court. When brought up for trial there, he astounded his backers by pleading guilty and offering to point out the spot where he had ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... you a very circumstantial account of this society, I confess I have a view beyond the pleasure which a mind like yours must receive from the contemplation of so much virtue. Your constant endeavours have been to inculcate the best principles ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... unworthy of mention in the presence of her sovereign affliction. Whenever anybody presumed to speak of their little personal sufferings before her, she said: "You should thank Heaven you haven't got the rheumatics," and would then proceed to give a circumstantial history of her acquaintance with that disease. Therefore, on this occasion, she was quite unaware that poor Bog sat opposite to her with a pale, dejected face, playing aimlessly on his plate with his knife and fork. She thought only, and talked only, of her malady, which had been pranking in ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... the truth," returned Barret, who thereupon gave a circumstantial account of the disaster that had befallen himself ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... this to the best of their power, and their views will undergo an unlooked-for change. Other difficulties of a more circumstantial kind, it is true, still remain for them; and of these I shall speak presently. But putting these for the moment aside, and regarding the question under its widest aspects only—regarding it only in connection with the larger generalisations ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... circumstantial evidence, it was clear that the river had not re-formed at a distance of twenty-five miles to the north of us, since Mr. Hume had gone to the westward of that point, at about the same distance on his late journey, without having observed the least appearance ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... genius—full as the year itself of months and seasons—we notice that the change that comes over his art is always in the direction of purer and more spiritual beauty. We find him more and more absorbed in the emotion that the landscape conveys, more willing to sacrifice the superfluous and circumstantial for the sake of ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... London, there are no fewer than ten logs of Cook's voyage; three of these are anonymous, but six of them are signed by the ship's officers, and one, from circumstantial evidence, is no doubt by Green, the astronomer. The signed logs are by Hicks, Cook's first lieutenant; Forwood, the gunner; and Pickersgill, Clerke, Wilkinson, and Bootie, mates. Hicks, as we have seen, died on the passage home; Forwood, after the Endeavour's return, is not heard of again. ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... and the real murderer was discovered. This was a man named Hawkins, who, with his son, had been reduced from an honest livelihood to beggary and ruin by Tyrrel. On circumstantial evidence, Hawkins and his son were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... at this time (July 17th) that the intense anxiety of the civilized world with regard to the fate of the besieged reached its culminating point. Circumstantial accounts of the fall of the legations and the massacre of their inmates were circulated in Shanghai and found general credence. It was not till near the end of the month that an authentic message from the American minister proved these fears to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... evident to me that your wicked friend has given you, from time to time, a circumstantial account of all his behaviour to me, and devices against me; and you have more than once assured me, that he has done my character all the justice I could wish for, both by ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... liberty to dispose of them as I should think fit. I have carefully perused them three times. The style is very plain and simple; and the only fault I find is, that the author, after the manner of travellers, is a little too circumstantial. There is an air of truth apparent through the whole; and indeed the author was so distinguished for his veracity, that it became a sort of proverb among his neighbours at Redriff, when any one affirmed a thing, to say, it was as true as if ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... 70: The open air)—Ver. 586. Donatus remarks that it was usual for the Greeks to sit and drink in the sun; and that Syrus being suddenly asked this question shows his presence of mind by giving this circumstantial answer, that he may the better impose upon Demea. The couches used on such occasions may be presumed to have required stout legs, and to be made of hard wood, such as oak, to prevent them from splitting. Two instances of couches being used for carousing in the open ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... "But let's admit that speculation has its uses. After all, circumstantial evidence is permitted in court. Speculation can give us the circumstances that need to be proved, and that tells us where to put our efforts. I think that's ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... full circumstantial narrative such as boys delight in. The ship so sadly destined to wreck on Kerguelen Land is manned by a very lifelike party, passengers and crew. The life in the ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... until the judge swept most of its sophistries away. It was, however, a very able performance. Thurtell's line of defence was to declare that Hunt and Probert were the murderers, and that he was a victim of their perjuries. If hanged, he would be hanged on circumstantial evidence only, and he gave, with great elaboration, the details of a number of cases where men had been wrongfully hanged upon circumstantial evidence. His lawyers had apparently provided him with books containing these examples from the past, and his month in prison was devoted to this defence, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... passed off, Mrs. Bentley sent and begged my wife to come again and see her. She went without me, while I was in town, but she was so circumstantial in her report of her visit, when I came home, that I never felt quite sure I had not been present. What most interested us both was the extreme independence which the mother and daughter showed beyond a certain point, and the daughter's great frankness in expressing her difference ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... type of man for a hero! And yet I do not know. Perhaps he fought harder than many a man who conquers. In the world's courts, we are compelled to judge on circumstantial evidence only, and the chief witness, the man's soul, cannot ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... As we go away from the Canyon, either north or east, we find thousands of feet more of the later depositions, and the geologists affirm that many of these at one time may have overlaid the Canyon region. There is circumstantial evidence, amounting almost to proof, and Figure 3 of plate facing page 99 suggests what that evidence is. It should be carefully noted that the Canyon has been cut through the highest portions of a ridge, which runs ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... account of the brief sickness and speedy death of Washington is so short, yet circumstantial and perspicuous, and may not be condensed without injury to its completeness, that we will give it in ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... amours. In other respects, he piqued himself on understanding the practice of the courts, and in private company he took pleasure in laying down the law; but he was an indifferent orator, and tediously circumstantial in his explanations. His stature was rather diminutive; but, upon the whole, he had some title to the character of a ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... left England 'under a cloud'; that before he went he was 'cudgelled' by an infuriated publisher; that he swindled Lord Peterborough out of large sums of money, and that the outraged nobleman drew his sword upon the miscreant, who only escaped with his life by a midnight flight. A more circumstantial story has been given currency by Dr. Johnson. Voltaire, it appears, was a spy in the pay of Walpole, and was in the habit of betraying Bolingbroke's political secrets to the Government. The tale first appears in a third-rate life of Pope by Owen ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... press. The enemy have long lain idle, and amused themselves with carrying on the war by proclamations only. While they continue their delay our strength increases, and were they to move to action now, it is a circumstantial proof that they have no reinforcement coming; wherefore, in either case, the comparative advantage will be ours. Like a wounded, disabled whale, they want only time and room to die in; and though in the agony of their exit, it may be unsafe to live within the flapping of their tail, yet ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... But a purely circumstantial explanation of an important departure in a man's life will only appear satisfactory to fatalists who worship the blind god Environment. And without indulging in any abstruse psychological discussion, but rather looking at the question ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... World[A] the tale is told (SMITH, ELDER do it cheap) in diction So circumstantial that its hold Is more than that of common fiction; If you can run the story through, By aid of portraits when you need it, And not be half convinced it's true, You simply don't ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... doubt upon his claim. If the late Jonathan Edwards should rise up and tell me he wrote Mr. Dooley's books, I should answer and say that the marked difference between his style and Dooley's is argument against the soundness of his statement. You see how much I think of circumstantial evidence. In literary matters—in my belief—it is often better than any person's word, better than any shady character's oath. It is difficult for me to believe that the same hand that wrote the Plague-Spot-Bacilli and the first third of the little Eddy biography wrote also Science and Health. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... circumstantial, and constructively informative reply is characteristic of his method of rejoinder. It also illustrates his habit of placing his reliance on facts and not on adjectives, and of so marshalling his facts that they fought his battles for him. He ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... city to the king. This cold-blooded and treacherous immolation of seven thousand subjects was considered by the humane Darius and the Persians generally a proof of the most illustrious virtue in Zopyrus, who received for it the reward of the satrapy of Babylon. The narrative is so circumstantial as to bear internal evidence of its general truth. In fact, a Persian would care no more for the lives of seven thousand Medes than a Spartan would care for the lives ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... (Vol. viii., p. 412.).—BRIGANTIA will find a very circumstantial and interesting account of these caves, and their Romano-British contents, in vol. i. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... influence, which would have counteracted such extreme restriction in money matters. The particulars, however, have been so transmitted as to entitle them to acceptance, unless contradicted by something more positive than circumstantial inference from ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... say that they are substantial, Mr. Harley. They are rather more circumstantial. Frankly, I have forced myself to come here, and now that I have intruded upon your privacy, I realize my difficulties more keenly ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... these pages are meant. Having no particular interest in the writer or his affairs, he does not care for the history of "the migrations from the blue bed to the brown" and the many Mistress Quicklyisms of circumstantial narrative. Yet all this may be pleasant reading to relatives ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... a train of circumstantial evidence was produced, as completely established the Prophet's guilt, in the opinion of all who had heard the trial, and the result was a verdict of guilty by the jury, and a sentence ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... realized. Day after day Sant caught the word that Sam missed, and thus added another ticket to his collection. So it went until I took my place again, and then Sant lapsed back into his indifference, leaving me to look after Sam myself. When I tried to face him down with circumstantial evidence he seemed pained to think that I could ever consider him capable of such designing. The merry twinkle in his eye was the only confession he ever made. Small wonder that I loved Sant. If I were writing a testimonial for myself I should say that it was much to my credit that I loved ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... a dim and wavering light—of the archaeological evidence, helped out by circumstantial evidence from such parallel or analogous instances as are afforded by existing communities on a comparable level of culture, one may venture more or less confidently on a reconstruction of the manner of life among the early Europeans, of early neolithic ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... a contradiction, Her window still stood open to conviction; And by short course of circumstantial labour, He fix'd the guilt upon his adverse neighbour;— Lord! how he rail'd at her: declaring how, He'd bring an action ere next Term of Hilary, Then, in another moment, swore a vow, He'd make her do pill-penance in the pillory! She, meanwhile distant from the dimmest dream Of combating with ...
— English Satires • Various
... this tragedy, and concentrate our attention upon its outskirts. Not the least usual error, in investigations such as this, is the limiting of inquiry to the immediate, with total disregard of the collateral or circumstantial events. It is the mal-practice of the courts to confine evidence and discussion to the bounds of apparent relevancy. Yet experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of truth, arises from the seemingly irrelevant. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... one's attention over a host of subjects, is not observing. The travelling entomologist can stick numerous species, the joy of the collector and the nomenclator, into his boxes; but to gather circumstantial evidence is a very different matter. A Wandering Jew of science, he has no time to stop. Where a prolonged stay would be necessary to study this or that fact, he is hurried past the next stage. We must not expect the impossible of him under these conditions. Let ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... nothing, in which suspicion had pointed to her. Possibly the vague confessions, implicating no one, which he had made to Mrs. Miller, taken in connection with events of which he had no knowledge, had proved sufficient to weave a chain of circumstantial evidence about her; and now the commanding officer was aroused, and was coming down on him, and poor Mac yonder, for full details of their losses and their knowledge of the affair. He would give anything to secure ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... the great storm of November, 1703, A Collection of the most remarkable Casualties and Disasters which happened in the late Dreadfal Tempest, both by Sea and Land, may be set down as the first of his works of invention. It is a most minute and circumstantial record, containing many letters from eye-witnesses of what happened in their immediate neighbourhood. Defoe could have seen little of the storm himself from the interior of Newgate, but it is possible ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... IX, King of France," commonly called St. Louis. The passage here given is from Joinville's account of a battle between Christians and Saracens, fought near the Damietta branch of the Nile in 1240. Mr. Saintsbury remarks that Joinville's work "is one of the most circumstantial records we have of medieval life and thought." It was translated by Thomas Johnes, of Hafod, and is now printed ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... tessellae, which also includes a valuable report by Dr. VOELCKER, on an analysis of ruby glass, which formed part of the composition of one of the Cirencester pavements. This portion of the volume is too elaborate and circumstantial for any justice to be done to it in an extract."—Gentleman's ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... statesman that he concluded not to wait for the revolution to come in the ordinary course of events, but to hurry it a bit. Although there is no conclusive proof for this statement, there is plenty of convincing circumstantial evidence. We know that it was proposed to have the workmen of Petrograd strike on February 27, the day of the opening of the Duma, as a protest against the government; we know also that to meet this situation, the Minister of the Interior had placed machine ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... dead, sirrah," said Daun; "hoisted to the highest gallows: Are not you? But put in a Note of my dictating, and your beggarly life is saved." Retzow Junior, though there is no evidence except of the circumstantial kind, thinks this current story may be true. [Retzow, i. 347.] Certain it is, neither Friedrich nor any of his people had the least suspicion of Daun's project, till the moment it exploded on them, when the clock at Hochkirch struck five. Daun, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... the Italians, and especially the Romans, have the art of sketching a man's picture in a couple of words. This rapid apprehension of what is characteristic is an essential condition for detecting and representing the beautiful. In poetry, it is true, circumstantial description may be a fault, not a merit, since a single feature, suggested by deep passion or insight, will often awaken in the reader a far more powerful impression of the figure described. Dante gives us nowhere a more splendid idea of his Beatrice ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... massacres that occurred during the short but severe conflict for Texian independence, in which nearly the whole of his comrades were slain. He has recently published an account of the campaign; and his narrative, highly characteristic and circumstantial, derives a peculiar interest from his details of the defeats suffered by the Texians, before they could succeed in shaking off the Mexican yoke. Of their victories, and especially of the crowning one at San Jacinto, various accounts have already appeared; but the history of their reverses, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... merchants of their first journey to Calcutta, in July, 1774, is circumstantial and remarkable. They say, "that, on their arrival, to their astonishment, they soon learned that the Governor, who had formerly been violently enraged against the said Richard Barwell for different improprieties in his conduct, was ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... circumstantial in relating this affair, because it furnished abundance of discourse, and gave rise to many wild conjectures and misrepresentations, as well here as in Holland, especially that part which concerned the Duke of Ormonde;[7] for the angry faction in the House of Commons, upon the first ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... careful exercise of their judgment, would doubt either that this letter was addressed to Penn, or that another, subsequently alluded to, was written by him. Still we admit that its phraseology does not bear out all Mr. Macaulay's circumstantial details of the transaction, and it certainly cannot be denied that his conduct was, to say the least, susceptible of an interpretation which should have called rather for the approval than the censure of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... now and then, though seldom, is circumstantial, gives a curious account of the marriage of Richard duke of Gloucester and Anne Nevil, which I have found in no other author; and which seems to tax the envy and rapaciousness of Clarence as the causes of the dissention ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... object of almost superstitious dread to the neighborhood," said the Times, "ever since the tragic death of Armand Lascelles in the spring of 1868. In police annals the affair was remarkable because of the extraordinary chain of circumstantial evidence which for a time seemed to fasten the murder upon an officer of the army then stationed at Jackson Barracks, but whose innocence was triumphantly established. Madame Lascelles, it is understood, is now educating her daughter in Paris, whither she removed immediately after her ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... agent was shrewd, but he had not done justice to his abilities; and it was, indeed, with something very like envy that he listened to Chupin's clear and circumstantial report. "I have not been as successful," he remarked, when Chupin's story was ended. But he had not time to explain how or why, for just as he was about to do so, Madame Dodelin appeared, and announced that the young lady ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... opinion, assigns it a much later foundation—about 818 years before the Christian era. If this opinion be correct, Rome and Carthage were founded nearly about the same period. The circumstances which led to and accompanied the foundation of Carthage, though related with circumstantial fulness by the ancient poets, are by no means ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... from the more circumstantial account in Stowe. LL. has, simply, 'his entrails and ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... the contents of a little show-case, in which Fandor had collected what he called his "Circumstantial Evidence"; in other words, various objects relating to cases he had been engaged on, such as scraps of clothing, blood-stained weapons, broken locks: these records of crimes, new and old, were ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... time of Burckhardt no such detailed account of Mecca and her sanctuary had been given to the world. For this reason we shall insert extracts from the original narrative; extracts which might indeed be multiplied, for they include circumstantial accounts of the sacred well, called Zemzem, water from which is considered as an infallible remedy for every complaint. The traveller speaks also of the "Gate of Salvation," of the Makam Ibrahim, a monument containing the stone upon which Abraham sat when he was engaged ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... to trap Tarzan through any voluntary act of his own, Rokoff and Paulvitch put their heads together to hatch a plan that would trap the ape-man in all the circumstantial evidence of a ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... however, be confessed, that sometimes the answer of the oracle was clear and circumstantial. I have related, in the history of Croesus, the stratagem he made use of to assure himself of the veracity of the oracle, which was, to demand of it, by his ambassador, what he was doing at a certain time prefixed. The oracle of Delphi replied, in verse, that he ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... hold together against foreigners, and that if Si Maieddine wished to be incognito among his own people, his wish would probably be respected, in spite of bribery. Besides, he was rich enough to offer bribes on his own part. Circumstantial evidence, however, being against the supposition that the man had followed Victoria after landing, Stephen abandoned it for the time, and urged the detective, Adolphe Roslin, to trace the cabman who had driven Miss Ray away from her hotel. Roslin was told nothing about Victoria's ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... forth in the balcony, and, drawing in their breath, looked down, as the three men of the hour, pale and haggard with imprisonment and torture, were brought up amid the hoots and obscene jests of the populace. Savonarola first was led before the tribunal, and there, with circumstantial minuteness, endued with all his priestly vestments, which again, with separate ceremonies of reprobation and ignominy, were taken from him. He stood through it all serene as stood his Master when stripped of His garments on Calvary. There is a momentary hush of voices and drawing in of breaths ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... garbled translations. And even Englishmen had sometimes found his arguments difficult to follow. He therefore determined to take the utmost care to make his views quite clear; his opinions upon religious probability, his distinction between demonstrative and circumstantial evidence, his theory of the development of doctrine and the aspects of ideas—these and many other matters, upon which he had written so much, he would now explain in the simplest language. He would show that there was nothing dangerous in what he held, that there was ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... in a devilish bad box. His principal witness has run away, his old friends all turn against him, and circumstantial evidence doesn't befriend him. I have advised him to stop this suit right here, and make a compromise. No one wants to kill the General. He's a sharp man, but he is good-natured, and a useful citizen. He can handle these patents better than Benedict ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... witness gives no reason why that spot was inspected, or rather no account of how, or by whom, sprinkled blood was detected on the rail. Nobody saw the murder committed. Chief-Justice Forbes said, in summing up (on February 2, 1827), that the evidence was purely circumstantial. We are therefore so far left wholly in the dark as to why the police began their investigations at ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... renegade who related to me, on my return, these events as they happened, was very circumstantial. He is a Corsican, and had killed many men in battle, and more out; but is (he gave me his word for it) on the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... that the very idea of a pet is something to be spoiled for the amusement of the pet-owner; and Isella was spoiled in the most particular and circumstantial manner. She had suits of apparel for every day in the year, and jewels without end,—for the Duchess was never weary of trying the effect of her beauty in this and that costume; so that she sported through the great grand halls and down the long aisles of the garden much like a bright-winged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... of circumstantial detail, is remarkably beautiful. 1. The history of the bow, giving in a few words the picture of a hunter, lying in ambush and slaying his victim. 2. Then the process of making the bow. 3. The anxious preparation for discharging ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Fielding, who painted the characters and ridiculed the follies of life with equal strength, humor, and propriety. The field of history and biography was cultivated by many writers of ability, among whom we distinguish the copious Guthrie, the circumstantial Ralph, the laborious Carte, the learned and elegant Robertson, and above all, the ingenious, penetrating, and comprehensive Hume," &c. &c. We will quote no more of the passage. Could a man in the best humor sit down to write a graver satire? Who cares for the tender muse of Lyttelton? Who knows the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... account of the matter, which warrants the doubt, although it is fearfully circumstantial, as to ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... proposition would be deemed equally inconvenient and absurd. Under such circumstances, the negro husbands took justice into their own hands. They murdered the overseer. Four innocent slaves were taken up, and upon very slight circumstantial evidence were condemned to be shot; but the real actors in this scene passed unsuspected. When the unhappy men found their companions were condemned to die, they avowed the fact, and exculpated all ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... him. And if he told about Pete Jones, he really could tell only enough to bring vengeance upon himself. And how could he explain his own walk through the pasture and down the road? What business had he being out of bed at two o'clock in the morning? The circumstantial evidence was quite as strong against him as against the man on the horse with the white left forefoot and the white nose. Suspicion might fasten on himself. And then what would be the effect on his prospects? On the people at Lewisburg? On Hannah? It is astonishing ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... suspicions, do we condemn, on circumstantial evidence, persons who may be perfectly guiltless of the crimes laid to their charge. Yet, though the gardener and his son were innocent of the faults they were accused of, had Lary staid at home, instead of joining in a scene ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... judged by the condition of the dead and other circumstantial evidence that the fight had taken place at the very beginning of the great battle—that is, on the morning of Tuesday, the 8th, when the French were slowly pushed back from the vicinity of Fere Champenoise. The road ran through the middle of an open field, with heavy forests ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... I tell you without offense? But, dearest Michael you will not mind—you will forgive an old man's childish prejudices, especially when you know they are not personal—but circumstantial, national, bigoted." ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... accounts of the size of Burr's following were filtering to Washington, together with circumstantial rumors of the disloyalty of his designs. Yet for weeks Jefferson did nothing, until late in November his alarm was aroused by a letter from Wilkinson, dated the 21st of October. On the 27th of November the President issued a proclamation calling ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... with agony over the lady's sensitiveness," broke in the detective dryly. "A good many people believe that you were concerned in this murder. There are not lacking circumstantial details which warrant that view. I am not saying too much when I tell you that some men, in my ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... confident belief which communicated itself to John's mind, and, coupled with the fact that there was certainly only circumstantial evidence against Wilhelm, slowly brought him to sharing her belief and tender sorrow. But they were alone in this belief and alone in their sorrow. The verdict of the community was unhesitatingly, unqualifiedly, ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of the Cave of Gold, something that they were almost ready to give their lives to prevent, and would not help their case in the least. Indeed, under the circumstances it would, probably, be considered the strongest possible circumstantial ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... Taking circumstantial and pathological evidences into consideration, the hope of the person thus poisoned rests solely upon lack of vitality in the serpent and its venom, and in his personal idiosyncrasies, habits of life, condition of health, etc., and the varied chapters of accidents. To look for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... we arrived at Oparre. During this time Tinah gave me a more circumstantial account of the cattle and sheep that had been left with him: he related that, after five years from the time of Captain Cook's departure (counting 63 moons) the people of the Island Eimeo joined ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... paid the penalty of his crime before the sun was far above the hill held by the enemy. There was abundance of circumstantial evidence against him, besides the direct testimony of Raffles and myself, and the wretch was shot at last with little ceremony and less shrift. And that was the one good thing that happened on the day that broke upon us hiding behind the bushes overlooking the donga; ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... Asiatic source for Sumerian culture has also been urged of late with much circumstantial detail. It breaks quite fresh and interesting ground. Recent scientific expeditions in Russian and Chinese Turkestan have accumulated important archaeological data which clearly establish that vast areas of desert country were at a remote ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... The first circumstantial account that we have is that of Dampier; who, in his celebrated Buccaneering Voyage in the year 1688, visited that part of the North-West Coast, to which the name of Cygnet Bay has been attached: of this place he gives a faithful and correct account, particularly with ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... a very great crime,— nothing less than murder,—a fowl crime it may well be called, for it is the slaughter of one of Mr. Hayward's hens. He has been seen to chase the hens, several times, and the other day one of them was found dead. Possibly he may be innocent, and, as there is nothing but circumstantial evidence, it must be left with his ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... account in attempting to produce abortion in the case of Miss Burns, who was suspected of being pregnant by him, and thereby causing her death. Miss Burns was Mr. Angus's housekeeper, and governess to his three children. The case rested entirely on circumstantial evidence, made out against the prisoner by his conduct previous to the supposed commission of the deed, by his conduct at the time and afterwards. At the time the strongest prejudice ran against Mr. Angus, and it must be said that the public were not satisfied with the verdict of the jury; ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... stories, came to Gordon's memory in regard to the long credit extended by Simmons to "old friends," the absence of any rendered accounts; and, in that connection, the thought of the number of homesteads throughout the county that had come, through forced sales, into the storekeeper's hands. The circumstantial details of these events had been bitten by impassioned oaths into his mind, together with the memory of the dreary ruin that ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... fears have I that this multitude of seeming facts, conspiring in a focus against Roger Acton, will be quite enough to overwhelm the innocent. "Nothing lies like a fact," said Dr. Johnson: and statistics prove it, at least as well as circumstantial evidence. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... missive, and arranged in his mind the damning, if circumstantial, evidence he had accumulated, he awaited the hour with confidence, for his nature was not lacking in the cock-surety of a Briton. All the same, he dressed himself particularly well that morning, putting on a blue and white striped waistcoat which, with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... recognized the familiar handwriting, the profuse capitals, of Mrs. Reynolds. Fortunately, he made no comment, for the contents were utterly different from his quick anticipation. It contained a minute and circumstantial account of his visits during the past year to Mrs. Croix, with many other details, which, by spying and bribing, no doubt, she had managed to gather. Failing one revenge, the woman had resorted to another, and fearing that it might be lost among ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... preponderance of negative testimony, and in corroboration of Mr. Lowell's and Mrs. Treat's circumstantial narratives, there remain to be mentioned the fact communicated to me by Mr. Hoar, that a townsman of his had at different times had two hummers' nests in his grounds, the male owners of which were constant in their attentions, and the following very interesting and ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... authority of all writers about the Sacro Monte, and on the other, the exceedingly explicit claim made by Rossetti himself in the inscription given above. Probably Bargnola began the work and Rossetti finished it. It is not likely that the extremely circumstantial statement of Fassola should be without any foundation, but again it is not likely that Rossetti would have claimed the work if he had not done at any rate the greater part of it. If Bargnola died about 1587, he could not have done much, for in the ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... any doubt that the fact of delivery had taken place, as set forth in her own declaration, which was, therefore, not a solitary piece of testimony, but adminiculated and supported by the strongest circumstantial proof. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Emily, Jane's little maid, more closely, and did so when I went there that afternoon. She was certainly more circumstantial than she had been when she had told me the story before, in the first shock and confusion of the disaster. I gathered from her that she had heard her master and Mr. Gideon talking immediately before the fall; she had been surprised when ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... which there is not some edifice, in which the afflicted are lodged, fed, and kindly treated. Would that we had such institutions in Hindustan!" In pursuance of this feeling, we now find him visiting the Blind Asylum and the Deaf and Dumb School; and the circumstantial details into which he enters of the comforts provided for the inmates of these establishments, and the proficiency which many of them had attained in trades and accomplishments apparently inconsistent with their privations, sufficiently evidences ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... has no significance, though perhaps its object may be to affect the circumstantial, a favourite manoeuvre with the Rawi. [It may mean that the prisoner had to pass through seven gates before reaching it, to indicate its formidable strength and the hopelessness of all escape, except perhaps by a seven-warded, or as the Arabs would say, a seven-pinned ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... attack him openly; but they were desirous to add to all their other advantages the advantage of a surprise. He was not, however, a man to be taken off his guard. He had tools in every Court; and he now received from Vienna, from Dresden, and from Paris, accounts so circumstantial and so consistent, that he could not doubt of his danger. He learnt, that he was to be assailed at once by France, Austria, Russia, Saxony, Sweden, and the Germanic body; that the greater part of his dominions was to be portioned out among his enemies; that France, which from her geographical position ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... believe a word of your story," I heard the doctor answer to this long and circumstantial yarn. ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... oversight Giles's telegram to the London Bank to stop the cheque did not reach them in time. And yet Etta went herself to the telegraph-office. As you may have perhaps heard, a tall fair young man, with a light moustache, cashed the cheque early in the afternoon. Yes, I know, Ursula, the circumstantial evidence is rather strong just here. I am quite aware that it was possible for Eric after leaving our house to be in London at the time mentioned, but no one can prove ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... John Wesley's father, was haunted in 1716-17 by a persevering ghost called Old Jeffrey, whose exploits are recorded with a gravity and circumstantial exactitude that remind us of Defoe's narrative concerning the ghostly Mrs. Veal in her "scoured" silk. John Wesley declares stoutly that he is convinced of the literal truth of the story of one Elizabeth ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... from the safe, drew himself up by the rope, closed the trap door, locked up the rope and threw the stone into the pond. In France he would be safe to spend the proceeds of his crime. A nice bit of circumstantial evidence, is it not?" ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... year 1635-36 describes the arrival at Manila of Governor Corcuera, and narrates his controversies with the archbishop. The account is more detailed and circumstantial than that of Diaz (given in Vol. XXV); and the two constitute an interesting chapter, not only of ecclesiastical history but of human nature. The friars finally send secret envoys to the king, to inform him of their troubles. News comes ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... as well as other tame animals which belonged by right in the barnyard, but preferred the drawing room. Ill feeling sprang up, quarrels, lawsuits, all the dreadful sequel of a neighbors' feud. At the trial circumstantial evidence piled up and up. It was not enough for conviction. The inmates of "Goat Castle" were acquitted. Even so, black distrust was their portion from ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... upon to execute a preordained plan of arson and pillage. From the very first women were not safe. At Liege women and children were chased about the streets by soldiers. A witness gives a story, very circumstantial in its details, of how women were publicly raped in the market place of the city, five young German officers assisting. At Aerschot men and women were deliberately shot when coming out of burning houses. At Liege, Louvain, Sempst, and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... governor, "that there is more gold in the country drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers than would pay the costs of the late war with Mexico a hundred times over." And he then went on to report in detail big nuggets and big washings, mentioning men, places, dates, in a circumstantial manner ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... lengthen out our historiette into one of circumstantial evidence, trial, condemnation, and ultimate discovery; but we have preferred telling it as it really happened. On the person of David Bain were found a pocket-book and purse, recognized as the property of the late Mr. Bruce, and containing bank-notes and bills to a considerable ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... would be directly damning to me, if in the end it did not incriminate us both. It made me quite faint to feel that we might escape the Scylla of our present peril and yet split on the Charybdis of circumstantial evidence. Yet I could see no middle course of conceivable safety, if I held my tongue another moment. So I spoke up desperately, with the rash resolution which was the novel feature of my whole conduct on this occasion. But any sheep would be resolute and ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... on the convening of court the district attorney outlined his case with circumstantial detail. He related in spectacular fashion the first meeting of Dr. Earl and the Bells at the suffrage ball, and dwelt insinuatingly upon the interest manifested by Dr. Earl in the child at the time of the accident. Either inadvertently, or by design, he referred in slighting ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... again he drew a blank, for Mark had long ago found it expedient to concoct a circumstantial account of how and when the central idea ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... in these words! Nature proclaims a life beyond the grave, but Christ proves it by His resurrection. Nature gives circumstantial evidence that would seem conclusive; but Christ is the living witness whose testimony establishes beyond controversy that the mortal can put on immortality. He comforts those who mourn; He dispels the gloom by making death but a narrow, ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... house we most haunted after our own, was that of our cousin Albert, still another of the blest orphans, though this time of our mother's kindred; and if it was my habit, as I have hinted, to attribute to orphans as orphans a circumstantial charm, a setting necessarily more delightful than our father'd and mother'd one, so there spread about this appointed comrade, the perfection of the type, inasmuch as he alone was neither brother'd ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... it is one amongst the grievous neglects of the military writers, that they have made it impossible for us to describe the Affghan soldiery under any better representative term, by giving no circumstantial account of the arms or discipline prevailing through the Affghan forces, the tenure of their service, &c. Many had matchlocks; but many, we presume, had only swords; and artillery the Affghans had none, but what they had been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... had taken down a young fellow, about twenty years of age, who had been convicted at the assizes for stealing curious coins from a person who had brought them out to this country as old family relics. The evidence was more circumstantial than positive, and many persons believed ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... circumstances so different from our own that we have the greatest difficulty in believing that it was really salvation at all she was so working out. Till, as we read in humility and in love, we learn to separate-off all that is local, and secular, and ecclesiastical, and circumstantial, and then we immensely enjoy and take lasting profit out of all that which is so truly Catholic and so truly spiritual. Teresa was an extraordinary woman in every way: and that comes out on every page of her Autobiography. So extraordinary that I confess there is ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... rot? I have enough circumstantial evidence against him to put him behind the bars right ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley |
