"Circumstantial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so many romantic and fabulous stories about ourselves, that we were sometimes in doubt whether people in Europe and elsewhere would really believe that we were ordinary human beings and not legendary monsters. On these occasions I read circumstantial reports of my death, and once a long, and by no means flattering, obituary (extending over several columns of a newspaper) in which I was compared to Garibaldi, "Jack the Ripper," and Aguinaldo. On another occasion I learned from British newspapers of my capture, ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... cellar; this they asserted was the reason he would not consent to having the upper rooms of the house rented, and so they remained untenanted season after season. Thus, according to the general verdict (and assuredly the circumstantial evidence was strong), he was a miser of the most pronounced type,—"as stingy as could be," everybody agreed; and is not what everybody says usually accepted ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... brought together by a pre-existing interest in Mr. Browning's work should often ignore its authorized explanations, and should read and discuss it in the light of personal impressions more congenial to their own mind; and the various and circumstantial views sometimes elicited by a given poem did not serve to render it more intelligible. But the merit of true poetry lies so largely in its suggestiveness, that even mistaken impressions of it have their ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... witness against an innocent man. He took the money 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, ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... a disease or deformity in nature for 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... witness, and his testimony is to the point. It must be taken into consideration that we nave no direct evidence as to the murder of John Borg. We can bring no eye-witnesses into court. Whatever we have is circumstantial. It is incumbent upon us to show cause. To show cause it is necessary to go into the character of the accused. This we intend to do. We intend to show his adulterous and lustful nature, which has culminated in a dastardly deed and jeopardized ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... with those same incriminating initials which Miss Carson had one day dropped in the garden. Though it seemed to Hilary an unimportant matter now, she yet looked upon it as a link in the long chain of circumstantial evidence which she alone and unaided had forged against Miss Carson. Really, she thought, she had a right to be proud of herself, for had she not shown more intelligence and acumen in the detection of the Seabourne burglaries than every police official in the town. How every ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... wonders, he attempts, perhaps, to give a description of some of the strange people he has been visiting. Instead of representing them as a community of lusty savages, who are leading a merry, idle, innocent life, he enters into a very circumstantial and learned narrative of certain unaccountable superstitions and practices, about which he knows as little as the islanders themselves. Having had little time, and scarcely any opportunity, to become ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... will be published within eight months from the present time. Now, therefore, with the premise that I most unwillingly speak of myself and what I have done and suffered for some time past, all of which I wished to keep locked up in my own breast, I will give a regular and circumstantial account of my proceedings from the day when I received your letter, by which I was authorised by the Committee to bespeak paper, engage with a printer, and cause our type to be set ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... and anonymous denial, issued by men who seek to wash their hands of innocent blood, cannot avail against Mr. Gibson's clear, specific, and circumstantial statement. The Secretary of our embassy states that on October 11th "repeated" inquiries were made of Herr Conrad, the official in charge of the Political Department of the German Government in Belgium, ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... a little obvious speculation, founded upon the circumstantial evidence, we weave the network of quite a natural story of Talbot; and our meagre tradition takes on the form, and something of the substance, of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... idea of the annual death and resurrection of the Sun a multitude of circumstantial details soon clustered. Some were derived from other astronomical phenomena; while many were merely ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... of his being restored to liberty that she ventured to ask her uncle, under pretext of some charitable object, to give her ten thousand francs, which she sent to the unfortunate victim of circumstantial evidence; who, from what she had heard of his poverty, must be ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... which they inhumanly secured him; and, after depositing a small allowance of provisions near by, they left him to die. Human bones were afterwards found near the identical spot where it was said this unfortunate incident happened, which afforded strong circumstantial evidence that the man had eked out a miserable existence soon after he was deserted by his so-called friends, and also, that the truth of this story rested upon ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... no comparison was to be made between the British government and the French usurpation.—That they who endeavored madly to compare them were by no means making the comparison of one good system with another good system, which varied only in local and circumstantial differences; much less that they were holding out to us a superior pattern of legal liberty, which we might substitute in the place of our old, and, as they describe it, superannuated Constitution. He meant to demonstrate ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... am advised; for, my sovereign, know, There's not a lord here will lift up his arm Against the person of yon noble youth, Till you have heard the circumstantial truth, By good presumptions, touching this foul deed. Therefore, go on, young Bruce; proceed, refel[369] The allegation that puts in this doubt, Whether thy mother, through her wilfulness, Famish'd herself and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... concerning this alleged incident in Shakespeare's early London experience, that which is simplest and latest in date seems to bear the greatest evidence of truth when considered in connection with established facts and coincident circumstantial evidence. Traditions preserved in the poet's own family would in essentials be likely to be closer to the truth than the bibulous gossip of Sir William Davenant, from which source all the other records of this story ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... investigations which are necessary to show HOW it is to be effected, these details will doubtless appear trifling and ridiculous; but as my mind is strongly impressed with the importance of giving the most minute and circumstantial information respecting the MANNER OF PERFORMING any operation, however simple it may be, to which people have not been accustomed, I must beg the indulgence of those who may not feel themselves ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... of such persons' conversation, would, one might have thought, be the last which an inventor would have introduced into a pretended narrative betwixt the dead and living. In short, the whole is so distinctly circumstantial, that, were it not for the impossibility, or extreme improbability at least, of such an occurrence, the evidence could not ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... usual, to tell Christophe that he was coming on Sunday afternoon. On Sunday morning Christophe waited in vain for Aurora. At the hour mentioned by Georges she appeared, and asked him to forgive her because it had been impossible for her to come in the morning: she embroidered her excuses with a circumstantial story. Christophe was amused by her innocent ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... course, the strongest piece of circumstantial evidence, and no doubt the police hoped to collect a great deal more now that they held a clue in their hands. Directly after the verdict, therefore, which was guardedly directed against some person unknown, ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... causes. Even these could not much benefit him; for, whether Clancy be dead or still living—whether he has walked away from the ground, or been carried from it a corpse—to him, Darke, the danger will be almost equal. Not quite. Better, of course, if Clancy be dead, for then there will be but circumstantial evidence against, and, surely, not ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... is only circumstantial," said Lucian cautiously. "We must not jump to conclusions. At present I am completely in the ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... Three of them were "treed" by the dog; the fourth sprang over the fence, but left the seat of his trousers and the rear section of his shirt, the latter bearing in indelible ink the name of the wearer. The circumstantial evidence was so strong against him that he did not attempt an alibi, and he was unable to sit down ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... strange place and its customs are peculiar; nor is any man who has not spent at least ten seasons there qualified to pass judgment on circumstantial evidence. which is the most untrustworthy in the Courts. For these reasons, and for others which need not appear, I decline to state positively whether there was anything irretrievably wrong in the relations between the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid. If there was, and hereon you must form your ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... horns are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the sting is to the bee, what beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. Large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the people of the Lower Ganges. All those millions do not furnish one sepoy to the armies of the Company. But as usurers, as money-changers, as sharp legal practitioners, no class of human beings can bear a comparison ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who knew Caspar Brooke best, it seemed ridiculously impossible that he should have been accused of any act of violence. But the accusation was made with so much circumstantial detail that no course seemed open to the police but to arrest him with as little delay as possible. And before the ill-fated wedding party had been dispersed, before Miss Brooke could hurry home, and long before Lesley suspected the blow that was in store for her, he had been taken by ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier: the manners and habits of a duke would cost a city clerk his situation. In short, though character is independent of circumstances, conduct is not; and our moral judgments of character are not: both are circumstantial. Take any condition of life in which the circumstances are for a mass of men practically alike: felony, the House of Lords, the factory, the stables, the gipsy encampment or where you please! In spite of diversity of character and temperament, the conduct and morals of the individuals in each ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... things, fresh and interesting to us, were ordinary and banal to them, would be a rather shallow one. The point is that, in previous fiction, circumstantial verisimilitude of this kind had hardly been tried at all. So it is with the incident of Nicodeme sending a rabbit (supposed to be from his own estate, but really from the market—a joke not peculiar to Paris, but specially favoured there), or losing ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... beings could be hatched. It is 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. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... holdeth,(1217) That in the actions of Christ's apostles, or the customs of the church, there is nothing exemplary and left to be imitated of us, but that which either being moral, is generally commanded in the decalogue, or being ceremonial and circumstantial, is particularly commanded by some constant ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... pick up an envelope which Mr. Randall dropped on the floor, but he cannot swear that it is the same one that was found by the side of the murdered man. Bramshaw will also swear that he never met Betty that night on the road. His lawyer will not overlook anything, mark my word. It will be only circumstantial evidence after all, and it ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous - almost of pedantic - veracity, that ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... Major Thomson replied. "At any rate, there is enough circumstantial evidence against you in this book to warrant my taking the keenest interest in your future. As a matter of fact, you would have been at the Tower, or underneath it, at this very moment, but for the young lady who probably perjured herself to save you. Now that you know my opinion ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... construction of the tabernacle, the disposition of it in the camp, the transportation of it from place to place in the wilderness, the order of the march, the summoning of the people when camp was to be broken, with all its minute and circumstantial directions, would be destitute of meaning if it had been written while the people were living in Palestine, scattered all over the land, dwelling in their own houses, and engaged ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... further comment just then. But the others looked astonished. Armand had but asked a simple question, and Blakeney's reply seemed almost like a rebuke—so circumstantial too, and so explanatory. He was so used to being obeyed at a word, so accustomed that the merest wish, the slightest hint from him was understood by his band of devoted followers, that the long explanation of his orders which he gave to Armand struck ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... secretaries to write down all the names. They took much pains to examine all the dead, and were the whole day in the field of battle, not returning but just as the King was sitting down to supper. They made him a very circumstantial report of all they had observed, and said they had found eighty banners, the bodies of eleven princes, twelve hundred knights, and about thirty thousand ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... girl suddenly found herself notorious; scarcely a day passed without some disagreeable mention of her. There was published a highly imaginative but circumstantial account of a weak-minded youth whom she had driven to suicide—utterly false, of course, but difficult to deal with. A Sunday "special" appeared—one of those fantastic, colored- supplement nightmares—in which she ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... say absolutely that I can clear up this mystery, but my suspicions are confirmed by a good deal of circumstantial evidence. This will not be understood unless I explain my strange infirmity. Wherever I went I used to be troubled with a presentiment that I had left my pipe behind. Often, even at the dinner-table, I paused in the middle of a sentence as if ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... others. We have, first and last, to be captains of our own souls. There is an element of absurdity in the thought that the aim and purpose of human life is for each soul to hunt for the sins and imperfections in others. The enjoinment of self-criticism and self-culture seems a simpler and less circumstantial rule of life. Asceticism, abnegation, prayer, remoteness from the passions that rend the worldly, bring peace and content. But they limit experience and give a false simplicity to the problems of life. Early Christian monasticism ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... until they struck something hard. Then they would dig down to see what it was, but it never turned out to be money. That night the boys declared they would not dig any more. But Tom had another dream. He dreamed the gold was exactly under the little papaw-tree. This sounded so circumstantial that they went back and dug another day. It was hot weather too, August, and that night they were nearly dead. Even Tom gave it up, then. He said there was something about the way they dug, but he never offered to do any ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to protest against the improper actions of the police. He lodged complaints with the Governor and the District Attorney, and wrote circumstantial petitions to both—his chief concern being that no offending expression of any ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... room, and asked me various questions with respect to what had been going on, and my behaviour in the church, of which he had heard something. I told him all I knew with respect to the intrigues of the two priests in the family, and gave him a circumstantial account of all that had occurred in the church; adding that, under similar circumstances, I was ready to play the same part over again. Instead of blaming me, he commended my behaviour, told me I was a fine fellow, and said ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... 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 into youthful minds, the only ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... he said. He said that you had been convicted on circumstantial evidence; that was why you had got life imprisonment instead of hanging; that you had always stoutly maintained your innocence; that you were the black sheep of the Maryland Dettmars; that they moved heaven and earth for your pardon; ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... 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 ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... they were deprived of the delights of the society of the Faure boys, through whose domain the creek ran, because, when they went to bed on that disastrous night, it was discovered that Bob had on The Boy's stockings, and that The Boy was wearing Bob's socks; a piece of circumstantial evidence which convicted them both. When the embargo was raised and they next went to the creek, it is remembered that Bob tore his trousers in climbing over a log, and that The ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... so circumstantial, and his authority as an historian is so great, that we can scarcely hesitate to accept the history as he delivers it, rather than as it is related by the Jewish writer. It is, however, remarkable that the series ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... presiding over my fate, can be more conscious than myself, from the nature of the evidence given in this case, of the utter hopelessness of any defence which may be offered on my behalf. But, while recognising, in their fullest force, the strong circumstantial proofs of crime which you have heard, I may be permitted to deny for myself what my counsel has been pleased to admit for me. To say that I have not been guilty of this crime, is only to repeat that ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... replied Jekyl; "and there is no law court in Britain that would take the lady's word—all she has to offer, and that in her own cause—against a whole body of evidence direct and circumstantial, showing that she was by her own free consent married to the gentleman who now claims her hand.—Forgive me, sir—I see you are much agitated—I do not mean to dispute your right of believing what you think is most credible—I only use the freedom of pointing out to you the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... I am so circumstantial in relating these events, which are merely introductory to my story, I shall have neither time nor space left for the story itself. So I will hasten to say, that the upshot of Mr. Edward Talcott's frequent visits, as might have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... employed in drawing up a circumstantial account of these discoveries, in order to make their report to the Barons at their return. In the mean time Mr. William took an opportunity to introduce Edmund ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... unfamiliar to the student of human nature in campaigns, which many historians overlook, so keen are they to get their dates and circumstantial details correct, in the way that the Gray and the Brown veterans fraternized in groups, crossing and recrossing the frontier line as they labored with each other's tongues. This frequently comes with peace, when the adversaries have been of the same metal and standards of civilization. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... 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 that carried conviction. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... they all had on their boots except the one who fell last, and he was in his socks, with no boots on. It was he who had waited for me as I have already said, on the cabin steps that I usually passed up and down on, but this time avoided. Circumstantial evidence came up in abundance to make the case perfectly clear to the authorities. There are few who will care to hear more about a subject so abhorrent to all, and I care less to write about it. I would not have said this much, but for the enterprise of a rising department ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... difficulties of the biographer are, however, different in the two cases. There is nothing, or next to nothing, in Shakespeare's works which throws light on his own story; and such evidence as we have is of the kind called circumstantial. But Falstaff constantly gives us reminiscences or allusions to his earlier life, and his companions also tell us stories which ought to help us in a biography. The evidence, such as it is, is direct; and the only ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... nobody knows when, saw many very strange sights, and we can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of the romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, resident at Rotherhithe, tells us of pigmies and giants, flying islands, and philosophizing horses, nothing but such circumstantial touches could produce for a single moment a deception on ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... little George realized that circumstantial evidence was against him. He knew that his father would know from the size of the chips that no full-grown hatchet cut that tree down, and that no man would have haggled it so. He knew that his father would send around the plantation ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the police headquarters. A few minutes later the chief himself appeared, accompanied by the night watchman, Kranz, whose story of the nervous and agitated appearance of Hedin on his midnight visit to the store forged the strongest link in the chain of circumstantial evidence. ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... Tale of Circumstantial evidence. By the author of "My Shooting Box," "The Quorndon Hounds," etc. ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... countrymen, that the work of butchery had begun. He had little hopes of escaping, but life even to him was dear, and he kept in his hiding-place, hoping, at all events, to prolong it. His evidence was clear and circumstantial. ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... have noted, circumstantial evidence is not lawful: the witness must swear to what he has seen. A curious consideration, how many innocent men have been hanged by "circumstantial ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... which suspicion had pointed to her. Possibly the vague confessions, implicating no one, which he had made to Mrs. Miller, taken in connection with events of which he had no knowledge, had proved sufficient to weave a chain of circumstantial evidence about her; and now the commanding officer was aroused, and was coming down on him, and poor Mac yonder, for full details of their losses and their knowledge of the affair. He would give anything to secure the postponement of that dreaded interview ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... the more 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, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... fact, be established. The fact that the victim is indeed dead must first be made certain before anyone can be convicted for her killing, because, so long as there remains the remotest doubt as to the death, there can be no certainty as to the criminal agent, although the circumstantial evidence indicating the guilt of the accused may be positive, complete, and utterly irresistible. In murder, the corpus delicti, or body of the crime, is composed ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... the management of the bank entirely to the elder Sefton, and upon his death to his son, who was already a partner. He had lived abroad, and had not visited England for more than ten years. There was a report, somewhat more circumstantial than a rumor, but the truth of which none but the elder Sefton had ever known, that Mr. Clifford, offended by his only son, had let him die of absolute starvation in Paris. Added to this rumor was a vague story of some crime committed by the ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... occupied mainly with literary work, and it was then, in 1719, he produced his world-famous "Robinson Crusoe"; has been described as "master of the art of forging a story and imposing it on the world for truth." "His circumstantial invention," as Stopford Brooke remarks, "combined with a style which exactly fits it by its simplicity, is the root of the charm of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... with her circumstantial shopping; and, at dusk on Christmas Eve, he helped her to carry her parcels to the house of some German friends. He himself was invited to Miss Jensen's, where a party of English and Americans would celebrate ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... of the association, for the members that have charge of our house will come immediately to obtain the most exact information as to all your special wishes. You must not grow impatient if you have to undergo a somewhat circumstantial examination; it will be for your comfort, and will not be repeated. When you have once been subjected to the association's questions, which leave out nothing however trivial, it will never, so long as you are in Freeland, happen to you to find the wrong ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... circumstantial and distinct. There is a passage in the Iliad which cannot be read without strong emotions. A Trojan prince, seized by Achilles in the battle, falls at his feet, and in moving terms supplicates for life. "How can a wretch like thee," says the haughty Greek, "intreat ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... our own 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 of riot and folly, he would not ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... servant in the place, having lived among dogs and horses the greater part of a century, and been in the service of Mr. Bracebridge's father. He knows the pedigree of every horse on the place, and has bestrode the great-great-grandsires of most of them. He can give a circumstantial detail of every fox-hunt for the last sixty or seventy years, and has a history for every stag's head about the house, and every hunting trophy nailed to the door ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the men prepared to give chase. The evidence was, indeed, though circumstantial, so convincing, that but little argument was needed to show the shepherd's guests that after what they had seen it would look very much like connivance if they did not instantly pursue the unhappy third stranger, who could not as yet have gone more than a few hundred yards ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Of this circumstantial and sufficiently positive attribution, which is dated October, 1785, no contradiction ever appeared that I am aware of. The person intended is S. Berington, the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... 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 had ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... over and handed it back; but not then. The two were not speaking to each other. Later, at the time of the struggle in the cave, the box fell from the old man's pocket, and formed a most damaging piece of circumstantial evidence against ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... A very circumstantial narrative of these proceedings, copies of the minutes of the privy council, and other documents, will be found in the introduction to The Pilgrim's Progress.[278] One of these official papers affords an interesting subject of study ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... intellect. But I've great confidence in you, Miss Barrington. You seem to be rather a specialist in domestic relations. If you say Mrs. Fulham will be happier for having me bathe neck-deep in lies, I suppose I shall have to oblige you. Shall it be the lie circumstantial? Do you wish to specify the laboratory to which ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... and to a certain degree judicious, no doubt, as respects published species. Once admitted, they may stand until they are put down by evidence, direct or circumstantial. Doubtless a species may rightfully be condemned on good circumstantial evidence. But what course does De Candolle pursue in the case—of every-day occurrence to most working botanists, having to elaborate collections ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... hit between the eyes. He made a motion as though to ward off a blow. "Name of Peter, old cock!" he exclaimed abruptly. "You saw enough certainly, if you saw that, and you needn't mention the lady's name, as you say. The evidence is not merely circumstantial. You saw it with your own eyes, and you are an official of the Court, and have the ear of the Judge, and you look like a saint to a jury. Well for sure, I can't prove defamation of character, as you say. But what ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... confers on archaeology is strikingly shown in the chapter on the materials of the tesselle, 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... discovered. Morelli and his daughter underwent a rigid examination; the former could throw no light upon the mysterious disappearance of Frederic, but Bianca, the pure-minded Bianca, unreservedly related all the circumstances. The examining officers forwarded an elaborate and circumstantial report of the case to Vienna, accompanied by an earnest petition in behalf of the absent Count. The Emperor laid the affair before a select council of old and experienced officers, who, after due deliberation, and weighing ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... parlour, and who for some unexplained reason had loaded his pistols on the evening before the alleged assault, professed to have seen the villain; and, on the other, that the details furnished by Harriet, and confirmed at a subsequent period by so hostile a witness as Eliza, are too circumstantial to be ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... providential interposition, the tables were suddenly turned, and she was rescued from the jail, from infamy, and perhaps from death! A young girl, one of the domestics at the chateau, having examined the portion of the letter which formed a link in the circumstantial evidence, produced from her pocket another fragment, which exactly fitted to the first, and made the letter complete! With much curiosity, and indeed excitement, all listened eagerly to what she had to say. She stated that the fragment she ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... this paper as a curiosity, but unfortunately lost them later on, with all my papers and luggage. One or two items I remember quite well. One gave a vivid account of how the Queen of Holland had killed her husband because he had allowed the Germans to pass through Maestricht; another even more circumstantial story was that England had declared war on Holland, Holland had submitted at once, and England imposed many stringent conditions, of which I only remember two. One was, that all her trade with Germany should cease at once; secondly, ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... and vulgar tradesmen) are here humorously represented paying him a congratulatory visit on his change of fortune, and regaling themselves with the 'Brewer's' ale. The song is mentioned in Thackeray's Catalogue, under the title of Joan's Ale's New; which may be regarded as circumstantial evidence in favour of our hypothesis. The air is published in Popular Music, accompanying three stanzas of a version copied from the Douce collection. The first verse in Mr. ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... is drawn pretty close round Fitzroy Simpson," he remarked, "and I believe myself that he is our man. At the same time I recognize that the evidence is purely circumstantial, and that some ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Bickers; now he was making a speech at the debating society. It was impossible for the listener to follow all his wild incoherent talk, it was all so mixed up and jumbled. But if Railsford harboured any doubts as to the correctness of his surmise about the picture, the circumstantial details of the outrage repeated over and over in the boy's wild ravings ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... set him upon compiling a code of morals and manners which still exists in a manuscript in his own handwriting, entitled "rules for behavior in company and conversation." It is extremely minute and circumstantial. Some of the rules for personal deportment extend to such trivial matters, and are so quaint and formal, as almost to provoke a smile; but in the main, a better manual of conduct could not be put into the hands of a youth. The whole code evinces that rigid propriety ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... December 25, as is generally supposed; but his birth occurred about the first of October. Midwinter would have been a very inopportune time for the shepherds to be watching their sheep in the fields and sleeping in the open. In addition to this circumstantial evidence, all the facts show that the birth of Jesus was in October, and that December 25, nine months previous, was probably the date of the annunciation. (Luke 1:30,31) For a full discussion of this subject see STUDIES IN THE SCRIPTURES, Volume 2, ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... one has a taste for that kind of thing the merest starting-point becomes a coign of vantage, and then by a series of logically deducted verisimilitudes one arrives at truth—or very near the truth—as near as any circumstantial evidence can do. I have not studied de Barral but that is how I understand him so far as he could be understood through the din of the crash; the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the newspaper contents bills, "The Thrift Frauds. Cross-examination of the accused. Extra special"—blazing ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... trophies of victory and spoils of war—the three Indian rifles now added to the rest. Mounting a low, wide poplar stump directly in front of his cabin, he proceeded to give his colored brethren a circumstantial account of all that had happened to him in the course of his late adventure. As if the wonderful reality were not enough to satisfy any reasonable lover of the marvelous, he must needs lug in a deal that had not happened to him in the time, and never could have happened ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... should bring him to a halt. But the violent emotion which his struggle had caused him, the rage into which his compromised dignity had thrown him, the ideas of vengeance to which he abandoned himself, the suppositions suggested to him by the circumstantial care which this girl had taken in order to bring him to her, all hindered him from the attention, which the blind have, necessary for the concentration of his intelligence and the perfect lucidity ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... for the circumstantial evidence connecting the Rebel authorities with the premeditated plan for destroying the prisoners. Let us ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... As a gloss says on this passage, "uncleanness" stands for lust against nature, while "lasciviousness" is a man's abuse of boys, wherefore it would appear to pertain to seduction. We may also reply that "lasciviousness" relates to certain acts circumstantial to the venereal act, for instance ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... true that from the first dawn of his preference for Madame Walmoden, the king wrote circumstantial letters of fifty or sixty pages to the queen, informing her of every stage of the affair; the queen, in reply, saying that she was only one woman, and an old woman, and adding, 'that he might love more and younger women.' In return, the king ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... tangible at last. Not direct evidence that Collins was guilty, but circumstantial evidence of the highest importance. Not only had he threatened to kill the merchant, but he had motive for the crime, and a motive which could be established easily in a court ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... earnestly, "I've got a strong case of circumstantial evidence." He turned over the eight of hearts; then, after a pause, the ace, king, queen and jack of spades; and resumed the stacking of his chips. "I discarded that seven of hearts," he said, ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... deal of talk of the mysterious passage of Russians through the country. Some said there were twenty thousand, some a hundred thousand, and the stories concerning this secret army of avengers grew more and more circumstantial. They reached Witanbury Close from every quarter. And though for a long time the Dean held out, he at last had to admit that, yes, he did believe that a Russian army was being swiftly, secretly transferred, via Archangel and Scotland, to the Continent! ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... judge in Massachusetts. He has left in his diary a circumstantial account of his courtship of Madam Winthrop, also a curious "confession" made by him in church of the "Guilt contracted upon the opening of the late Commission of Oyer and Terminer, at ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... which do not affirm or enjoin anything positively, which are circumstantial and incomplete, or in open contrast with the positive, all these ideas may be properly grouped into another single class because they all should have the same kind of slide. This ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... not have been good law, but they were first-class justice.' His 'doctrine was that if a man were killed, some one had to be hanged for it; and the effect was salutary.' A man had been sandbagged in a Victoria saloon and thrown out to die. His companion in the saloon was arrested and tried. The circumstantial evidence was strong, and the judge so charged the jury. But the jury acquitted the prisoner. Dead silence fell in the court-room. The prisoner's counsel arose and requested the discharge of the man. Begbie whirled: 'Prisoner at the bar, the jury have said you are not guilty. ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... not know that in the face of the circumstantial evidence against him even his own people had commenced to entertain suspicions that he might have stolen the ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy." As originally prepared, the resolutions were found in Jefferson's handwriting after his death. Hildreth's conjecture that Madison, as well as the brothers Nicholas, was consulted in the preparation of these resolutions, rests only on circumstantial evidence. The Kentucky resolutions were passed in November; those of Virginia in December; the former were written by Jefferson, the latter by Madison; and the doctrines in each are essentially the same. It would have been a perfectly natural ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay |
