"Unexplained" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or trespass, and hold the bailee liable, where, in theory at least, he has a remedy over. It was with reference to such cases, as has been seen, that the rule arose, although it is not improbable that it would have been applied to an unexplained loss; the writ against innkeepers reads absque subtractionie seu amissione custodire. In later times, the principle may have been extended from loss by theft to loss by destruction. In Symons v. Darknoll ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... "builder"—who, it must be added, ceases the work of construction only when it is on its way to completion, which happens about the age of seven—is influenced by the forms of the new surroundings, and at times copies them, more or less, and we may ask ourselves if the unexplained fact of negro children being born to a white woman—the widow of a negro—remarried to a white man is in no way connected with the reproduction of a mental image of the coloured children ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... stage, and Jack Ketch in the character of a foot-pad, now add to the romance of the drama. Not to leave anything unexplained, the hero declares, that he has cut the walk of life he formerly trod in the rope ditto, and has been induced to take to the road solely by Fate, brandy and (not salt, but) Barbara! By some extraordinary accident, every character in the piece, with two exceptions, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... on the long journey to Aquileia, on which you'd have countless opportunities of escape. I do not believe your tale. Yet I'll pay this much attention to it: I'll write to Vedius Aquileiensis and ask him if he owned two slaves answering your descriptions and lost them through unexplained disappearance or known crimping by Dalmatian pirates at about the time ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... object of our Mission this sad occurrence could have. Is it a frown on our undertaking? or can it really be a movement of his kind, guiding hand? We often spoke of it: in our visit to Galilee we thought that we saw some purposes evolving; but there was still something unexplained. Now, however, the reason appears: even that event was of the Lord, in wise and kind design. But for that fall, our fathers in the deputation would not have sailed up the Danube on their way to Vienna, and Pesth would not have been visited. This accident, which ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... grin, "I expect the' might be some fun to be got out o' that, if a feller wa'n't worryin' too much about his own skin; an' as fur's I'm concerned——" Dick's further views on the subject of that momentous occasion were left unexplained. A significant look in David's face caused the speaker to break off and turn toward the door, through which came two men, the foremost a hulking, shambling fellow, with an expression of repellent sullenness. He came forward ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... whether real or fictitious, pique curiosity. Even the scholar and the practical man of affairs find relaxation in the mystery of the detective story. Real life often furnishes events sufficiently mysterious to make a special feature story that rivals fiction. Unexplained crimes and accidents; strange psychical phenomena, such as ghosts, presentiments, spiritism, and telepathy; baffling problems of the scientist and the inventor—all have elements of mystery that ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... was returning to her cheeks. Stuart studied her attentively—even delightedly, for all her shortcomings, and knew in his heart that he could never give her in charge of the police. More and more the wonder of it all grew upon him, and now he suddenly found himself thinking of the unexplained incident ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... wonderfully still out of doors, quiet and damp with belts of unexplained shadow here and there, and a sense of illimitable space and silence. Julia sat down on the door steps and smelt the good smell of the earth and felt the nearness of it. But it did not comfort her; she was not in tune with ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... their meaning than anyone else has. The passages must speak for themselves; they are children sent into the world—helpless infants like those Pickwickian "expletives, let loose upon society." Among these unexplained things were "my Prooshan Blue" and "Old Nobs." Sir Walter, with real Pickwickian sagacity, points to a true explanation which may be applied in other cases. "Probably it was a phrase which he had heard in a crowd, and had never asked himself what it meant," i.e., ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... fellow, coarse, heavy, vulgar, scarce able to speak French, to those other young men, sons of well-to-do farmers, who had been seen hovering round her for some time. And, as provincial people do not allow anything to remain unexplained, they made sure there was some mystery at the bottom of this affair, alleging even that the marriage of the two young people had become an absolute necessity. But events proved the falsity of the accusation. More than a year went by before Adelaide ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... rule of LAIUS and JOCASTA there appeared a strange and monstrous creature, "the riddling Sphinx," "the She-Wolf of the woven song," who in some unexplained way sang riddles of death and slew the people of Thebes. LAIUS went to ask aid of the oracle of Delphi, but was slain mysteriously on the road. Soon afterwards there came to Thebes a young Prince of Corinth, ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... his hands into his pockets, and stood in front of the fireplace in a horribly British manner while she turned over her songs. Estelle sang rather prettily. She preferred songs of a type that dealt with bitter regret over unexplained partings. She sang them with a great deal of expression and a slight difficulty in letting go of the top notes. After she had sung two or ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... went first to Chicago, where he confidently expected to be editor of a magazine to be called the Lakeside Monthly. He was invited to a dinner given by the projectors of the enterprise, at which a large-sized check was said to have been concealed beneath his plate; but for some unexplained reason he failed to attend the dinner and the magazine was given up. Those who know the facts acquit him of all blame in the matter; but, in any event, his hopes were dashed, and he proceeded to ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... him, and she rung the bell to have the breakfast-table cleared. Then the sunshine tempted her to saunter into the garden, and gather a bunch of sweet lavender, but from some unexplained cause her mind was ill at ease. She could take no pleasure in her flowers; no interest in the vine which had been her especial care; and she returned to the house, determined to spend the morning at her worsted-work. Seating herself near the open window, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... husband! Perhaps her poor dazed mind groped for him, or perhaps it shrank from his name.... Justine was thankful for her silence. For the moment her heart was bitter against Amherst. Why, so soon after her appeal and his answer, had he been false to the spirit of their agreement? This unannounced, unexplained departure was nothing less than a breach of his tacit pledge—the pledge not to break definitely with Lynbrook. And why had he gone to South America? She drew her aching brows together, trying to ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... with the proverbial contempt for the supposed stolidity of the goose, there is something still unexplained in the extraordinary honours paid to it by the ancients, and the veneration in which it is held to the present day by some of the eastern nations. The figure that occurs so frequently on Buddhist monuments, is the Brahmanee goose (casarka ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... for some unexplained reason frequently lodged in Haines' mind was that of the apparent assiduity with which Mrs. Spangler cultivated Senator Langdon's friendship. For several years she had occupied a high social position at the capital, he well knew, but various indefinite, intangible rumors he ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... to tell Mr. Stevens the thing that he had omitted: the history of Teeny-bits' unexplained origin. With this information stimulating his mind to solve the mystery, the English master suggested to Teeny-bits that they lose ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... head of his cavalry straight on Mackay's centre. But for some unexplained reason his troopers had not followed him close; whether their new captain did not like the guns, or had misunderstood his orders, is not clear. Dunfermline, seeing his general's plumed hat waving above the smoke, had spurred out of the ranks with sixteen ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... whom I have referred before. {244b} He says, “A mile away from Woodhall is one of the loveliest little gems of architecture in the country, a pure, little, Early English church, now dreadfully dilapidated, which belonged, in some unexplained way,—probably as a chantry chapel,—to the Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstead.” As this little gem is now locked away from public view, I will here give extracts from the description of it given by the late Bishop Suffragan, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... of simple, satisfying Christianity. For a space this unnatural state of things would last; for a space their curious companionship would continue—their long, intimate talks would make life something new and wonderful; then—But there, for some unexplained reason, ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Mr. Adams and General Pinckney. The military skill and approved bravery of the General must be peculiarly valuable to his countrymen at these trying moments." Let us have a military Vice-President, by all means, to meet this formidable exigency of Gabriel's peck of bullets, and this unexplained three shillings in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... innocent interpretation. But his conscientious mind refused to permit him to evade responsibility in that way. The letter could not be dismissed with a wave of one's wishing wand. It remained stubbornly in Barrant's perspective, an unexplained factor which could be ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Judson family. Or what if he is hunting for an heir on the Haygarth side?" asked the Captain, with a very close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's face. Let the stockbroker be never so skilful a navigator of the high seas of life, there was no undercurrent, no cross trade-wind, no unexplained veering of the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the diplomatic admiral made so bold ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... of the regiment, Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above them, Great is the battle-god, and his kingdom— A field where a thousand ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... small outstanding error or discrepancy; the stars were still subject to an unexplained displacement—not, indeed, a displacement that repeated itself every year, but one that went through a cycle of changes in a ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... behind him was to be found his perplexed endeavours to explain this mental leap, that after all his efforts still remained unexplained. He had been vividly impressed by the decision and courage of her treatment of the dogs; it was just the sort of thing he could not do. And there was a certain contagiousness in the petting admiration with ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... clause, 'like a branch.' Look at the mysteriousness of the language. 'They gather them.' Who? 'They cast them into the fire.' Who have the tragic task of flinging the withered branches into some mysterious fire? All is left vague with unexplained awfulness. The solemn fact that the withering of manhood by separation from Jesus Christ requires, and ends in, the consuming of the withered, is all that we have here. We have to speak of it pityingly, with reticence, with terror, with tenderness, with awe lest it should ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... always starts in the poor quarters. To know how people die, you have to know how they live. So I cultivated my beggar friend and listened to the gossip of quick funerals and unexplained disappearances. I'd have had some real arguments to present to Mr. Brewster if he had ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... observations first made by him, and since then confirmed by others, was, that a body falling from a height not only fell a little to the east of the true perpendicular—which is, no doubt, due to the earth's motion—but that it fell to the south of that line; the cause of this is at present unexplained. It is, no doubt, connected with some great phenomena of gravitation which yet remain to be discovered. At the meeting of the British Association at Southampton, Professor Oersted communicated to the Chemical Section some ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Marquis a dark and penetrating glance, as if to ascertain whether this sudden mission was not conferred for some latent and unexplained purpose. But Montrose, skilful in searching the motives of others, was an equal adept in concealing his own. He considered it as of the last consequence, in this moment of enthusiasm and exalted passion, to remove Allan ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... different Selfs, it would follow from the infinity of the past aeons that all souls must have been released before this, none being left in the state of bondage; and that hence the actually observed distinction of souls bound and released remains unexplained. But this argumentation is refuted by the fact of the souls also being infinite. You indeed maintained that, if the souls are really separate, they must necessarily have a definite number like beans, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... of Aram's did indeed account to Madeline for much that had till then remained unexplained; the appearance of Houseman at Grassdale,—the meeting between him and Aram on the evening she walked with the latter, and questioned him of his ill-boding visitor; the frequent abstraction and muttered hints of her lover; and as he had said, his last declaration of the possible necessity ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... both in and out of the store, to ascertain whether he has any unexplained expenses, or any questionable companions. I want to know how he spends his time out of the office. It may be that the result of my investigation will be to his credit. It may be that he is all that he seems,—a reputable member ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... unexplained anomaly in this woman's pass business. If the writer were to go and live in the "Free" State, he could apply for and obtain letters of exemption from the ordinary pass laws; but if his wife, who has had a better schooling and enjoyed an older civilization ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... rightly to think about it. I have stated a few facts that have come under my own personal knowledge; but there are thousands of others similar and even more extraordinary, which numerous persons quite as credible as I am can vouch for in like manner to be true facts while remaining unexplained miracles. For myself, I must suspend judgment; waiting to see what in these wonderful times—some further development of electricity, for example, may haply produce for us. After recent marvels of the telephone, microphone, photophone, and I know ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... view. We shall then manage to get along with what was done and accepted long ago, and content ourselves with explaining it; whereas now, at the beginning of its course, though we cannot unmake it, we think perhaps to prevent its acceptance and deprive it of immortality by rejecting it unexplained. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... last scene in the evolution of this vision, which was surely more than a vision, was the Vision of Grace. One of the fiery attendants, who hovered on quivering wing ready to execute the orders of the Divine King, receiving a command by some unexplained mode of communication, flew to the altar, and, taking up the tongs, seized with them a stone from the altar fire. It was neither a coal, as our rendering gives it, nor a brand, but a heated stone, such as was used, and ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... Harris's fearless handling of the matter to sweep away what is nothing but a morbid and very disagreeable modern fashion. There is always some stock accusation brought against eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... the copy filed in the War Department of the order actually given to the troops on November 29 explains how that mistake occurred. In brief, the draft of an order prepared in writing for another purpose, but not issued, was by some unexplained blunder substituted for the oral orders actually dictated to a staff officer. It was an example of how the improvised staff of a volunteer army, like the "non-military agencies of government," may interfere with ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... were imprisoned, fine being the usual punishment, but still, imprisonment there was, and so that would not seem to him strange; and as to the conduct of his master, he would be content to leave that unexplained. The Buddhist is content to leave many things unexplained until he can see the meaning. He is not fond of theories. If he does not know, he says so. 'It is beyond me,' he will say; 'I do not understand.' He has no theory of an occidental mind to explain acts of ours of which he cannot grasp the ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... you a bundle of proposals, which, I think, do not profess more than I have hitherto performed. I have printed many of the plays, and have hitherto left very few passages unexplained; where I am quite at a loss, I confess my ignorance, which is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... periods of ocean travel, men have looked with astonishment upon a phenomenon not only singular at first sight, but which still remains unexplained, namely, a fish and a creature believed to be formed only for dwelling under water, springing suddenly above the surface, to the height of a two-storey house, and passing through the air to the distance of a furlong, before falling back ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... the "start"-button; the headings vanished, to be replaced by page after page of print, succeeding one another on the screen as the two men read. They told strange and apparently disconnected stories—of unexplained fires and explosions; of people vanishing without trace; of unaccountable disasters to aircraft. There were many stories of an epidemic of mysterious disk-shaped objects seen in the sky, singly or in numbers. To each account ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... before the law written on the enlightened consciences of those devoted men and women. These rifles had been forwarded previously to the National Committee at Chicago, for the defense of Kansas, but for some unexplained reasons had never proceeded farther than Tabor, in the State of Iowa. Later on, Mr. Stearns, in his individual capacity, authorized Captain Brown to purchase two hundred revolvers from the Massachusetts Arms Company, and paid for them from his private funds, thirteen or fifteen hundred ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... but half realized. At the end of six months Herbert Bly's discretion and devotion were duly rewarded by Cherry's hand. But Tappington did NOT give her away. That saintly prodigal passed his period of probation with exemplary rectitude, but, either from a dread of old temptation, or some unexplained reason, he preferred to remain in Portland, and his fastidious nest on Telegraph Hill knew him no more. The key of the little door on the side street passed, naturally, into the keeping of ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... great age of the Renaissance, when all the free burghs accepted the rule of despots, and when the genius of the Italians culminated, is for him a period of downfall and degradation. Besides, he leaves the history of the Italian people before the starting-point of the Republics unexplained. He has, at the close of their career, to account for the reason why these Communes, so powerful in self-development, so intelligent, so wealthy, and so capable of playing off the Pope against the Empire, failed to ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... a loss to account for my having plunged thus headlong into an act so monstrous. There is something in it of unexplained and involuntary sympathy. One sentiment flows, by necessity of nature, into another sentiment of the same general character. This was the first instance in which I had witnessed a danger by fire. All was confusion around me, and all changed ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... said there had been too many graceful "concessions" all round, and of these he made himself the critic. He did not, however, identify himself with the extreme school of so-called "Imperial" thought, which seemed to consider that in some unexplained manner Great Britain had acquired a prior lien on the whole unoccupied portion of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... story of the cat—has been told of so many other persons in different parts of the world that there is every reason to believe it to be a veritable folk-tale joined to the history of Whittington from some unexplained connection. None of the early historians who mention Whittington allude to the incident of the cat, and it is only to be found in popular literature, ballads, plays, &c. The story seems to have taken its rise in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The reason why however the life of Whittington ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.
... still clings to her husband. Unlike Macheath, he seems in no way embarrassed by the position. His wife forgives him, at this supreme moment, all the sorrow he has caused her, in consideration of some unexplained past, "gilded," as she expressed it, "by the sunny smiles of southern France," while the young lady, holding on with great tenacity to his hand, weeps frantically ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... such phenomena without admitting any movement of the land itself, we are required to imagine several retreats and returns of the ocean; and even then our theory applies merely to cases where the marine strata composing the dry land are horizontal, leaving unexplained those more common instances where strata are inclined, curved, or placed on their edges, and evidently not in the position in ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... eyes, and then to bless her, and tell her that she must mind and be a good girl, or detect a look in her face something like Richard's as a small boy. That drew down upon her her mother's fervent embrace, and she was sent back to the nursery very proud, and with a mysterious sense of an important and unexplained state of things, which time, by degrees, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... winds or deposited by the waves,—and that it is almost impossible to exclude them by any artificial expedient, since they are capable of resisting the action of boiling water and even of alcohol itself,—it cannot, we think, be denied that the few cases which still remain obscure or unexplained may be, at least, probably accounted for in accordance with the same natural law which is found to be invariably established in every department to which ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... was not until her subsequent appointment to the Canadian Mission, that she understood the connection between this supernatural warning and her own destiny; but, although the vision remained for a time unexplained, it served as a strong stimulus to her already ardent zeal for the salvation of souls, especially those of the savages. We have already noticed how manifest was the hand of God in her appointment as the companion of the Mother of the Incarnation to Canada, and we are, therefore, quite prepared to ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... among the backward planets. Each of the advanced communities might pick as its probe assignment a single other solar system—and one such probe may well be circling our Sun right now on a routine check for life."[80] Unexplained delayed echoes of earthly radio transmissions received in the past, it is thought, could be evidence of such ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... his creator. "The Lord spake unto Moses, face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." In the union of which I am treating the demonstrative and ordinary appearance will be that of entire equality, which is heightened by the inner, and for the greater part unexplained and undeveloped, impression of a contrary nature. There is in either party a perfect reliance, an idea of inequality with the most entire assurance that it can never operate unworthily in the stronger party, or produce insincerity ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... been suggested by very excellent people that these resemblances are due to some unexplained necessity of adherence to type, as though, the power that they assume created these animals originally, as they are now, coupled creative ability with a plentiful lack of ideas, and so perforce repeated itself with impotent variations. On the other hand, we have the supposition ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... experience of mine—is as clear as a bell. I have done some of my best thinking with my hand on the butt of a pistol. But to return to the question we are discussing. You have left one or two of the main facts unexplained. What caused Weir's vision? She never had an attack of melancholia ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... with Godfrey, offering at the same time to leave his son as a hostage for his good faith. Godfrey agreed to meet him; and, whether to put an end to these useless dissensions, or for some other unexplained reason, he rendered homage to Alexius as his liege lord. He was thereupon loaded with honours, and, according to a singular custom of that age, underwent the ceremony of the "adoption of honour" as son to the emperor. Godfrey and his brother Baudouin de Bouillon conducted themselves with proper courtesy ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... back to the cabin. She was indifferent, she thought, as to whether he did or did not continue his appeals for love. She was under her own deep, unexplained, emotional control which led her forward. She was finding herself, but before she would be safe she would have to throw off a mass of traditional views, beliefs, and teachings. If Philip chose to press his suit while her knowledge ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... further upon his welfare, was truly comic. The Germans, he said, had imposed severe penalties on inhabitants who roamed about the country-side between eight o'clock in the evening and daylight. His quest remained unexplained, except in so far as a sack of something the boys did not examine might have explained it. Bob advised the old man to remain where he was till morning light, and ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... had gained a clearer glimpse into that dark cavern. "Yet I have not been altogether idle," he writes in December, 180O, "having in my own conceit gained great light into several parts of the human mind which have hitherto remained either wholly unexplained or most falsely explained." In March, 1801, he declares that he has "completely extricated the notions of time and space." "This," he says, "I have done; but I trust that I am about to do more—namely, that I shall be able to evolve all the five senses, and to state their growth and the ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... future idleness, we went back to the elementary works, until even he was satisfied that nothing more remained to be done in that direction. I had my two grammars literally by heart, notes and all. Then we revised as thoroughly as possible, reading everything anew, and leaving no passage unexplained. I learned to scan, too, a fact that was sufficient to make a reputation for a scholar, in America, half a century since. [*] After this, we turned our attention to mathematics, a science Mr. Hardinge rightly enough thought ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Frank went on to explain how it came there was a second vacation for the academy boys of Centerville, and also the unfortunate fact of Andy, known among his chums as "Butch" for some unexplained reason, having determined to take an outing in the same region at the identical time they had arranged ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... light on the dark and hidden depths of the Prussian mind. They reveal like no other German writings the meaning of German policy, the spirit which inspires it. They explain what without them would have remained unexplained. He is much more than the historian of the Prussian State, he is the champion of its ideals. Much better than Bismarck, or the Kaiser, or than the "Clown Prince," he makes clear to us the aims and the aspirations of the Hohenzollern monarchy and of ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... all other proprieties, was left in ruins that day. They tore along the Avenue with unexplained and most inexplicable speed, Hope being concealed by riding backward, and by a large shawl, and Blanche and her admirer receiving the full indignation of every chaste and venerable eye. Those who had tolerated all this girl's ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... endeavour to give definite significance, in succeeding chapters, to these expressions, which, standing unexplained and unillustrated, probably convey very little meaning. We shall then see that every work, no matter what its subject-matter, necessarily involves these three principles in varying degrees; and that its success is always strictly in accordance with its ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... a new flood of ideas. We had thought, up there in St. Georges, that this Tako was a ghost. How could one say but that all or most manifestations of the occult were not something like this. The history of our Earth abounds with superstition. Ghosts—things unexplained. How can one tell but that all occultism is merely unknown science? Doubtless it is. I can fancy now that in the centuries of the past many scientists of this realm of the Fourth Dimension ventured forth a ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... fully account for the origin of the Cornish name as preserved by Carew, it would still leave the Saxon appellation the "Hore rock in the wodd" unexplained. How could William of Worcester have got hold of this name? Let us remember that William does not mention any Cornish name of the Mount, and that nothing is ever said at his time of the "Hore rock in the wodd" being a translation of an old Cornish name. All we know is that the monks of the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... President's consideration that rumours unconnected or unexplained acquire almost the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... show how movement, unexplained by dialogue, may be used to condense a middle action, a climax, and an opening. Now, if you will turn to the surprise ending of "The System"—which has been discussed before in its relation to dialogue—you will see how business may condense an ending. Indeed, the very essence ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... to Rowland, something acutely touching in this humble petition. He had always felt a sort of imaginative tenderness for poor little unexplained Giacosa, and these words seemed a supreme contortion of the mysterious obliquity of his life. All of a sudden, as he watched the Cavaliere, something occurred to him; it was something very odd, and it stayed his glance suddenly from again turning to Mrs. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... this was the very man he had been so sedulously careful to avoid, his unexplained position at the receipt of custom changed distaste ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... in, and the brougham moved past the window just as Sir William Gore, who had painfully pulled himself out of his chair, looked out, petrified with surprise at the unexplained crisis that seemed to have come upon the household. "Stamfordham!" he said to himself, "and Frank! What are the Imperialists hatching now, I wonder?" and he mechanically looked round him at Rendel's writing-table. It was, however, closed and forbidding, save for a little corner of white paper that ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... slight movement which might have meant dissent, but which remained unexplained. For a little she stood passive, leaning against him as though she lacked the energy to go, but at length she made a move. Glancing round, she saw that Bertrand ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... beautiful. The ghosts of the old chiefs must surely chuckle when they note that the name by which Canada has called her capital and the centre of her political life, Ottawa, is an Indian name which signifies 'buying and selling.' And the wanderer in this land will always be remarking an unexplained fragrance about the place-names, as from some flower which has withered, and which he does ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... Hen noted her cousin's unexplained nervousness, and it may be she divined a little further. She answered no, not a bit of it. She said she meant to speak to him, not as a business expert, but only as his daughter. It was always a mistake to have secrets in a ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... hour I sat silent and watchful. All at once the feeling of fear took me again. I felt as I imagine an animal must, under the eye of a snake. Yet now I could hear nothing. Still, there was no doubting that some unexplained influence was at work. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... Unexplained arrest, which would greatly astonish an Englishman nowadays, was then a very usual proceeding of the police. Recourse was had to it, notwithstanding the Habeas Corpus Act, up to George II.'s time, especially in such delicate cases as were provided for by lettres de cachet in France; ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Rite, to see a celestial globe on one, and a terrestrial globe on the other; but these are not warranted, if the object be to imitate the original two columns of the Temple. The symbolic meaning of these columns we shall leave for the present unexplained, only adding that Entered Apprentices keep their working-tools in the column JACHIN; and giving you the etymology and literal ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... formal announcement that he intended to ask Congress to repeal it. The question did not come into the foreground, however, until March 5, 1914, when the President addressed this request to Congress in ominous language, which to this day remains unexplained. "No communication I addressed to Congress," he said, "has carried with it more grave and far-reaching implications to the interests of the country." After expressing his belief that the law as it stood violated the treaty and should be repealed ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... she has, also, words that cause the brows to draw together, the mind to pause uneasily, then to cry "Not so!" Of such is the analysis of her own blank ignorance with regard to the marriage-state. This, wholly acceptable while left unexplained, loses its verisimilitude when comparisons are found in her mouth with which to delineate it; and the particular one chosen—of marriage as a coin, "a dirty piece would purchase me the praise of those I loved"—is actually inept, since ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... a reptile, it cannot tell us. That from two different eggs placed under the same hen, should respectively come forth a duckling and a chicken, is a fact not to be accounted for on the hypothesis above developed. Here we are obliged to fall back upon the unexplained principle of hereditary transmission. The capacity possessed by an unorganized germ of unfolding into a complex adult which repeats ancestral traits in minute details, and that even when it has been placed in conditions ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... place whence his forgery was to emanate, was his forming the acquaintance of a member of the abbey, who attended in the name of his brother Benedictines to watch a case that was being litigated for the monastery in the ecclesiastical courts of Rome. From some reason unexplained this monk was under obligation to Bracciolini, who determined that this holy man should be the medium of his forgery being placed before the world. The monk had the necessary qualifications for the tool that was wanted; he was needy and ignorant; above all things, he was stupid. ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... division upon the question. Still, however, the impression which the claim itself had made on the country, was such that it was a point of real duty to quiet people's minds upon it. But it cannot be surprising, that under all these circumstances, and under the fear of some unexplained danger, many people should be caught by a previous question. I was a little mortified at finding our friend Sir P. P. among these. I had no previous intimation of this till I saw him in the division, nor have I had any opportunity of conversing with him since. ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... introduced as in Virgil, but instead of giving her oracle with solemn dignity, she first refuses to speak at all, then under threats of cruel punishment she submits to the influence of the god, but in the midst of the prophetic impulse, Apollo, for some unexplained reason, compels her to stop short and conceal the gist of her message. [46] Even more unpleasant is the description of Sextus Pompeius's consultation of the witch Erichtho; [47] horror upon horror is piled up until the blood curdles at the sickening details, which even ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... they disappeared in a turn of the path, masked suddenly by trees, as if they had vanished in an abyss. Then Ramuntcho felt the grasp of an unexpected melancholy, unexplained like most of his complex impressions, and, with an habitual gesture, while he resumed his less alert march, he brought down like a visor on his gray eyes, very sharp and very soft, the crown of his ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... anything he wanted done by others; he simply commanded, and that was the end of it. But the mass of knowledge about the Terranovans and their world before he came appalled him not only by its sheer bulk but by its intricacy, the unexplained gaps, the contradictions. For a long time after the founding of New Washington—later New Jerusalem—he was still bothered a little by doubt. He wanted to learn all that there was to learn about the Terranovans, so that finally he would ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... instruction of the whole body of Christians, was in the first instance spoken to the Apostles with a special view to their Apostolic vocation; to them it was "given to know the Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven." Doubtless much of what they were thus taught remained unexplained "Mysteries" to them until the Coming of the Holy Ghost on the Day of Pentecost to "guide them into {6} all Truth," and especially to instruct them in the real meaning of what had before seemed to be "hard sayings" in their ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... left the mission house, through a hole made in the thatch, the spirit of revolt took hold of Rosemary McClean again. The stuffy, narrow quarters—the insolent, doubled, unexplained, but very obvious, guard that lounged outside—the sense of rank injustice and helplessness—the weird feeling of impending horror added onto stale-grown ghastliness—youth, chafing at the lack of ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... the day's work, the Malays, man and woman, boy and girl, solace and refresh themselves with tobacco and with the areca-nut, or the betel nut as, for some unexplained reason, it is called in English books, though betel is the name of the pepper leaf in which the areca-nut is wrapped and ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... the time, and every now and then he must have yielded to it, stealing away from the piffling duties of the magazine office—spat on popular art, so to speak—and shut himself away somewhere to forget and to do. Milly remembered certain unexplained absences, which had mystified her at the time and aroused suspicions that he "was having another affair." On his returns he had been morose and dispirited. Evidently the mistress he had wooed in this intermittent and casual fashion had not been kind. But the desire had never left ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... and almost senseless; his lieutenant, Gneisenau, not only saved the army, but repaired, and more than repaired, all its losses by a memorable movement northwards that brought the Prussians again into communication with the British. Napoleon, after an unexplained inaction during the night of the 16th and the morning of the 17th, committed the pursuit of the Prussians to Marshal Grouchy, ordering him never to let the enemy out of his sight; but Bluecher and Gneisenau had already made ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... to the professor the first two days of his stay. His arrival, late one afternoon, in the sewing-machine man's buggy, was as unexplained as it was unexpected; and when he was shown to the little girl's room, which she hospitably relinquished, he volunteered neither his name nor his place of residence. The following morning he left the house, carrying a small paper box and a black ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... with other affections causing difficulty in swallowing, spasmodic dysphagia usually has a sudden and unexplained onset, the progress of symptoms is irregular and erratic, while the remission of symptoms common to all affections of the oesophagus, and the influence of mental impressions, such as excitement, hurry in the presence ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Abiathar's motives are unexplained, but if we notice that he had been obliged to acquiesce in the irregular arrangement of putting the high- priest's office into commission, we can understand that he bore no goodwill to Zadok, his colleague, or to David for making the latter so. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is standing nearly in the same position. The remaining subjects are—a figure which has been sometimes described as that of the Eternal Father, and again as St. John the Baptist, with the Agnus Dei; St. Paul and St. Anthony breaking a loaf in the desert; the Flight into Egypt; two figures unexplained; a man seated on the ground with a bow, taking aim; the Visitation; our Lord healing the man born blind; the Annunciation; and traces almost obliterated, of the Crucifixion, on the bottom ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... For some cause, unexplained in a general sense, the white people in the Colonies and in the States, came to entertain against the colored races therein a prejudice, that showed itself in a hostility to the latter's enjoying equal civil ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... he had given up all hope, and the help of gods or men seemed beyond question, that a strange thing happened. For before his fading and terrified vision there slid, as in a dream of light,—yet without apparent rhyme or reason—wholly unbidden and unexplained,—the face of that other man at the supper table of the railway inn. And the sight, even mentally, of that strong, wholesome, vigorous English face, inspired him suddenly with ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... helped me on my mare and mounted his own horse. Together we rode silently back over the seven or eight miles, only to learn that my father had suddenly died, partly from the shock and partly from my unexplained absence. The old man's strength could not endure ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... when Diana proposed her plan; she would think of it, she said. But when she began to think of it, the attractions were found irresistible. To have her grandchild in the house beside her, perhaps with a vague thought of making up to her daughter in some unexplained way for the wrong she had done; at any rate, to have voices and life in the house again, instead of the bare silence; voices of people that belonged to her own blood; Mrs. Starling found that she could not give up the idea, once it ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... missletoe, and that these had been produced perfect as we now see them; but this assumption seems to me to be no explanation, for it leaves the case of the coadaptations of organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life, untouched and unexplained. ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... fellow-guests, and when in secret I showed her several places on board the yacht where valuables were secreted, she also became convinced that the men were expert thieves to whom her father, for some unexplained reason, rendered assistance and asylum. She told me that since she had left school she had been on quite a number of cruises, and that the same party always accompanied her father. She had, however, never suspected the truth until I pointed it out to her. Well, one hot summer's night we were ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... sight of a thin stream of smoke, rather black than blue, arising from the little chimney at the rear of the cabin. His eyes flew very wide open; his heart experienced a sudden throbless moment; his mind leaped backward to the unexplained smoke mystery of the day before. It was on the end of his tongue to cry out to his unseen patron, to urge him to leave the Witch to her deviltry and come along home, when the old woman ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... reimbursed for the delay caused in sending the case before a prize court; Captains of the American steamers Navajo, Joseph W. Fordney, and Llama appeal to American Embassy at London to procure their release from British marine authorities at Kirkwall; British collier Newlyn is damaged by an unexplained explosion off the Scilly Islands, but makes port; a French battleship, assisted by French aeroplanes, bombards the Turkish encampment ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... dark as pitch. I had left Nokomee asleep in her chamber. I had avoided Holaf, who still kept a kind of amused watch over my activities, and I was free. Free to explore that weird city of plodding lives, of strange unexplained sounds, of ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... another voyage, persuades her husband to fall on Helgi and Finnbogi, when asleep, and murder them and all their men; and then, when he will not murder the five women too, takes up an axe and slays them all herself, and getting back to Greenland, when the dark and unexplained tale comes out, lives unpunished, but abhorred henceforth. All these folks, I say, are no phantoms, but realities; at least, if I can ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... silent, and unresponsive; yet there was nothing forbidding about her appearance. Looking into her soft gray eyes and face still beautiful, though wrinkled and colorless, Helen was conscious of a strange feeling of attraction toward her, a sort of unexplained affinity which women in trouble or distress often feel for one another, but which the sterner fiber of man's nature rarely admits of. She moved impulsively forward, and stretched out her hands in mute invitation, but there was no response. If anything, indeed, her visitor ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The decree of one jurisdiction, on any particular question, will often be found at variance with that of another, while a third will differ from both. The consultor of a work, embracing within its pages such distracting judgments, unexplained by commentary, would be in doubt as to which decision he should adopt, so that coming to the inspection with the desire of solving a legal question, he would be constrained to close the volume, in utter despair of extracting truth or information ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... mind, purely theoretical difficulties or discrepancies will provoke thought. To the astronomer an unaccounted-for perturbation in the path of a planet provokes inquiry; the chemist is challenged by a curious unexplained reaction of two chemical elements, the biologist, anterior to the discovery of micro-organisms, by the putrefaction of animal tissues. The degree to which curiosity persists and the extent of training a ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... to the effect that men and women sometimes get to be such friends, and have such relations, that a sudden unexplained absence of three ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... it was converted into heat, we discover a means whereby it could have been retained in the liquid condition, even when forced for long distances through very narrow channels. Moreover, this explanation accounts for the fact which has long remained unexplained that dikes, except those formed about volcanic craters, rarely, if ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... virtual admission, that, during convulsion, by some sudden change, the bodies of the patients did, as they themselves declared, become, to a marvellous extent, invulnerable,—with the suggestion added, that the nervous fluid may, after some unexplained fashion, have been the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the world, Dr. Woodburn had taken him into his home for a couple of years until he had gone away to school. Arthur had written once or twice, but Beth was staying with her Aunt Margaret, near Welland, that summer, and she had seen fit, for unexplained reasons, to stop the correspondence: so the friendship had ended there. It was five years now since she had seen her old play-fellow, and she found herself wondering if ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... the tragedy of her poor, witless son, the hatred of old Mrs. Brenner, and her ever-present fear of Mart. She had never quite given up her unreasoning hope that some day some one might come to the house in one of Mart's long, unexplained absences and sit down and talk with her over a cup of tea. She put away the feeble hope again as she turned back into the dim room and closed the door ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... GEORGE has known intimately the romantic stream, named, for some unexplained reason, the Dwyfor river. To its musical murmur may be traced the mellifluous cadences of the statesman's voice employed so effectually in his appeals to Labour and the Paris Conference. Who can say what influences this little Welsh river, with its bubbling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... me here to state fully my reasons for joining the Theosophical Society, the three objects of which are: To found a Universal Brotherhood without distinction of race or creed; to forward the study of Aryan literature and philosophy; to investigate unexplained laws of nature and the physical powers latent in man. On matters of religious opinion the members are absolutely free. The founders of the society deny a personal God, and a somewhat subtle form of Pantheism ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... single tear fall, when an ocean of tears is pent up in hearts that would burst and overflow if but one drop should force its way out? Why across the sea came faint gusty stories, like low voices in the wind, of a cloistered garden and sunny seclusion—and a life of unknown and unexplained luxury. What is this picture of a pale face showered with streaming black hair, and large sad eyes looking upon lovely and noble children playing in the sunshine—and a brow pained with thought straining into their destiny? Who is this figure, a man tall and comely, ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... with all the attributes of the spiritual. The hymn that follows this[19] is a bald imitation. In V. 47 there are more or less certain signs of lateness, e.g., in the fourth stanza ("four carry him, ... and ten give the child to drink that he may go," etc.) there is the juggling with unexplained numbers, which is the delight of the later priesthood. Moreover, this hymn is addressed formally to Mitra-Varuna and Agni, and not to the sun-god, who is mentioned only in metaphor; while the final words namo dive, 'obeisance to heaven,' show that the sun is ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... by a barber in S. Giorgio's service, and placed in the Church of S. Pietro a Montorio. Benedetto Varchi describes this picture as having been painted by Buonarroti's own hand. We know nothing more for certain about it. How he earned his money is therefore, unexplained, except upon the supposition that S. Giorgio, unintelligent as he may have been in his patronage of art, paid him for work performed. I may here add that the Piero de' Medici who gave the commission mentioned in the last quotation was the exiled ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... can be the most selfish thing imaginable, and one might as well be reticent on a desert island as in Manicaland. Moreover, despite the tolerant manners of the country, Mills was conscious of something unexplained in his companion— something which engendered ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... had been assaulted one night by a man who secretly cherished a passionate love for her, and in the struggle to defend her honour superhuman strength was given her to fling him into the courtyard below. The mystery of his death remained unexplained until the day of his solemn obsequies, when the lady herself, who attended them and was kneeling in solemn prayer, suddenly fell forward and expired. The mysterious strength of this profound and ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... did not invite confidence; for some reason as yet unexplained the Mother had avoided speaking with her best nurse since that ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... at her heart? The unexplained emotion in her voice moved him profoundly. He cautiously approached. "Of course, we know Frank Congdon—he likes to 'string' us Easterners and we take his yarns with due discount. I suppose Captain Haney, like many other ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... not given to talkativeness; moreover, he was a considerate man, and he respected Harboro. Therefore it may be doubted if he ever said anything about that unexplained drama which occurred on the main street of Eagle Pass on a Sunday morning, before the town was astir. But there was the bartender at the Maverick—and besides, it would scarcely have been possible for ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... are; he and the reader study them together; and when best known, their possibilities are obviously unexhausted, the unknown remains in them still. They go forward into their future, with a real future before them, with an unexplained life to live: not goblets whose contents have been drained, but fountains that still flow when the traveller who drank from them has passed on. Jarno, for example, a man of firm and definite outlines, and drawn here with masterly distinctness, without a blur ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... unaccustomed and unexplained absence always produces, but with no actual apprehension, Mrs. Pember went back to her work. Mellony had certain mild whims of her own, but it was surprising that she should have left her room in disorder, the bed unmade; that was not like her ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... should have all that is good for him, of what the earth produces, and the labour of man can create. Then, why should affluence, and the other accessories of power, have so uniformly a corrupting and dissolving effect upon society? This the common theory leaves unexplained. There is no necessary connection betwixt the enjoyment of abundance and the corruption of nations. The Creator surely has not ordained laws which must necessarily result in the death ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Why, having done so, should he have made a wild attempt to scale the side of the cutting, an impossible feat at any time? Had danger threatened, the ordinary course of things would have been to run up the line towards the signal-box. These points are quite unexplained. Another curious fact is that death appears to have taken place just before the day-man came on duty, as the light at the mouth of the tunnel had been put out, and it was one of the night signalman's duties to do this as soon as daylight appeared; it is possible, therefore, that Pritchard went ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... invisibly through the rain. The Wabbly backed cautiously away from the spot where they landed, because they were wholly invisible and they made a sound which those in the Wabbly could not understand. Always, to a savage, the unexplained is dangerous. Modern warfare has reached the same high peak of wisdom. The Wabbly drew off from the sparks because it could not know what made them, and because it had used its power-beam and the bomber had dropped its bombs without stopping or destroying them. It was not conceivable ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... dust-free as from a warm body. Combustion and evaporation explanations suffered their death-blow. But he was unable to suggest any other explanation in their room, and so the phenomenon remained curious and unexplained. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... place that Cap'n Sproul decided upon after several days of rumination. His own abstraction during that time, and the unexplained absence of Hiram, the bridegroom of a month, an absence that was prolonged into a week, caused secret tears and apprehensive imaginings ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... sand by the impalpable wind—matter and motion, that was all! Again and again he said, in his dry way, that no theory was of any use that was not supported by facts; and that though there was left a little corner of thought, which was still unexplained, we should soon have some more facts, and the last ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... left what may be called a hypothetical estate, consisting chiefly of claims upon the first Earl of Lonsdale, the payment of which, though their justice was acknowledged, that nobleman contrived in some unexplained way to elude so long as he lived. In October, 1787, he left school for St. John's College, Cambridge. He was already, we are told, a fair Latin scholar, and had made some progress in mathematics. The earliest books we ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... surprising of all she did not discover till she was going to bed on the second night after their arrival, when she thought she knew all about the mysterious doors and what they led to. A little unexplained draught of wind made her candle flicker, and betrayed the existence of still another door so cunningly hid in the wall pattern that she had failed to notice it. She had quite a creepy feeling as she drew her dressing-gown about her, took a light, and entered the ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... Mozart was, he possessed such integrity and independence that he refused a most liberal offer from the King of Prussia to become his chapel-master, for some unexplained reason which involved his sense of right and wrong. The first year of his marriage he wrote "Il Seraglio," and made the acquaintance of the aged Gluck, who took a deep interest in him and warmly ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... governess and followed by a huge hirsute flunkey in the canary coloured livery of the Snobkys, she used occasionally in these promenades to meet with young Lord Claude Lollipop, the Marquis of Sillabub's younger son. In the very height of the season, from some unexplained cause, the Snobkys suddenly determined upon leaving town. Miss Snobky spoke to her female friend and confidante. 'What will poor Claude Lollipop say when he hears of my ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this way, action through the subliminal seeming thus in many individuals to have the prerogative of inducing relatively stable change. If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door, then. But just HOW anything operates in this region is still unexplained, and we shall do well now to say good-by to the PROCESS of transformation altogether—leaving it, if you like, a good deal of a psychological or theological mystery—and to turn our attention to the fruits of the religious ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... will wait for me here—safe in your secret home." And then she looked out over the misty clover-grown pleasance to the country beyond bathed in brilliant moonlight. And something in the beauty of it stilled the wild ache in her heart. She would not admit into her thoughts the least fear, but some unexplained, unconquerable apprehension stayed in her innermost soul. She knew, only she refused to face the fact, ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... exploded rationalistic explanation of the New Testament miracles, and deriving an important event from a mere accident, leaves the figure of Christ and the Greek or Latin inscription, 'By this sign thou shalt conquer!' altogether unexplained. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... her original fright, her attention fixed on the injured part, arrested there amidst increasing pain, incapable of acquiring fresh notions unless it were under the lash of some violent emotion. Moreover, he also admitted the probability of accidents due to nutrition, as yet unexplained, and on the course and importance of which he himself would not venture to give an opinion. However, the idea that Marie dreamt her disease, that the fearful sufferings torturing her came from an injury ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... remains an unexplained incident in Joseph Smith's career. Instead of taking the mayoralty himself, he allowed that office to be bestowed upon Bennett, Smith and Rigdon accepting places among the councillors, Bennett having taken up his residence in Nauvoo in September, 1840. His election as mayor ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... but these Jesuits have cast a peculiar melancholy over me; this frog's blood of mine would warm to generous impulses! . . . I wonder where I have seen that younger fanatic?" The marquis mused a while, but the riddle remained elusive and unexplained. He struck the bell to summon Jehan. "Announce to Monsieur le Comte my desire to hold ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... passed McKelvey's limousine and saw Sir Gerald, a large, ruddy, pop-eyed, Teutonic Englishman whose dribble of yellow mustache gave him an aspect sad and doubtful. Babbitt drove on slowly, oppressed by futility. He had a sudden, unexplained, and horrible conviction that the ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... and he is exceedingly frightened of other people's contempt for it. And he is unable, because the words he is accustomed to use are valueless in this connection, and he feels priggish if he tries to use others.... But, though unexplained, the mystical tendency is there, and should ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... if they had but one mind between them, till the present seemed all a fevered dream, and the past alone reality. She could not have been deceived then: then, at least, he had loved her. Oh, had she not wronged him? had there not been a mistake—some incident unexplained? He had warned her that his temper was proud and jealous, and she felt now that she ought to have written and asked an explanation. She had thrown away her happiness, and deserved her fate. Then she recollected that such thoughts ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various |
