"Circumstantial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wanted. She was on the spot at the time—the death-dealing weapon was essentially a woman's weapon, and the murdered woman was her feared and hated rival—and now we have direct evidence that she felt her to be such. If the judges can find any other hypothesis supported by stronger circumstantial evidence than this—why, I think that I had ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... investigation. The Socialist press was destined to take it up, defend him and demand the truth. But, swamped by a perfectly overwhelming capitalist press, not only naturally hostile but in this case already heavily subsidized; shattered by the close-knit, circumstantial evidence; hamstrung and hampered in every way by the power of unlimited money and Tammany pull, the Socialists might as well have tried to sweep back the sea with a broom as save this man from legal crucifixion. Worse still, they themselves, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... difference in principle between our measures and those you are so ready to condemn among the people I am treating of? There is none; the difference is merely circumstantial. Thus we denounce, instead of banishing—we libel, instead of scourging—we turn out of office, instead of hanging—and where they burnt an offender in proper person, we either tar and feather, or burn ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... last moment, seeing that it demands the most careful piecing together and the most elaborate dove-tailing. Nevertheless, if you cast your joke upon the waters, you shall find it no joke after many days. This is what I read in the Lyttelton Times, New Zealand: "The chain of circumstantial evidence seems fairly irrefragable. From all accounts, Mr. Zangwill himself was puzzled, after carefully forging every link, how to break it. The method ultimately adopted I consider more ingenious than convincing." After that I made up my mind never to joke again, but this ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... the boy who gave his name as John Burgess, sat down beside Paul, while he, with the frankness of boyhood, gave a circumstantial account of his father's death, and the ill-treatment he had ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... and as he kneels the image thus addresses him: "Thomas, thou hast written well concerning me; what price wilt thou receive for thy labour?" The myth-making faculty of the people at large was also brought into play. According to a widespread and circumstantial legend, Albert, by magical means, created an android—an artificial man, living, speaking, and answering all questions with such subtlety that St. Thomas, unable to answer its reasoning, broke it to pieces ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Haydon condoned those offenses upon which Deveny stood convicted by circumstantial evidence. Nor had Haydon ever sought to defend Deveny. On the other hand, Haydon's condemnation of the outlaw and his men had been vigorous—almost too vigorous for Haydon's safety, she had ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... communicate what she had to tell. Impatient or not, she must wait a moment, while I say a word about her. Our Landlady is as good a creature as ever lived. She is a little negligent of grammar at times, and will get a wrong word now and then; she is garrulous, circumstantial, associates facts by their accidental cohesion rather than by their vital affinities, is given to choking and tears on slight occasions, but she has a warm heart, and feels to her boarders as if they were her blood-relations. She began her ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... correspond very closely indeed to the dial-work which forms the greater part of the de Dondi clock, and for this reason we suggest now that the two clocks were very closely related in other ways too. This, circumstantial though it be, is evidence for thinking that the weight drive and some form of escapement were known to Richard of Wallingford, ca. 1320. It would narrow the gap between the clock and the protoclocks to less than half a century, perhaps a single ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... was the only woman you saw for some months; and she had, I think you allow, possession of your cabin, to and from which you had of course constant egress and regress. Sir, human nature is human nature; here is temptation, and opportunity, and circumstantial evidence enough, in our days, to hang a man. What have you to offer ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... this first monastery was utterly destroyed by the Danes about the year 870. The very circumstantial account given in the chronicle of Abbot John, derived from Ingulf, is well known; but as it is entirely without corroboration in any of the historians who mention the destruction of the monastery, recent criticism has not ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... of the man's bold and devoted character as to be absolutely sure that if Saracinesca loved Corona he would not seriously think of marrying Donna Tullia. He had done all he could to strengthen the passion when he guessed it was already growing, and at the very moment when he had received circumstantial evidence of it which placed it beyond all doubt, he had allowed himself to be discovered, through his ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... predicament; emergence, emergency; exigency, crisis, pinch, pass, push; occurrence; turning point. bearings, how the land lies. surroundings, context, environment 229a[TE 232]; location 184. contingency, dependence (uncertainty) 475; causation 153, attribution 155. Adj. circumstantial; given, conditional, provisional; critical; modal; contingent, incidental; adventitious &c. (extrinsic) 6; limitative[obs3]. Adv. in the circumstances, under the circumstances &c. n., the circumstances, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... writing down what they said, seeing their very manner of saying, living with them as often and as long as he wills—with such a personal unity, that an ingenious lawyer once told me that he required no stronger evidence of a fact in any court of law than a circumstantial scene ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... hero's thrilling adventures, he almost shed tears when the girl who had helped the hero outwit the villain was found mysteriously murdered. With keen interest he watched the authorities carry the hero to jail. He was first in the audience at the trial, he drew a long breath when only circumstantial evidence could be brought out, his heart sank when the villain rushed into the court room and cried out that he had conclusive evidence, his hopes went down, a sharp pain assailed him in the shoulder, he thought the villain had grabbed him, he jumped up and—in place of the court room, prisoner, ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... perfection is more circumstantial and more prosaic. "The function of man is an activity of soul in accordance with reason," and his happiness or well-being will consist in the fulness of rational living. But such fulness requires a sphere of life that will call forth ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... actual circumstances of the crime, as far as they could be constructed from what evidence there was. This evidence was purely circumstantial, but of a sort which left no reasonable doubt that the murder had been committed by the prisoner in the manner suggested. Mr. Godfrey Mills had gone to London on the Tuesday of the fatal week, intending to return ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... In spite of circumstantial evidence, he reflected that those impassioned letters did not correspond in any way to this woman in the flesh. Never was woman more controlled, more adept in the lies of good breeding. He remembered the ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... of my character of incongnito has engaged early talent in the discussion of a curious question of evidence. But a cause, however ingeniously pleaded, is not therefore gained. You may remember, the neatly-wrought chain of circumstantial evidence, so artificially brought forward to prove Sir Philip Francis's title to the Letters of Junius, seemed at first irrefragable; yet the influence of the reasoning has passed away, and Junius, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... was not difficult to believe. It was less difficult to believe that he was lying. There is no inventor in the world so clever, so circumstantial, so exact as to detail, as the Chinaman. He is a born teller of stories and piecer together of circumstances that fit so closely that it is difficult to see the joints. Yet the man had been frank, straightforward, patently honest. He had even placed himself ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... after many days of suspense, during which rumors and reports of war grew into circumstantial statements of engagements at sea and battles on land. A mysterious vessel was said to have slipped in at night with despatches for the governor. All was sensation and canard, on dit and oui dire, and all ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... countenance the stories, long and widely current, about the "evil eye"? or is it a mere fancy that such a power belongs to any human being? Have you any personal experience as to the power of fascination said to be exercised by certain animals? What can you make of those circumstantial statements we have seen in the papers, of children forming mysterious friendships with ophidians of different species, sharing their food with them, and seeming to be under some subtile influence exercised by those creatures? Have you read, critically, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of this circumstantial sheet, I do not think I have said enough of the bravery of the American troops. To have an idea of their vivacity and intrepidity, you must have shared their danger and seen their charge, which exceeded any thing of the sort ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany
... murder,—a fowl crime it may well be called, for it is the slaughter of one of Mr. Hayward's hens. He has been seen to chase the hens, several times, and the other day one of them was found dead. Possibly he may be innocent, and, as there is nothing but circumstantial evidence, it must be ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... one of grave and lofty eloquence, apt to move even to tears the reader who is fully alive to the stupendous issues that were involved in the discussion. Hamilton was supremely endowed with the faculty of imagining, with all the circumstantial minuteness of concrete reality, political situations different from those directly before him; and he put this rare power to noble use in tracing out the natural and legitimate working of such a Constitution as that which ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Republic of Brazil was waited on by Admiral Prince Heinrich von Schnitzenhausen, who was attended by an imposing armed guard. After compliments, the admiral stated that his Imperial master wished to be informed as to the truth or otherwise of a circumstantial statement made by the German Consul at Maceio, and confirmed by functionaries at Pernambuco, that on a certain date, to wit, September the 2d, he, Dom Corria De Sylva, aided and abetted by a number of filibusters, did unlawfully ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... found in the foreman's box. Upon examination, this note was discovered to be the very note which Mr. Macpherson sent with the change to Pasgrave. It was No. 177, of Sir William Forbes's bank, as mentioned in the circumstantial entry in the day-book. The joy of the poor dancing-master at this complete proof of his innocence was rapturous and voluble. Secure of the sympathy of Forester, Henry, and Dr. Campbell, he looked at them by turns, whilst he congratulated himself ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Wimp, with his flexible intellect, had a great contempt for Grodman and his slow, laborious, ponderous, almost Teutonic methods. Worse, he almost threatened to eclipse the radiant tradition of Grodman by some wonderfully ingenious bits of workmanship. Wimp was at his greatest in collecting circumstantial evidence; in putting two and two together to make five. He would collect together a number of dark and disconnected data and flash across them the electric light of some unifying hypothesis in a way which would have done ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... people. She held that every other human ailment was unworthy of mention in the presence of her sovereign affliction. Whenever anybody presumed to speak of their little personal sufferings before her, she said: "You should thank Heaven you haven't got the rheumatics," and would then proceed to give a circumstantial history of her acquaintance with that disease. Therefore, on this occasion, she was quite unaware that poor Bog sat opposite to her with a pale, dejected face, playing aimlessly on his plate with his knife and fork. She thought only, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... great master from presumptuous confidence in his abilities, that, in his examinations of the sick, he was remarkably circumstantial and particular. He well knew that the originals of distempers are often at a distance from their visible effects; that to conjecture, where certainty may be obtained, is either vanity or negligence; and that life is not to be sacrificed, either to an affectation ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... for the thought. If there was an honest person in the world, it was Morgan. She had heard her father talk of circumstantial evidence, and how easy it was to draw wrong conclusions. She was puzzled. One thing was certain, she had seen the ring ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... fellow, with thy profane foolery," said Don Rodrigo; "it is not seemly when the life of thy master is at stake. Prepare to give me a full and circumstantial account of this iniquitous business, or by my sword thou shalt severely rue the day thy master first bestrode ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... Vivian with a sepulchral voice, "'tis all over with me: I have been thinking what would come next. This is too much: I am already dead. Have Boreall arrested; the chain of circumstantial ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... [9] A circumstantial account of the Jihad or Moslem crusades is, I am told, given in the Fath el Habashah, unfortunately a rare work. The Amir of Harar had but one volume, and the other is to be found at Mocha ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... disgrace of the judiciary of New York, that scores of ignorant, helpless, and innocent Negroes—and a few white people too—were convicted upon the confessions of the terror-stricken witnesses! There is not a court to-day in all enlightened Christendom that would accept as evidence—not even circumstantial—the incoherent utterances of these Negro "confessors." And yet an intelligent (?) New-York court thought the evidence "clear (?), ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... 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 ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... that it does not seem to have been known to Greek Fathers, and that it is very doubtful whether any of them, with the exception of Theodoret, had ever seen it, has led many critics to maintain that it was written in Syriac. Nothing but circumstantial evidence of this can be produced. This alone shows how little we really know of the original. The recently discovered works, being in Arabic and Armenian, even supposing them to be translations from the Syriac and that the Diatessaron was ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... importance in the former narration of my life. I willingly comply with your desire, in giving you a more circumstantial relation; though the labor seems rather painful, as I cannot use much study or reflection. My earnest wish is to paint in true colors the goodness of God to me, and the depth of my own ingratitude—but it is impossible, as numberless ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... her about them. My story was long; but she was evidently touched by it, for she asked me quite a number of circumstantial questions, which I took for proof of her friendly interest. She wanted to know the exact title of the manuscript, its shape, its appearance, and its age; she asked me for the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... Hogarth, while O'Hara's eyes started from his head: "and liar, too, it seems. Ha!—he gave me the most circumstantial story. Why didn't you tell me ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... no means my intention to describe the exact state and condition of the Gitanos in every town and province where they are to be found; perhaps, indeed, it will be considered that I have already been more circumstantial and particular than the case required. The other districts which they inhabit are principally those of Catalonia, Murcia, and Valencia; and they are likewise to be met with in the Basque provinces, where ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... things. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is more explicit, yet it does not exceed in clearness the oracles of Delphos. The historical proof that Moses, Isaiah, and Hosea did write when they are said to have written is far from being clear and circumstantial. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the author departs from the narrative of facts, and endeavours to render those facts consistent with reason and experience, we see the one-sided bias of his mind—we see that he is not a judge but an advocate; and the faith which we should repose on the circumstantial narrative of a gentleman, becomes changed into the courtesy with which we listen to an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... a reference to the circumstances of the particular to which we argue. For herein consists the essential distinction between an analogical and an inductive argument. Since, in an inductive argument, we draw a general conclusion, we have no concern with the circumstantial peculiarity of individual instances, but simply with their abstract agreement. Whereas, on the contrary, in an analogical argument, we draw a particular conclusion, we must enter into a consideration of the circumstantial peculiarity of the individual instance, in order to exhibit the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... 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 been expected, was a very splendid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Josephus in particular are cited. (1) The circumstances attending the death of Herod Agrippa I. in A.D. 44. Here Acts xii. 21-23 is largely parallel to Jos. Antt. xix. 8. 2; but the latter adds an omen of coming doom, while Acts alone gives a circumstantial account of the occasion of Herod's public appearance. Hence the parallel, when analysed, tells against dependence on Josephus. So also with (2) the cause of the Egyptian pseudo-prophet in Acts xxi. 37, f., ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a good specimen of the groundless rumors, all with copious circumstantial evidence, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... when he wrote it. Still, this is only conjecture. We have only circumstantial evidence. ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... by the condition of the dead and other circumstantial evidence that the fight had taken place at the very beginning of the great battle—that is, on the morning of Tuesday, the 8th, when the French were slowly pushed back from the vicinity of Fere Champenoise. The road ran through the middle ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... accumulation of circumstantial evidence against him. He was the last person seen in company with the murdered woman—for no one seems to have seen her after they left Munsden; he appeared to be quarrelling with her when she was last seen ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... 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 ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... made before witnesses, whom the father had asked to countersign his report. I have preserved this letter, and have added a few circumstantial details thereto. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... sense. But the meagre list of determinations thus produced in an evolved type of language can yield one no idea of the vast medley of complicated forms that serve the same ends at the lower levels of human experience. Moreover, there are many other shades of secondary and circumstantial meaning which in advanced languages are invariably represented by distinct words, so that when not wanted they can be left out, but in a more primitive tongue are apt to run right through the very grammar of the sentence, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... hopped to twenty-five knots, dumped over a 300-pound "ash-can," and got Mister U-boat. At least, the British admiralty later gave her 100 per cent on the circumstantial evidence. Two other destroyers—the 396 and the 384, we will call them—went at once to the job of taking off passengers from ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... ever existed—was probably a drunkard, not an uncommon complaint in that settlement, or a person qualified for the state asylum. The inference is drawn from strong circumstantial evidence, and not from prejudice. As witness, the saloon seemed to have claimed his most serious effort as a piece of finished construction. Here his weakness peeps through in no uncertain manner. The bar occupies at least half of the building, and the fittings ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the Emperor Francis the minutest details about the magnificent way in which the marriage was celebrated, and the French Ambassador thus described that monarch's satisfaction: "The Emperor of Austria received to-day from Count Metternich most circumstantial accounts of what took place in Paris, April 5, and he expressed to me his great delight. The unprecedented honors paid to his daughter did not touch him so much as the delicacy displayed by His Majesty the Emperor Napoleon. I am especially bidden to convey to Your Excellency the expression of ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... such miracles," said she, with a kind of gasp, her eyes very bright, and her cheeks pinker than they had been when she was suspected of bridehood. She was still suspected of it; indeed, I think that in the minds of the black satin codfishes circumstantial evidence had tinkered suspicion into certainty. But Ellaline was deaf to the "madam." They might have turned her from wife into widow without her noticing. She was burning with the desire to possess those embroidered cobwebs and those frilled petticoats. I don't know ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... establish his innocence at once. I leave you a single mouth in which to do this, and at the same time screen yourself, if that be possible. If, at the end of a month, it is not done, then a copy of this letter, with a circumstantial statement of the whole iniquitous affair, will be placed in the hands of your husband, and another in the hands of your daughter. I have so provided for this that no failure can take place. So be warned and make the innocence of George ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... absolute facts known concerning the external events of Dante's life. A multitude of statements, often with much circumstantial detail, concerning other incidents, have been made by his biographers; a few rest upon a foundation of probability, but the mass are guess-work. There is no need to report them; for small as the sum of our actual knowledge is, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... dreaded, all that I feared is fallen upon me: I have been arraigned, and convicted, three judges, severe as the three infernal ones, sat in condemnation on me, a father, a mother, and a sister; the fact, alas, was too clearly proved, and too many circumstantial truths appeared against me, for me to plead not guilty. But, oh heavens! Had you seen the tears, and heard the prayers, threats, reproaches and upbraidings—these from an injured sister, those my heartbroken parents; ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... this missive, and arranged in his mind the damning, if circumstantial, evidence he had accumulated, he awaited the hour with confidence, for his nature was not lacking in the cock-surety of a Briton. All the same, he dressed himself particularly well that morning, putting ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... did not take this well-known gaze with meekness. She was a small person, thin as a lath, with no attempt at complexion, and a way of doing her hair which alone would have proved impeccable virtue in the face of incriminating circumstantial evidence. She had neat little features, and a neat little figure, though "provincial" was written over her in conspicuous letters; and the gray eyes which she fastened on Miss Dene looked almost ill with gloomy intelligence. She did not attempt to "down" the beautifully ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... created by a nation's struggle for existence. In any such struggle it is impossible to obtain proper authority in circumstantial fashion beforehand. In fact, any previous attempt to obtain a regular decision from the majority would probably ruin the undertaking from the outset. For internal schisms would make the people defenceless against external dangers. ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... not, however, share Mr. Orde's optimism. The circumstantial evidence was very strong. Interest in the trial was such that people came from far out in the country to attend it. Every day of the preliminaries the court-room was filled with silent spectators. The ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... 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 to an occasional conformist. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... views of the subject were presented to my mind. It did not entirely satisfy me to narrate wrongs; I felt like denouncing them. I could not always curb my moral indignation{282} for the perpetrators of slaveholding villainy, long enough for a circumstantial statement of the facts which I felt almost everybody must know. Besides, I was growing, and needed room. "People won't believe you ever was a slave, Frederick, if you keep on this way," said Friend Foster. "Be yourself," said Collins, "and tell your story." It ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... find him guilty," Mr. Thompson said. "The jury will see that he received very strong provocation; and after all, the evidence is, so far as we know at present, wholly circumstantial, and unless the prosecution can bring home to him the possession of the rope, it is likely enough they will give him the benefit of ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... cried. "I'm lawyer enough to know that there's nothing in the world so misleading as circumstantial ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... have translated from the more circumstantial account in Stowe. LL. has, simply, 'his entrails and ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... enquirers do this to the best of their power, and their views will undergo an unlooked-for change. Other difficulties of a more circumstantial kind, it is true, still remain for them; and of these I shall speak presently. But putting these for the moment aside, and regarding the question under its widest aspects only—regarding it only in connection ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... typhoid. But was Mr. Willcox quite sure? Yes, Mr. Willcox had to be sure of just such things. So Mrs. Bainbridge drove out to Miss Langrais' tea at the golf club, and passed on the glad tidings with an addition of circumstantial detail. Mister Masters (people found that it was quite good fun to say this, with assorted intonations) had been sick for many months at—she thought—the New York Hospital. Sometimes his temperature had touched a hundred and fifteen degrees and sometimes he had not had any temperature ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... 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 the experienced angler ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... reticule and flipped it at him. Even before he opened it he recognized the familiar handwriting, the profuse capitals, of Mrs. Reynolds. Fortunately, he made no comment, for the contents were utterly different from his quick anticipation. It contained a minute and circumstantial account of his visits during the past year to Mrs. Croix, with many other details, which, by spying and bribing, no doubt, she had managed to gather. Failing one revenge, the woman had resorted to another, and fearing that it ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... signing their provoking report,—Friedrich, confident in Heucking, had transmitted to his Supreme Board of Justice (KAMMERGERICHT) the impartial Heucking's account of the affair, with order, "See there, an impartial human account, clear and circumstantial (DEUTLICHES UND GANZ UMSTANDLICHES), going down to the true roots of the business: swift, get me justice for these Arnolds!" [Preuss, iii. 480.] Scarcely was this gone, when, September 29th, the Custrin impertinence, "Perfectly right as it stood," ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the committal may be readily foreseen. Mr. Pennifeather, amid the loud execrations of all Rattleborough, was brought to trial at the next criminal sessions, when the chain of circumstantial evidence (strengthened as it was by some additional damning facts, which Mr. Goodfellow's sensitive conscientiousness forbade him to withhold from the court) was considered so unbroken and so thoroughly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... la Ville. The first question the abbe asked me was whether I thought myself capable of paying a visit to eight or ten men-of-war in the roads at Dunkirk, of making the acquaintance of the officers, and of completing a minute and circumstantial report on the victualling, the number of seamen, the guns, ammunition, discipline, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... up. There was guilt in the heart of one boy at least, but which one there was no evidence at present to show. That the fact of the snuff-box being found in Howard's bed had at first sight looked like circumstantial evidence against him could not be denied, but as the links in the chain had been broken in several places, he considered that the whole had fallen to pieces, and he confessed that he did not believe for a moment, from the facts before him, that Howard was guilty. From his knowledge ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... shall we continue, in more circumstantial detail, the history of their attempts to escape from their mountain prison; which they were now convinced could only be done by climbing ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... But a purely circumstantial explanation of an important departure in a man's life will only appear satisfactory to fatalists who worship the blind god Environment. And without indulging in any abstruse psychological discussion, but rather looking ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... Meeker was apt to be discussed with great freedom, and Nan told long stories about her own childish experiences, which were listened to and encouraged, and matched with others even longer and more circumstantial by Marilla. The doctor, who was always reading when he could find a quiet hour for himself, often smiled as he heard the steady sound of voices from the wide kitchen, and he more than once took a few careful steps into the dining-room, and ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... any account of himself. When his mind was again clear, he remembered that it was his duty to tell the story of the accident on the mountain, but as soon as he uttered a few words on the subject he was met by an animated and circumstantial account of the affair in all its details. Two Englishmen, and two guides, and a porter had been crossing the mountain when the avalanche took place; a guide and a porter had been killed, and their bodies had been recovered. One Englishman ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Lesurques has certainly assured impunity to many criminals; but, it is necessary to say it justifies hesitation in receiving circumstantial evidence in ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... to the jurist, the study of human nature and human character with its infinite varieties, especially as affecting the connection between motive and action, between irregular desire or evil disposition and crime itself, is equally indispensable and difficult."—Wills on Circumstantial Evidence. ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... if he were drawing plans of those towns, and collected local traditions of the coast and the country, of the smugglers, the Huguenot settlements, and the old war time of 1778-82. The Annual Register and the Gentleman's Magazine furnished him with suggestive incidents and circumstantial reports which he expanded with admirable fertility of imagination; so that by combining what he saw with what he read he could lift the curtain and light up again an obscure corner of the Kentish coast, and the doings of the queer folk who lived on it a century before he went there. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Englishman, but one well acquainted with Paris and Parisian matters, 'spotted' him in the Hill Road. Others followed suit, and at last one afternoon a member of the 'Globe' staff called upon me and supplied me with such circumstantial particulars that I could not possibly deny the accuracy of his information. But M. Zola had then left Wimbledon, and thus I was able to fence with my visitor and inform him that, even if the novelist had ever been in the town, he was not ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... occurring on the last night of the life of Jesus, and at the precise moment of his arrest. If this version were the true one, we should scarcely understand why John, who had been the intimate witness of so touching an episode, should not mention it in the very circumstantial narrative which he has furnished of the evening of the Thursday.[4] All that we can safely say is, that, during his last days, the enormous weight of the mission he had accepted pressed cruelly upon Jesus. Human nature asserted itself for a time. Perhaps he began to hesitate about his ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... deadly pale—he was speechless—his tongue refused its office, for then the dreadful conviction forced itself upon him, that he was regarded as the murderer of that young woman. And how could he prove his innocence? The weight of circumstantial evidence against him was tremendous and might produce his conviction and ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... curved her lips, she was beginning to judge the situation more correctly, and in a calmer tone she resumed: "Moreover, what does circumstantial evidence prove? Did you not this morning hear all our servants declaring that I was accountable for M. de Chalusse's millions? Who knows what might have happened if it had not been for your intervention? Perhaps, by this time, I should have ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... must be 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 to live, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... carcases may be found, in consequence of the general belief that living cows go mad if they find the grave of a companion; so that I should probably have made a laborious collection of the bones of the bos domesticus. This belief of the bergers respecting the cows is supported by several circumstantial and apparently trustworthy accounts of fearful fights among herds of cattle over the grave of some of the herd. The sight of a companion's blood is said to have a similar effect upon them. Thus a small pasturage between Anzeindaz and the Col de Cheville, on the border of the cantons ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... settled in this agreeable solitude, when he received a letter from his friend Settimo, asking him for an exact and circumstantial detail of his circumstances and mode of living, of his plans and occupations, of his son John, &c. His answer was prompt, and is not uninteresting. "The course of my life," he says, "has always been uniform ever since the frost of age has quenched the ardour of my youth, and particularly ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... character, and the barbarous manner of his crime. And yet while everybody spoke of him as undoubtedly guilty, almost everybody had a thought of Clarkson haunting his mind, and an uneasy desire to find out the truth, entirely incompatible with the clearness of the circumstantial evidence. ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... American blood-curdler," it said, in a voice which seemed to come in a hollow murmur from the earth beneath it. "None other is genuine. I am the embodiment of Edgar Allan Poe. I am circumstantial and horrible. I am a low-caste spirit-subduing spectre. Observe my blood and my bones. I am grisly and nauseous. No depending on artificial aid. Work with grave-clothes, a coffin-lid, and a galvanic battery. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... through ignorance, sifted through to the bottomless pits could have saved themselves had they realized the truth and "taken stock" of themselves, in time—of course, allowing for those, who are victims of circumstantial evidence. ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... herself: it would have meant also the establishment of a college beyond the sea, removed from the Founder's supervision and control. No one who knows human nature, or daughters, or Dorothy Wadham, can regard the story as more than an interesting fiction. And yet, is there no foundation for Wood's circumstantial narrative? Does the fact that the Foundress was presented as a Recusant mean nothing? The problem is one worthy of the industry and ingenuity ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... is told on the authority of Weed with much circumstantial detail including the full text of a letter written by McClellan. The letter was produced because McClellan had said that no negotiations took place. Though the letter plainly alludes to negotiations of some sort, it does not mention the specific offer attributed to Lincoln. Nicolay and Hay are silent ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... living. She was very kind through it all, or she tried to be; but Fleda felt there was a difference since the time when her aunt kept house in State street and Mrs. Renney made jellies for her. When her neighbours' affairs were exhausted Mrs. Renney fell back upon her own, and gave Fleda a very circumstantial account of the occurrences that were drawing her westward; how so many years ago her brother had married and removed thither; how lately his wife had died; what in general was the character of his wife, and what, in particular, the story of her decease; how many children ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... White girls anything for the information. Glass alleys, paint cards or even popcorn rings were powerless to corrupt them. Once Jimmy Watson became the hero of an hour by circulating the report that he had smelled it cooking when he took the milk to Miss Barner's; but alas, for circumstantial evidence. ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... Gaulish Druids" are discussed. Mr. Elton notices the difference between the continental and the British Druids, but ascribes it to unequal development (Origins of Eng. Hist., 267-268). Caesar's well-known account of the wickerwork sacrifice is very circumstantial. It is not repeated by either Diodorus or Strabo, who both refer to individual human sacrifice. Pliny introduces the mistletoe, oak, and serpent cults, and the other three authorities are apparently dependent upon ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... adjudged—of one member of the family by the criminal act of another. Certain circumstances attending this fatal occurrence had brought the deed irresistibly home to a nephew of the deceased Pyncheon. The young man was tried and convicted of the crime; but either the circumstantial nature of the evidence, and possibly some lurking doubts in the breast of the executive, or, lastly—an argument of greater weight in a republic than it could have been under a monarchy,—the high respectability and political influence of the ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... learned this lesson; and depressed as he was with grief for his patron, and disappointment at the escape of the French frigate, his prospects seemed altogether clouded. A letter which he wrote to the Earl of Sandwich on this occasion, displays all the struggle of his feelings. Circumstantial proof that everything was done to prevent the enemy from escaping; a modest allusion to his former services; expressions of the keenest sorrow for his loss; a bitter sense of his desolate condition; with earnest appeals ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... as sure of Tom Cameron's guiltlessness as she was of her own faithfulness. But how damning the circumstantial ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... greatest monster of our criminal annals, and yet even in that case some kind-hearted people said I had gone quite to the limits of a Judge's rights in summing up the case. Let me say a word about circumstantial evidence. Some writers have spoken of it as a kind of "dangerous innovation in our criminal procedure." It is actually almost the only evidence that is obtainable in all great crimes, and it is ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... that these 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... and monastical instructions will not effect for men what is to be expected from evangelical doctrine. And if the faith of Christ was so much declined (and its decayed state ought to be dated from about the year 270,) we need not wonder that such scenes as Eusebius hints at without any circumstantial details, took place in the Christian world."—Century IV, Chap. I. (Parenthetical clause is Milner's; italicizing, mine.) In addition to this quotation, and as if to give emphasis, the historian places prominently in a side-head the words, "Decay of pure Christianity, ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... confession of love and the startling discovery that Dolly was a professional model"; "The Doctor's Story," with a picture of a corpse, "whose white shapely hands were clasped one over the other"; and "Would you Convict on Circumstantial Evidence?—A Scaffold Confession. A True Story." I glance at this, and read, "While the crowd watched in strained, breathless silence there came a sharp agonised voice and a commotion near the steps of the scaffold. 'Stop! Stop! The man is not guilty. I ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... is all circumstantial, or rather inferential. But I picked up the final link in the chain—the human link—yesterday. One of the detectives had been dogging Duvall. Two days ago the senator disappeared, unaccountably. I put two and two together, and late ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... Accumulate wealth by any means, however illegal, profligate, infamous. You are sure of impunity; for the natives of India are, by their religion, debarred from appearing against you out of their own country; and circumstantial evidence will not be received." But neither the complaints of the accused nor the accusers quickened the proceedings of the peers. They still walked leisurely from the hall to their chamber, and from ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... his own vote for Ingelheim; and it is singular that he does not so much as mention Aix-la-Chapelle. Of his education and his early years, Mr. James is of opinion that we know as little as of his birth-place. Certainly our information upon these particulars is neither full nor circumstantial; yet we know as much, perhaps, in these respects, of Charlemagne as of Napoleon Bonaparte. And remarkable enough it is, that not relatively, (or making allowances for the age,) but absolutely, Charlemagne was much more accomplished than Napoleon ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... white-robed negro. We saw him in profile as he passed along the road at some distance, but he was reading a paper with an expression so placid that I felt sure he had not seen us. On the seat beside him was a suitcase with the air of having been made in France; and circumstantial evidence said that Monny's ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... account of the "Retaliation" which is very amusing from the closely circumstantial manner in which the incidents are narrated, although they have so little relationship to truth: "It was upon a proposal started by Edmund Burke, that a party of friends who had dined together at Sir Joshua Reynolds's and my house, should meet ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... join the army, for to him his General was always the dearest of mistresses. Junot has often spoken to me, and to me alone, of the vexations he experienced on this journey. He might have added to his circumstantial details relative to Josephine the conversation he is reported go have had with Bonaparte to Egypt; but he never breathed a word on the subject, for his character was always noble and generous. The journey to Italy did not produce the effect which usually arises from such incidents in common ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of biographic memoirs, of which we have few counterparts in English. We refer to their MEMOIRES POUR SERVIR, such as those of Sully, De Comines, Lauzun, De Retz, De Thou, Rochefoucalt, &c., in which we have recorded an immense mass of minute and circumstantial information relative to many great personages of history. They are full of anecdotes illustrative of life and character, and of details which might be called frivolous, but that they throw a flood of light on the social habits and general civilisation of the periods to which ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... brute, not without sharp wits and a following—or better, a heeling. There had been bad blood between him and Braddish for some time over political differences of opinion and advancement. But into these Hagan had carried a circumstantial, if degenerate, imagination that had grown into and worried Braddish's peace of mind like a cancer. Details of the actual killing were kept from us children. But I gathered, since the only witnesses of the shooting were heelers of Hagan's, that it could in no wise be construed into an out-and-out ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... they are substantial, Mr. Harley. They are rather more circumstantial. Frankly, I have forced myself to come here, and now that I have intruded upon your privacy, I realize my ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... woman had reached this state, circumstantial and complete, when, by divers methods, it got out to the more aristocratic circles ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart |
