"Accidental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... way on indifferent subjects, never once alluding to Olive's departure. He did so now, however, but carelessly, as if with an accidental thought. ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... same sort of thing; he found a disused target in a deserted yard and couldn't resist indulging in a little secret shooting, like secret drinking. You thought the shots all scattered and irregular, and so they were; but not accidental. No two distances were alike; but the different points were exactly where he wanted to put them. There's nothing needs such mathematical precision as a wild caricature. I've dabbled a little in ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... depend on sex, though by the influence of sex it might be quickened and accentuated. It was something much more deep and wide, something which she did not and perhaps never would understand. The sex element was accidental, so much so that the passage of a few earthly years would rob it of its power to attract and make it as though it had never been, but the perfect friendship between their souls was permanent and without shadow of change. She knew, oh!, she knew, although no word ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... was now pleading for the defendant, was trying to impress upon the jury that the murder had been merely accidental, inasmuch as the merchant had thrown the missile only in sport, just to scare away the fellow who was insulting him in his own house; but, strange to say, no mention was made at all of the note, though everybody knew perfectly well that the merchant had given it, and ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... To an accidental association may be ascribed some of the noblest efforts of human genius. The Historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire first conceived his design among the ruins of the Capitol; and to the tones of a Welsh harp are we indebted for the ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... and finally succeeded in rescuing the tenant of the cellar from the threatened deluge. She was comfortably cared for by a fellow-countrywoman, and a regular dispensary physician sent for. Wonderful to relate, the shock of the cold bath had accomplished one of those accidental cures, of which many are recorded in the history of rheumatic disorders; and in a few days, the sufferer was on her legs again. Furthermore, her sickness had proved the means of interesting several benevolent ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... explanation were needed, the accidental blow to the back of his head, together with the latent suggestion from the "Arabian Nights," would ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... seconded for Secret Service? Have you ever been surprised by anything? I don't know. You have said often in my hearing that you suspect every one. Have you suspected me? Sometimes when I have caught that sidelong squint of yours, that studied accidental glance which sees so much, I have felt almost sure that you were far from satisfied that Trehayne was the man he gave himself out to be. I have been useful to you. I have eaten your salt, and have served you as faithfully as was consistent ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... our mule, jest afo' dat, ter take Sally an' de chillen an' what few duds dey hez down inter Hanson County, whar his brudder Rufe libs, an' whar dey's gwine ter libbin' tu. Dar didn't nobody 'spect him ter git back till de nex' day, any more'n Nimbus; an' it war jes kinder accidental-like dat either on 'em got h'yer dat night. Now, Miss Mollie, what yer s'pose hez come ob dat ar mule an' ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... has been explaining how it was to us, and he tells me it was all accidental. He says we left him behind, and that he searched for us for long enough afterwards, till he was quite lost. It is an awkward place to ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... form of reaction is known as habit. On account of the plastic character of the matter constituting the nervous tissue in the human organism, any act, whether instinctive, voluntary, or accidental, if once performed, has a tendency to repeat itself under like circumstances, or to become habitual. The child, for example, when placed amid social surroundings, by merely yielding to his general tendencies of imitation, sympathy, etc., will form many valuable ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... evidence, and the courts being administered by Europeans, and there being no doubt whatever of the quality of justice administered by Europeans in their own behalf, it is not surprising that Rivers was acquitted. The verdict returned was, Accidental death due to rupture of the spleen, caused by over-exertion. Rivers was a good deal shaken, however, when he stepped out of the courtroom, into the hot, bright sunshine, and received the congratulations of his friends. He had heard so many disgusting ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... and embellishments of Paris are executed from the plans of men of talent, yet some owe their origin to circumstances merely accidental. Of this I ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... spore-bearing[12] species have also been reported as well as gas-producing[13] forms allied to the colon bacillus. Such findings are, however, due in all probability to accidental invasion. Most investigators report the absence of the distinctively lactic-acid group ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... that epic and lyric poetry admit not of any such precise division into two opposite species, as the dramatic does. The ludicrous epopee has, it is true, been styled a peculiar species, but it is only an accidental variety, a mere parody of the epos, and consists in applying its solemn staidness of development, which seems only suitable to great objects, to trifling and insignificant events. In lyric poetry there are only intervals and gradations ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... you would burn my letters. He was out when I commenced this letter, but he has just come in. It is not "old friends" he mistrusts, he says, but the chances of war—the accidental passing of letters into hands and under eyes for ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... reason to suspect the presence of Miss Thorne, as he called her, at the school, he would have thought the resemblance only accidental, but for a whiff of wind which blew the veil aside from her face. That face there was ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... figure of any people yet; and that if at any time they should be driven here, it was probable they went away again as soon as ever they could, seeing they had never thought fit to fix there upon any occasion to this time; that the most I could suggest any danger from, was from any such casual accidental landing of straggling people from the main, who, as it was likely, if they were driven hither, were here against their wills; so they made no stay here, but went off again with all possible speed, seldom staying one night on shore, lest they should not have the help ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... slightest reason in the world why he should have done such a thing. Upon the trial my client insisted on simply denying that he had done anything of the kind. I had naturally assumed that he would either claim that the shooting had been accidental or that he had fired in self-defense, after he had first been attacked by the deceased. But no—he had had no pistol, did not know the man, and had not killed him. Why should he have killed him? he inquired. ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... tendency-novel is in itself a monster. A picture of the age must be, in the highest acceptation of the word, a poem. It must not represent real persons or places—it must create such. It must not ingraft itself upon the passing and the accidental, but be pervaded by a poetic intuition of the real. He that attempts it must look with a poet's eye at the real and enduring elements in the confusing contradictions of the time, and place the result before us as an actual existence. It has been the high privilege of ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... believe that somehow in the mysterious Divine economy it is all for the best. In reviewing the apparently accidental circumstances that placed you among us, I have thought that, because this was your appointed field of labor, God in his wisdom brought you where he designed you to work. Does Mrs. Murray know that her son offered ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... herself whether it would be right, proper, or expedient for her to give information of that secret interview between Mr. Fabian and Mrs. Stillwater, to which she herself had been an accidental and most unwilling witness, on that warm night in September, in ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... for me to describe the gracious condescension of the Queen and the Princesse Elizabeth, in expressing their sentiments for the accidental discovery I had made. Amid their assurances of tender interest and concern, they both reproved me mildly for my imprudence in having, when I went to Brussels, hurried from Paris without my passport. They ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the largest buildings in town—an accidental sort of structure, painted white, green-blinded, and protected, from the two roads at whose intersection it stood, by a white-washed board-fence, deficient in several places. The house expanded into no less than four large bay-windows, affording an outlook ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... A.M. we set out for our rooms. We took a lighted candle with us to keep us warm as we went. The way to get the most warmth from a candle is to sit round it. As the corridor was cold, we sat round the candle outside Miss Wortley's room, but this was quite accidental. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... prosecution was found in the pamphlets thus stolen, and the possession of them by the traverser was alleged as proof of their publication by him. Against this false and more than inquisitorial doctrine, he solemnly protested. Let the accidental possession of a denounced pamphlet be made proof of its utterance and publication by the possessor, and let the new process of detecting and bringing to light that obnoxious pamphlet be established, and what man, in the whole community, can be safe in the ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... much obliged, if at any future or leisure time you could tell me on what you ground your doubtful belief in imagination of a mother affecting her offspring. I have attended to the several statements scattered about, but do not believe in more than accidental coincidences. W. Hunter told my father, then in a lying-in hospital, that in many thousand cases he had asked the mother, before her confinement, whether anything had affected her imagination, and recorded the answers; and absolutely not one case ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... electricity, FARADAY remarks: "What an idea of the ever-present and ever-ready state of this power is given to us, when we consider that not only every substance, but almost every mode of dealing with substance manifests its presence. It is not accidental at these times, but active and essentially so, and we may, in our endeavors to comprehend it, usefully compare and contrast it with gravity which never changes. There we see that power which in undisturbed and solemn grandeur holds equally the world and ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... saw, with the most abominable distinctness, although at the time in profound darkness, every article of furniture and accidental arrangement of the chamber in which I lay. This, as you know, is incidental to ordinary nightmare. Well, while in this clairvoyant condition, which seemed but the lighting up of the theatre in which was to be exhibited ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... splendidly appointed house of her husband—he was extremely intelligent and had honorably passed the examination for licentiate, one of only two hundred successful bachelors out of twenty thousand—and the period following his accidental drowning ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... who held views strongly opposed to those of the Reform party. It has always been the policy of the Government to endeavour to divide the Rand community. This is no vague general charge: many instances can be given extending over a number of years. The accidental revelations in a police court showed that in 1891 the Government were supporting from the Secret Service Funds certain individuals with the object of arranging labour unions to coerce employers upon various points. The movement was a hopeless failure because the working men declined to have anything ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... dangerous? It is always according to his sensations, to his own peculiar experience, or to his suppositions, that he judges of things either well or ill; but whatever way be his judgment, it depends necessarily on his mode of feeling, whether habitual or accidental, and the qualities he finds in the causes that move him, which exist in despite ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... mistaken for the Count d'Ossore. I was myself led into the mistake by the Marquis Albert having the same Christian name as my English friend. The second meeting with the Count Rodolph, in the black domino, was accidental. The next walk had been appointed as the place of meeting with the Carbonari Felippo and his companions; but Count Rodolph, perceiving me examining my stiletto by the light of the lamp, presumed that I was Felippo, and that I had mistaken the one path for the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... gesturer and the inches traced by his motions, are of as little necessity as would be, when quoting a written word, a careful reproduction of the flourishes of tailed letters and the thickness of down-strokes in individual chirography. The fingers must be in some position, but that is frequently accidental, not contributing to the general and essential effect. An example may be given in the sign for white man which Medicine Bull, infra, page 491, made by drawing the palmar surface of the extended index across the forehead, ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... to offend me," answered the precentor. "I would pluck it out. I suppose you think, and baith o' you farmers too, that there's no necessity for praying for rain the nicht? You'll be content, will ye, if Mr. Dishart just drops in to the kirk some day, accidental-like, and offers up ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... same race, we speak the same language, we worship the same God, we have the same ideas of culture and of pleasures. The difference is one that is not patent to the eye or to the ear. It is a difference of accidental incident, not ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... for larger triumphs. The association of names is not accidental. These two men were, in some respects, not dissimilar, although ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... Theory is thought slightly of, the similarity of language being deemed but inconclusive evidence; yet in this instance, and even in opposition to such authority, I will venture to consider it, as forming a basis of the most substantial kind. It is not the accidental coincidence of a few words, but the whole vocabulary he produces, differs not so much from the common Hindostanie, as provincial dialects of the same ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... quietly to a portfolio of drawings at her elbow. She had let her fleeting glance rest on Neville for a second; had divined in a flash that he was enduring and not courting their examination of this picture; that, somehow, her accidental discovery of it had displeased ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... whose enlarged mind first planned the fitting out of maritime expeditions for discovery, and by the imitation of whose example all subsequent discoveries have been accomplished. Every thing of the kind before his time was isolated or accidental, and every subsequent attempt has been pursued on scientific or known principles, which he invented and established. Although America was discovered by Columbus, in the service of Spain, some years before the Portuguese were able to accomplish their long sought route to India; and although ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... none. I desired promotion but in one way—the army." I then briefly stated the accidental loss of my original appointment, and received, before I left the chamber, a note for the secretary at war, recommending me, in the strongest terms, for a commission in the Guards.—The world was now before me, and the world in the most vivid, various, and dazzling shape; in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... humanity, and resolution, he endeavored with incredible quickness to repair the mischief, and raised the confidence of his army as high as ever. Had the Zealand fleet come in time to the spot, the whole plan might have been crowned with success; but by some want of concert, or accidental delay, it did not appear; and consequently the beleaguered ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... thinking that the occasional ravages of the plague in the former period must have had some tendency to increase this proportion. If an average of ten years had been taken in the intervals of the returns of this dreadful disorder, or if the years of plague had been rejected as accidental, the registers would certainly give the proportion of births to burials too high for the real average increase of the population. For some few years after the great plague in 1666, it is probable that there was a more than usual excess of ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... purposes, of the eternal mind; and that the same general law which regulates the flight of an angel, or the affairs of an empire, connects even the fall of a sparrow with the plans of heaven. It is their privilege to feel assured, that the events which appear contingent or accidental to us, are equally ordained with those which seem the most orderly and regular. The arrow may be shot at a venture, but the Supreme Ruler guides it through the air. So ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... its rough surface Foyle had noted a slight sheen, unusual enough to attract his attention. Even he would not have noticed it but for the angle in which he had happened first to look at it when he took it from Green. It might be an accidental fault in the manufacture of the paper. Yet, trivial as it seemed, it was unusual, and one of the chief assets in detective work is not to let the unusual ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... said to show that consciousness is far too complex and accidental to be taken as the fundamental characteristic of mind. We have seen that belief and images both enter into it. Belief itself, as we saw in an earlier lecture, is complex. Therefore, if any definition of mind ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... as authoritative; but the extent of the third division was indefinite, so that the non-citation of the three books respecting which there was a difference of opinion among the Jews may not have been accidental. Inasmuch, however, as the Greek-speaking Jews received more books than their Palestinian brethren, the apostles and their immediate successors were not wholly disinclined to the use of the apocryphal productions. The undefined boundary ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... of the woodland sprites, the more effective would be the charm. Accordingly we may assume with a high degree of probability that the profligacy which notoriously attended these ceremonies was at one time not an accidental excess but an essential part of the rites, and that in the opinion of those who performed them the marriage of trees and plants could not be fertile without the real union of the human sexes. At the present day it might perhaps be vain to look in civilised Europe for customs ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... not in the least noticing Sir Philip's dissertation on Roman virtues—"my own belief is, that there is not a proper name in England, except a few intruded upon us by the Normans, which might not easily be traced to accidental circumstances in the history of the family or the place. Thus, in the case of Aylesbury, or Eaglestown, from which it is derived, depend upon it the place has been noted as a resort for eagles in old times, coming ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... perception of a triumph that is only delayed. A reverent homage before the sublimities of yesterday is the condition of a fine perception of the hidden triumphs of the morrow. And, therefore, I do not regard it as an accidental conjunction that the psalmist puts them together and proclaims the evangel that "the Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in them that hope in his mercy." To feel the days before me I must revere the purpose which throbs ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... it is never reached. Adam and I, through our new sense which comprehends Time and Space, can vanish by stepping a few seconds into the future, the Fourth Dimension of Space. Death can never reach us, not even accidental death, unless that which causes death could also slip into the future, which ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... beg your attention to a melancholy tale, and which may, in some slight degree, extenuate the offence I was guilty of in assuming, or rather in maintaining an accidental disguise." ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... while this may be true as regards the fact, we dissent from it as regards the inference. It is a question to be decided between the learned drones of a by-gone school and the quicker intellects of a ripening age, which is the better thing,—criticism on words—on accidental peculiarities of style—or a just and sympathizing conception of the feelings of the poet or the wisdom of the philosopher. Men are beginning to disregard the former, while they set a high value upon the latter: so much laboriously-earned ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... present "bush-beef:" as the flames blow inland, they keep to seaward, knowing that game will instinctively and infallibly break cover in that direction, and they have learned the "wrinkle" of the prairie traveller to make a "little Zoar" in case of accidental conflagration. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... which has not our Puritan theory of the Sabbath. Protestant Switzerland, England, Scotland, and America cover the whole ground of popular freedom; and in all these this idea of the Sabbath prevails with a distinctness about equal to the degree of liberty. Nor do I think this result an accidental one. If we notice that the Lutheran branch of the reformation did not have this element, and the Calvinistic branch, which spread over England and America, did have it, and compare the influence of ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... be incredulous without being cruel, I should think," said Mittie, with asperity. She felt the reproach, and could not believe it accidental. Poor Mittie! how much ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the same reason Catholics place flowers and lights around the statues and images of saints. Every child knows that the wood in the statue might as well have been a pillar in the Church, and that its selection for a statue was merely accidental, and hence he knows that the statue cannot hear or see him, and so he prays not to the statue but to the person it represents. Again if you can offer a person insult by dishonoring his image, may we not honor him by treating it with respect? What greater ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... nothin' but a hold-up who needs hangin' every hour. Whatever takes him to where I lays by my bayonet-bush I never knows. He don't disclose nothin' on that p'int afterward, an' mebby he tracks up on me accidental. ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... twentieth, Mr. Pike met death in his own tent by the accidental discharge of a six-shooter in the hands of Mr. Foster, his brother-in-law. He left a young wife, and two small children, Naomi, three years of age, and Catherine, a babe in arms. His loss was keenly felt by the company, ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... account he also heaved a sigh. "This was indeed," he observed, "a retribution in store for them! Their encounter was likewise not accidental; for had it been, how was it that this Feng Yuean took ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... accidentally met Col. Starbottle, and dropped a few incoherent phrases which apparently interested that gentleman. When he concluded, the colonel handed him a letter and a twenty-dollar gold-piece. "If you bring me an answer, I'll double that—Sabe, John?" Ah Fe nodded. An interview equally accidental, with precisely the same result, took place between Ah Fe and another gentleman, whom I suspect to have been the youthful editor of "The Avalanche." Yet I regret to state, that, after proceeding some distance on his journey, Ah Fe calmly broke the seals of both ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... Abbot's resignation, his ignorance of the fate of their unhappy offspring, and above all, the good father's listless and inactive disposition, had suffered the matter to become totally forgotten, until it was recalled by some accidental conversation with the Abbot Ambrosius concerning the fortunes of the Avenel family. At the request of his successor, the quondam Abbot made search for it; but as he would receive no assistance in looking among the few records of spiritual experiences ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... inasmuch as the dealer has the last call, there is no penalty attaching to a misdeal, unless the game is being played with the addition of a pool or kitty (see page 11), in which case the player making a misdeal pays a penalty to the pool equal to the stake of one trick. In the event of a misdeal, or accidental exposure of a card, the whole pack must be collected, shuffled and re-cut, as before, after which the cards are to be re-dealt by the same player who made the mistake. The players must not interfere with the cards during the deal, under a similar penalty, nor touch the ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel
... best be shown by one incident A little gathering of men started shouting "Mansei" in a street in Seoul. The police came after them, and they vanished. One man—it is not clear whether he called "Mansei" or was an accidental spectator—was pushed in the deep gutter by the roadside as the demonstrators rushed away. As he struggled out the police came up. There was no question of the man resisting or not resisting. He ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... confidence in his promise, and therefore made divers efforts to enjoy a little private conversation with his wife; but he was baffled in all his attempts by the indefatigable vigilance of her keeper, and reaped no other immediate pleasure from this accidental meeting, than that of a kind squeeze while he handed her into the coach. However, as he had been witness to some instances of her invention, and was no stranger to the favourable disposition of her heart, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... clattered down I turned again to the lion. He lay with head hidden under a little shelf and he moved not a muscle. What a place for him to choose! But for my accidental venturing down the broken fragments and steps of the rim he could have remained safe ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... It is recorded that Katsumoto's plan was to offer to send Yodo as a hostage to Yedo. Then the question would arise as to a place of residence for her in the eastern capital, and the processes of preparing a site and building a house were to be supplemented by accidental conflagrations, so that the septuagenarian, Ieyasu, might easily pass away before the actual transfer of the hostage took place. Such was Katsumoto's device, but he had to flee from Osaka before he could carry ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... which ought to have ensured me an honourable standing in the world, with some intelligence, wit, good literary and scientific knowledge, and endowed with those accidental physical qualities which are such a good passport into society, I found myself, at the age of twenty, the mean follower of a sublime art, in which, if great talent is rightly admired, mediocrity is as rightly despised. I was compelled by poverty to become a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... whilst she prophesied unto them, with occasional comic relief from the unfortunate Perpetual Grand. At the decent hour of ten o'clock, she bade them good night and withdrew to her own residence and to bed. For some accidental reason or other I lingered until, as I thought, all the young things had gone home. I should explain that I was in the two pair back. At last I started to go home myself. As I descended the stairs I was ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Wilhelmine rose, groped her way to the door, and turned the handle. The door remained firmly closed. She shook it gently, pushed it—the doors in her mother's house often stuck fast; but this time it was no accidental adherence of ill-fitting hinges, the door was securely fastened from outside. Her mother had locked her in! To be locked into a room had always been a terrible thing to her. When she was a child, her brother had often teased her by pushing her into a dark cupboard and turning the key, and it was ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... The number of accidental deaths in France is attaining alarming proportions. It is certainly time that a stop was put to the quaint custom ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... other means of grace. In essentials they could allow no compromise; in non-essentials they gladly agreed to differ. For essentials they often shed their blood; but non-essentials they described as merely "useful" or "accidental." ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Miltoun unfolded, if but little, the trouble of his spirit, lying that same afternoon under a ragged tamarisk hedge with the tide far out. He could never have done this if there had not been between them the accidental revelation of that night at Monkland; nor even then perhaps had he not felt in this young sister of his the warmth of life for which he was yearning. In such a matter as love Barbara was the elder of these two. For, besides the motherly knowledge of the heart peculiar ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... an immense force of infantry. Vast accessions of forces joined him each day, and on the 17th of September he occupied a position between the Black Prince and Guienne. The first intimation that either the Black Prince or the King of France had of their close proximity to each other was an accidental meeting between a small foraging force of the English and three hundred French horse, under the command of the Counts of Auxerre and Joigny, the marshal of Burgundy, and the lord of Chatillon. The French hotly ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... accidental breaking of far less worthwhile things, at home, she and her brothers and sisters had often been thrashed most unmercifully: Her lamentations soared to high heaven. And her father's running feet sounded ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... into their original, when they have outlived the memory of it: for it is with commonwealths as with particular persons, they are commonly ignorant of their own births and infancies: and if they know any thing of their original, they are beholden for it, to the accidental records that others have kept of it. And those that we have, of the beginning of any polities in the world, excepting that of the Jews, where God himself immediately interposed, and which favours not at all paternal dominion, are all either ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... remained in that port, but I did not, on that account, postpone the reconnaissance. I could not do all of this in person, because I was convalescing from a serious wound in my right foot, received April 3d by the accidental discharge of a double-barrel pistol, which Don Miguel Manrique had left loaded in the cabin. Notwithstanding this, I am satisfied that Don Jose Canizares executed with his usual ability everything I entrusted to his care. I therefore state to Your Excellency (in order that the ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... Thoughts of America, and commencing life afresh as an innocent gentleman, had crossed his disordered brain. He wrote to his friend Richard, proposing to collect disposable funds, and embark, in case of Tom's breaking his word, or of accidental discovery. He dared not confide the secret to his family, as his leader had sternly enjoined him to avoid any weakness of that kind; and, being by nature honest and communicative, the restriction was painful, and melancholy fell upon the boy. Mama ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the road, told Morano to join him where it entered the wood when he had acquired his bacon. And then as they parted a thought occurred to Rodriguez, which was that bacon cost money. It was purely an afterthought, an accidental fancy, such as inspirations are, for he had never had to buy bacon. So he gave Morano a fifth part of his money, a large gold coin the size of one of our five-shilling pieces, engraved of course upon one side with the glories and ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... small vessel and put to sea. Touching at Japan and Loo Choo to obtain water and provisions, the party reached the Portuguese colony of Macao in safety. There were no nautical instruments or charts on the ship, and the successful result of the voyage was more accidental than otherwise. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Travelers of the time comment on the contrast between the returning stream of discouraged and disgruntled men and the cheerfulness of the lot actually digging. Nobody had any scientific system to go on. Often a divining-rod was employed to determine where to dig. Many stories were current of accidental finds; as when one man, tiring of waiting for his dog to get through digging out a ground squirrel, pulled the animal out by the tail, and with it a large nugget. Another story is told of a sailor who asked some miners resting at noon where ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... in New England only in 1646. Hence Dr. Clay remarks that "the Swedes may claim the honor of having been the first missionaries among the Indians, at least in Pennsylvania."[36] "It was, in fact, the Swedes who inaugurated the peaceful policy of William Penn. This was not an accidental circumstance in the Swedish policy, but was deliberately adopted ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... in the drift of his silence the vision capriciously failed him. He looked at Julia. He looked back at the wall. It was nothing but a funny old picture which hung there confronting them. The commonplaceness, beside it, of Julia's long-drawn expression made him snicker, until, as a result of this accidental reaction, they were both actually ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to explain away coincidences to men who were the victims of them is likely to need more sympathy than he will get. The dictionary defines them clumsily as instances of coinciding, apparently accidental, but which suggest a ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... must have been quite accidental. In general she has been in very good health and very good looks ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... industry; and the employing so many other idle vagrants and sturdy beggars, with the product of their labour, will altogether be a present benefit to the lands of England, as well in the rents as in the value; and further the accidental charities in the streets and at doors, is, by a very modest computation, over and above the poor rates, at least 300,000 pounds per annum, which will be entirely saved by this proposal, and the persons set at work; ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... Encouragement, sympathy, can not help you. It is of no use to fight against the eternal laws. But if this be only a perversion or misdirection of noble and lovely powers and faculties, the result of accidental circumstances and vicious institutions, as I believe, then, when the outward pressure is removed, the elastic spring of the genuine human spirit, encased in the form of woman, shall return; the great curse of civil and domestic strife shall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... satisfaction, I placed in position as a keystone. Thus the floor space between the door and the opposite wall of the room was completely filled. My roommate, a young fellow in the speechless condition in which I had been during my period of depression, was in the room with me. This was accidental. It was no part of my plan to hold him as a hostage, though I might finally have used him as a pawn in the negotiations, had my barricade resisted the impending ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... direct the defensive works. The expenses of the war are divided,—one part to the State, one part to the provinces; every proprietor pays, beside the general imposts, a special impost for the dikes, in proportion to the extent of his lands and their proximity to the water. An accidental rupture, an inadvertence, may cause a flood; the peril is unceasing; the sentinels are at their posts upon the bulwarks; at the first assault of the sea, they shout the war-cry, and Holland sends men, material, and money. And even when there ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... sake. Not a word was said at the weekly meetings, but the artless faces betrayed all shades of hope, discouragement, pride, and doubt, as their various attempts seemed likely to succeed or fail. Much curiosity was felt, and a few accidental words, hints, or meetings in queer places, were very ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... Accordingly in 1880 an Employers' Liability Act was passed which abolished the doctrine of "common employment" as to much of its application, and made it possible for the employee to obtain compensation for accidental injury in the great majority ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... is something radically wrong in this attitude. The teachings of philosophy and the deductions of biology should find more practical application in the daily reasoning of man. No process is vile, no condition is unnatural. The accidental variation from a given social practice does not necessarily entail sin. No poor little earthling, caught in the enormous grip of chance, and so swerved from the established customs of men, could possibly be guilty of that depth of vileness which the attitude of the world would seem ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... I myself expressed it in slightly different terms nearly ten years ago. "Curiosity," I said, "is the accidental relish of a single night; whereas the essential and abiding pleasure of the theatre lies in foreknowledge. In relation to the characters in the drama, the audience are as gods looking before and after. Sitting in the theatre, we taste, for a moment, the glory of ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... in consequence of a circumstance which appeared accidental, to state with confidence the exact number of persons in the Convent one day of the week in which I left it. This may be a point of some interest, as several secret deaths had occurred since my taking the veil, and many burials had been openly made ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... certain circumstances, call up another, if the corresponding impressions have only once occurred together, or if the ideas have any degree of resemblance, or, finally, if only they stand in marked contrast with one another. Any accidental coincidence of events, such as meeting a person at a particular foreign resort, and any insignificant resemblance between objects, sounds, etc., may thus supply a path, so to speak, from fact ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... had depended upon finding his friend at hand, sympathetic, strong, responsive; he had come to be as one unable to stand alone. It seemed impossible for him to go on longer without seeing his fellow, his friend, his confidant, his support. The convention and the Clergy House alike became misty and accidental in comparison with his own desperate need ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... sorcery. In short, whether we regard the savage's attitude to death at the present day or his ideas as to its origin in the remote past, we must conclude that primitive man cannot reconcile himself to the notion of death as a natural and necessary event; he persists in regarding it as an accidental and unnecessary disturbance of the proper order of nature. To a certain extent, perhaps, in these crude speculations he has anticipated certain views of modern biology. Thus it has been maintained by Professor August Weissmann that death is not a natural necessity, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... definitely laid upon the consciences of her members. A further advance in thought which makes possible a closer approximation of the severed fragments of the Christian Church, is to be found in the process of sifting the essential from the accidental in the Christian tradition. It would be idle to pretend that the process has reached its conclusion, or that there is any large measure of agreement as to what constitutes the essence of Christianity. No one indeed ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... the dairy, which was abundantly supplied, stock appearing to thrive extremely well; and we had an unusual luxury in a present of fresh butter, which was, however, by no means equal to that of Fort Hall—probably from some accidental cause. During the day we remained here, there were considerable numbers of miserable, half-naked Indians around the fort, who had arrived from the neighboring mountains. During the summer, the only subsistence of these people is derived from the salmon, of which they ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... by mistake? Is it possible to imagine a clerical error to have been committed every, time the word occurs? (82) Moreover, it would have been easy, to supply the emendation. (83) Hence, when these readings are not accidental or corrections of manifest mistakes, it is supposed that they must have been set down on purpose by the original writers, and have a meaning. (84) However, it is easy to answer such arguments; as to the ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... to see what the special characteristics of women are, ignoring as far as possible the accidental variations of individuals, and the temporary advantages or disadvantages due to economic or ideational forces, and all assertions of what would be if things were not as ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... boys over at Beetle Ring heard—as you might say, accidental"—Breem coughed into his big hand—"about your folks over here, your wife and—the baby. They were powerful interested, specially about the baby. Why, pard, some of the boys hain't seen a baby in ten years, and we thought as you belonged to the camp, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... they complete the outer fabric of their very beautiful and compact nest. As the work progresses more cobwebs and fibre of a silky kind are applied externally, and at times the nest, when tossed about by the wind (sometimes at a considerable elevation), would be mistaken by a casual observer for an accidental collection of cobwebs. The inside of the nest is well felted with the down of the madar plant, and then it is finally lined with fine hair and grass-stems of the softest kind. Sometimes the nest is suspended from only two twigs, exactly ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... My own accidental cut across the knuckles was a flea-bite. Doctor Livesey patched it up with plaster and pulled my ears for me into ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... how Shorty's yellow hair stuck through a hole in his hat, and how old and battered were Shorty's overalls. Shorty had been glad to take a little accidental pay for becoming the bearer of the letter which he had delivered to the Virginian. But even that sum was no longer in his possession. He had passed through Drybone on his way, and at Drybone there had been a game of poker. Shorty's money was now in ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... likely that Morgan would have burnt so glorious a town before he had offered it to ransom. The Spaniards have always charged Morgan with the crime, but it seems more probable that the Spanish Governor was the guilty one. It is yet more probable that the fire was accidental. Most of the Spanish houses were of wood, and at that season of the year the timber would have been of extreme dryness, so that a lighted wad or match end might have caused the conflagration. At the time when the fire ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... they were the instinctive beliefs of his temperament. So sure was he of his own goodness, so natural was it with him to love and to be brave, that he unhesitatingly ascribed all the evil of the world to the working of some force which was unnatural, accidental, anti-human. If he had grown up a mediaeval Christian, he would have found no difficulty in blaming the Devil. The belief was in his heart; the formula was Godwin's. For the wonder, the miracle of all ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... incidentally that he had accompanied the commissioner to the installation of a new NONO (I think in Spiti). The term here corresponds so precisely with the explanation which Marco gives of None as a Count subject to a superior sovereign, that it is difficult to regard the coincidence as accidental. The Yuechi or Indo-Scyths who long ruled the Oxus countries are said to have been of Tibetan origin, and Al-Biruni repeats a report that this was so. (Elliot. II. 9.)[2] Can this title have been a trace of their rule? Or ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... head above the waters of oblivion, you must agree. For 'you saw at once,' said Narcissus, in reference to that poet, 'that his writing was so delightful because he was more so.' His writings, in fact, were but the accidental emanations of his personality. He might have given himself out to us in fugues, or canvases, or simply, like the George Muncaster of whom I am thinking, in the sweet breath and happy shining of his home. Genius ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... from the water, a feat which required no great effort. The party stroll out of the way, and up the rising beach, watching for a time the tardy movement of the 'flat.' Tired of this they continue their slow ramble further into the interior, in hopes, at the same time, of making some accidental discovery by which to replenish their commissariat, which was quite empty, and made their steps faint and feeble, for it was now considerably past noon. As 'fortune favors the brave' they did succeed in making ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... vaguely turning over in his mind a half-matured plan of effecting a seemingly accidental entry to the house of Senora Barenna, in the hope of meeting that lady's daughter in the garden or grounds. Once outside the walls of the town he found the country open and bare, consisting of brown hills, of which the lower slopes were ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... temples of that goddess, which were situated near rivers, that there might be water to wash the statue'. JOHNSON. 'Nay, sir, the argument from the name is gone. The name is exhausted by what we see. We have no occasion to go to a distance for what we can pick up under our feet. Had it been an accidental name, the similarity between it and Anaitis might have had something in it; but it turns out to be a mere physiological name.' Macleod said, Mr M'Queen's knowledge of etymology had destroyed his conjecture. JOHNSON. 'You have one possibility ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... taken of this subtile indication and leading towards the truth. Yet surely that is hardly philosophic. For could Mr. Dallas suppose that the idea involved in the word genial had no connection, or none but an accidental one, with the idea involved in the word genius? It is clear that from the Roman conception (whencesoever emanating) of the natal genius, as the secret and central representative of what is most characteristic and individual in the nature of every human being, are derived ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Jordan, the two unparallelled sentences, and the cave of the Nativity. Of these the phrase [Greek: kathezomenos], which occurs in three places, Dial. 49, 51, 88, but always in Justin's own narrative and not in quotation, may be an accidental recurrence; and it is not impossible that the other items may be derived ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... one who had seen Beauregard fastened at Morico's door. Hosmer was making a tour of inspection that afternoon through the woods, and when he came suddenly upon Therese some moments after she had quitted the cabin, the meeting was not so wholly accidental as that ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... shoes, he kicked his horse in the ribs for falling down, climbed on and said the procession might move on. He was all cut to pieces by horse's hoofs, but he was full of fight the next morning. Another soldier had his big toe shot off by the accidental discharge of a carbine, and when the regiment stopped, and the colonel asked him if he wanted to stop there and wait for an ambulance to overtake him, he said, not if there is going to be a fight. I don't use a big toe much, anyway, and if there ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... needle of his compass will still point to the North Star of his hope. Whatever comes, his life will not be purposeless. Even a wreck that makes its port is a greater success than a full-rigged ship with all its sails flying, with every mast and rope intact; which merely drifts into an accidental harbor. ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... the spinal cord and the cerebrum cross to opposite sides—most of them at the bulb, but many within the cord—so that the right side of the cerebrum is connected with the left side of the body, and vice versa. This accounts for the observed fact that disease or accidental injury of one side of the cerebrum causes loss of motion or of feeling in the opposite ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... was in conflict. It had been his first business to convince the girl that their secret was safe with him; but it was far from easy to square this with the equally urgent obligation of safe-guarding Anna's responsibility toward her child. Darrow was not much afraid of accidental disclosures. Both he and Sophy Viner had too much at stake not to be on their guard. The fear that beset him was of another kind, and had a profounder source. He wanted to do all he could for the girl, but the fact of having had to urge Anna to confide Effie to her ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... Anecdotes of Bowyer; but his name does not even appear in the index; being probably reserved for the second forth-coming enlarged edition. Meanwhile, it may not be uninteresting to remark that, like Magliabechi, (vide p. 86, ante) he imbibed his love of reading and collecting from the accidental possession of scraps and leaves of books. The fact is, Mr. Ratcliffe once kept a chandler's shop in the Borough; and, as is the case with all retail traders, had great quantities of old books brought ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... annul. It is not a thing of compacts, bound together by promises and paper, but is itself a law of nature as irreversible as any other. Compacts may give it one form or another, but in one form or another it must exist. It is no accidental or artificial thing, which may be made or unmade, which may be set up or pulled down, at the mere will and pleasure of man. It is a decree of God; the spontaneous and irresistible working of that nature, which, in all climates, through all ages, and under ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... their onward course sooner or later assume. In the individual, how well we know that a sober moderation of action, an appropriate gravity of demeanour, belong to the mature period of life; a change from the wanton wilfulness of youth, which may be ushered in, or its beginning marked, by many accidental incidents: in one perhaps by domestic bereavements, in another by the loss of fortune, in a third by ill health. We are correct enough in imputing to such trials the change of character, but we never deceive ourselves by supposing that it would have failed to take place had those ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... is commonly called Nagari. A common English Gipsy word for writing is "niggering." "He niggered sar he could pooker adree a chinamangree." The resemblance between nagari and nigger may, it is true, be merely accidental, but the reader, who will ascertain by examination of the vocabulary the proportion of Rommany words unquestionably Indian, will admit that the terms have probably ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... kept high by the pestilential state of the towns, and thus the pressure of numbers was less felt than it is now, since it was possible to have, though not to rear, unlimited families. Occasionally, from accidental circumstances, England was for a short time under-populated, and these were the periods when, according to Professor Thorold Rogers, Archdeacon Cunningham, and other authorities, the labourer was well off. The most striking example was in the half-century after the Black ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... fascination for him. His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time to time he affected, had their marked influence on the young exquisites of the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows, who copied him in everything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of his graceful, though to ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... Vitrified Forts built? Was the vitrification of the walls accidental, or was it not rather intentional, as most of us now believe? In particular, who first constructed, and who last occupied the remarkable Vitrified Forts of Finhaven in Angus, and of the hill of Noath in Strathbogie? Was not the Vitrified Fort of Craig-Phadric, near Inverness, the residence ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... perfect organization, and not only in this body, but throughout the country. In the judgment of those who called this meeting, the great movement for woman suffrage is too far advanced to be further prosecuted only by local and accidental organizations. In most of the States, State Associations are of but recent origin, and in many they do not exist at all. The efforts hitherto made were all well and useful in their way, but not enough to meet the demands of the present. It is the aim to establish this ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... exception in the happiest way, that of having no sorrow at all. I come, now, to the silence of affectation, which is presently discernible by the roving of the eye round the room to see if it is heeded, by the sedulous care to avoid an accidental smile, and by the variety of disconsolate attitudes exhibited to the beholders. This species of silence has almost without exception its origin in that babyish vanity which is always gratified by exciting attention, without ever perceiving that it provokes ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... of different kinds, which had purposely been planted near each other, and of the seedlings no less than 155 were plainly deteriorated and mongrelized; nor were the remaining 78 all perfectly true. It may be doubted whether many permanent varieties have been formed by intentional or accidental crosses; for such crossed plants are found to be very inconstant. One kind, however, called "Cottager's Kale," has lately been produced by crossing common kale and Brussel-sprouts, recrossed with purple broccoli,[586] and is said to be true, but plants {325} raised ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... there was in his home, and the small collection was not a bad one. "Chambers' Miscellany" was in the accidental lot, and good for him it was. "Chambers' Miscellany" is better reading than much that is given to the world to-day, and the boy rioted in the adventure-flavored tales and sketches. Scott's poetical works were there, and Shakespeare, but the latter was read only for the story of the play, and "Titus ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... up in their room over the baker's shop, they discussed the chances of their being able to pass her in such a way as would seem accidental. Two common boys could not enter the courtyard. There was a back entrance for tradespeople and messengers. When she drove, she would always enter her carriage from the same place. Unless she sometimes walked, they could not approach her. What should be done? The thing was difficult. ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... realised that he had heard the intonation of Miss Wycliffe's voice, or had imagined it. He would doubtless have thought it mere imagination, some accidental resemblance to which his ear had given identity, had not Cardington's manner registered a sudden emotional disturbance. He paused in his narration, like one smitten with mental atrophy and searching for the word that was ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... exclusively connected with their text or format,—are sometimes, as a matter of fact, independent of both. Often they are memorable to us by length of tenure, by propinquity,—even by their patience under neglect. We may never read them; and yet by reason of some wholly external and accidental characteristic, it would be a wrench to part with them if the moment of separation—the inevitable hour—should arrive at last. Here, to give an instance in point, is a stained and battered French folio, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... which those poets put before them. Nothing was to be mentioned by its technical—or even by its exact name; no clear picture was to be raised before the inner eye; nothing was to be left definite or vivid. We shall make a very great mistake if we suppose this conventional vagueness to have been accidental, and a still greater if we attribute it to a lack of cleverness. When Pope referred to the sudden advent of a heavy shower at a funeral ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... than ever in the older philosophy of life. She looked on Mark's personality with such suspicion that she gradually withdrew herself from his influence. Hideously disturbed by his audacity of thought, she had even gone so far as to tell Tatiana Markovna of this accidental acquaintance, with the result that the old lady told the servants to keep a watch on the garden, but Volokov came from the direction of the precipice, from which the watchmen were effectually kept away by their superstitious ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... what strange clairvoyance a mind possessed with a fixed idea discovers resemblances and allusions in accidental description. Madame de Camors perceived without doubt some remote connection between her husband and Faust—between herself and Marguerite; for she could not help showing that she was strangely agitated. She could not restrain the violence of her emotion, when Marguerite ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... devotion brings about a spiritual joy of the mind; but as an accidental result it causes sorrow. For, as we have said above, devotion arises from two considerations. Primarily it arises from the consideration of the Divine Goodness, and from this thought there necessarily follows gladness, in accordance ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... said MacLachlan, amazingly undisturbed, but bringing again to the front, by a motion of the haunch accidental to look at, the sword he ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... ten thousand rifles, and an enormous quantity of ammunition." "You don't say so, Chris? Then you had better luck than you deserved. One of the correspondents told me this morning that there was news in the town by a telegram from Lorenzo Marques that there had been an accidental explosion at Komati-poort, but it did not seem to be anything serious. ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... things which she had noted in him came up before her now, not as accidental fragments, but as surface outcroppings of the deep, continuous, everlasting granite rock, the real longing of his nature; and the strength of its fixity appalled her. As she watched from the outer ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... ladder and fed the bairns. His way in this matter, as in everything else, was characteristic. He never went to the nest till he had called her off by his song. It was not till several days later, when she had given up brooding, that I ever saw the pair meet at the nest, and then it seemed to be accidental, and one of them ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... every the smallest approach to the desired end, to select such individuals and pair them with the most suitable forms, and so continue with succeeding generations. In most cases careful selection and the prevention of accidental crosses will be necessary for several generations, for in new breeds there is a strong tendency to vary and especially to revert to ancestral forms: but in every succeeding generation less care will be requisite for the breed will become truer; until ultimately only an occasional individual ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... order, which he has so confidently laid before the house, seems to me to have no foundation in reason or justice; for if it be an offence against the house to be present at our consultations, and that offence be justly punishable, why should any man be exempt from a just censure by an accidental escape? or what makes the difference between this crime and any other, that this alone must be immediately punished, or immediately obliterated, and that a lucky flight is ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... made a study of the ancient and indispensable art of bread-making, consulting such authorities as offered, going back to the primitive days and first invention of the unleavened kind, and traveling gradually down in my studies through that accidental souring of the dough which it is supposed taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations thereafter till I came to "good, sweet, wholesome bread,"—the staff of life. Leaven, which some deemed the soul of bread, the ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... frequently begets that malicious pleasure in the audience, which is testified by laughter: as all things which are deviations from common customs, are ever the aptest to produce it. Though, by the way, this Laughter is only accidental, as the person represented is fantastic or bizarre; but Pleasure is essential to it, as the Imitation of what is natural. This description of these Humours[9], drawn from the knowledge and observation of particular persons, ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... fellow, that he will be very little concerned at any misfortunes which may befal him in the sequel; for to have no suspicion that an old schoolfellow, with whom he had, in his tenderest years, contracted a friendship, and who, on the accidental renewing of their acquaintance, had professed the most passionate regard for him, should be very ready to impose on him; in short, to conceive that a friend should, of his own accord, without any view to his own ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... green velvet dress. 1886 was chiefly notable for the statue in bronze of The Sluggard, in which Leighton again furnished us with a plastic characterization of Sleep, which he designed by way of contrast to his statue of the struggling Athlete. It was suggested, Mr. Spielmann says, by accidental circumstances. The model who had been sitting to him fell a-yawning in his interval of rest, and charmed the artist, not only with his exceptional beauty of line and play of muscle, but also with the artistic contrast of energy and languor. But that he might not ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... all those substances employed for the purpose of causing the adhesion of two or more bodies, whether originally separate, or divided by an accidental fracture. As the various substances that may require cementing differ very much in texture, &c., a number of cements possessed of very different properties are required, because a cement that answers admirably under one set of circumstances ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... between the first and second story there was a sort of plinth seven feet in height which corresponded to the foundation platform below the first story. It appears to me, as it did to Loftus, that the slope which now separates the two vertical masses of brickwork "is accidental, and owes its existence to the destruction of the upper portion of the second story." Taylor mentions only two stories, and evidently considers the slope in question to be ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... regard as the heart of spirituality? When we have eliminated the accidental characters with which varying traditions have endowed it, what is it that still so definitely distinguishes its possessor from the best, most moral citizen or devoted altruist? Why do the Christian saint, Indian rishi, Buddhist arhat, Moslem S[u]fi, all seem to us at bottom ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... for field-mice, or come flying in from the woods with a squirrel swinging from his claws, either for variety's sake, or because he had really forgotten the stores he had laid up. Scattered magazines of this kind, established in times of accidental plenty, may render life during our winters ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... were about to engage. That the true nature of a war should be realised by contemporaries as clearly as it comes to be seen afterwards in the fuller light of history is seldom to be expected. At close range accidental factors will force themselves into undue prominence and tend to obscure the true horizon. Such error can scarcely ever be eliminated, but by theoretical study we can reduce it, nor by any other means can we hope to approach the clearness of vision with which posterity will read our mistakes. ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett |
