"Account for" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will must be substituted for the fraudulent one. By it you will receive ten thousand dollars, and Frank will consent that you shall receive it. He will not ask you to account for the sums you have wrongfully spent during the last year, and will promise not to prosecute you, provided you leave this neighborhood and never return to it, or in any way interfere with him. To insure this, we shall have Jonas Barton's written confession, attested before a justice of the ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Messrs. Babbage and Herschel to the same cause as that considered as influential in Arago's experiment[B]; but it would be interesting to know how far the electric current which might be produced in the experiment would account for the deflexion of the needle. The mere inversion of a copper wire six or seven times near the poles of the magnet, and isochronously with the vibrations of the galvanometer needle connected with it, was sufficient to make ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... account for the change in his appearance in that way, why look for symptoms of something wrong ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... were written many years since and, so far as I was capable of judging, are drawn with fidelity. I mention this circumstance that, if any reader should find a difference in the versification or expression, he will be thus enabled to account for it. ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... "Sakyamuni,""The Sakya sage." This last is the most common designation of the Buddha in China, and to my mind best combines the characteristics of a descriptive and a proper name. Among other Buddhistic peoples "Gotama" and "Gotama Buddha" are the more frequent designations. It is not easy to account for the rise of the surname Gotama in the Sakya family, as Oldenberg acknowledges. He says that "the Sakyas, in accordance with the custom of Indian noble families, had borrowed it from one of the ancient Vedic bard families." Dr. Davids ("Buddhism," p. 27) says: "The family name was ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... is as good as a musket ball at this distance," the Major said; "and when our guns are empty we can take to them; there are enough spare rifles for us to have five each, and, with those and our revolvers and the bricks, we ought to be able to account for an army. There are some of the servants and syces who can be trusted to load. They can stand down behind us, and we can pass our guns down to them as we ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... his heart telling him that something had happened which was out of the ordinary kind of accident that regularly happened at a coal mine. He bounded along, knowing as he went that there was something more of sorrow for his mother in this, whatever it was. He felt so, but could not account for the feeling, and as this thought grew in intensity in his mind, he changed his course a bit, and made for home, to ascertain what had really happened. It was something big, he felt, but whatever it was, his mother must again be called upon to suffer, and his alarm grew with ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... of the wedding of the Caternas did not come off. Here is Mr. Fulk Ephrinell, dressed this morning just as he was dressed yesterday—and—detail to note—with a pencil behind the lobe of his left ear, for he has just been making out an account for his New York house. ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... supply and brain to conduct the enterprise, it matters little whether it be of the professional or business type. The medical practitioner and undertaker are striking exceptions to the non-prosperous and unsuccessful class, although the good fortune of both is due chiefly to giant causes which account for the business and professional dearth of the race in other directions. While the physicians and funeral directors of the dominant race will not refuse service to colored applicants who seek them, the fee they charge, together ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... of form or character. When the oldest and truest breeds of various colours are crossed, we see a strong tendency for the blue tint and bars and marks to reappear in the mongrels. I have stated that the most probable hypothesis to account for the reappearance of very ancient characters, is—that there is a TENDENCY in the young of each successive generation to produce the long-lost character, and that this tendency, from unknown causes, sometimes prevails. And we have ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... published in a body with those of his less successful rival Grattelard; but very few of them are suited to nineteenth-century taste, and most of them are gross to the last degree. Some of the presentable ones are here given, and may serve as specimens of his manner, though they will scarcely account for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... body—that an aide-de-camp of a general, who himself has killed the youth of Moscow, is allowed to write such verses and that Natacha should take it upon herself to translate them into lovely poetic French for her album. It is hard to account for what they do nowadays, ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... his monthly spree—" I was reflecting while Bettie talked nonsense that there had been no less than four shots. I was wondering whom the last was for. It would be much pleasanter, all around, if Hardress had sent it into his own disordered brain. Yes, certainly, three bullets ought amply to account for an unprepared ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... those who had waged it all their lives; and he saw at a glance that an attack on Oswego was the key to the whole campaign. Louisbourg was, as yet, safe enough; and the British movements against Lake Champlain were so slow and foolish that he turned them to good account for ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... head, and smiled significantly. 'Rely on it,' he said, 'that what I tell you is the fact; but you have probably not seen Miss Seymour very lately, which would sufficiently account for your ignorance of her secret. I am told that she is extremely handsome and charming, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... colors,—ten thousand dingy flowers, then one with the divine streak; or, if you prefer it, like the coming up in old Jacob's garden of that most gentlemanly little fruit, the seckel pear, which I have sometimes seen in shop-windows. It is a surprise,—there is nothing to account for it. All at once we find that twice two make FIVE. Nature is fond of what are called "gift-enterprises." This little book of life which she has given into the hands of its joint possessors is commonly one ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... be truly dark, the brightness of its satellites cannot be caused by light projected from its surface or surroundings. How, then, may we account for the light of the moon and planets, which do not possess a light sui generis? A new hypothesis is requisite. To frame ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... singularities, as their converse with the invisible and amazing distractions are called. Willoughby became aware of them that night. He said to himself, upon one of his dashes into solitude: I believe I am possessed! And if he did not actually believe it, but only suspected it, or framed speech to account for the transformation he had undergone into a desperately beseeching creature, having lost acquaintance with his habitual personality, the operations of an impish host ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were mainly those who came to the Western world to find an asylum from the religious persecutions to which they had been subjected at home. In the South, society was largely established under the sanctions of royalty. These two facts will account for the radical differences existing between the people of the two sections. In the North, society very naturally accepted the political doctrines of personal equality and universal freedom. In the South, the people as naturally adhered to their aristocratic ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... weighed anchor and bore down right between the luggers, so close that he tossed his hat on the deck of the one and his wig on that of the other, hoisted a cask to his maintop, to show his occupation, and bore away under an extraordinary pressure of canvass, without receiving injury. To account for these and other hairbreadth escapes, popular superstition alleged that Yawkins insured his celebrated buckkar by compounding with the devil for one-tenth of his crew every voyage. How they arranged the separation of the stock and tithes is left to ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Narcissus; so bulky indeed and so suspiciously heavy, that it bore signs of several agitated official inspections, and nothing short of official deference to Endymion (under cover of whom it was addressed) could account for its having come through at all. For it came from France. It contained a set of the Bayfield drawings exquisitely cut in stone; and within the cover was wrapped a lighter parcel addressed to Miss Dorothea Westcote—a rose-tree, with a packet of seeds ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that first involuntary shudder. He was not a full-blooded negro but an octoroon. His color was a muddy yellow, his features were sharp instead of flat, and his hair hung across his forehead almost straight. But these facts alone did not account for his queerness; the most uncanny thing about him was the color of his eyes. They had a yellow glint and narrowed in the light. The creature was bare-footed and wore a faded suit of linsey-woolsey; I wondered at that, for ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... Carthaginian brothers with a Greek name, philainoi, praise-loving, is probably a fable. Cortius thinks that the inhabitants, observing two mounds rising above the surrounding level, fancied they must have been raised, not by nature, but by human labor, and invented a story to account for their existence. "The altars," according to Mr. Rennell (Geog. of Herod., p. 640), "were situated about seven ninths of the way from Carthage to Cyrene; and the deception," he adds, "would have been too gross, had it been pretended that ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... sharp, waking day she felt his fear as a secret, mysterious thing. She couldn't account for it. She didn't, considering the circumstances, she didn't judge the imminence of the Germans to be a sufficient explanation. It was as incomprehensible to-day ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... remedies were multiplied. In the primitive church, a voluntary and open confession prepared the work of atonement. In the middle ages, the bishops and priests interrogated the criminal; compelled him to account for his thoughts, words, and actions; and prescribed the terms of his reconciliation with God. But as this discretionary power might alternately be abused by indulgence and tyranny, a rule of discipline was framed, to inform and regulate the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... account for the difference in the distance given in the books," said the captain, who was in the pilot-house. "But the information we obtain from what are considered the authorities is so various on the same subject that I don't know ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... think of it," resumed Mrs. Riversedge, "there are things about Mr. Brope that I've never been able to account for. His income, for instance: he only gets two hundred a year as editor of the CATHEDRAL MONTHLY, and I know that his people are quite poor, and he hasn't any private means. Yet he manages to afford a flat somewhere ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... instructions, she sought another bank and opened an account for one William Linville, gentleman, residing abroad. She gave herself as a reference, left the usual signature of William Linville, and paid to his account a cheque for 8,000 pounds. She saw the manager ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... desiring to buy bread either at a baker's or in a restaurant must turn in these little stamped sections for an amount equivalent to the weight of bread purchased. Each baker was given a certain amount of meal at the commencement of each week, and he had to account for this meal at the end of the week by turning in its equivalent ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... an attraction for tourists, by the canny Yankee proprietor. Elsewhere the old ice-blocks are buried under the debris of moraine-stuff and alluvium, and are only accidentally discovered by the sinking of what are locally known as ice-wells. No existing conditions can account for the formation of such solid rocks of ice at such a depth in the soil. They are essentially glacier-like in origin and character: they result from the pressure of snow into a crystalline mass in a mountain valley: and they must have remained there unmelted ever since the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... suffer. From ill-filled lungs, which signify ill-repaired blood, arise year by year an amount not merely of disease, but of folly, temper, laziness, intemperance, madness, and, let me tell you fairly, crime—the sum of which will never be known till that great day when men shall be called to account for all deeds done in the body, whether they be ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... with astonishment. He did not remember to have seen him before; and he could not account for the interest he ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... first high-pressure double-acting engine ever made. The engine that used steam at each end of the cylinder with a vacuum and a condenser, was in this first instance, so far as any record can be found, supplanted by the engine of to-day. The reason of the delay it is difficult to account for on any other grounds than lack of boldness, for unquestionably the early experimenters knew that such an engine could be made. They were afraid of the power they had evoked. Such a machine may have seemed to them a willful ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... my task by the crackling and roaring of a large fire, and a suffocating smell of burning soot. I looked up at the kitchen cooking-stove. All was right there. I knew I had left no fire in the parlour stove; but not being able to account for the smoke and the smell of buring, I opened the door, and to my dismay found the stove red hot, from the front plate to the topmost pipe that let out ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Sir, I can somewhat account for the strange, provoking, and ridiculous conduct of this Sir Clement last night; for Miss Mirvan says he is the very man with whom she heard Lord Orville conversing at Mrs. Stanley's, when I was spoken of in so mortifying ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... lady," he said very gravely, "I would hear from your own lips what the impediments to this marriage really are. I scarce know how to account for it. Nothing has happened to change the aspect of affairs here; but within the last hour I have been troubled with doubts and misgivings. Has all been done that can be ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... her fiendish wickedness, and knew that as they had been seen last together she must account for McKay's disappearance. At the end of an interval long enough to make rescue impossible she startled the whole yacht with ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... words, a shudder ran through my frame, and a strong emotion, which I could not account for, kept ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... 880, the Monolith fails us. But even if we had no other document, the Annals itself would show us that the year 880 was an important one in the development of our sources. At the end of the account for this year, we have a closing paragraph, taken bodily from the Ninib inscription, which may thus be assigned to 880. This is further confirmed by the manner in which, this passage in the Annals abstracts the last lines of the Monolith, [Footnote: Ann. II. 125-135a is the same as the Ninib inscription ...
— Assyrian Historiography • Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead
... I am very weak to-day, but I can account for it. The day before yesterday there was a masquerade; in the course of conversation some time before, I happened to wish to go to it. Lady K. offered me two tickets for myself and Miss Delane to accompany me. I refused them on account of the expense of ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... stealing. Stealing! It's a nice sounding word in connection with one of your own that you've rared strict, ain't it? You snuffed up mighty smart when I asked you your doings, now it comes out why you couldn't account for 'em. 'Might as well be in a bloomin' glass case as have to carry a pocket-book round an' make a map of where he's been,' sez he. It appears a map of your doin's wouldn't pass examination by the police. How would you have been makin' a honest ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... "One cannot exactly account for other women's paling before her," he said to himself; "but they do—and lose significance." And then he laughed tenderly. At this moment, it was true, every other thing on ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... written, as I have observed, to convince us that our God is merciful, that he loves his saints, takes them into his special care, and demands an account for them; while, on the other hand, he is angry with the murderers of his saints, hates them and designs their punishment. Of this consolation we stand in decided need. When oppressed by our enemies and murderers, we are apt to conclude that our God has forgotten and lost interest in us. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... this right away." He rang the bell and asked Barrymore whether he could account for our experience. It seemed to me that the pallid features of the butler turned a shade paler still as he listened ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... In order to account for the extraordinary appearance of the Indians, armed in every way for death, at a moment when neither gun nor tomahawk was apparently within miles of their reach, it was necessary to revert to the first entrance of the chiefs into the fort. The fall of Pontiac ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... thing is impressed upon the mind by the imagination. It also brings to our recollection these images, when they are not present. It is thought to be only by impressing these images upon the imagination, that he can operate upon our souls. Hence, we may account for the strange manner in which our minds are led off from the contemplation of divine things, by a singular train of thought, introduced to the mind by the impression of some sensible object upon the imagination. This object brings some other one like it ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... accounted for it from very natural causes. He attributed it to the anxiety which she felt at the presence of Lord Chetwynde, and at the desperate part which she had to play. For some time this seemed sufficient to account for every thing. But afterward he learned enough to make him think it possible that there were other causes. He heard the gossip of the servants' hall, and from that he learned that it was the common opinion of the servants that Lady Chetwynde was very fond of Lord Chetwynde, but that the latter was ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... no doubt that my relatives would be greatly shocked; and I am bound to take that into account for—what ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... unwaveringly, that I'm convinced it will be reached—and soon—because it has devoured my existence: I am swallowed up in the anticipation of its fulfilment. My confessions have not relieved me; but they may account for some otherwise unaccountable phases of humour which I show. O God! It is a long fight; I wish ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... Complaints of deafness are disregarded; if the patient turns of a blue color he may be consoled by a dose of Epsom salts. It is claimed that by this drastic treatment the relapses are prevented which, in India and elsewhere, probably account for at least nine attacks out ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... times on the Esplanade, she would have borne no small amount of torture to earn the privilege of one more turn to meet him for the thirty-fifth—and that her rest was broken by waking dreams of the possible misfortunes which might account for his (and the dog's) obvious melancholy, and of impossible circumstances in which she should act as their ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... at Lord's are uncommonly hard, and a Daily Telegraph, folded twice and placed beneath one, brings something of the solace which good literature will always bring. My friends had noticed before the war, without being able to account for it, that my views became noticeably more orthodox as the summer advanced, only to fall away again with the approach of autumn. I must have been influenced subconsciously by ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... the history of the English Morris, which by this time may be called impossible to account for with any exactitude, is that in the elder days the Mummers and their plays, the Robin Hood games and other ancient diversions with their characters and customs, became allied—or rather mixed up—with the Morris-men, upon May-day and occasions of festivity such as the Leet-ales, Lamb-ales, ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... I., p. 165), who shows ample grounds for the belief that this tribal name must have once been more widely spread over the southern slopes of the Hindu kush as far as they are comprised in the limits of Kafiristan. If the great commentator nevertheless records his inability to account for Marco Polo's application of 'the name Pashai to the country south-east of Badakhshan,' the reason of the difficulty seems to me to lie solely in Sir Henry Yule's assumption that the route heard of by the traveller, led 'by the Dorah or the Nuksan ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... into a most complex machinery, indefinitely multiplies the combinations, in any one of which chance might have gone astray. From this infinite array of proofs of design, it seems to man's reason, in ordinary moods, stark madness to account for the phenomena of the universe upon any other supposition than that which docs account, and can alone account, for them all,—the supposition of a Presiding Intelligence, illimitable alike in power and ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... the Western Hemisphere, for that is the only part of the world where fossil remains have been discovered, showing the various intermediate forms which have been identified as the precursors of the true horse. It would therefore be difficult to account for the presence of the horse in Europe except on the hypothesis of continuous land communication between the two continents, seeing that it is certain that the horse existed in a wild state in Europe and Asia before his domestication by man, which ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... whole narrative (except part of Nehemiah) but also the decrees of the kings of Persia, the letters of the governor, and the prayers of Ezra and the Levites are "pure fictions of the Chronicler;" and the book of Esther is an unhistorical romance, suggested by a wish to account for the existence of the Feast of Purim, which was probably no more than the commemoration of the choosing by lot of the new inhabitants of Jerusalem ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... to true. When away from me I thought of him tenderly, and of whether he was thinking of me. But when with me I was diferent. I could not account for this, and it troubled me. Because I felt this way. Romanse had come into my life, but suppose I was ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to dig a grave. The bier is a rude framework of poles bound with ropes of hide. Some tie up the body and plant it in a sitting posture, to save themselves the trouble of excavating deep: this perhaps may account for the circular tombs seen in many parts of the country. Usually the corpse is thrust into a long hole, covered with wood and matting, and heaped over with earth and thorns, half-protected by an oval mass of loose stones, and abandoned to ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... was a great difference between the homeless and destitute fellow who became the humble client of a rich Roman landowner, and the noble young German warrior who sat at the board of a distinguished military leader, both of these help to account for the later feudal arrangement by which one person became the "man," or faithful and honorable dependent, of another. When, after the death of Charlemagne, men began to combine the idea of the comitatus with the idea of the beneficium, and to grant the usufruct of parcels of their land ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... an expression of stern gravity and melancholy, which impressed me greatly at this, my first interview with him, and which I could readily account for when I learned, later on, the tragical fate of his lovely young ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... to dig in my garden is puzzled to account for my peculiarities; I often catch a look of wondering speculation in his eye when it turns upon me. It is all because I will not let him lay out flower-beds in the usual way, and make the bit of ground in front of the house really neat and ornamental. At first he ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... ex-lightweight's plan, it had been vexing him, no nearer solution than it had been that day when he assured Hogarty that there was more behind young Denny's eagerness to meet Jed Conway than the prize-money could account for. ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... the cloud was that the story reached Miss Etta. She had noticed the general avoidance of Katie by the other girls in her class, and was very much at a loss to account for it, for to her this scholar had always seemed the best and brightest of them all, and she could see no change in her reverent, attentive behavior, her carefully prepared lessons, and her evident understanding and enjoyment ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... was now that crimson hand which had once blazed forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer's face with a trouble and anxiety that he could by no means account for. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... general administration of the Republic, it is obvious that this lowering of the level of character and of capacity must be most marked among the professional politicians of the Republican party. This is a matter of scientific necessity, and not at all of sentiment; and it suffices to account for the unquestionable average inferiority of the Government members of the Senate and the Chamber to the Opposition members in point both of character and ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... accompanying celestial phenomena; but from these, when applied to the celestial motions, we any draw conclusions as to the nature of the heavens, whereas this last may be quite different, especially as many other causes are conceivable which would account for such motions. [z] (1) It often happens that a man recalls to mind this word soul, and forms at the same time some corporeal image: as the two representations are simultaneous, he easily thinks that he imagines and feigns a corporeal soul: thus confusing the ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... laird, a bachelor and a humorist—wealthy, convivial, and hospitable, and of course having always plenty of company about him. He had a regular custom of swallowing every night in the world one of Dr. Anderson's pills, for which reasons may be readily imagined. But it is not so easy to account for his insisting on every one of his guests taking the same medicine, and whether it was by way of patronising the medicine, which is in some sense a national receipt, or whether the mischievous old ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... thought a difficult problem to account for the pleasure from the tears and grief and sympathy of tragedy, which would not be the case if all sympathy was agreeable. An hospital would be a more entertaining place than a ball. I am afraid that on p. 99 and 111 this proposition has escaped you, or rather is interwoven ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... It seemed to account for Pete's extreme shrewdness, and Andy had no difficulty in believing him. He weighed the reasons for and against going to Philadelphia after Regy on the strength ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... a pic-nic they would have the first time the chaplain rode the horse down town, there was a laugh all through the regiment, but nobody squealed, or told the chaplain what a prize package he had secured. I cannot account for it, how I could have coolly traded that dastardly horse off on to the chaplain, but I was young then. Now, after arriving at a ripe old age, I would not play such a trick on a chaplain. The next day there was to be a review, and when the regiment was notified, I got sick and could not go. ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... point which may help to account for the apparent physical disparity between the boys and girls of the village. The other is a subject of remark amongst all who know the school-children. There is no doubt about it; whether the girls are comelier of growth than the boys or not, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... altogether according to nature, and have no responsibility. Man stands in a different relation to the Lawgiver who bestowed on him the faculty of conscience and impressed on his soul a conviction that he will have to give account for all his actions. The Being to whom he must ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... Letty was as much at a loss to account for herself as Elijah must have been in the chariot of fire. She didn't know where she was going. She was not even able to ask. The succession of wonders within twenty-four hours blocked the working of her faculties. She thought of the girls who sneered at her in the studios—she thought ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Universities. He would not have done so had he not taken his degree. It possibly might have been in Paris, and he might have followed it up with foreign study. This would quite accord with his appearance in Stratford after the death of Elizabeth. A Warwickshire gentle origin[193] may somewhat account for the degree of intimacy he seems to have had with the county families, both Puritan and Catholic. His fame as a physician rapidly spread. He resided in a house in Old Town, on the way from the church to the chapel. His only daughter, Elizabeth, was baptized at Stratford on February 21, 1607-8,[194] ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... motions of the heavenly bodies by uniformly described circles, a challenge generally held responsible for a vast amount of wasted effort, and the postponement, for many centuries, of real progress. Eudoxus of Cnidus, endeavouring to account for the fact that the planets, during every apparent revolution round the earth, come to rest twice, and in the shorter interval between these "stationary points," move in the opposite direction, found that he could represent the phenomena fairly well by a system of concentric ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... imprisoned under jailers in the forecastle. On the schooner's sloping decks, when Dolores and her party climbed aboard, were a score of nondescript pirates, besides the crew's custodians, at a loss to account for the escape of the sloop, and worked up to a pitch of nervousness where they were only fit for sudden, strenuous action with a merciless taskmaster. ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... undoubtedly incorrect, since the extracts are from the MS. of 1844, about the date of which no doubt exists; but even if it could be supposed to refer to the 1842 Essay, it must, I think, be rejected. I can only account for his mistake by the supposition that my father had in mind the date (1839) at which the framework of his theory was laid down. It is worth noting that in his Autobiography (p. 88) he speaks of the time "about 1839, when the theory was clearly conceived." However ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... rudest of Gothic forms. Necessarily, when it falls on the pier, and meets that of the opposite arch, the entire section of masonry is in the shape of a cross, and is carried by the crosslet shaft, which we above stated to be distinctive of Northern design. I am more at a loss to account for the sudden and fixed development of this type of archivolt than for any other architectural transition with which I am acquainted. But there it is, pure and firmly established, as early as the building of St. Michele of Pavia; and we have ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... possible meaning, and invests itself with a sinister importance which would at ordinary times seem absurd. We three shared the queen's feelings, and forgetting the many chances of the chase, any one of which would amply account for the king's delay, fell to speculating on remote possibilities of disaster. He might have met Rischenheim—though they had ridden in opposite directions; Rupert might have intercepted him—though no means could have brought Rupert to the forest so early. Our fears ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Georges, who had been pestering me for a long time, to transform my life to one of noise and excitement. But I swear to you, Frantz, that in that whirlpool of pleasure into which I then plunged, I never have ceased to think of you, and if any one had a right to come here and call me to account for my conduct, you certainly are not the one, for you, unintentionally, have made ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... historical times the lakes were still gradually diminishing by the excess of evaporation over the quantity of water supplied by rain and snow, is an open question. At any rate the two causes I have mentioned will account for the changes which have taken place since ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... character. In answer to his renewed inquiries, she stated that her wound had been caused by a severe fall; but she assured him that it was nothing serious. The Dead Man grinned with satisfaction, as, with his ear applied to the key-hole, he heard her thus account for the wound inflicted by ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... bear in mind what female relations a man might not marry; and expounded the ties between me and Joe. Having his hand in, Mr. Wopsle finished off with a most terrifically snarling passage from Richard the Third, and seemed to think he had done quite enough to account for it when he ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Mound-Builders with these animals was made in a region far distant from the one to which they subsequently migrated would seem to be not unworthy of attention. It is necessary, however, before advancing theories to account for facts to first consider the facts themselves, and in this case to seek an answer to the question how far the identification of these carvings of supposed foreign animals is to be trusted. Before noticing in detail the carvings supposed by Squier and Davis to represent the manatee, ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... many writers who have recorded or taken notice of this rule, I have found none who have attempted to account for its introduction into the Gaelic. They only tell that such a correspondence between the vowels ought to be observed, and that it would be improper to write otherwise. Indeed, none of them seem to have attended to ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... economy that encompasses a mixture of foreign and domestic entrepreneurship, government regulation, welfare measures, and village tradition. Crude oil and natural gas production account for just over half of GDP and more than 90% of exports. Per capita GDP is among the highest in Asia, and substantial income from overseas investment supplements income from domestic production. The government ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a small percentage of the population is born with that most excellent quality, a desire for excellence, or with special aptitude of some sort or another.... Now, the most important object of all educational schemes is to catch these exceptional people, and turn them to account for the good of society. No man can say where they will crop up; like their opposites, the fools and the knaves, they appear sometimes in the palace, and sometimes in the hovel; but the great thing to be aimed at, I was almost going to say, the most important end of all social ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... and the pursuer by his ingenuity and resources keeping the victim in a state of the most fearful alarm. This was the project of my third volume. I was next called upon to conceive a dramatic and impressive situation adequate to account for the impulse that the pursuer should feel incessantly to alarm and harass his victim, with an inextinguishable resolution never to allow him the least interval of peace and security. This I apprehended could best be effected by a secret murder, to the investigation of which the innocent victim ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... thousand ways in which it may have been done; the difficulty is not to account for the doing of it; but for the showing of it in some crystals, and not in others. You never by any chance get a quartz crystal broken or twisted in this way. If it break or twist at all, which it does sometimes, like the spire of Dijon, it is by its own will or fault; it never seems to ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the people of Lumaba, to account for a peculiar knifelike cut in one of the guardian stones ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... chevalier had grown bolder, and had declared his passion for her; whereupon she had risen and ordered him to leave her. Just at that moment the duke had entered, and had taken the natural agitation and confusion of the chevalier as signs of her guilt. Some explanation was also necessary to account for the presence of the two other visitors of whom he had been told below stairs. As he knew nothing at all about them, the servant who admitted them never having seen either of them before, she acknowledged that two gentlemen had called earlier ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... constantly inhabits Paris, just as she used to do. Lavretsky has opened a private account for her with his banker, and has paid a sufficient sum to ensure his being free from her—free from the possibility of being a second time unexpectedly visited by her. She has grown older and stouter, but she is still undoubtedly handsome, and always dresses in taste. Every one has his ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... years." Her eyes held steadfast to his face; shallow, flawed by her every thought, like the sea by a cat's-paw he found them altogether inscrutable; yet received an impression that their owner was now unable to account for him. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... and Buddha: "Les voyelles du mot Buddha sont les memes que celles du mot Jehovah, qu'on prononce aussi Jouva; mais d'ailleurs le nom de Boudda a bien pu etre tire du mot Jeoudda Juda, le dieu de Joudda Boudda."—Chap. ix. p. 235. To account for the purer morals of Buddhism, MAUPIED has recourse to the conjecture that they may have been influenced by the preaching of St. Thomas at Ceylon, and Bartholomew on the continent of India. "Or il nous ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... sad, but she went on talking. The bells had struck up again: they sounded sweetly, and they seemed sometimes to come as if directly from the church, and then again as if from the woods and hills on the opposite side. Lucilla remarked how odd this was, and said she could not account for it; and then she added, 'Do you know, Bernard, that I never hear bells ring without thinking of Alfred? he used to love to hear them; he called them music, and once asked me if there would be bells in heaven. I was very little then, ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... 'didn't think.' I says to her, says I, 'Do you s'pose that'll be held for a good excuse in the day of Jedgment, when you'll have to account for that poor old mother's life? The Lord'll ask you what He give you your brains for if it wasn't to think, I reckon.' I don't fancy she'll leave ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... enlistments which were permitted white men but denied Negroes, depleted the whites eligible to Class I to some extent. Probably there were more Negro delinquents in proportion to their numbers in the south than white delinquents. The conditions under which they lived would account for that. Delinquents, under the regulations, were placed in Class 1. Then there is the undoubted fact that the Negro sought and was granted fewer exemptions on the ground of dependency. Many Negroes in the south, where the rate of pay was low, were put in Class ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... The effects of the SUN upon human labour and human enjoyment are so sensible to the simplest understanding, that we cannot wonder to find that glorious luminary among the most popular deities of ancient nations. Why search through the East to account for its worship in Greece? More easy to suppose that the inhabitants of a land, whom the sun so especially favoured— saw and blessed it, for it was good, than, amid innumerable contradictions and extravagant assumptions, to decide ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one of the Irish Henrys. They showed their curiosity in an unwarrantable manner; and Henry, who has great feeling, and a spirit as quick to resent injury as to be won by kindness, was going to call one of these gentlemen to account for his impertinence. He would have had half a dozen duels upon his hands, if Gascoigne had not settled them. I have not time to tell you the whole story—but it is enough to say, that Major Gascoigne showed great address and prudence, as well as steadiness, and you would all love Captain Henry for ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Mansfeld, being somewhat alarmed, endeavoured to prove that they had been entirely misunderstood. The venerable personage lying on the ground, he explained, was not his father, but Socrates. He found it difficult however to account for the appearance of La Motte, with his one arm wanting and with artillery by his side, because, as Farnese justly remarked, artillery had not been invented in the time of Socrates, nor was it recorded that the sage had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... myself to discuss this matter with you any further, Mr. Hodder. I feel too deeply—too strongly on the subject. I do not pretend to account for this astonishing transformation in your opinions. Up to the present I have deemed St. John's fortunate—peculiarly fortunate, in having you for its rector. I am bound to say I think you have not considered, in this change of attitude on your part, those ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... accumulations at successive heights, wherever the main river and its tributaries met the sea. Such a movement, especially if it were intermittent, and interrupted occasionally by long pauses, would very well account for the accumulation of stratified debris which we encounter at certain points in the valley, especially around Abbeville and Amiens. But we are precluded from adopting this theory by the entire absence of marine shells, and the presence of freshwater and land ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... dimensions, that I, felt mortified; but I remembered that I had the same impression many years ago when first approaching the Alps; and I began to consider, that as the extreme clearness of the atmosphere gave them the appearance of proximity in the far distance, so it would also partly account for the diminutive aspect they persisted in presenting. I dismounted, and scrambled up the bold ledge of rock, and found myself already a hundred feet above the level of the Nile. Here my Arab guide produced cold fowl, bread, wine, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... the exact counterpart of Mrs. Potter's, and I was puzzled to account for this new move. As I sat in my office, in Chicago, with Green's report before me, the idea flashed into my mind, that possibly some of the stolen money was hidden at the bottom of the creek. Recollecting the gold pieces, which had ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... general excitement reached fever-height, and when once more the Canon linked the names of Edward Wharton and Margaret Heptonstall, a kind of amazed murmur rippled from bench to bench. All those who had been party to the plot against Margaret's peace were totally at a loss to account for the conduct of the chief conspirator. They made up their minds to take him to task at the earliest possible opportunity; but, as on that particular morning he did not come to church, they were forced to restrain their curiosity ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... fellows. To the noblemen and others who befriended him he expressed himself in language which may seem exaggerated; but the warmth of his disposition, and the letter writers of the eighteenth century on whom he had formed his style, sufficiently account for it without the suspicion of affectation or flattery. Whatever his vices, ingratitude to those who showed him kindness was not among them; and the sympathetic reader is more apt to feel pathos than to take offense ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... necessary to suppose the presence of any member of the Company of Jesus, in order to account for the image on the neck of the Indian woman. The French traders are Catholics, and one of them might have given ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... controversial aspect and the practical. It will probably on the whole be admitted that the balance of argument has in the past been usually somewhat on the side of the apologists; but the argumentative victory has seldom if ever been so decisive as quite to account for the comparatively undisturbed continuity of the religious life. It was in the height of the Deist controversy that Wesley and Whitfield began to preach, and they made more converts by appealing to the emotions than probably Butler did ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... necessarily drawn to the warfare just renewed by the savages on one of our extensive frontiers—a warfare which is known to spare neither age nor sex and to be distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity. It is difficult to account for the activity and combinations which have for some time been developing themselves among tribes in constant intercourse with British traders and garrisons without connecting their hostility with that influence ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... with his brothers, unable to account for the cries he heard, and fearing that Damietta had been seized, and that the prisoners were being slain. At last there rushed in a Mameluke with a bloody sword, crying, "What wilt thou give me for delivering thee from an enemy who intended ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... reflected, "my hands are tied; and I cannot call this little d'Escorval to account for his insolence. To swallow such an affront in silence is hard. Still, he is brave, there is no denying that; perhaps I can find some other way to provoke his anger. But even then, what could I do? If I harmed a hair of his head, Marie-Anne would never forgive me. Ah! I would give a handsome sum ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... organs that secrete health and enjoin them from the performance of that rite. The medical conservatives mentioned attempt to whittle away the value and significances of this theory by affirming its inadequacy to account for such disorders as broken heads, sunstroke, superfluous toes, home-sickness, burns and strangulation on the gallows; but against the testimony of so eminent bacteriologists as Drs. Koch and Pasteur their carping is as that of ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... depressed, and bent in at the tip. The full-grown bucks shed their horns, and it is seldom that they are seen in a herd after Christmas. The female reindeer, however, retains hers during winter. Several theories have been advanced to account for this. There seems no doubt, however, that the object is to enable the female to protect her fawns from the males, who are apt to attack ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... been heard to assert in America that the Senate is hostile to the interests of the people. From what cause, then, does so startling a difference arise? The only reason which appears to me adequately to account for it is, that the House of Representatives is elected by the populace directly, and that the Senate is elected by elected bodies. The whole body of the citizens names the legislature of each State, and the Federal Constitution converts these legislatures ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... of refreshments, both in hogs and vegetables; that is, bread-fruit and cocoa-nuts; little else being in season. I do not know that there is any difference between the produce of this island and of Otaheite; but there is a very striking difference in their women that I can by no means account for. Those of Eimeo are of low stature, have a dark hue, and, in general, forbidding features. If we met with a fine woman among them, we were sure, upon enquiry, to find that she had come from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... actually wept. She could not speak much French, but she said as well as she could that she did not know that she had grown so ugly. I have noticed, however, that my photographs have a tendency to draw tears or angry expressions from most of those on whom I operate, which I can only account for by the reason that these people have not the pleasure of paying for their portraits. What is done for nothing is seldom appreciated. Suzette, not wishing to hurt my feelings, soon wiped out her eyes with her largest knuckle, and, having composed her countenance, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... from the opera-houses of the great capitals. In Switzerland, except for a short time when he was connected with the Zurich opera, he heard no operatic music except such as his own brain created. Undoubtedly this helps to account for the astounding originality of the music-dramas he wrote ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... to a deep melancholy which went on increasing from day to day, Bettina having entirely ceased her morning visits by my bedside. During the first week, I could easily account for the girl's reserve, and my sadness would soon have taken the character of the warmest love, had not her manner towards Cordiani inoculated in my veins the poison of jealousy, although I never dreamed of accusing her of the same crime ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... postmaster, was standing at the counter. Little Willy Eddy also was there. He lingered about the soda-fountain. Nobody knew how badly he wanted a drink of soda. He was like a child about it, but he was afraid lest his Minna should call him to account for the ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... banks, which were covered with a high stiff grass to the water's edge, and the stream was fringed with a thicket of drooping tea trees, which were comparatively small, and much bent by the force of floods, the probable frequency of which may account for the reduced size of the tree. The ridges were covered with rusty Gum and narrow-leaved Ironbark. An Erythrina and the Acacia of Expedition Range were plentiful. The grass was rich and of various species. The granite rock still prevailed. A felspathic rock cropped out near the second ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... is satisfactory except that it does not account for the absence of the muff. Ah, well, there must always be a mystery somewhere! Mystery ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... all very well, Mlle. Vauquier. But it does not account for the lace coat in which the girl went away. She must have returned to her room to fetch that after ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... since I had heard from Mr. Thorold! I had told him he must not write to me; but at the same time he had said that he would, and that he would enclose a letter to my father. Neither letter had come. It was easy to account for; he might not have had a chance to write; or in the confusions at home, his despatch might have been detained somewhere; it might reach me after a long interval, or it might never reach me! There was nothing strange about it; there was something trying. The hunger of my heart ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... too old to learn, Master Easy. All I have to say is this, you are welcome to all the apples in the orchard if you please, and if you prefers, as it seems you do, to steal them, instead of asking for them, which I only can account for by the reason that they say, that 'stolen fruit be sweetest,' I've only to say that I shall give orders that you be not interfered with. My chaise be at the door, Master Easy, and the man will drive you to your father's—make ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat |
