"Hearsay" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... floating earthy masses of great size in the tropical rivers, and then describes the manner of the construction of the chinampas, but in such a way as to satisfy the careful reader that he does not intend to say that he saw them himself, and evidently makes his statement upon hearsay; and takes it up as an admitted fact, without having his mind called to the physical impossibilities of floating a mass of earth that was of a greater specific ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... of the Tragical Scene which was witnessed in Southampton County (Virginia) on Monday the 22nd of August last. New York, 1831. (This gives a table of victims and has the advantage of nearness to the event. This very nearness, however, has given credence to much hearsay and accounted for several instances ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... all hearsay, but it is the only evidence we can have; it is the only evidence we have of the price of sales of any description. I do not receive it as the precise thing, but as what is in the ordinary transactions of mankind received as proper information, and I suppose there is hardly ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... found secreted in Loring's trunk, and, to the amaze of the court, Loring declined to cross-examine. Petty was a failure. He wanted to swear to a thousand things that other people had told him, for of himself he knew nothing, and though the defense never interposed, the court did. It was all hearsay, and he was finally excused. Mrs. Burton appeared, but like Mrs. Cluppins of blessed memory, had more to say of her domestic and personal affairs than the allegations against the accused. Miss Allyn, said the judge advocate, in embarrassment, was to have appeared on the afternoon of the second ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... him. The mistakes he made in the hastiness of his spirit were corrected; his knowledge of GOD was deepened and increased; he had learned to know Him better than he could have done in any other way. He exclaimed that he had heard of Him previously, by the hearing of the ear, and knew GOD by hearsay only; but that now his eye saw Him, and that his acquaintance with GOD had become that which was the result of personal knowledge, and not of mere report. All his self-righteousness was gone: he abhorred himself in ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... proceedings, as did others present. One influential member of the Society, however, who met me the next day in the street, stated very decidedly his disapprobation of the tenor of certain parts of my address; but I found that he condemned me on hearsay evidence, not having attended the meeting himself. On the 29th, I was favored with a call from Lieutenant Governor Cunningham, of St. Kitts, on his way to England, who gave a very favorable account of the continued good conduct of the emancipated slaves in that Island. It is ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... leeward:—all this, and much more, accustoms one to strange things. Death, to be sure, has a mouth as black as a wolf's, and to be thrust into his jaws is a serious thing. But true it most certainly is—and I speak from no hearsay— that to sailors, as a class, the grisly king seems not half so hideous as he appears to those who have only regarded him on shore, and at a deferential distance. Like many ugly mortals, his features grow less frightful upon acquaintance; and ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... proofs, the witnesses of these pretended facts? Can we receive them without examining the evidence? The least action in a court of justice requires two witnesses; and we are ordered to believe all this on mere tradition and hearsay!" ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... hearsay about the pressure in the bake-houses and the accidents to the van-men, who worked on a speeding-up system that Sir Isaac had adopted from an American business specialist, Susan's mental discharge poured out into the particulars of the ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... am not going to drop Mr. Arabian because of hearsay, more especially when I don't even know what ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... most artistic nature, dwelling continually in the presence of the most flint-hearted, atrabilious, and frigid man on earth; think of me as a young girl married to a skeleton, and you will understand the life whose curious scenes can only be a hearsay tale to you; the plans for running away that perished at the sight of my father, the despair soothed by slumber, the dark broodings charmed away by music. I breathed my sorrows forth in melodies. Beethoven or Mozart would keep my confidences sacred. Nowadays, I smile at recollections ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... recollection, and quotation, though not frigidly or formally dismissed, kept a subordinate place in the talk and had to make way for comments which were actual, original, personal, and therefore in a high degree stimulating. Their talk had nothing of the flavour of the second-hand or of hearsay, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... nothing of my affairs except from hearsay, Edward. I was once intimate with the man; but he served me a shabby trick, and that ended the friendship. I ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... who'd have guessed he'd ... Surely, there's a strain Of Haggard in the young limb, after all: No Haggard stops to ask a parent's leave, Even should they happen to ken the old folk by sight: My own I knew by hearsay. But, what luck You're here to welcome the ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... means ask Miss Kavanagh to write to me. Why should she trouble herself to do it? What claim have I on her? She does not know me—she cannot care for me except vaguely and on hearsay. I have got used to your friendly sympathy, and it comforts me. I have tried and trust the fidelity of one or two other friends, and I lean upon it. The natural affection of my father and the attachment and solicitude of our two servants ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... in his veins—barely enough to stain the red of his skin, pinch up his children's hair and give them those mournful, passionate black eyes through which the tragedy of the race always looks. But so vague, so mere a hearsay, was this negro stain, if it existed at all, that he had married a white wife, and moved in society unchallenged by these very fastidious descendants of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... he began to investigate. Gradually he learned the story (from sailors in wine-shops and general hearsay) of the mysterious schooner that had twice saved Code Schofield from actual capture, and had aided him on one or two ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... his outward life was as regular and uneventful as that of a steady Somerset House clerk. There is next to nothing to record, and I will spare the patient reader the usual stock of fabulous anecdotes, the product of hearsay and loose imaginations. Let us turn for a moment to what he had learnt and actually achieved during the first thirty ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... stair, with a door to it out of the church. It looks as if they feared their people would desert them for heaven. But I presume it arises generally from the fact that they know of such an ascent themselves, only by hearsay. The knowledge of God is good, but the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... tender, and rough is the earth below. But if thou wilt I shall swear the great oath by my father's head, that neither I myself am to blame, nor have I seen any other thief of thy kine: be kine what they may, for I know but by hearsay." ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... the traders affected by it had first boycotted the fish, he had sent his steamer and purchased it from the company. Now the boot was on the other leg. The Commission and even the lawyers have all told me that they were prejudiced against the whole Mission by hearsay and misinterpretations, before they even began their exhaustive inquiry. Their findings, however, were a complete refutation of all charges, ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... accept it; if it is not, I reject it. And what am I to go by? My brain. That is the only light I have from nature, and if there be a God, it is the only torch that this God has given me by which to find my way through the darkness and the night called life. I do not depend upon hearsay for that. I do not have to take the word of any other man, nor get upon my knees before a book. Here, in the temple of the mind, I go and consult the God—that is to say, my reason—and the oracle speaks to ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... dumbfounded," said van Manderpootz. "I presume you are aware, by hearsay at least, of the existence of thought. The psychon, the unit of thought, is one electron plus one proton, which are bound so as to form one neutron, embedded in one cosmon, occupying a volume of one spation, driven by one quantum ...
— The Ideal • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... wreckage of old theories, yet we claim that the skeptic or the mystic can know of their existence only by traveling over the pathway himself; for in the world of the inner life nothing can be known by hearsay. If, then, he would really know that the road to theoretical insight into beauty is impassable, let him travel with us and see; or, if not with us, alone by himself or with some one wiser than we as ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... with a look of slight displeasure. "Do you venture to question our judgments on hearsay—for ye can know naething o' ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... their authority, are published only in this paper and the Daily Courant, and that the publishers of all other papers who insert advertisements of the same plays, can do it only by some surreptitious intelligence or hearsay, which frequently leads them to commit gross errors, as, mentioning one play for another, falsely representing the parts, &c., to the misinformation of the town, and the great detriment of the said theatre." And the Public Advertiser of January 1st, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... do to lie about it: Cornelia had a natural if not a moral disinclination to falsehood, and was, moreover, acute enough to see how strong, in this case, would be the chances of detection. It was not likely that Sophie would accept upon hearsay any imputations or accusations against her lover: she would speak to Bressant at once; the lie would be revealed, and the result would be not only a failure to alienate Sophie from him, but a certainty of alienating him ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... write the story of the 'Cochrane craze' sometime, or such part of it as has to do with my family history, and you shall read it if you like. I should set down my child-hood and my boyhood memories, together with such scraps of village hearsay as seem reliable. You were not so much younger than I, but I was in the thick of the excitement, and naturally I heard more than you, having so bitter a reason for being interested. Jacob Cochrane has altogether disappeared from public view, but there's many a family ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... traditional folklore came out, but only as hearsay, in court. M. Cheval, Maire of Cideville, deposed that a M. Savoye told him that Thorel had once been shepherd to a M. Tricot. At that time Thorel said to one of two persons in his company: 'Every time I strike ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... hearsay evidence that Peg added to this speech a wish and desire to "bust the crust" of her traducers, and remarking that "that was the kind of hair-pin" she was, closed the conversation with an unfortunate accident to the plate, that left a severe contusion on the legal brow of her ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... at any time turned themselves to criticise, to doubt, to argue, their very existence, as a people, would have ceased. They must go on believing, or all reality vanishes from their minds, accustomed for so many ages to take in that solid knowledge founded, it is true, on hearsay; but how else can truth reach us save by hearsay? Hence, their simple and artless acquiescence in any thing they hear from trustworthy lips - acquiescence ever refused to a known enemy, never to a well-tried friend, even when the facts ascertained are strange, mysterious, unaccounted ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... an' half a dozen o' the other. Moreover, when the missionaries git among the Redskins, some of 'em turns Christians an' some hypocrites—just the same as white men. What Unaco is, in the matter o' Christianity, is not for me to say, for I don't know; but from what I do know, from hearsay, of his character, I'm sartin sure that he's a good man and true, an' for that little bit of sarvice I did to his poor boy, he'd give me his life if ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... effectively. "Familiar with it? You might as well ask me if I'm familiar with the Emancipation Proclamation—the Magna Charta." And this was accurate; his knowledge of all three was based on hearsay evidence. ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... crimes they commit while executing orders, than he would put his head in a lion's mouth. It is understood that Alston simply points to a thing when he wants it done, leaving all shocking details to his tools. But this is mere hearsay. No one really knows anything about him; that is to say, no one outside his band—if he actually has one. It is very generally believed, however, that he has only to blow a single blast on a horn at any hour of the day or night, and that from fifty to a hundred armed men will instantly appear, ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... have his son fostered in an Irish family, and, despite the Statute of Kilkenny, obtained a special permission to that effect—another evidence that social life among the natives could not have been quite what the malice of Cambrensis, and others who wrote from hearsay reports, and not from personal knowledge, have ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... be practiced in my own neighborhood about seven years ago. Those who were about to begin knew nothing about drainage, except from hearsay knowledge that had crept into the community. Not a single book upon the subject was consulted or even inquired for. Even now they are as rare in farmers libraries as the classic poets. Farmer A. wished to drain and consulted ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... miss," said the groom, "but the hoss is sold. My master has paid his money. He is a friend of Captain Winstanley's. They met somewhere in Scotland the other day and my lord bought the hoss on hearsay; and I must say I don't think he'll be ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... said, "if you don't mind, we'd better talk it out. You see I do really need to know about him, and you're the only one that can tell me. Mother's is chiefly hearsay." ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, described Java from hearsay as being the largest island in the world, and the Portuguese finding this to be incorrect, as far as their knowledge of Java proper was concerned, but finding nevertheless, this "largest island in the world" to the south-east of Java, in fact, approximately in the longitudes ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... Ferrante shed his kingly tears to his wife in private, and to her in private he delivered his opinion of the new Pontiff. How, then, came Guicciardini to know of the matter? True, he says, "It is well known"—meaning that he had those tears upon hearsay. It is, of course, possible that Ferrante's queen may have repeated what passed between herself and the king; but that would surely have been in contravention of the wishes of her husband, who had, be it remembered, "dissembled his grief in public." And Ferrante does not impress one ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... hearsay evidence is unreliable. A narrative is sure to become so garbled by passing from mouth to mouth that unless a witness can testify to a fact from his own personal knowledge the evidence he gives is worthy ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... having printed Wilkes's North Briton, No 45. Leach was taken out of his bed in the night, his papers were seized, and even his journeymen and servants were apprehended, the only foundation for the arrest being a hearsay that Wilkes had been seen going into Leach's house. Wilkes had been sent to the Tower for the No. 45. After much litigation, he obtained a verdict of L4,000, and Leach L300, damages from three of the king's messengers, who had executed the illegal warrant. Kearsley, the bookseller, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... torero. He risks his life at every point of the conflict, and it is his coolness, his courage, his dexterity in giving the coup de grace so as to cause no suffering, that raise the audience to such a pitch of frenzied excitement. I speak wholly from hearsay, for I have myself only witnessed a corrida de novillos—in which the bulls are never killed, and have cushions fixed on their horns—and a curious fight between a bull and an elephant, who might have been described as an "old campaigner," ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... were shot down in the thickets, others were torn in pieces by the lash of the cart-whip. Smith was arrested, although he had in fact done his best to stop the rising. Tried before a court in which every rule of evidence was tyrannically set aside, he was convicted on hearsay and condemned to death. Before the atrocious sentence could be commuted by the home authorities, the fiery heat and noisome vapours of his prison killed him. The death of the Demerara missionary, it has been truly said, was an event as fatal to slavery in the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... women either male heads or sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... now live and the prizes they coveted; thousands still tread the earth whom he benefited, and neither class can forgive, for they are of clay. But all those who lived when Washington lived are gone; not one survives; even the last body-servant, who confused memory with hearsay, has departed ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... society even in this new and isolated corner of the earth. He had had an Indian wife in his youth; being more accustomed to the ways of her people than of his own. For nearly twenty years he had lived a thriftless, bachelor existence, known among men, and by hearsay among women, as a noted story-teller, and genial, devil-may-care, old mountain man, whose heart was in the right place, but who never drew very heavily upon his brain resources, except to embellish a tale of his ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... trace this alley up and down, Our talk must only be of Benedick: When I do name him, let it be thy part To praise him more than ever man did merit. My talk to thee must be how Benedick Is sick in love with Beatrice: of this matter Is little Cupid's crafty arrow made, That only wounds by hearsay. ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... already, since her recapture by this English world, since what was hearsay had begun to be experience, the value of things ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... saw-mill to the young feller on sort o' time-payment; an' I believe he got on splendid for a couple or three year; an' his wife had one picaninny—so we come to hear—an' suddenly he balled her out with some other feller. I on'y got hearsay for it, mind, but I know it's true; for it's just what ought to happen. Anyhow, the hand of God was on him, an' he got it hot an' heavy. Accordin' to accounts, he sold out, an' give her the bulk o' the cash, an' then he travelled. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... serious illustration of the charge, Aubrey repeats a tale related by an old attendant, who had seen the Lord High Admiral in the Privy Garden wipe with his cloak the dust from Ralegh's shoes 'in compliment.' Aubrey's description of Ralegh is all hearsay; since he was not born till 1627. He may have been told anecdotes by members of the family; for his grandfather was a Wiltshire neighbour of Sir Carew Ralegh, and he was himself a schoolfellow of Sir Carew's ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... fair to observe that all the discrepancies in the story of the 'warning' are not more numerous, nor more at variance with each other, than remote hearsay reports of any ordinary occurrence are apt to be. And we think it is plain that, if Lord Lyttelton WAS Junius, Mr. Coulton had no right to allege that Junius went and hanged himself, or, in any other way, was guilty ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... under cultivation that farmers have been compelled to destroy incredible numbers of vizcachas: many large "estancieros" (cattle-breeders) have followed the example set by the grain-growers, and have had them exterminated on their estates. Now all that Azara, on hearsay, tells about the vizcachas perishing in their burrows, when these are covered up, but that they can support life thus buried for a period of ten or twelve days, and that during that time animals will come from other villages ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... sacrificed their intellects for the glory of God? The pinching of the devil's tail he was ready and eager to believe, and not only in the figurative sense. Besides he had, before visiting the monastery, a strong prejudice against the institution of "elders," which he only knew of by hearsay and believed to be a pernicious innovation. Before he had been long at the monastery, he had detected the secret murmurings of some shallow brothers who disliked the institution. He was, besides, a meddlesome, inquisitive man, who poked his nose into everything. This was why the news of the fresh ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... one can recall experiences of their very early years which they have actually learned from hearsay, from countless repetition ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... village five miles away; but something or other intervened, and in the middle of the week I learned he could not come. A mutual friend suggested my asking Mr. Dodgson, who was then in Eastbourne, to help me, and I went with him to his rooms. I was quite a stranger to Mr. Dodgson; but knowing from hearsay how reluctant he usually was to preach, I apologised and explained my position—with Sunday so near at hand. After a moment's hesitation he consented, and in a most genial manner made me feel quite at ease as to the abruptness of my petition. ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... religion has been a matter of hearsay or dogma. A bitter conflict has always raged between theology and the latest word of science. The Church cannot afford to be without the scientific thinkers of the race. The time has come when there is everywhere heard the call of Jesus to ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... seen; so many of friends, so many of physicians, so many continually of other men, which unless we should believe, we should do nothing at all in this life; lastly, with how unshaken an assurance I believed of what parents I was born, which I could not know, had I not believed upon hearsay -considering all this, Thou didst persuade me, that not they who believed Thy Books (which Thou hast established in so great authority among almost all nations), but they who believed them not, were to be blamed; and that they were not to be heard, who should say to me, "How knowest thou those ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... prepared to see my hopes blasted, and my affection for you spurned! My happiness, my dear Miss Goodwin—my happiness for life depends upon the result of this interview. I know—but I should not say so—for in this instance I must be guided by hearsay—well, I know from hearsay that your heart is kind and affectionate. Now I believe this; for who can look upon your face and doubt it? Believing this, then, how can you, when you know that the happiness of a man who loves you beyond the power of language to express, is at stake, depends ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... space, all with the same evidence of real existence, all full of life, full of sensations, fall of beauties and transports - this became for me a matter of simple experience. And no one only knowing it from hearsay can realize how different and how much more profound is the effect of ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... Theosophy in the middle of one of his confidences about the Italian Court. It was no use. Without stopping to take breath, at once Forepaugh began to tell us the most marvellous theosophical adventures, which he knew not by hearsay, but because he had passed through them himself. We might express an opinion: he stated facts. And it seemed that he had no more intimate friend than Sinnett, and that to Sinnett he had confessed his scepticism, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... and went; and Schiller, at last, about the end of 1780, stept out of the Academy, into the actual world, which he as yet knew only by hearsay. Delivered from that long unnatural constraint of body and spirit, he gave free course to his fettered inclinations; and sought, as in Poetry so also in Life, unlimited freedom! The tumults of passion and youthful ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the man of wisdom and reason, is not fit for all persons; and not everything can be proved by reason. Revelation in the Law is necessary for the simple minded. "I am the Lord thy God" (Exod. 20, 2) is a hint to the philosopher, who need not depend on hearsay, for real knowledge is proved knowledge. But as not everyone is in a position to have such knowledge, the Bible adds, "which brought thee out of the land of Egypt." This all can understand, the simple minded ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... women who have common sense are so curiously plain, father, aren't they? Of course I only speak from hearsay. ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... into her own and the colonel's praises! and Tourville and Mowbray may be both her vouchers—I, and you, and Belton, must be only hearsay confirmers. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... (identification) 550; exhibit, material evidence, objective evidence. witness, indicator, hostile witness; eyewitness, earwitness, material witness, state's evidence; deponent; sponsor; cojuror^. oral evidence, documentary evidence, hearsay evidence, external evidence, extrinsic evidence, internal evidence, intrinsic evidence, circumstantial evidence, cumulative evidence, ex parte evidence [Lat.], presumptive evidence, collateral evidence, constructive evidence; proof &c (demonstration) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of a summer trip across the Atlantic!" Thus sung and chorused my good friends one and all; some from experience, most from hearsay, but ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... actor; that more of what is acceptable to the God of Truth may come forth in men striving with infinite confusion, and often uttering words like the east-wind, than in those who can discourse calmly and eloquently about a righteousness and mercy, which they know only by hearsay. The belief which a minister of God has in the eternity of the distinction between right and wrong should especially dispose him to recognise that distinction apart from mere circumstance and opinion. The confidence which he must have that the life of ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... the Rio Branco, which is a branch of the Amazons, to the River Paumaron, but never could find it. I was told by a man in the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly that this humming-bird is found in Mexico; but upon questioning him more about it his information seemed to have been acquired by hearsay; and so I concluded that it does not appear in Mexico. I suspect that it is never ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... permit hearsay evidence to save a man's life; with a fine distinction you permit it to ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... partly in consequence, against anything you write in my favour (and never was anything published more favourable than the Arctic paper). Lyell had difficulty in preventing Dawson reviewing the "Origin" (356/3. Dawson reviewed the "Origin" in the "Canadian Naturalist," 1860.) on hearsay, without having looked at it. No spirit of fairness can be expected from so biassed ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... not vouch for the number of the killed, but gives it on hearsay as twenty-six thousand drowned and slain; but he regrets that their flight was so precipitate as to prevent him from recording a more refreshing total. He is specially merry over the wealth and luxurious habits of Charles, alludes to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Kaestner [Gesch. der Math. I. 50] maintains that the title Calculator should be applied to the book rather than to the author, and hints that this misapprehension on Cardan's part shows that he knew of Suisset only by hearsay. The title of the copy of Suisset in the British Museum stands "Subtilissimi Doctoris Anglici Suiset. Calculationes Liber," Padue [1485]. Brunet gives one, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... it is painted, is hardly ever "exhibited," in the ordinary sense, in the centres where it is produced. The regular visitor to the Paris salons might know almost all that has been done in France in the way of mural painting. The public of our American exhibitions knows only vaguely and by hearsay what our mural painters have done and are doing. It is true that such work is infinitely better seen in place, but it is a pity it cannot be seen, even imperfectly, by the people who attend our exhibitions—people who can rarely have the necessary knowledge to read such collections ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... highest Ground of the Field, but which they mistook for the centre-ground of the Battle. This I told Carlyle, who was very reluctant to believe that he and Arnold could have been deceived—that he could accept no hearsay Tradition or Theory against the Evidence of his own Eyes, etc. However, as I was just then going down to Naseby, I might enquire further ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... possession and bequeathing of property, and the administration of justice. The second division would include histories, which consist in a great part of incidents from the Bible, as Christians know it. Mohammed probably picked up a good deal of hearsay knowledge in this department from Jews and Christians. Some of his historical incidents are purely fabulous, others are perversions or falsifications of the Scriptural narrative. This portion of the "Koran," interesting and anecdotic as it is, is the least satisfactory of the ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... them: First, I knew nothing, except by the merest hearsay, of the art of brewing tea. Second, I had failed to provide myself with a teapot or similar vessel. Third, in the natural confusion of the moment I had left the tea on board the train. Fourth, there was no milk, neither was there cream or sugar. A sense of lassitude, with a ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... mother. Father places more faith in hearsay and in the statements of the knaves who are leading him on, than he does in anything we can say. I am glad to have your confidence, mother. My plan is to allow father to do as he wills, so that he may run the full length of his folly. To me, it is most foolish and absurd; but ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... said angrily. 'But can you prove it? Can you prove it? Mind you, I will take no hearsay evidence, sir. Now, there is Turenne's agent here—you did not know, I dare say, that he had ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... pause more pregnant with scorn than the spoken words had been. "You didn't think of that, did you? Oh, no! You gave no thought to the ruined home and the weeping wife, the broken-hearted mother and the fatherless child. That was outside your reckoning altogether. And, if hearsay be true (and in this case I believe it is) you even went so far as to kill a defenceless woman who had been brave enough to wander out across that particular part of the Fens just to see what those flames really were. ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... the first witness called. The law of evidence, or at least the practice in Salem at that time, was quite different from the present. Hearsay testimony was freely admitted in the case of Goody Nurse. Mr. Parris stated that he was called to see a certain person who was sick. Mercy Lewis was sent for. She was struck dumb on entering the chamber. She was asked to hold up her hand, if she saw any of the witches afflicting ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... conversation, he told me that there were strange reports in circulation concerning the negroes, who, it was said, were to refuse to go to work on the next day, and to demand their freedom. He could not assign any further grounds for these reports than hearsay. Being accustomed to hear of war and revolution in Europe, as well as disturbances and riot in the French islands, from the fact of the majority in this little place, Frederiksted, seeking to make up for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... increased in numbers, and the uniform dashing bravery of which in the field, strongly contrasts with the misconduct of one at least of the regular native cavalry regiments in the late Affghan war. "I have seen," (says the colonel,) "a lineal descendant of Pathan Nawab's serving in the ranks of Hearsay's horse, as a common trooper on twenty rupees a-month, out of which he had merely to buy and feed his horse, procure clothes, arms, and harness, and sustain his hereditary dignity! By his commander and his fellow-soldiers he was always addressed by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... way home, the New England agents stopped at Flushing, Stamford and New Haven, to collect all the evidence they could against Governor Stuyvesant. The hearsay stories of the Indians they carefully picked up. Still the only point ascertained, of any moment was, that Governor Stuyvesant had told an Englishman, one Robert Coe, that if the English attacked him, he should try to get the Indians ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... calumnies, utterly disproved by every fact in the case, and unsupported by a tittle of evidence, save the hearsay reports of a man like Noircarmes, did this "woman, nourished at Rome, in whom no one could put confidence," dig the graves of men who were doing their best to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... In fact, I hardly know how to explain myself to you, since I know nothing save by hearsay, and what ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... braids of hair dangling half-way down her short skirt as she threw back her head to gaze up, she looked incredibly modern and American. "There were no tourists' agencies in those days," she remarked, regretfully, "so I suppose Shakspere had to trust to hearsay, and somebody must have told him a big tarradiddle. I guess Juliet was really on a visit to an aunt in the country when she first met Romeo, for fancy a girl in her senses yelling down from that balcony up at the top of a tall house to any lover, let alone a secret one? Besides, there wouldn't ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Jimmy's swimming brain, as thunder relieves the tense and straining air. The feeling that he was going mad left him, as the simple solution of his mystery came to him. This girl must have heard of him in New York—perhaps she knew people whom he knew and it was on hearsay, not on personal acquaintance, that she based that dislike of him which she had expressed with such freedom and conviction so short a while before at the Regent Grill. She did not know who ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... original inventor of the compass, was a native of this town, once a flourishing and important member of the group of cities which comprised the Amalfitan Republic in its palmy days. But Clio, the Muse of History, is an inexorable mistress, and she will not rest content with mere hearsay, however venerable, and as a result of careful investigation it would seem that Flavio Gioja, who for centuries has been generally credited with this marvellous discovery, must himself have been a personage almost as mythic as the Sirens of this shore, for his very ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... of evidence I feel in my heart the urgent necessity of seeing him face to face, of holding him by the shoulders and asking him whether these things are true. We have faced death together, Craig and I. We have done more than that—we have courted it. There is nothing about him I can accept from hearsay. I shall go with you to England, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... very reason she has been so hard to kill. Nothing is so long-lived as a chimera, nothing so difficult to lay as a ghost. From her first appearance, or rather mention, in literature, Mrs. Grundy has been a mere hearsay, a bugaboo being invented to frighten society, as "black men" and other goblins have been wickedly invented by nurses to frighten children. In the old play itself where we first find her mentioned by name, she herself never comes on ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... "a filthy little Atheist" (or was the adjective "dirty"? I really forget!) he was very young,—only twenty-eight,—and doubtless had accepted his viewpoint of the great reformer-patriot from that "hearsay upon hearsay" against which Paine himself has so urgently warned us. Of course Mr. Roosevelt, who is both intellectual and broad-minded, knows better than that today. But it is astonishing how that ridiculous and unsuitable epithet—(a ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... their native soyle and countrie, their lands & livings, and all their freinds & famillier acquaintance, it was much, and thought marvelous by many. But to goe into a countrie they knew not (but by hearsay), wher they must learne a new language, and get their livings they knew not how, it being a dear place, & subjecte to y^e misseries of warr, it was by many thought an adventure almost desperate, a case intolerable, & a misserie ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... wards, without and within, which cumber the shelves of your dry-as-dust libraries. We must hunt up all available books; and when we've got all the information that books can give us, we can go in upon hearsay evidence, which is always the most valuable in ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... giant, whom I had not seen since his childhood, was merely understood to be carrying on a conspicuous, but in all probability the most innocent, flirtation in a Swiss hotel; and here was I, on mere second-hand hearsay, crossing half Europe to spoil his perfectly legitimate sport! I did not examine my project from the unknown lady's point of view; it made me quite hot enough to consider it from that of my own sex. Yet, the day ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... but in stubborn battle, blow for blow, he mastered him; and set up trophies worthy of the name, seeing that he left behind him imperishable monuments of prowess, and bore away on his own body indelible marks of the fury with which he fought; (1) so that, apart from hearsay, by the evidence of men's eyes ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon
... book so highly recommended by such an authority is about to be introduced to a public which has hitherto only known it by hearsay, it will be interesting to inquire into the reason of its appreciation by such men as Darwin and Hooker—and Lyell, Huxley, and Wallace, with other leaders of the scientific world of that day, might be ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... on the job a week before things seemed favourable. We had only what we stood in, excepting the rough map, which was drawn from hearsay and our scanty knowledge of the country. We planned to travel at night, lay our course by the stars and perhaps walk to Switzerland in ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... from hearsay. I was in France during the week preceding that battle, the most anxious and gloomy period, probably, of the entire war. What I am about to relate is based either on authoritative information gathered on the spot, or on my own observations. In telling it, nothing is farther from my thoughts ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... River, as well as a portion of Lake Michikamau, some years ago was explored and correctly mapped; but the other rivers that flow to the eastward have either been mapped only from hearsay or not at all. Of the several rivers flowing into Ungava Bay, the Koksoak alone has been explored. This river, which is the largest of those flowing north, rises in lakes to the westward of Lake Michikamau. Next to the Koksoak, the George is the best known ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... the origin of certain deeds, of certain heroic expressions, which are born one knows not how; you will see them leap out ready-made from hearsay and the murmurs of the crowd, without having in themselves more than a shadow of truth, and, nevertheless, they will remain historical forever. As if by way of pleasantry, and to put a joke upon posterity, the public voice invents ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... he not sworn to travel even to the never-opening ice? The lying charts, compiled in main from hearsay, were ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... filthy lucre's sake. Other things I might speak in vindication of my practice in this thing: but ask of others, and they will tell thee that the things I say are truth: and hereafter have a care of receiving anything by hearsay only, lest you be found a publisher of those lies which are brought to you by others, and so render yourself the less ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... paid. This condition of affairs caused a clash among the 1,100 claimants, 700 of whose petitions on the definitive list were examined. Many other claimants were seeking evidence to secure compensation. They were not successful, however, for Cheves opposed the admission of hearsay testimony as well as the testimony of slaves. Well informed as to the progress of the commission, Congress passed an act May 15, 1828,[83] specifying August 31st as the last day on which the commission would meet. Of that entire amount awarded ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... obscure and hearsay evidence, Gerard Vossius (de Poetis Graecis, c. 6) and Le Clerc (Bibliotheque Choisie, tom. xix. p. 285) mention a commentary of Michael Psellus on twenty-four plays of Menander, still extant in Ms. at Constantinople. Yet such classic studies seem incompatible with ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... been very many or very fine in his collection of travellers' books. It was the greatest joy to me to see some of those things in Mme. Ricard's library, that I had read and dreamed about so long in my head. It was adding eyesight to hearsay. I found a good deal too that I wanted to read, in these later authorities. Evening after evening I was in madame's library, lost among the halls of the ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... single item of strictly contemporary testimony is very important, because quite incidentally it gives to the later accounts such confirmation as to show that they rest upon a solid basis of continuous tradition and not upon mere unintelligent hearsay.[253] The unvarying character of the tradition, in its essential details, indicates that it must have been committed to writing at a very early period, probably not later than the time of Ari's uncle Thorkell, who was contemporary ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... and Eleusinian Mysteries; and we are especially bound to this caution, because if we prove faithless, we should not only provoke Heaven, but draw upon our heads the utmost rigor of human displeasure. And should strangers betray us? They know nothing but by report and hearsay. Far hence, ye Profane! is the prohibition ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... had formed from hearsay the most extravagant misconceptions concerning the Friends called "Hicksites." They supposed them to be outright infidels, and that the grossest immoralities were tolerated among them; that they pointed loaded pistols at the "Orthodox" brethren, and drove ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... diligently trading in every big and little thing that had money in it; so we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in those said latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay. But not as a celebrity? Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot to remember any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known about him in the first twenty-three years ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... maintain itself upon the dogmatic creeds of the past, was rapidly petrifying into a mere "dead Letter of Religion," from which all the living spirit had fled; and those who could not nourish themselves on hearsay and inherited formula knew not where to look for the renewal of faith and hope. The generous ardour and the splendid humanitarian enthusiasms which had been stirred by the opening phases of the revolutionary movement, had now ebbed away; revulsion had followed, and with it ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... of them hath aught to say against thee; so I now would know of thee the certainty of these things and hear from thine own lips how thou didst gain this abundant wealth. I have summoned thee before me that I might be assured of all such matters by actual hearsay: so fear not to tell me all thy tale; I desire naught of thee save knowledge of this thy case. Enjoy thou to thy heart's content the opulence that Almighty Allah deigned bestow upon thee, and let thy soul have pleasure therein. Thus ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... I want all your help and advice. It's this: There seems to be no doubt that the conditions under which women are working in our factories are hideous—dangerous—the law is broken with perfect impunity. I know you can't act on rumors and hearsay. Even the inspectors don't give out the truth. And so we are going to persuade the Woman's Forum to abandon its old ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... her house came the rate in all his most virulent developments; the "new woman" with stupendous lopsided opinions on difficult Old Testament subjects; the "lady authoress" with a mission to show up the vices of a society which she knew only by hearsay. Hither came, unwittingly, simple-minded Church dignitaries, who, Sybell hoped, might influence for his good the young agnostic poet who had written a sonnet on her muff-chain, a very daring sonnet, which Doll, who did not care for poetry, had not been shown. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... that owner amounted to superstition; and he confined his feelings regarding him to muttered innuendoes and private comminations. I don't pretend to be intimately acquainted with the mode of living customary in those days at Wuthering Heights: I only speak from hearsay; for I saw little. The villagers affirmed Mr. Heathcliff was near, and a cruel hard landlord to his tenants; but the house, inside, had regained its ancient aspect of comfort under female management, and the scenes ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... the Indian found himself on the ice of the open sea with nothing but hummocks and bergs to shelter him. Being acquainted, by hearsay at least, with some of the methods of the Eskimos, he avoided the bergs, for there was the danger of masses falling from their sides and from overhanging ice-cliffs, and selected a small hummock—a heap of masses that had been thrown or crushed up earlier in the winter, covered with snow, and ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... One should not judge anybody. Margaret knew that, but she was a human being. She thought her mother a worldly woman. The fact that she was false as Judas was not apparent to this girl whose knowledge of Iscariotism was as hearsay as her ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... enough. Every species of false wit and spurious argument may be learnt here by potent examples. Whatever observations you hear dropt have been picked up in the same place or in a kindred atmosphere. There is a kind of conversation made up entirely of scraps and hearsay, as there are a kind of books made up entirely of references to other books. This may account for the frequent contradictions which abound in the discourse of persons educated and disciplined wholly in coffee-houses. There is nothing stable or well-grounded ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Bud's mind. If these were punchers from the Bar T outfit he was indeed in a bad way, for no one knew better than Larkin (by hearsay) the wild stories told of Beef Bissell's ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... with knowledge, and no need of self-reproach because one is content to remain more or less ignorant of many things which interest his fellow-creatures. We gain a good deal of knowledge through the atmosphere; we learn a great deal by accidental hearsay, provided we have the mordant in our own consciousness which makes the wise remark, the significant fact, the instructive incident, take hold upon it. After the stage of despair comes the period of consolation. We soon find that we are not so much worse off than most of our neighbors ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... colour. "Look," said he, "at the fallibility of rumour; for I had heard of you as something of a philosopher, and here I find you not only taking a man's character on hearsay but denying him the chance to ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... a romantic evening, with the moon, the stillness, and all the etceteras. Do you know, Vera Gavrilovna, here I have lived twenty-nine years in the world and never had a romance. No romantic episode in my whole life, so that I only know by hearsay of rendezvous, 'avenues of sighs,' and kisses. It's not normal! In town, when one sits in one's lodgings, one does not notice the blank, but here in the fresh air one feels it. . ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... fortune-hunting which offends you. I have only obeyed Fate, and so will you. From the moment I met him, he seemed as one I had known of old. It was Charlecotism, of course; and his signature filled me with presentiment. Nay, though the fire and the swamp have become mere hearsay to me now, I still retain the recollection of the impression throughout my illness that he was to be all that I might have been. His straightforward good sense and manly innocence brought Phoebe before me, and Currie tells me that I had fits of hatred to him as my supplanter, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... several dollars in their pockets. Certain editors have joined in the same "hue and cry" with their worthy compeers. The reasons were evident in their case. They knew I was invading their dearest worldly interests. There were others who only knew me from hearsay. Why should they become my enemies? It was because I held in my possession secrets, whose exposition would make many of them tremble. It would be to them like the interpreted handwriting upon the wall. Hence they were ready to contribute their talents and wealth, to sustain ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... seen them yourself?" said the Count. He could not help smiling at the characteristic British habit of criticising on hearsay. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... greedy for and affectioned to silver of any race known. They hold it in the greatest esteem, for they withdraw the gold from their own country in order to lock up the silver therein. And when they see silver, they look at it admiringly. I am writing not from hearsay, but from the sight and experience of many years. Consequently, he who has any silver, and takes passage with them, is not safe. Depraedari ergo desiderat qui thesaurum publice portat in via. [40] It would not be bad if they only despoiled him, but ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... little of John Hewlett's warning, thinking that it rested on the authority of a sick nervous woman, and that there was no distinct evidence but that of the young man who would not speak out, and only went by hearsay. ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the ones paramount. Tell him that I have studied my own heart as well as one can, and I know its weakness as well as I do its needs. That is why I decline to hear his pleas, whatever they may be. I did not condemn him through hearsay or doubtful evidence, and that is why I made no charge. But, since he persists in hearing what he already well knows, you may convey ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... being Psmith, the cog in the wheel of the New Asiatic Bank; Psmith, the link in the bank's chain; Psmith, the Worker. I shall not spare myself,' he proceeded earnestly. 'I shall toil with all the accumulated energy of one who, up till now, has only known what work is like from hearsay. Whose is that form sitting on the steps of the bank in the morning, waiting eagerly for the place to open? It is the form of Psmith, the Worker. Whose is that haggard, drawn face which bends over a ledger long after the other toilers have sped blithely westwards to dine ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... had spent the last five or six years of his life there, diligently trading in every big and little thing that had money in it; so we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in those said latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay. But not as a CELEBRITY? Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot to remember any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known about him in the first twenty-three years of his life ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... data used by the authors of more pretentious works are second-hand or hearsay; the author of this treatise, however, has no confidence in the accuracy of such material, therefore he has not made use of any such data. His material has been thoroughly sifted, and the reader may depend upon the absolute truth ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... mother were shadowy and half-mythical beings of hearsay to her, because just before her birth her father had been murdered from ambush. The mother had survived him only long enough to bring her baby into the world and then die broken-hearted because the child was not a boy whom she might suckle ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... from hearsay, that is all," Darrell replied, quietly; "I have heard the story a number ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... way, and to be allowed freely to excite and foster revolutionary sentiments. The press, which groaned under the most odious and intolerable censorship, was to be wholly resigned to them. I do not state these facts from hearsay. I happened by chance to be present at two conferences in which were set forward projects infected with the odour of the clubs, and these projects were supported with the more assurance because ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... which it had no immediate means of paying. Its creditors were clamorous; whilst the Executive, turn to which side it would, found itself confronted by threats, reproaches, accusations of slavery and cruelty based upon hearsay, and which, like the annexation that steadily approached, could not be met, because neither of them had yet assumed the evidenced consistency of actual fact. There was no public opinion to support the Government or to save the Republic. The Boers lived far apart from each other, whilst the annexationists ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... better inured to toil in time of war; for hunting is an image of a martial life, and Xenophon was much in the right of it when he affirmed that hunting had yielded a great number of excellent warriors, as well as the Trojan horse. For my part, I am no scholar; I have it but by hearsay, yet I believe it. Now the souls of those brave fellows, according to Gripe-men-all's riddle, after their decease enter into wild boars, stags, roebucks, herns, and such other creatures which they loved, and in quest of which they went while they were men; ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... I can't." Valencia studied her beneath a droop of eyelids behind which she was very alert. "Those things aren't said about a man unless they are true. Moreover, it happens we don't have to depend on hearsay." ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... the products of a weak and eccentric scrupulosity. Turgot was of other calibre, holding it to be only a degree less unprincipled than the avowed selfishness of the adventurer, to contract so serious an engagement on the strength of common hearsay and current usage, without ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... Time, says in 1847 that "many years before a Mr. James McKee, the brother of Mr. William Johnson's deputy, had told him that he had seen the speech in the handwriting of one of the Johnsons ... before it was seen by Logan." This is a hearsay statement delivered just seventy-three years after the event, and it is on its face so wildly improbable as not to need further comment, at least until there is some explanation as to why the Johnsons should have written the speech, how they could possibly have gotten it to Logan, and why Gibson ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... one hand, the remembrances connected with him are far fresher; his contemporaries can he consulted, and much can be made matter of certainty, for which a few years would have made it necessary to trust to hearsay or probable conjecture. On the other, there is necessarily much more reserve; nor are the results of the actions, nor even their comparative importance, so clearly discernible as when there has been time ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... places, you were told he was the French missionary; and if you sought him in his lonely hut, you found ever the same surroundings, the same simple evidences of a faith which seemed more than human. I do not speak from hearsay or book-knowledge. I have myself witnessed the scenes I now try to recall. And it has ever been the same, East and West, far in advance of trader or merchant, of sailor or soldier, has gone this dark-haired, fragile man, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... nothing of the Effinghams, except by a hearsay that got its intelligence from her own school, being herself a late arrival in the place. She had selected Templeton as a residence on account of its cheapness, and, having neglected to comply with ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... the man by hearsay, though we had never met before; and I knew that he was of a nature to be pleased with his own prominence as coroner, especially in the case of so important ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... giving him hints about cooking and making himself comfortable, and abstaining from asking many questions. They were easily satisfied with his answers and, after the meal was eaten, sat down with him and talked of the coming campaign. Neither of them had ever been to Chitral, but they knew by hearsay the nature of the road, and discussed the probability of the point at which serious opposition would begin; both agreeing that the difficulties of crossing the passes, now that these would be covered ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... Joe; "I s'pose it wouldn't be comfortable if those were your feelin's, but I reckon you don't know much about it unless from hearsay. But I tell you one thing, whiskey's a friend to be trusted"—adding, slowly, with a glance at George's face—"to get you into trouble if you let it get the upper hand of you. It's like a woman in that! It begins with the same letter too, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... inclined to the belief that—at least among the priests—knowledge had been gained of a process quite unlike that known to us for producing a gold fulminate. I was not so fortunate as to gain more knowledge of this matter than could be learned from hearsay, but from several sources I heard of the splitting asunder of a certain great rock by the Priest Captain—which wonder was accompanied by a thunderous noise and a gleam of flame and a bursting forth of smoke—whereby he was considered to have proved that the aid of the gods ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... Dick knew well enough, from hearsay, the method of "breaking down" a wild horse. He knew that the Indians choke them with the noose round the neck until they fall down exhausted and covered with foam, when they creep up, fix the hobbles, and the line in the lower jaw, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne |
