"Accident" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inexorably demolishes the Atheistic scheme for the arrangement of the solar system by accident, commonly ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the risk of any loss which might arise from storms to the commodities conveyed to the armies, not only had these two men fabricated false accounts of shipwrecks, but even those which had really occurred were occasioned by their own knavery, and not by accident. Their plan was to put a few goods of little value into old and shattered vessels, which they sank in the deep, taking up the sailors in boats prepared for the purpose, and then returning falsely the cargo as many times more valuable than it was. This fraudulent ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... conditions of the peace, Caesar again invaded their country with 600 ships and twenty-eight galleys; he landed without opposition, and defeated the Britons. His fleet again encountered a storm, in which forty ships were lost, and the rest greatly damaged. In order to prevent a similar accident, he drew all his ships ashore, and enclosed them within the fortifications of the camp. After this, he had no further naval ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... or, if not, fastened somehow. No; a faint light is admitted through the keyhole, and by putting my eye to it, I can see a stone passage on the other side. Perhaps the old woman has locked this by accident. And perhaps they are not far off. I shake it. A deep, low savage growl follows this, and I hear within two inches of my toes, a series of jerky and inquisitive sniffs. The sniffs say, as it were, "There's no doubt about it, I know you're there;" the growl adds, "Show ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... the residence of the Roman emperors, and the center of the Roman Empire, not on account of its historical and traditional associations with the foundation and first growth of the city, nor because of its central and commanding position, but by a mere accident. At daybreak on September 21st, of the year 63 B.C., Augustus was born in this region, in a modest house, opening on the lane called "ad capita bubula," which led from the valley, where now the Coliseum stands, up the slopes of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... explained that a certain number of cases of abortion occur perfectly innocently as the result of some condition of ill health, or, occasionally, as the result of accident. These spontaneous cases constitute an ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... been an irreparable loss in our situation. However, by the exertions of the Negroes, who swam in with ropes to the canoe, the asses were landed on the other side; where they stood by the water's edge until the Negroes with their corn hoes made a path for them up the steep bank. To prevent such an accident, we took the ropes from several of our loads, and fastened them together, so as to reach across the river; with this we hauled over the loaded canoe, and the Negroes paddled it back when empty. In this manner all the asses and horses were ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... this moment an awful accident occurred. From behind the door of the adjacent bedroom, Oscar, the collie, sprang forward with an angry growl; then he seemed to recognize the situation of affairs, when he saw his master holding the stranger's hand; then he began to wag his tail; then he jumped up with his fore-paws ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... 1627), a story is told. If the visitor passes out of the churchyard by the N.W. gate he will be vis-a-vis to the almshouses founded in 1627 on the W. side of what was then "St. Peter's Street, Bowgate". Pemberton is said to have been shooting in the woods, to have shot a widow by accident, and to have founded these almshouses for widows, and endowed them with L30 per annum for ever as a salve to his conscience. There is an iron arrow over the old brick gateway before the houses, which seems to countenance the story. There were formerly many other brasses ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... were headed by men who, though Christian (with the Mass, the Sacraments and all Christian things), were yet out of communion with the bulk of their officials, and all their taxpayers. They had inherited that odd position from an accident in the Imperial history. At the moment when their grandfathers had received Baptism the Imperial Court had supported this heresy. They had come, therefore, by family tradition, to regard their separate sect (with its attempt to rationalize the doctrine of the Incarnation) as a "swagger." They ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... "were reading it in the tail end of an emigrant wagon. I crept up to them softly. Their parents are still unaware of the accident," and she ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... to let me look at the ring and I'll drop it. You pick it up. But remember, it's a pure accident, and you don't know me. I can't have my name mixed up in a thing like this. You're ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... was an accident my putting you on the fire,' said Robert, telling the truth with some difficulty, for he did not know how the Phoenix might take it. It took it ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... he was niver caught. He came close to ut wanst or twice, but caught he niver was, an' that cost him more at the ind than the beginnin'. He talked to me more than most, bekaze he tould me, barrin' the accident av my educashin, I'd ha' been the same kind av divil he was. 'An' is ut like,' he wud say, houldin' his head high - 'is ut like that I'd iver be thrapped? For fwhat am I when all's said an' done?' he sez. 'A damned privit,' sez he. 'An' is ut like, think you, that ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... stretch by the roadside, and one by one the pioneers of the vast pine-woods of the interior appear. A great portion of the pine-forest (Pinus larix, or Corsican pine, not larch) between Bocognano and Corte had recently been burned by accident when we passed by. Nothing could be more forlorn than the black leafless stems and branches emerging from the snow. Some of these trees were mast-high, and some mere saplings. Corte itself is built among the mountain fastnesses of the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Club," one of the few poems that deal only with minor misfortunes, a certain player, Mr. Follet, tried a good remedy for a novel accident. ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... looked at the yellow feather and stout moire antique dress, but quite as if by accident, and without any mental deduction; then she glanced at the rosebuds in ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... enterprise which promised to increase his empire and his glory. The old Japanese ruling family was descended, as already described, from a Chinese exile; but the hero of the sixteenth century could claim no relationship with the royal house, and owed none of his success to the accident of a noble birth. Fashiba, called by some English writers Hideyoshi; by the Chinese Pingsiuki; and by the Japanese, on his elevation to the dignity of Tycoon, Taiko Sama, was originally a slave; and it is said that he first attracted attention by refusing to make the prescribed ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... which had obliged him to change his lodgings; for he had gathered them in a heap on the floor, and set fire to them with a candle, on the supposition that the boards would sustain no damage, because it is the nature of flame to ascend; but, by some very extraordinary accident, the wood was invaded, and began to blaze with great violence, which disordered him so much, that he had not the presence of mind enough to call for assistance, and the whole house must have been consumed with him in the midst of it, had not the smoke ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... died by a judgment of God, who permitted him while drinking at a well, a few days after denouncing excommunication against the emperor, to swallow a fly, which stuck in his throat, and could not be extracted by the surgeons, till the patient had expired through the inflammation produced by the accident. Adrian, however, did not excommunicate the emperor at all, but died on the eve of doing so. His body was carried to Rome, and entombed in a costly sarcophagus of marble, beside that of Eugenius III., in the nave of the old ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... listen to Ninian who was describing the accident which had happened when the Gigantic started on her first trip to America. "She jolly near sank a cruiser," he was saying as Henry moved away from the bar. "That was the second accident. The first time, she ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... loquacious personage was, what he afterwards mildly confessed to be, a government man, in other words a convict, sent out of course, according to the usual story, through mistake. It appears that he had been a drover, and that a few beasts were one morning found (quite by accident) among a herd he was driving through the West of England. He had spent the early part of his servitude at Circular Head, where he was for some time in charge of the native woman caught stealing flour at a shepherd's hut, belonging to the Van ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... number of rude boys came rushing by; and, either by accident or malice, the largest one, in passing the little girl, pushed her so roughly, that she stumbled off the sidewalk altogether, ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... killed in a railway accident, left their child a legacy other than the fortune that the New York ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... which bears witness to the intentions of the Supreme that we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, as only a succession of meaningless and monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says, it has ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... think I am a born fool, Alfred, but for the past six months I've been corresponding with a fellow in Florida. But he's all right. Don't you worry; he's safe, and that is a lot to say in this day of trickery and strife. It all come about by accident. I've got a cousin—Tobe Chasteen—working down there in an orange-grove, and now and then he writes me a letter. Well, in one he wrote that a nice fellow down there wanted to write to some girl up in Georgia, and asked me if I'd answer. So, just for fun, and to kill time, I agreed, and so ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... in his arms dripping as I was, into the tavern and I was put to bed, while a man was sent down to Church-street, to acquaint my parents with my disaster, and for dry clothes. My mother came up in a terrible fright, but my father only laughed heartily at the accident, saying he had been overboard three times before he was my age. He must have had a charmed life, if he spoke true, for I don't think I could have been above eight years old then. My father was well acquainted with Mr. Gibson, and after I had got on my ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... natural joy and delightful effort which lie in those years between seventeen and seven- and-twenty. All but all men have to look back upon beginnings of life deformed and discoloured by necessity, accident, wantonness. If a young man avoid the grosser pitfalls, if he keep his eye fixed steadily on what is called the main chance, if, without flagrant selfishness, he prudently subdue every interest to his own (by "interest" understanding only material ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... Archaeans made an expedition into the interior, which fared so ill that Xenophon, hearing by accident of what had happened, was obliged to march to their relief. To his satisfaction, however, it was found that the enemy had already dispersed, and the Greek column was overtaken on the way back to Calpe. The general effect of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... his feelings in verse because he must. There is a foretaste of Goethe in his lyrics, poured put to free the soul from a burden, and melodious as if by accident. As we turn over the leaves of his book of songs, we find deep feeling for Nature mingled with his ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the first thing which he did in the morning was to write a copy of verses. Men the family and guests assembled, the poem made its appearance as regularly as the eggs and rolls; and Mr. Gleig requires us to believe that, if from any accident Hastings came to the breakfast-table without one of his charming performances in his hand, the omission was felt by all as a grievous disappointment. Tastes differ widely. For ourselves, we must say that, however good the breakfasts at Daylesford may have been,—and we are ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... missing. Evidently the "Farnum" had made a clean get-away. If there had been any accident, it must have taken place after the new submarine boat had slipped away from ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... I must not let remorse of conscience get hold of me, and he encouraged me to believe that my responsibility had long ago ended. It was pleasant to hear these things said, and I believed him in a way; but he left by accident or design a copy of Illustrated England on my table. I am sufficiently broad-minded to believe that it is better to be a good Protestant than a bad Catholic; but Mr. Walter Poole is neither Catholic nor Protestant, but an agnostic, which is only a polite word for an ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... creature may at any moment die in the fulness of strength through sudden malady or accident, or, on the other hand, may meet with death as a mere consequence of old age, so may our globe be destroyed by some sudden cataclysm, or end in slow processes of decay. Barring accidents, therefore, it would seem probable that the growing cold of the earth, or the gradual extinction of ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... Air Accidents, Mr R. Chippindale, carried out an investigation and made a report to the Minister, dated 31 May 1980, under reg. 16 of the Civil Aviation (Accident Investigation) Regulations 1978. It was approved by the Minister for release as a public document. The Chief Inspector concluded that 'The probable cause of the accident was the decision of the captain to continue the ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan
... of an enchanted summer for the young Doctor. Day after day he met Miss Eden, at first by so-called accident; but soon their visits were pre-arranged to fall together at some poor cottage, where she told him he could bring healing or he told her ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... mission, Marquis Berghen, had been prevented from setting forth at the same time, by an accident which, under the circumstances, might almost seem ominous. Walking through the palace park, in a place where some gentlemen were playing at pall-mall, he was accidentally struck in the leg by a wooden ball. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was smashed and the chauffeur hurt. I'm going to bring her back. She had no business to be visiting the Willings in the first place, and their taking her to Chicago without our consent was downright impudence. I don't want Mrs. Bassett to know of the accident. I'm going up on the ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... The names were given to the descendants of Cain, not by accident, but by special thought and with a definite ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... Milton steered a zigzag course about the menacing rocks, grazing and bumping them now and again, but emerging finally, without accident, in quieter waters. Here they hugged the shore and waited for Harden's boat, the Mary, to come down. And come it did, balancing uncannily on the top of the waves, with Jonas' yells sounding even above the ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... of Ogimau Keegido (Speaker Chief), the head sachem of the Saginaws. He had indulged some time in drinking, and, after getting out of this debauch, was confined by sickness three days. Death came to his relief. Some years ago this man met with an accident by the discharge of a gun, by which his liver protruded; he took his knife and cut off a small piece, which he ate as a panacea. He was a man of strong passions and ungoverned will. He visited Washington in 1836, and, with other chiefs, sold the ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... le symbole ne supporte pas la presence active de l'homme. Il suffit que le coq chante, dit Hamlet, pour que les spectres de la nuit s'evanouissent. Et de meme, le poeme perd sa vie "de la seconde sphere" lorsqu'un etre de la sphere inferieure s'y introduit. L'accident ramene le symbole a l'accident; et le chef-d'oeuvre, en son essence, est mort durant le temps de cette ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... quadruple transformation. Then the second "Albatross" must have carried these pieces to the Great Eyrie, where they had been put together, within easier access of the world of men than the far-off island had permitted. The "Albatross" itself had apparently been destroyed, whether by accident or design, within the eyrie. The "Terror" had then made its appearance on the roads of the United States and in the neighboring waters. And I have told under what conditions, after having been vainly pursued across Lake Erie, this remarkable masterpiece had risen through the air carrying ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... a mother's prayers; of early associations; of a teacher, a lover, a friend. The conversion came direct from God—the soul was acted upon by some special moving of the Holy Spirit. Or it was the death of a friend, an illness, an accident, a disappointment, which turned the thoughts to heavenly things. Or it was a book that searched the soul's depths, or some quickening human experience. Is this quite as it should be? Is not professional ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... who use whiskey and other strong liquors, but also of those who use fermented drinks, as wine and beer. Beer drinkers are much more likely to suffer from disease than those who are strictly temperate. It is often noticed by physicians that when a beer-drinker becomes sick or meets with an accident, he does not recover so readily as one who uses ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... sections, which astonished Descartes; at 18 invented a calculating machine; he afterwards made experiments in pneumatics and hydrostatics, by which his name became associated with those of Torricelli and Boyle; an accident which befell him turned his thoughts to religious subjects, and in 1654 he retired to the convent of PORT ROYAL (q. v.), where he spent as an ascetic the rest of his days, and wrote his celebrated "Provincial Letters" in defence of the Jansenists against the Jesuits, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... that he could scarcely have expected a different reception in these conditions. The great river being at the stage known as "dead low water," steamboat travel was practically suspended for the season, or he could have reached his destination more directly than by rail. An accident had delayed the train some seven hours, and although the gasoline launch sent to meet him at the nearest way-station had been withdrawn at nightfall, since he did not arrive, as his sable attendant informed him, the dug-out had been substituted, with instructions to ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... surgeon or a doctor as soon as we can find one," answered the man at the door. "One of our party has been wounded by accident, and we wish to have ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... the way with me when I was a boy. I had nobody to help me out of the mud—nobody to splice my spokes, or assist me any how, and so I larned to do it myself. And now, would you think it, I'm sometimes glad of a little turn-over, or an accident, jest that I may keep my hand in and not forget to be able to help myself ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... embarrass both sides. Lying a little north of the village was the solid stone house of Chief Justice Chew, and it remains famous as the central point in the bitter fight of that day. What brought final failure to the American attack was an accident of maneuvering. Sullivan's brigade was in front attacking the British when Greene's came up for the same purpose. His line overlapped Sullivan's and he mistook in the fog Sullivan's men for the enemy and fired on them from the rear. A panic ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... the traces of a bear excited their hope of fresh meat and amended health; how, with a lantern, two or three had limped upon the track, until the light became extinguished, and they came back in despair to die. We might speak, also, of eight English sailors, left, by accident, upon Spitzbergen, who lived to return and tell their winter's tale; but a long journey is before us and we must not linger on the way. As for our whalers, it need scarcely be related that the multitude of whales diminished as the slaughtering went on, until it was no longer ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... in the laboratory, and the engineer in his machinery. But what we can do is to reduce that danger to a minimum, so that, humanly speaking, we are reasonably and sufficiently safe. No doubt you remember the case of that girl? Well, that was an accident: and accidents will happen; but do me the justice to remember that it was the first time that I had seen her. It was absolutely impossible to foresee. She was on the very edge of a nervous breakdown before she entered the room. But with regard to Mr. Baxter, ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... uttered his whole character. As a master of the revels, or an opera impresario, this royal rake would have been a complete success in life. The pity of it was that the accident of birth should have robed him in the royal purple. Like many another prince who has come to a violent end, he was ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... ever cost so much; and take good care—I warn you of this—that no other drink of it because there is too little of it for that. And, moreover, I give you this advice, that he never know whence it came; but let him think it came by accident, that you found it among the presents, and that because you tested it, and perceived by the scent of its bouquet the fragrance of good spices, and because you saw that it sparkled, you poured the wine into his cup. ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... plainly, he did not now love her as much as he did. His vagabond nature was already tired of his love-affair. This one was watered too much by tears. Bah! he was usually lucky, and this troublesome affair would come out all right like the others. Truly, it was as bad an accident as if one had fallen into a hole and broken his leg. But then, who could tell? Chance and time arrange many things. The child might not live, perhaps; at any rate, it was perfectly natural that he should ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... part of the body which it desires to influence, and acts upon that part only by means of action propagated through a series of intervening parts; or that it is able to direct only some organs, and not others, or cannot direct even those, if by some accident they have become seriously deranged. A strong-armed blockhead is not the less obviously able to pump up water because the terms 'muscular contractility' and 'atmospheric pressure' are as heathen Greek ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... foal turned out a magnificent horse. Malcolm did not allow him to do anything that could be called work before he was eight years old, and had the return at the other end, for when Goblin was thirty he rode him still, and to judge by appearances, might but for an accident have ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... we were in the city. After breakfast the company separated. I retired to my room and practiced an hour before going to try the voices in the Theater Royal. While in the midst of my practice a queer accident occurred in front of the hotel. A man in a watering cart, in backing up to the sidewalk, turned too abruptly and the traces gave way, the cart turned turtle and the poor horse hung in mid-air. Relief was soon at hand, a dozen or more of the brawny Englishmen righted ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... fear now," said General Bisson, with a pleasant and proud smile. "It was no accident, but a decree of Fate, that caused us to meet here. I was ordered by my emperor to march with a column of four thousand men from Mantua to Ratisbon, and I am now on the road to the latter place. Hence, our route leads us through the gap of Brixen, and as a matter of ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Daniels, expressive of her belief in Mr. Blake's present affection for his wife. The latter will not otherwise trust us, or understand that we are to be obeyed in whatever we may demand. Let it be unsigned and without names in case of accident; and if the housekeeper don't understand French, tell her to get some one to help her that does, only be sure that the handwriting employed is ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... so worked up about your marrying me, a BSG-man, that a little extra anger won't even show," Winfree said. "I'm convinced that he's teaching me fencing only in hopes I'll have a fatal accident." ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... first accident, though not immediate, were lasting. Paragot walked for ever afterwards with a slight limp, and his tramps along the high-roads of Europe had to ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the report of the accident had spread among the workmen and boatmen about the Cobb, and many were collected near them, to be useful if wanted, at any rate, to enjoy the sight of a dead young lady, nay, two dead young ladies, for it proved twice as fine as the first report. To some of the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... his whereabouts? Is he now in hiding abroad, or even at home, indifferent alike to the safety of his own considerable property and the peace of mind of his friends? Or is it that death has come upon him unawares by sickness, by accident, or, more probably, by the hand of some unknown criminal? Let us consider ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... departed from the home of his chum directly after breakfast, having likewise borrowed various brilliant bits of manly luxury which flashed from his ankles, his neck and his breast pocket. At exactly nine o'clock as though by accident Miss Vivi's trim figure daintily balanced on the smartest of "Safety" bicycles appeared from the Balou driveway and the following ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... cliffs now rose to the height or some five hundred feet for a distance of four hundred and fifty miles—the great Australian Bight. Young Franklin's name was given to one island, Investigator to another, Cape Catastrophe commemorated a melancholy accident and the drowning of several of the crew. Kangaroo Island speaks for itself. Here they killed thirty-one dark-brown kangaroos. "The whole ship's company was employed this afternoon skinning and cleaning the kangaroos, and a delightful regale ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... far advanced in years, was destined to feel the heaviest pressure of domestic calamity. His queen, a woman of sense and virtue, to whom, notwithstanding the grossness of his vices, he could not help paying public respect, died from the effects of an accident, which had grown into a confirmed disease. Her death was followed by that of his youngest daughter, the Queen of Denmark, a woman "of great spirit and sense," who died of an accident resembling her mother's. She, too, like the Queen of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... bearings upon their conduct. It is solemnly recorded in the Commons' Journals that during the discussion of the statute against witchcraft passed in the reign of James I., a young jackdaw flew into the House; which accident was generally regarded as malum omen to the Bill.[1] Extraordinary bravery on the part of an adversary was sometimes accounted for by asserting that he was the devil in the form of a man; as the Volscian soldier does with regard to Coriolanus. This is no mere ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... "Accident threw in my way a lad of nineteen years of age, a Swiss peasant, who for three years had nearly lost the faculty of sight. His eyes betrayed but little appearance of disorder, and the gradual decay of vision which he had experienced, was attributed to a paralysis of the optic nerve, resulting from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... was impaired by an accident which to a superstitious people seemed of evil augury. Louis of Tarentum, riding a richly caparisoned horse, had just passed the Porta Petruccia, when some ladies looking out from a high window threw such a quantity of flowers at the king that his frightened steed reared ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... a girl of eighteen, who had come to live with her uncle and aunt. Her father had died some months before. She was absolutely deaf as the result of some accident in childhood, and she was, as his own eyes told him, exquisitely lovely in her white, haunting style. But she was not Isabel Temple; he had tricked himself—he had lived in a fool's paradise—oh, he must get away and laugh at himself. He left her at her gate, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with a cover car, which was merely a flat car with a heavy bottom and side boards. When a charge was to be fired, this car was run over the 12 holes and the side boards let down, so that the charge was entirely covered. This work was remarkably free from accidents. There were no personal accident claims whatever, and the total amount paid out for property damages for the whole six miles of construction was $685. Most of this was for glass broken by the shock of explosion. There was no glass broken by flying particles. The men doing this work, few of whom had ever done blasting ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... about the corners of his fine, keen, blue eyes when he said this left no doubt in the mind of his hearer as to his real opinion of the poor country lawyer who had by accident been placed in the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... by stratagem, others by treachery, others, again, by accident; and while the exact bearings of the places were mostly well remembered, others died out of the memory of those to whose trust they had been committed, or in some cases died with them. But to this day it is believed that vast ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... a third visit to India some day, with the special object in view of occult investigation. It remains to be seen whether, by any fortunate accident, I may then be more successful in encountering anything more interesting than the ordinary clever conjurers, who sometimes pose as Fakirs, and may be found by the tourist on ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... said cheerfully. "But if you are going to be turned over in anything, Dot, always pick out a sleigh for the accident; a motor car can pin you down and a railroad wreck is serious, but when a sleigh turns over, you just slip out into the snow and there's nothing to ...
— Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun • Mabel C. Hawley
... noise of hauling on deck, followed by the threshing of our sails, as though they had suddenly come aback. I knew enough of the sea to know that if we were tacking there would be other orders, while, if the helmsman had let the ship come aback by accident I should have heard the officers rating him. I heard neither nor orders; something else was happening. A glance out of the stern windows showed me that the ship was no longer under way. She was not moving through the water. It struck me that I had better go on deck ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... that class who, while travelling through the "States," have the good sense to carry their umbrella along, and leave their title behind them. To us he was known as Mr Thompson, and, after some time, when we had all become familiar with each other, as plain "Thompson." It was only long after, and by accident, that I became acquainted with his rank and title; some of our companions do not know it to this day, but that is of no consequence. I mention the circumstance here to aid me in illustrating the character of our travelling companion, who was ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... of the twisted cast would hold all might be well. And behold it did hold. The fish was heavy, as everyone saw from the first, and it behaved fairly well. One ugly rush, which was the critical point of the battle, passed without accident, and the salmon was revealed—a silvery beauty that was more than ever your heart's desire. Easy and firm was the motto now. The fish was at last safe in Jamie's net, and if it was beaten so was I, thanks to the treacherous reel. The prize was a baggit of 22 lb., as bright ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the foreign Government to produce upon a previous application and for the want of which the prisoners were upon such first application discharged, or perhaps in a case where some official or legal formality had by mere accident been ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... of the latter to see that this trust is deserved. Moreover, it would obviously be bad business on their part to neglect this duty. For a good reputation as an issuing house takes years to build up, and is very easily shaken by any mistake, or even by any accident, which could not have been foreseen but yet brings a loan that it has handled into the list of doubtful payers. Mr. Brailsford, indeed, asserts that it may be to the advantage of bondholders to be faced by default ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... no pretense to seek the dressing-room for repairs after that number; this time they were necessary and genuine. Dowling waited for her, and when she came out he explained for the fourth or fifth time how the accident had happened. "It was entirely those other people's fault," he said. "They got me in a kind of a corner, because neither of those fellows knows the least thing about guiding; they just jam ahead and expect ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... Gould, to do her justice, measured others by herself, and really and truly believed that only accident had disconcerted a plan for concealing the will till Elvira should have been safely married to Allen Brownlow, and that thus it was the fixed purpose of the family to keep her and her fortune in their hands, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... action of the wind mechanically produces separations between the layers of annual growth, and greatly diminishes the value of the timber. The same defect is often observed in pines which, from some accident of growth, have much overtopped their fellows ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... my chums upset that bench by accident, and the pans fell with a racket, of course it gave the whole thing away, and we started to run; but unfortunately I happened to drop into your nice little trap, and you found me upside down. That is all, Mr. Growdy. Do you want to whip me ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... seems a trifle overdrawn to me. He is a thought too much the aristocrat and society man," he added, coldly. "Have you ever seen him, Ned? No? He is a striking figure, especially since he had the vast misfortune some years ago to lose a leg in a runaway accident." ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... here, and no Chinamen." This is precisely what is done in Samoa by a native Government; but the French have bound their own hands, and for forty thousand francs sold native subjects to crime and death. This horrid traffic may be said to have sprung up by accident. It was Captain Hart who had the misfortune to be the means of beginning it, at a time when his plantations flourished in the Marquesas, and he found a difficulty in keeping Chinese coolies. To-day the plantations are practically ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and furious in order to keep pace with the frenzied boundings of the squire, ceased at once, showing some interruption had occurred, while from the confused noise that ensued, it was evident the sudden stoppage had been the result of accident. With blanched cheek Alizon listened, scarcely daring to look at her mother, whose expression of countenance, revealed by the lamp she held in her hand, almost frightened her; and it was a great relief to hear the voices and laughter of the serving-men as they came forth with Nicholas, and bore ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... nothing but a tiny girl, I determined to be a heroine and find some outlet for my patriotic feeling. This became a consuming passion. In 18— just two years prior to my meeting you, a book entitled, 'White Supremacy and Negro Subordination,' by the merest accident came into my possession. That book made a revelation to me ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... past which had exiled the man who had kept by him his lost mother's ring as the sole relic of years to which he was dead so utterly as though he were lying in his coffin. No matter what the precise reason was—women, or debt, or accident, or ruin—these two, who had been familiar comrades, were now as strangers to each other; the one slumbered in ignorance near her, the other had gone out to the close peril of death, lest the eyes of his friend recognize his face and read his secret. It troubled her, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... thought that her daughter's names were decidedly a failure—Aspasia by mistake, Matilda through obstinacy, and Dilly by accident. However the child herself was a success. She was four years old when the incident occurred about the Mitchells. The whole of this story ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... across the old hall, till at last they reached the doctor's study. The exertion had been too much for him, and he fainted. Marjory rushed to call Lisbeth, saying that the doctor had come home, and that there had been an accident. ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... Silas, that was! Just!... He died from a motor accident. He was perfectly conscious and knew he'd only a few hours to live. Spine. He made his will in hospital, and died about a couple of hours after he'd made it. I wasn't there myself. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... teeth hard and went about with a fierce energy rearranging the birds in their pens, and generally working as if this were all a mere accident that only wanted putting straight, for everything to go on prosperously in ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... in the accident of a corked bottle that ought to crush a man. I have seen a host rise serenely after such an occurrence, and nobody dreamt of imputing it to him for wickedness. But the contrast between the magniloquence ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... the men awoke in water. The Chinese mandur, notwithstanding my warnings, had tied his prahu carelessly, and in the middle of the night it drifted off, with lighted lamp and two Dayaks sleeping in it. Luckily some of the others soon discovered the accident and a rescuing party brought it back early in the morning. The "kitchen" had been moved up to my place, and in spite of rain and swollen river we all managed to get breakfast. I had a call from the chief of the near-by kampong, who spoke excellent Malay, and had visited New ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... behind the armoured screen bulkhead that formed a sort of "shelter trench" across the deck; for, if an accident should happen in the way of an unexpected explosion, refuge might be had there from ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... probably no accident that, like Dante's poem, Boccaccio's romance is styled a 'comedy.' Both represent, in allegorical form, the ascent of the human soul from sin, through purgation, to ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... love and weak in our resolutions. The world has stolen away our hearts. Evil associates have corrupted our good manners, and we are irreverent, sensuous, even in the house of God. To illustrate our impiety: suppose you, by some accident, had been cast away on some lone island, barrenness reigned around you; cold winds beat against you; alone and desolate you stood exposed to every element without and a prey to every want within. The sea in its wild fury roared around you. No ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... the town produced a little adventure. The captain had ordered Cooper to boil some pitch at the galley. By some accident, the pot was capsized, and the ship came near being burned. A fresh pot was now provided, and Cooper and Dan McCoy were sent ashore, at the station, with orders to boil down pitch on the land. There was no wharf, and it was ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... perfectly disagreeable, but remark that these are the men among whom drinking, wrangling, quarrelling, fighting, ravishing, etc. etc. are found as in their native soil; once to a degree that made them a pest of society; they are growing better, but even now, one or two of them got by accident (where they have no business) into better company are sufficient very much to derange the pleasures that result from a liberal conversation. A new spirit; new fashions; new modes of politeness exhibited by the higher ranks are imitated by the lower, ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... a happy and unforeseen accident came to his aid. A bric-a-brac dealer with a shop in Jersey City filled with some very good English and Italian patterns and a fine assortment of European gatherings—most of them rare, and all of them good—fell ill and was ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... streets or look out at windows; here is a ruin, with doleful creatures moping in the shade; we overturn a stone, and blind uncanny things writhe away from the light. We begin to reflect that it is after all much like other places, and that our fine romantic view of it was due to some accident of light and colour, some transfiguring mood of our own mind; and then we set out in search of another city which we see crowning a hill on the horizon, and leave the dull place to its own commonplace life. But to begin ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... him with me, and I have a physician also. I found him on a steamer, by accident. They were about to send him to a hospital, but I was sure you would want him ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... first blush like an axiom, is, as a matter of fact, an attempt to achieve a physical impossibility and always ends, as it has ended in Europe on this occasion, in explosion. You cannot indefinitely pile up explosive material without an accident of some sort occurring; it is bound to occur. But you will note this: that the militarist—while avowing by his conduct that nations can no longer in a military sense be independent, that they are obliged to co-operate with others and consequently depend ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... It is plain to me that as profound and forecasting a brain and pen as ever appear'd in literature, after floundering somewhat in the first part of that trilogy—or perhaps draughting it more or less experimentally or by accident—afterward developed and defined his plan in the Second and Third Parts, and from time to time, thenceforward, systematically enlarged it to majestic and mature proportions in "Richard II," "Richard III," "King John," "Henry IV," "Henry V," and even in "Macbeth," ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... fall into the sea we shan't hurt ourselves so much as if it were land. I've got a couple of lifebuoys. If a storm comes on, too bad to sail through, we must come down and wait till it's over. Of course any accident may stop us, even a speck of grit in the engine; but you're the last man in the world to be put off a thing by any bogey of what-might-be, and I'm going to look at the bright side. It's time I was off, so I'll take the things you've brought—oh, ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... telegraphic system, that, sooner than part with his interest in it, even when its stock was utterly discredited, he suffered from poverty, and almost from want. While pressing on his telegraphic construction, he had been terribly wounded in a Western railroad accident, but had extricated himself from the dead and dying, and, as I learned from others, had borne his sufferings without a murmur. At another time, overtaken by ship-fever at Montreal, and thought to be beyond help, he had quietly made ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Later we learn that no papers were found on Dr. Kincaid. On January 5, 1752, Albemarle mentions traffickings with Ireland. On August 4, 1752, Mann learns from a spy of some consequence in Rome that the Prince is in Ireland. His household in Avignon is broken up—which, by accident, is true. ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... Queen really very tolerably well at Claremont on Saturday. She is decidedly better than when we saw her at the end of November. Poor Joinville is suffering from an accident to his ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... the instant he could walk without support, and long before it was prudent to do so, Frank joined in the search. At first he could do little, but as day after day passed by his strength returned so rapidly that the only symptoms that remained to tell of his late accident were his pale cheek and the haggard expression of his countenance. But the mysterious disappearance of Edith had more to do with ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... with great transformations which have no intelligible cause beyond an individual accident.[198] In the sixteenth century England changed its religion three times on the death of a sovereign (Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary). Importance not to be measured by the initial fact, but by the facts which resulted from it. We must not, therefore, deny a priori the action of individuals and discard ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... it, and it was quite ready to go with her when she was prepared to take it. It was a long walk (in the rain) to BOB'S place of work, and it seemed the longer because she could not leave the baby. But both got there, and the dinner, without any accident. And then Mrs. BOB hurried back to give the children, now home from school, their midday meal. And Mrs. BOB had plenty of work to do afterwards. She had to mend, and to scrub, and to sweep, and to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... position as well as we could, and estimated that we had crossed about a quarter of the desert, a guess which proved very accurate, for on the evening of the fourth day of our journey we reached the bottom slopes of the opposing mountains, without having experienced either accident or fatigue. As Leo said, things were "going like clockwork," but I reminded him that a good start often meant a bad finish. Nor was I wrong, for now came our hardships. To begin with, the mountains proved to be exceeding high; it took us two ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... the Pacific over the Canadian railroad was a great success. We traveled 7,000 miles without fatigue, accident or detention. We stopped at the chief points of interest, such as Toronto, Montreal, Sudbury, Port Arthur, Winnipeg, Calgary, Banff, Donald, Glacier House, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle and Tacoma, and yet made the round trip within the four weeks ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... left by their parents to their own devices, the formation of groups or gangs is inevitable. Some of these children are not moulded into the activities of churches or other helpful organizations. They simply coalesce by the accident of their circumstances, and make their own fun, in which, unfortunately, the influence for good of the better among them is often outweighed by the misbehaviour and dangerous ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... avalanche which descended from the Lucendro. The dog alone shook himself free. His first care was to extricate his master. But when he saw that he could not succeed in doing this, he hastened back to the hospice, and there, by pitiful howling and whining, announced that an accident had happened. The landlord and his servants set out immediately with shovels and pickaxes, and followed the dog, which ran quickly before them. They soon reached the place where the avalanche had fallen. Here the faithful ...
— Harper's Young People, February 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... old man, whom Eckermann met by accident one day near Weimar, told him: 'Once Goethe rang in the middle of the night and when I entered his room I found he had rolled his iron bed to the window and was lying there, gazing at the heavens. "Have you seen nothing in the sky?" asked he, and when I answered "No", he begged me to ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... under our feet, of various kinds, which are hardly to be met with anywhere else. One of the greatest dangers, he told me, in passing this mount in winter, arises from a ball of snow, which is blown down from the top by the wind, or falls down by some other accident; which, gathering all the way in its descent, becomes instantly of such a prodigious bigness, that there is hardly any avoiding being carried away with it, man and beast, and smothered in it. One of these balls we saw rolling down; but as it took ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... know if other hunters are in the woods, and I like them to know I am there, too," went on the leader of the club. "Then there is not so much danger of an accident. I don't want somebody to take me for a deer or a ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... hard pavement. It is bad enough when it happens as the result of premeditation on the part of an unfeeling parent who has made up his mind that his offspring are quite able to shift for themselves, but, when it occurs from accident, it is nothing short ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... of myself. As to mirth and ridicule, that is out of my way; but I have a tolerable fund of sternness and contempt, and, with Juvenal before me, I shall perhaps read him a lecture he has not lately heard in the C——t. From particular circumstances, which came to my knowledge almost by accident, I could 'tell him what he ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... a large province, to say nothing of a minister of fisheries, would tend in reality to mitigate the unpleasantness of being "telescoped through colliding," I cannot decide, for we reached Toronto without accident, at midnight, and I saw no more of my ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... Japat had been the home of a Mohammedan race, the outgrowth of Arabian adventurers who had fared far from home many years before Wyckholme happened upon the island by accident. It was a British possession and there were two or three thousand inhabitants, all Mohammedans. Skaggs and Wyckholme purchased the land from the natives, protected and eased their rights with the ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... however, had personal grievances. Of course Cleon very naturally became a target for the invective of the poet. "The taking of Pylus," says GILLIES, "and the triumphant return of Cleon, a notorious coward transformed by caprice and accident into a brave and successful commander, were topics well suiting the comic vein of Aristophanes; and in the comedy first represented in the seventh year of the war—The Knights—he attacks him in the moment of victory, when fortune had rendered him the idol of a licentious ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... somehow or other after all, it would be the Scottish Army, and not this New Model, the invention of the Independents and the Sectaries, that would perform the finishing action, and reap the final credit. What then were his thoughts when the news of Naseby reached him? "This accident," he writes, June 17, 1645, three days after the Battle, "is like to change much the face of affairs here. We hope the back of the Malignant [Royalist] Party is broken; [but] some fears the insolence of others, to whom alone the Lord has given the victory of that day." The news ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... 'There has been an accident' thought he, and was elated at his perspicacity. Almost at the same time his eye lighted on John, who lay close by as white as paper. 'Poor old John! poor old cove!' he thought, the schoolboy expression popping forth from some forgotten treasury, and he took his brother's ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Chronicle newspaper, was experimenting, and two brothers, named respectively John and William Mitchell, were actually making, by a tedious method, a fairly good article. They were assisted in their work by a sister. By some fortunate accident, Gillott and Miss Mitchell met, and after a brief courtship they entered into an engagement to marry. She spoke to her intended husband of the nature of her occupation, and Gillott at once conceived the idea that the press, the useful implement then used principally ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... fifty miles into Liang-chou, a city founded by a Catholic Chinaman over two hundred years ago, we were compelled to make on foot, owing to an accident that caused us serious trouble all through the remainder of our Chinese journey. In a rapid descent by a narrow pathway, the pedal of one of the machines struck upon a protuberance, concealed by a tuft ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... invest a few pounds now on what they might sell for fifty guineas in a year, if all went well. It was legitimate speculation, for the horse is a delicate creature, he is afflicted with many ailments, the least accident may destroy his value, he is a certain expense and an uncertain profit, and for one who comes safely to maturity several may bring no return at all. So the English horse-dealers took their risks as they bought up the ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the polyphyletic hypothesis involves. According to this view one cell accidentally developed the attributes of vegetable life; a further accident leads another cell to initiate the line of invertebrates; another that of fishes, let us say; another of mammals: the number varying according to the views of the theorist on phylogeny. Let us not forget that the cell or cells which accidentally ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... to the house each one hands a card to the servant in waiting. The guest repairs to the dressing-room to lay aside outer wraps, and attend to any detail of the toilet which wind or accident may have disarranged. Upon entering the parlor each guest is greeted by the hostess, who stands near the door, surrounded by her aids. If her husband's name appears on the card of invitation, he, also, is in the receiving group, contributing, in so far as ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... Cleveland had lost his influence with Western Democrats before the repeal of the McKinley Act was undertaken, and they, like the Populists, had decided that he was the tool of the corporations and the "gold-bugs" of the East. The anti-corporation feelings of the West were increased by the accident which threw the corporations and the farmers into different ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... construed to have absolutely abandoned his property, and returned it into the common stock, without any intention of reclaiming it; and therefore it belongs, as in a state of nature, to the first occupant, or finder; unless the owner appear and assert his right, which then proves that the loss was by accident, and not with an intent ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... a chance of accident we have met again. Certainly you would not have sought the meeting any more than I. We have nothing in common other than those sentiments which may have been engendered by my natural dislike and suspicion of you, one of the authors of all the misery and sorrow that I have ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... no good. To Nanda. All the same," she continued, "it's an awfully superficial thing of you not to see that her dreariness—on which moreover I've set you right before—is a mere facial accident and doesn't correspond or, as they say, 'rhyme' to anything within her that might make it a little interesting. What I like it for is just that it's so funny in itself. Her low spirits are nothing more than her features. Her gloom, as you call it, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... pieces'? All that I have done is to make a mistake—to move one of my pieces by accident. If you like, I will ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... sounded, because the thigh of Cneius Scipio had been transfixed with a javelin. The soldiers round about him were thrown into a state of great alarm, lest the wound should be mortal. However, there was no doubt but that if they had not been prevented by the intervention of this accident, they might have taken the Carthaginian camp that day. By this time, not only the men, but the elephants, were driven quite up to the rampart; and even upon the top of it nine and thirty elephants were pierced with spears. In this battle, too, as many as twelve thousand are said to ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... James B. Pond one lecture season, and during that time heard only two themes discussed, John Brown and Henry Ward Beecher. These were his gods. Pond fought with John Brown in Kansas, shoulder to shoulder, and it was only through an accident that he was not with Brown at Harpers Ferry, in which case his soul would have gone marching on with that of Old John Brown. From Eighteen Hundred Sixty to Eighteen Hundred Sixty-six Pond belonged to the army, and was stationed in Western Missouri, where ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... back, twice and thrice, to that fairer world on high in the pilot-house, where they could study the river undistracted. There and thence, now together, now apart, they had gone and come all through Watson's watch, moved by Hugh's duties or her caprice. Their each new meeting had been by accident, but it is odd how often accidents can occur—"at that stage o' the game," thought the kind pilot, and on each recurrence he noticed that they had got a bit farther on in the story ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... chiefest attraction of worldly-minded and often of base-hearted people. What is that secret? Ah, my friend, it is the appeal to the most sacred instincts and passions of a man and of a woman! This appeal is peculiar to the modern dance by the accident of physical contact that men and women assume in dancing, and also by the circumstances that attend it, namely, mixed society, late hours, and the customary use of strong drink. No honest, normally passionate person, ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... was not quite clear about the "ought," although it was so fair, but he was mute, and, after a pause, went into his shop. An accident decided the question. Catharine was the lightest sleeper in the house, notwithstanding her youth. Two nights after this controversy she awoke suddenly and smelt something burning. She jumped out of bed, flung her dressing-gown over her, opened ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford |
