"Peculiarity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suggested a theory of the Ainos belonging to the Aryan race; and, although the idea comes to nothing when examined strictly, its existence is an acknowledgment of the special Aino race-type. Mention must also be made of an anatomical peculiarity of the Aino skeleton, consisting of a remarkable flattening of the arm-and leg-bones. On the whole it is evident that the Ainos are an ancient race in this part of Asia, and so far isolated that anthropology has not yet the means of ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... however, that the whale, seal and walrus constitute the entire food supply of the Arctic. There is scarcely any more toothsome delicacy than reindeer, the tongue of which is very dainty and succulent. There is one peculiarity about its flesh—in order to have it in perfection it must be eaten very soon after being killed; the sooner the better, for it deteriorates in flavor the longer it is kept. Indeed, the Eskimo do not wait for ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... branches, and also a lesser caliber of arterial trunk, be advantages, allowing the ligature to hold more firmly, then the vessels of the left side of the root of the neck manifest these advantages more frequently than those of the right, which spring from a common trunk. Whenever, therefore, the "peculiarity" of a separate aortic origin of the right carotid and subclavian arteries occurs, it is to be regarded more as a happy advantage ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... discolored with tar, and had got to be full of knuckles, and even her feet had degenerated into that flat, broad-toed form that, perhaps, sooner distinguishes caste, in connection with outward appearances, than any one other physical peculiarity. Yet this being had once been young—had once been even fair; and had once possessed that feminine air and lightness of form, that as often belongs to the youthful American of her sex, perhaps, as to the girl of any other nation on earth. Rose continued ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... - voman; work - vork; one - von; we - ve, &c. And hence, by way of a compound mixture, we get from him drafel for travel, derriple for terrible, a daple-leck for a table-leg, bepples for pebbles, tisasder for disaster, schimnastig dricks for gymnastic tricks, let-bencil for lead-pencil, &c. The peculiarity of Germans pronouncing in their mother tongue s like sh when it is followed by a t or p, and of Germans in southern Germany often also final s like sh, naturally produced in their American jargon such results as shplit, shtop, ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... At home, the peculiarity of their attitude was still more noticeable. I remember a certain evening party they gave a year after their marriage. The husband moved about among the crowd of guests, proud but rather embarrassed at gathering together so many in his own house. ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... in rows of little quaint old-fashioned curls on either side of the head, under a plain lace cap. At one corner of the mouth there was a mark, apparently a mole, which added to the characteristic peculiarity of the face. I looked and looked, fixing the portrait thoroughly in my mind. This woman, who had almost insulted me and my relatives, was, beyond all doubt or dispute, so far as appearances went, a person possessing unusual attractions—a person whom it would be ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... class, Mr. Slick is a specimen. I do not mean to say he is not a vain man, but merely that a portion only of that, which appears so to us, is vanity, and that the rest and by far the greater portion too, is local or provincial peculiarity. ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... composed of rude slabs of limestone with an intermixture of bowlders. The bowlders usually occur only in the lower part of the wall, near the ground, and in several cases, where nothing exists of the wall above the surface of the ground, the remains consist entirely of bowlders. A good example of this peculiarity of construction is shown in plate XLIV, and plate XLV shows the character of stone employed and also a section of standing wall on the western side of the village. A section of standing wall near the center of the ruin is illustrated ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... one who had once known Miriam could, ever forget her. Her parents called her 'a peculiar child;' among her friends the old people called her 'queer,' and the young ones 'cracked,' She was not pretty, but everybody pronounced her a fine-looking girl. Her eyes were the only peculiarity in her face. They were of a rich, dark-gray color, small, and deeply set; but at times—her 'inspired times,' as Annie called them—they would dilate and expand, until they became large and luminous. At such times she would relate with distinctness, and often with minuteness, events ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... found in the oak forests, and brown bears in the uplands. In the south are various species of antelope and wild goat. Red deer (Cervus elaphus barbarus), which differ from the typical European species only in the fact that the second tine is absent from their antlers, a peculiarity which they share with the red deer of Spain and Corsica, are still found in the forest of Beni Saleh in the department of Constantine, but are being exterminated by forest fires and poaching Arabs. Of domestic animals the camel and sheep ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... The peculiarity of construction, which is a consequence of the watery site of Venice, gives the same general character to all the superior dwellings of that remarkable town. The house to which the thread of the narrative now leads us, had its water-gate, its vestibule, its ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... affords opportunity for pomp or gaiety, or for the commission of smaller or greater sins. Rarely does a foreigner enter the island, whose remoteness, severe climate, inhospitality, and poverty, are uninviting. The grandeur and peculiarity of its natural formation alone makes it interesting, and that does not suffice ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... had inherited from his father and his grandfather before him, and of which he was entirely unconscious. Filtering down through so many generations, the mannerism had ceased at last to be merely a physical peculiarity, and had become strangely spiritual in its suggestion. The craving for possession, the singleness of desire, the tenacity of grasp, the dread of relinquishment, the cold-blooded determination to keep intact the thing which it had cost so much to acquire—all ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... the range may not be amiss here. It will be noted by the traveller from the north that the opposing line of heights in Surrey have their steepest face (or "escarpment") on the south side, while the Sussex Downs have theirs on the north. A further peculiarity lies in the fact that the river valleys which cut across each range from north to south are opposite each other, thus pointing to the probability that the fracture which caused the clefts was formerly ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... with the most central and vivid facts of our knowledge. In illustration of this, let us see how every materialistic exposition omits utterly, or fails to account for, the most essential element, the solitary and crowning peculiarity, of the case. For example, it is said that thought or consciousness is a phenomenal process of changes sustained in the brain by a correlation of forces, just as the rainbow appears, but has no ontological subsistence of its own: ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... customs of courts. At Vienna men always make courtesies, instead of bows, to the emperor; in France nobody bows to the king, or kisses his hand; but in Spain and England bows are made and hands are kissed. Thus every court has some peculiarity, which those who visit them ought previously to inform themselves of, to ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... One peculiarity had first struck me in the conduct of the case between Oscar Wilde and Lord Queensberry that did not seem to occur to any of the numberless journalists and writers who commented on the trial. It was apparent from his letter to his son (which I published ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... must not be supposed to be due to any exceptional circumstances or to inquisitorial action. The cause is found in the agricultural character itself. There has never been any difficulty in obtaining books in the country other than could be surmounted with patience. It is the peculiarity of knowledge that those who really thirst for it always get it. Books certainly came down in some way or other to Stratford-on-Avon, and the great mind that was growing there somehow found a means of reading them. Long, long before, when the printed page had not been dreamed of, the Grecian ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... difficult to explain," answered the engineer. "However, I should be disposed to conjecture that this peculiarity results from the situation of the island in the southern hemisphere, which, as you know, my boy, is colder than the ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... an undue predominance of the corresponding quality; thus, an excess of phlegm made a person phlegmatic, or dull; or an excess of black bile, melancholy. In the Elizabethan idiom, therefore, 'humor' came to mean a mood, and then any exaggerated quality or marked peculiarity in ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... come by his own spirit, that part of him which was neither flesh, nor bone, nor blood, but which had the power to make him sit up in the middle of the night to pray, and to make him fast maybe all the next day? At last I reached a comforting conclusion. That is one peculiarity of the human, he never rests upon any other kind of conclusion. What he thinks may be so, but if it is not comforting he thinks further on into the daybreak of Eternity till he gets something better, more satisfactory for his needs. This is why we shall ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... of Van Diemen's Land, arrived on the 4th February, 1813. His manner of entrance indicated the peculiarity of his character, for the weather being warm he carried his coat on his arm, and announced himself at the house where he sought temporary accommodations: nor did his subsequent administration differ from its unceremonious beginning. He took pleasure in practical jokes and rough humour: his countenance ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... special requirements. These requirements may be: the cultural necessities for some particular crop; a desire to have the atmospheric conditions inside more or less abnormal at given seasons (as in a forcing house); or an adaptation to some peculiarity of the situation, as when a greenhouse is built as an adjunct to ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... down to us from our northern ancestry, especially the Danes, who were in the habit of giving people surnames, or rather nicknames, from some quality of body or mind, but generally from some disadvantageous peculiarity of feature; for there is no denying that the English, Norse, or whatever we may please to call them, are an envious, depreciatory set of people, who not only give their poor comrades contemptuous surnames, but their great people also. They didn't call you the ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... whom was he not interested? I liked him for his real goodness, was entertained by his erratic ways, and admired his intellectual brightness. Never before had I come in contact with a mind at once so spontaneous and so versatile. It was perhaps his most striking peculiarity, that he seemed always to be looking for something startling to occur; and in a dearth of the new and sensational from without, he produced excitement for the community from within. The weather, for instance, was growing warmer, and the summer was apparently ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... aright for happiness. Our sisters found it and bestowed it. How many blessed their name! How many have had reason to love the memory of these two unobtrusive women, who, without name, or station, or show, or peculiarity, or distinction of any kind, were the types of a class the circle of which even this humble memorial, by its truth and suggestiveness, may aid in extending—of the true, simple, earnest, brave, holy Sisters of Charity of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... not feel its on-coming in the shops and streets, in the festive air of trade and business, in the thousand garnitures by which every store hangs out triumphal banners and solicits you to buy something for a Christmas gift? For it is the peculiarity of all this array of prints, confectionery, dry goods, and manufactures of all kinds, that their bravery and splendor at Christmas tide is all to seduce you into generosity, and importune you to give something to others. It says to you, ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... before the wild ambition thus kindled and inflamed can receive its first chaplet. All our literature teaches this unquiet and discontented spirit as to the present, and this rash and impatient determination to achieve immediate success. Now, this is a peculiarity of our country, the land of all others which should cherish a disposition to be gratefully contented with the unequaled blessings with which it is endowed. There is no necessity for this forcing system to expand properly and in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... way we've taken you in. Why, it's really a part of you. You're only two years out of college, hardly that; and you're still studying law; but think how people have taken you up! It is simply that Eleanor looks at it in a different way. It's a pretty peculiarity in one of ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... glen above the level of any particular shelf, as in Mealderry, Plate 2, a corresponding shelf is seen at the same level passing round the hill, as would have happened if it had once formed an island in a lake or fjord. Another very remarkable peculiarity in these terraces is this; each of them comes in some portion of its course to a col, or parting ridge, between the heads of glens, the explanation of which will be ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... warm-hearted, high-spirited, graceful boy, under his own roof for a short time, but who felt that that boy was nothing to him; would soon pass from his eye; form friends, pursuits, aims, with which he could be in no way commingled, for which he should be wholly irresponsible. There was also this peculiarity in Darrell's conversation; if he never spoke of his guest's past and future, neither did he ever do more than advert in the most general terms to his own. Of that grand stage on which he had been so brilliant an ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rule, if he but visited the tailor or had his hair cut, he told everybody all about it. He had really no idea that some things were uninteresting. I do not mean to say that this trait constitutes exactly a peculiarity. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... to be very true. Had it not been for this peculiarity of Mr. Hinckman, I might have been more willing to talk to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... a peculiarity in Lady Vargrave's countenance which I have rarely seen in others. Her smile, which was singularly expressive, came less from the lip than from the eyes; it was almost as if the brow smiled; it was as the sudden and ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wishing either to be, or to appear, de trop on a first visit; nor had he any opportunity of addressing more than a few common-place observations to me, had he desired to do so. Still I observed the same peculiarity in his manner towards me, as distinct as possible from the sort of proud humility, half badinage, half earnest, which he put on in talking ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... this plant is much used—as our own water-cress is in England—for a salad, under the name of Cresson de Roche. There is a little flower, elegant and singular in appearance, though, as its name indicates, not one of much splendour, which resembles the golden saxifrage, in the peculiarity of having a different number of stamens in its crowning floret from those of the lower ones: this is the green moschatel (Adoxa moschatellina), adoxa signifying 'inglorious.' The flowers are pale-green, in a terminal head of five florets, the upper of which is four-cleft, and has eight stamens, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... important thing to do—to steal the axe from the kitchen. That the deed must be done with an axe he had decided long ago. He had also a pocket pruning-knife, but he could not rely on the knife and still less on his own strength, and so resolved finally on the axe. We may note in passing, one peculiarity in regard to all the final resolutions taken by him in the matter; they had one strange characteristic: the more final they were, the more hideous and the more absurd they at once became in his eyes. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... local wags. Lauermann, it seems, imagined himself an excellent singer, and as a result of this presumption, evinced interest only in those in whom he thought he recognised a like talent. In spite of the fact that, owing to this singular peculiarity, he became the butt of constant jest and scornful mockery, he never failed to appear every evening among his laughter-loving persecutors. So often had he been laughed at and hurt by their scorn, that it became very difficult ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... this tree is its power of flourishing in almost any soil. It grows equally well on the mountain-side, in the rich valleys beside the streams, and on the barren sea-beach of the coral reefs, where its only soil is sand, and where its roots are watered by the waves of every rising tide. Another peculiarity is, that fruit in every stage may be seen on the same tree at one time—from the first formation, after the falling of the blossom, to the ripe nut. As the tree is slow in growth, the nuts do not probably come to perfection until twelve months after the blossoms ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... Bladud was not aware that, guided by superior Wisdom, he had, unknown to himself, approached a spot wherein there existed a remarkable natural peculiarity. This was no other than some warm, springs of salt water, which ooze out of the earth, and possess certain medicinal properties which have the effect of curing various diseases, and on which account they are sought by afflicted persons even to the ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... this time in Gaul, but Nume'rian, the younger son, who accompanied his father in his expedition was inconsolable for his death, and brought such a disorder upon his eyes, with weeping, that he was obliged to be carried along with the army, shut up in a close litter. 4. The peculiarity of his situation, after some time, excited the ambition of A'per, his father-in-law, who supposed that he could now, without any great danger, aim at the empire himself. He therefore hired a mercenary villain ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... are looking at nature—at trees, at water, at skies—nay, we admire the colour—see its harmony and many beauties—yet we know them to be, if we may use the term, misrepresented. While speaking of the Claude glass, it will not be amiss to notice a peculiarity. It shows a picture—when the unaided eye will not; it heightens illumination—brings out the most delicate lights, scarcely perceptible to the naked eye, and gives greater power to the shades, yet preserves their delicacy. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... he watched the three cars perform each two journeys to some spot or spots unknown, and, returning, deposit their passengers before the porch of Hillside. The limousine used by Ormuz Khan, upon its second appearance had partaken of the same peculiarity as the others: there were ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... in his dark eye; but there is a defect in his eyelids, for these he has no power of raising; so that, when he looks up, he turns up his face, being unable to raise his eyes; and when he looks towards the top of one of his romantic mountains, one would think he was looking at the zenith. This peculiarity is what will most strike every stranger in the appearance of the accomplished laureate. He does not at all see well at a distance, which made me several times disposed to get into a passion with him, because he did not admire the scenes which I was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... mainmast were stove in, and the whole of her quarter-galleries on both sides carried away. Forty-six men on board of her were killed, and seventy-six wounded.... The Temeraire was built with a beakhead, or, in other words, her upper works were cut off across the catheads; a peculiarity which can be observed in Turner's picture. It was found by experience in the early part of the French war that this mode of construction exposed the men working the guns to the enemy's fire, and it was afterwards ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... treating history. It is not history itself that is here presented. We might more properly designate it as a History of History—a criticism of historical narratives and an investigation of their truth and credibility. Its peculiarity, in point of fact as well as intention, consists in the acuteness with which the writer extorts from the records something which was not in the matters recorded. The French have given us much that is profound and judicious in this class of composition, but have not endeavored to make a merely ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... there is great delicacy and hesitation to be used in employing the weapon of ridicule on any point connected with religion. Some passages occur in the work before us for which the writer's sole apology must be the uncontroulable disposition to indulge the peculiarity of his vein of humour—a temptation which even the saturnine John Knox was unable to resist either in narrating the martyrdom of his friend Wisheart or the assassination of his enemy Beatson, and in the impossibility ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... with his companion, which he did frankly and even gaily, laughing, as we have said, from time to time, there was still a peculiarity which might be supposed to show that for some reason he was not perfectly at his ease, or perfectly sure of the man to whom he spoke. In general, he did not look at him, though he gazed straight forward; but, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... my opinion that the peculiarity of this season has wonderfully aided to solve many of those unanswered questions about the growing of European hazel-nuts for commercial purposes in the Eastern States. Through practical experience and close observation throughout the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... way. A quarter of an hour of this went by, then, suddenly, ahead, still farther down the slope, two or three dim lights shone up at them like will-o'-the-wisps. They seemed to dance about before Scipio's eyes as they rode. Nor, as he pointed them out to his companion, did he realize that this peculiarity was due to the motion ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... thrill when he stood in front of Rembrandt's Disciples at Emmaus or Velasquez' Lady with the Flea-bitten Nose. That was not her real name, but by that she was distinguished at Gravier's to emphasise the picture's beauty notwithstanding the somewhat revolting peculiarity of the sitter's appearance. With Ruskin, Burne-Jones, and Watts, he had put aside his bowler hat and the neat blue tie with white spots which he had worn on coming to Paris; and now disported himself in a soft, broad-brimmed hat, a flowing black cravat, and a ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Welsh emigrants in the fifth and sixth centuries. They became immensely popular wherever they were told, and they were slowly carried by minstrels and story-tellers all over Europe. That they had never received literary form or recognition was due to a peculiarity of mediaeval literature, which required that every tale should have some ancient authority behind it. Geoffrey met this demand by creating an historical manuscript of Welsh history. That was enough for the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... formerly. Twenty years before, England was engaged in a war, by which she was, in a degree, isolated from most of Christendom. This insulated condition, sustained by a consciousness of wealth, knowledge, and power, had served to produce a decided peculiarity of manners, and even of appearance. In the article of dress I could not be mistaken. In 1806 I had seen all the lower classes of the English clad in something like costumes. The Channel waterman wore the short dowlas petticoat; the Thames waterman, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... invaluable and are inclined to trust. His full-shaven face had a good-natured, almost a good-humored expression, which I have come to think must have depended on the cast of his features, on the setting of his eyes—on some peculiarity not under his control, or else he could not have preserved it so well. On certain occasions, as this one, for instance, it affected me as a refinement of cynicism; and, generally, it was startling, like the assumption of a mask ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the western transept may be quoted. He says[24] they "deserve particular examination, not only because they are very early and fine specimens of cusped and traceried windows—indeed, among the best in the kingdom—but for a remarkable peculiarity in the jambs; whereof one side is Norman, with the square capitals to the jamb-shafts both within and without, and the other Early English, as are the arch-mouldings and hoods round the whole arches, which were ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... Fern Owl; Mr. Rennie's interesting Notes on the Cleanliness of Animals; Mechanism of the Voice in Singing; the Vision of Birds of Prey; New species of British Snake; Animalculae in Snow; Habits of the Chameleon; Peculiarity of the Negro Stomach; Growth of Spanish Flies; British Pearl Fishery on the Conway; the cause of Goitre; seat of the sense of touch and taste; stones found in the stomach of Pikes; Learned Poodles at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... by reason of one of those strange psychologic intuitions which so often precede a human difficulty of one sort or another, he had been thinking of Aileen. He was thinking of the peculiarity of his relationship with her, and of the fact that now he was running to her father for assistance. As he mounted the stairs he had a peculiar sense of the untoward; but he could not, in his view of life, give it countenance. One glance at Butler showed him that something had gone ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... the great peculiarity of the national constitution of the Greeks as a distinct people. There is indeed a singular difference in the organization of the European nations, which does not always meet with due attention from historians. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... started off in couples—with a faithful friend—only to quarrel at last. For it is a peculiarity of the French that they can only have one friend at a time. Long ago—back beyond the Niemen—all friendships had been dissolved, and discipline had vanished before that. For when Discipline and a Republic are wedded we shall have the millennium. Liberty, they cry: meaning, I may do as ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... along the high roads. No man of English blood then regarded the aboriginal Irish as his countrymen. They did not belong to our branch of the great human family. They were distinguished from us by more than one moral and intellectual peculiarity, which the difference of situation and of education, great as that difference was, did not seem altogether to explain. They had an aspect of their own, a mother tongue of their own. When they talked English their pronunciation was ludicrous; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... there to learn his Art and Wisdom in the Business of pyrating, being Vessels on the same honourable Design with himself; and hoped with the Communication of his Knowledge, they should also receive his Charity, being in want of Necessaries for such Adventures. Roberts was won upon by the Peculiarity and Bluntness of these two Men and gave them Powder, Arms, and what ever else they had Occasion for, spent two or three merry Nights with them, and at parting, said, he hoped the L—— would Prosper their ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... convinced I have discovered his weakness. It is my fatal. peculiarity that I cannot be with people ten minutes without seeing some point about them where they are tenderest. Mr. Pollingray wants to be thought quite youthful. He can bear any amount of fatigue; he is always fresh and a delightful companion; but you cannot get him to show even a shadow ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Cantwell paused. It was a trick of his, a personal peculiarity. Then be permitted himself a slight ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... a department of the penal settlement. The general character of the forests is Burmese with an admixture of Malay types. Great mangrove swamps supply unlimited fire-wood of the best quality. The great peculiarity of Andaman flora is that, with the exception of the Cocos islands, no cocoanut palms are found in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... baleful American peculiarity, prejudice against color, is evidently diminishing, under the influence of anti-slavery principles and practice; and the laws which have oppressed the free colored citizen are rapidly yielding to the persevering action of the abolitionists. Dr. Channing has not over-stated ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... met at the table of their hospitable host; and there for the first time John Ferguson discovered the position in which the young physician stood to the family. He watched with a jealous eye the movements of his rival, who, though noticing a peculiarity in his young friend's manner, never dreamt of the true cause of his dejection. The contention in the breast of the lady was equally painful; for, while she divined the nature of Ferguson's melancholy, and was aware that the young doctor's attentions ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... this great fact in physical geography can never be referred to without calling to mind the remarkable hypothesis by which the distinguished President of the Royal Geographical Society (Sir Roderick I. Murchison) clearly indicated this peculiarity, before it was verified by actual observation of the altitudes of the country and by the courses of the rivers. New light was thrown on other portions of the continent by the famous travels of ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... in the entire series having any resemblance to what we hear described of "Spiritualism." This was a knocking, like a soft hammering with a wooden mallet, as it seemed in the timbers between the bedroom ceilings and the roof. It had this special peculiarity, that it was always rythmical, and, I think, invariably, the emphasis upon the last stroke. It would sound rapidly "one, two, three, four—one, two, three, four;" or "one, two, three—one, two, three," and sometimes "one, two—one, two," &c., and this, with intervals ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the sexual object if the sexual aim is to be attained (definite color of hair, clothing, even physical blemishes). No other variation of the sexual impulse verging on the pathological claims our interest as much as this one, owing to the peculiarity occasioned by its manifestations. A certain diminution in the striving for the normal sexual aim may be presupposed in all these cases (executive weakness of the sexual apparatus).[17] The connection with ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... It was a peculiarity of Miss Deemas's character, that she claimed the right to be as rude as she chose to people in her own house, and rather prided herself on this ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... The theory of Euhemeros, which was so fashionable a century ago, in the days of the Abbe Banier, has long since been so utterly abandoned that to refute it now is but to slay the slain. The peculiarity of this theory was that it cut away all the extraordinary features of a given myth, wherein dwelt its inmost significance, and to the dull and useless residuum accorded the dignity of primeval history. In this way the ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... abounds with the nasal ng, both as a prefix and a termination. It has another peculiarity, in great measure its own, in the broad sound of the letter a, somewhat as in the words mass, pass, but even more prolonged. I have distinguished this in the vocabulary by the italic. The letters f, r, v, z, are wanting ...
— Alphabetical Vocabularies of the Clallum and Lummi • George Gibbs
... corruptions of the corresponding Gregorian tunes, which adaptations the composers of classical German music called chorales with no more scruple than they applied the name to tunes of secular origin, German or foreign. The peculiarity of German chorale-music, however, is that its use, and consequently much of its invention, not only arose in connexion with the Reformation, by which the liturgy of the church became "understanded of the people," but also that it belongs to a musical epoch in which symmetry of melody ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... anticipated. I assured the officers that the money was Government (U. S.) money, which I did not intend, and was not instructed to take home with me; but which I should use in London in redeeming bonds and coupons, and should leave in the bank on deposit unless by the peculiarity of their rules, I should be obliged to withdraw it. They objected to taking the money as a Government deposit, or as an official deposit in my name, having some vague idea that if they took it and opened an official Government account they should be liable for ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... Hope, was sent to me by Dr. Hooker. The leaves are elongated, slightly concave along the middle and taper towards the apex, [page 280] which is bluntly pointed and reflexed. They rise from an almost woody axis, and their greatest peculiarity consists in their foliaceous green footstalks, which are almost as broad and even longer than the gland-bearing blade. This species, therefore, probably draws more nourishment from the air, and less from captured insects, than the other species of the genus. Nevertheless, the tentacles ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... Marmaduke (HEINEMANN) has this peculiarity, that the title role is by no means its most important or interesting character. Indeed it might with more propriety have been called Marrion, since hers is not only the central figure in the plot, but emphatically the one over which Mrs. F. A. Steel has expended most care and affection. Moreover ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... feet eastward from the screen. Its width is 33 feet between the columns, or 68 feet if the aisles be included. A notable peculiarity in it is, that after the lowering of the aisle-roofs externally, the triforium was glazed, so that there are two tiers of windows above the main arches.[92] Many styles meet here. The first three bays on the north side are Archbishop Roger's work, while the three opposite ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... period Colonel Burr was closely engaged in his studies. His constitution was somewhat renovated. His correspondence now became limited, and was principally confined to Mrs. Prevost. Here again the peculiarity already referred to was in full operation. The greater part of this correspondence is in cipher. But portions of it that are not thus written are highly interesting, and give evidence that Mrs. Prevost possessed a cultivated mind. Her health was very feeble, and continued ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... eyes. Oh, how vividly I noted it! Aunt Emma's hand, only younger, and unscarred on the palm. The family hand, no doubt: the hand of the Moores. I remembered, now, that Aunt Emma had spoken more than once of that family peculiarity. It ran through the house, she said. But my hand was quite different: not the Moore type at all: I supposed I must have taken it, as was ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... the man's side, with a gait peculiar, even to himself. The orphans all had a curious, orphan-like habit of rendering pedestrianism as difficult as possible. The twins would stagger around for a whole day tied together at the ankles, and Tim now displayed this family peculiarity by hirpling along, one foot up on the smooth, hard roadway, the other plunging ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... to the peculiarity of its situation, that one may attribute the sweetly solemn melodies produced by the bells of Venice. Flinging their prolonged notes down those immense hollows of architecture, sweeping round their narrow streets, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... is a fighting weapon, with a peculiarity in the shape of the blade which, Dr. TAYLOR informs me, is not known to occur in the weapons of any other country, and consists in the surface of the near side being flat, as in an ordinary blade, while that of the off side is distinctly convex. This necessitates rather careful handling ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... district singularly rich in fossil remains. Montmartre and its vicinity, covered with buildings and crowded with people, would not strike many observers as a promising field for scientific exploration; but it is the peculiarity of genius to read instruction where others can find only a blank, or a record of commonplace character. Cuvier discovered in the geological construction and the fossil remains of the Paris basin, elements for the solution of the most critical scientific ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... Life has pointed to the remarkable physiological likeness of tribes of people who live chiefly on rice, plantain, and potato. The Hindu, the negro, and the Irishman are all remarkable for being round-bellied, and this peculiarity is ascribed to the necessity of consuming a large bulk of food in order to obtain ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... stock a number of flies appeared in which the wing pads did not expand (fig. 33). It was found that this peculiarity is shown in only about twenty per cent of the individuals supposed to inherit it. Later it was found that this stock lacked two bristles on the sides of the thorax. By means of this knowledge the heredity of the character was easily determined. ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
... flavour than at many a rich table. He could not help noticing and admiring the skill with which Miss Wheatley ate without seeing what was before her; had he not known her misfortune, he would hardly have become aware of it by any peculiarity as she ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... fifth to return home invalided. (58. Major Tulloch, in a paper read before the Statistical Society, April 20, 1840, and given in the 'Athenaeum,' 1840, p. 353.) This immunity in the negro seems to be partly inherent, depending on some unknown peculiarity of constitution, and partly the result of acclimatisation. Pouchet (59. 'The Plurality of the Human Race' (translat.), 1864, p. 60.) states that the negro regiments recruited near the Soudan, and borrowed from the Viceroy of Egypt for the Mexican war, escaped ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... single brave man to the north of the Balkans dried up, as if by magic, the flood of invasion, brought back victory to the standards of Islam, and bade fair to overwhelm the presumptuous Muscovites in the waters of the Danube. Moltke in his account of the war of 1828, had noted a peculiarity of the Ottomans in warfare (a characteristic which they share with the glorious defenders of Saragossa in 1808) of beginning the real defence when others would abandon it as hopeless. This remark, if not true of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... A peculiarity was observable beneath her. A green field spread itself on each side of the hedge, one belonging to the glebe, the other being a part of the land attached to the manor-house adjoining. On the vicarage side she saw a little footpath, the distinctive ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... to dine. She was fat, shapeless, ugly, and grotesque. She had a ridiculous voice, and ridiculous gestures. It was easy to see that she lived alone, and that in the long lapse of years she had developed the kind of peculiarity which induces guffaws among the thoughtless. She was burdened with a lot of small parcels, which she kept dropping. She chose one seat; and then, not liking it, chose another; and then another. In a few moments ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... shop in the Strand,' he said, with an air of depreciation, such as set both ladies off with an ardour inexplicable to mere spectators, both vehemently defending the peculiarity of their favourite hue, and little personalities passing, exceedingly diverting apparently to both parties, but which vexed Honora and dismayed Phoebe by the coolness of the gentleman, and the ease with which he ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... set her affections on Heath she had made a sad mistake. His peculiarity of temperament was in accord surely with nothing in Charmian. That very fact, perhaps, had grasped her attention, had excited her curiosity, even stirred sentiment within her. Having perceived a gulf she had longed to bridge it, to set her feet on the farther side. Mrs. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... those of Original Sin. But the proximate causes seem to me to have been these two: FIRST, That the Jesuit-Priests and Principalities had vowed and resolved to have, by God's help and by the Devil's (this was the peculiarity of it), Europe made Orthodox again: and then SECONDLY, The fact that a Max of Bavaria existed at that time, whose fiery character, cunning but rash head, and fanatically Papist heart disposed him to attempt that enterprise, him with such resources ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... of their position, the best passport to the admiration and favour of women has always been to be thought highly of by men. From the combination of the two kinds of moral influence thus exercised by women, arose the spirit of chivalry: the peculiarity of which is, to aim at combining the highest standard of the warlike qualities with the cultivation of a totally different class of virtues—those of gentleness, generosity, and self-abnegation, towards ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... told over and over in thousands of volumes, the whole fruit of which has been to procure for their authors a cursory mention in the dictionary of heresies. You everywhere lay down that as proved which remains to be proved; with this peculiarity, that, as Gibbon says, firing away your double battery against those who believe too much, and those who believe too little, you hold out your own peculiar sensations, as to the precise criterion of truth; so that we must all be just of your size in order to pass the gate of that ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... as nearly as I can remember, was about all there was in the letter. Mr. Furlong professed to recognise the handwriting as his uncle's. It was a cramped hand, not easy to read, and the signature was so peculiarly formed that I was hardly able to decipher it. The peculiarity consisted of the extreme irregularity in the formation of the letters, no two of which were of equal size; and capitals were interspersed promiscuously, more ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... best-known poet of the country, by acclamation, not by criticism. He is just what poets would be if they sang, like birds, without criticism; and it is a peculiarity of his fame, that it seems as regardless of criticism, as a bird in the air. Nothing can stop a song of his. It is very easy to say that they are easy to do. They have a momentum, somehow, that it is difficult ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... It is a peculiarity of Harriet, that she had seldom been known to intimate a wish that anything should be given to herself; but when her people are in need, no scruples of delicacy stand in the way of her petitions, nay, almost her demands ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... Wilmot Proviso was no monstrous thing at all, as applied to Oregon. When the question came up of applying this same Proviso to New Mexico and California, Mr. Webster discovered in these Territories a certain peculiarity of physical geography and Asiatic scenery which he had not discovered in Oregon, and which, he found, rendered it a physical impossibility for Southern gentlemen to carry there "a law which creates property in persons," ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... specific contagion;—occurs most frequently during childhood and adolescence, though no age is exempt from it;—and affects the system but once; a peculiarity to which an exception is very rare, proved by the few instances of the kind which ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D. |
