"Circumstantial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to you do justice to those I have injured. To have saved his life who once saved mine, is a ray of consolation to that proud swelling heart, which has sometimes delighted to confer, but has always turned averse from the receiving of obligations, I would have been more circumstantial in my narrative, were it not for the teasing kindness of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... John D. Lee in regard to the practice of polygamy in Illinois is very circumstantial, and Lee was a conscientious polygamist to the day of his death. He says* that he was directed in this matter by principle and not by passion, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... does not influence him disagreeably if it be stormy, but calm, leaden November glooms oppress him with a feeling bordering upon stupor. These are altogether unproductive days with him. If authors, however, are subject in their moods to atmospheric and other circumstantial influences, it may be expected that readers also are to some extent possessed of a like tendency. Mr Willmott has, accordingly, a suitable suggestive word or two to guide them ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... children—have been murdered by the Kaiser's command. And the rigorous suppression of the strikes in Berlin furnishes a useful test of his recent avowals of sympathy with democratic ideals. By way of a set-off the German Press Bureau has circulated a legend of civil war in London, bristling with circumstantial inaccuracies. The enemy's successes in the field—the occupation of Reval and the recapture of Trebizond—are the direct outcome of the Russian debacle. Our capture of Jericho marks a further stage in a sustained triumph of good generalship and hard fighting, which verifies ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... spaciousness in his eyes and his smile as well as in his manner. To justify my friendly interest, I pretended to have heard about him from Rose as he himself had heard about me: that is to say, with the most circumstantial details regarding position, occupations and all the externals of life. He did not therefore enter into explanations about things of which I was ignorant and we at once began to talk without ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... counsel (of the meeting in Oxford) had the intention to set the king and his people at variance.' Nethersole to Carleton, Aug. 9, 1625: a circumstantial and very instructive ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... namely, in which exposure has not been followed by disease,—although, like other truths, they may be worth knowing, I do not see that they are like to shed any important light upon the subject before us. Every such instance requires a good deal of circumstantial explanation before it can be accepted. It is not enough that a practitioner should have had a single case of puerperal fever not followed by others. It must be known whether he attended others while this case was in progress, whether he went directly ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... the real murderer was discovered. This was a man named Hawkins, who, with his son, had been reduced from an honest livelihood to beggary and ruin by Tyrrel. On circumstantial evidence, Hawkins and his son were condemned ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... before he opened it he recognized the familiar handwriting, the profuse capitals, of Mrs. Reynolds. Fortunately, he made no comment, for the contents were utterly different from his quick anticipation. It contained a minute and circumstantial account of his visits during the past year to Mrs. Croix, with many other details, which, by spying and bribing, no doubt, she had managed to gather. Failing one revenge, the woman had resorted to another, and fearing that it might be lost ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... had about his conduct," defended Conscience with a straightforward glance, "were grossly untrue. He suffered the effects of the circumstantial out ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... whom we have already introduced to the reader, showed strong nautical propensities; he swam nut-shells in a puddle, and sent pieces of lath with paper sails floating down the brook which gurgled by the parsonage. This was circumstantial evidence: he was convicted, and ordered off to sea, to return a Nelson. For his conduct during the time he served her, Edward Forster certainly deserved well of his country; and had he been enabled ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... following our own suspicions, do we condemn, on circumstantial evidence, persons who may be perfectly guiltless of the crimes laid to their charge. Yet, though the gardener and his son were innocent of the faults they were accused of, had Lary staid at home, instead of joining in a scene of riot and folly, he would not ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... urged that this testimony, even if fully established, is purely circumstantial, for that none saw the accused commit the fatal deed. To this I ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... display any pronounced race-characters. I have early recollections of the rugged face and lovely Scotch accent of Tam Edwards, the Banffshire naturalist; and much later ones of J. Young, [24] who gave me a circumstantial account of how he found the first snow bunting's nest in Sutherlandshire; I recall the Rev. Mathew (? Mathews) of Gumley, an ardent Leicestershire ornithologist, whose friendship I gained at a tender age on discovering the nest of a red-legged partridge, from which I took every ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... reappears on the scene in charge of the ROEBUCK—a ship sent out by the English Government in 1699. His account of his voyage is very minute and circumstantial, but he still retains his aversion to the unfortunate natives, of whom he always speaks with the greatest scorn. Some of his statements are slightly doubtful, to say the least of it, as, for instance, one concerning ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... become our own personal and permanent possession, independent of surroundings; that it has sunk in some degree into the fibre of our character; that it is settled in us by conviction and principle, to guide and direct us everywhere, and is not merely a circumstantial garment, a sort of livery of this or that particular place, which will slip off us as we ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... For an excellent reason. From his capacious pockets he produced quantities of luscious sweets, and popped them into the children's mouths with his stumpy fingers. Meanwhile Olivo gave the newcomer a circumstantial account of the rediscovery of Casanova. Dreamily Amalia continued to gaze at the beloved ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... tale," declared Brick, "and them as has heard it once can take it or leave it." He was discursive, circumstantial, and it was a long time before he led them in fancy to the door of the boat-house and showed them Red Feather and Gledware disappearing forever beneath the surface of ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... says he published it in 1888, in an article on "Industrial Development," to be seen in the "Nineteenth Century". But no doubt this is another illusion. No superior person, brought up "in the Universities," to boot, could possibly have invented a myth so circumstantial. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... by the priesthood, but he was more extravagant than Brigham in his promises of blessings in store for them. He never resorted to vagueness in his pictures of what the Lord was about to do for them. He was literal and circumstantial to a degree that made Brigham and the older men in authority sometimes writhe in public and chide him in private. They were appalled at the sweeping victories he promised the Saints over the hated Gentiles at an early day. They suggested, too, that the Lord might withhold an abundance ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... soldiers of my own dear South looted not only the living but the dead. It is strong circumstantial evidence, I will admit, but ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the English bar, he surprised even his examiners. His summing-up in the Doughertie murder case was, I heard his lordship remark, one of the most masterly efforts he ever listened to. Just tore the circumstantial evidence to pieces and freed his man! Besides his profession at the bar, he is an unusually gifted criminologist; takes a strong personal interest in the lowest riffraff; is writing a book, I understand—one of the kind that will throw a new ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... curious knowledge of the adventures which took place in three counties, at least, and her brain was so alert and her memory so unusual that she was enabled to confront an enemy with such adroitly arranged circumstantial evidence that more than one poor beauty would far rather have faced a loaded cannon than found herself within the immediate neighbourhood of the mocking and flashing eyes. Her meeting in the mercer's shop with the fair "Willow Wand," Lady Maddon, had been so full of spirited ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the sting is to the bee, what beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. Large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the people of the Lower Ganges. All those millions do not furnish one sepoy to the armies of the Company. But as usurers, as money-changers, as sharp legal practitioners, no class ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Persian governor, who ruled over the province west of the Euphrates, to put a stop to the temple building. The narrative, the letter, and decrees which it contains reveal at many points their Jewish origin. While the tradition may be comparatively late, its circumstantial character favors the conclusion that it preserves the memory of a definite historical event. The action of the Jews in rebuilding their temple was in perfect accord with the policy of Cyrus and also of Darius, ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... comment just then. But the others looked astonished. Armand had but asked a simple question, and Blakeney's reply seemed almost like a rebuke—so circumstantial too, and so explanatory. He was so used to being obeyed at a word, so accustomed that the merest wish, the slightest hint from him was understood by his band of devoted followers, that the long explanation of his orders ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... circumstantial evidence, he reflected that those impassioned letters did not correspond in any way to this woman in the flesh. Never was woman more controlled, more adept in the lies of good breeding. He remembered the Chantelouve at-homes. She seemed ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... well as other tame animals which belonged by right in the barnyard, but preferred the drawing room. Ill feeling sprang up, quarrels, lawsuits, all the dreadful sequel of a neighbors' feud. At the trial circumstantial evidence piled up and up. It was not enough for conviction. The inmates of "Goat Castle" were acquitted. Even so, black distrust was their portion from many of ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... quite justified," she said—"not only by circumstantial evidence but to a degree in fact. You must know ... now I must ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... presence of her sovereign affliction. Whenever anybody presumed to speak of their little personal sufferings before her, she said: "You should thank Heaven you haven't got the rheumatics," and would then proceed to give a circumstantial history of her acquaintance with that disease. Therefore, on this occasion, she was quite unaware that poor Bog sat opposite to her with a pale, dejected face, playing aimlessly on his plate with his knife and fork. She thought only, and talked only, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... detective had permission to see the man as often as he wished to. Knoll had been proven a thief, but the accusation of murder against him had not been strengthened by anything but the most superficial circumstantial evidence, therefore it was necessary that Muller should talk with him in the hope of discovering ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... of man for a hero! And yet I do not know. Perhaps he fought harder than many a man who conquers. In the world's courts, we are compelled to judge on circumstantial evidence only, and the chief witness, the man's soul, cannot very ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... the very idea of a pet is something to be spoiled for the amusement of the pet-owner; and Isella was spoiled in the most particular and circumstantial manner. She had suits of apparel for every day in the year, and jewels without end,—for the Duchess was never weary of trying the effect of her beauty in this and that costume; so that she sported through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... views of the subject were presented to my mind. It did not entirely satisfy me to narrate wrongs; I felt like denouncing them. I could not always curb my moral indignation{282} for the perpetrators of slaveholding villainy, long enough for a circumstantial statement of the facts which I felt almost everybody must know. Besides, I was growing, and needed room. "People won't believe you ever was a slave, Frederick, if you keep on this way," said Friend Foster. "Be yourself," said Collins, "and tell your story." It was said to me, "Better ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... fact that Arabs hold together against foreigners, and that if Si Maieddine wished to be incognito among his own people, his wish would probably be respected, in spite of bribery. Besides, he was rich enough to offer bribes on his own part. Circumstantial evidence, however, being against the supposition that the man had followed Victoria after landing, Stephen abandoned it for the time, and urged the detective, Adolphe Roslin, to trace the cabman who had driven Miss Ray away from her ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... letter and telegram, and am glad to find that you have a better opinion of my deductions than was held by your confrere, Mr. Moyle. The longer I dwell on the idea the more does it appear that circumstantial evidence all points one way. Why should this unimportant and poor young man have an influence so extraordinary over Marcel Moncourt? More than one millionaire would have given a fortune to Moncourt for less work than he is doing at Kidd's Pines practically ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... of the business. I never liked it, and since the strange case of the man in lower ten, I have been a bit squeamish. Given a case like that, where you can build up a network of clues that absolutely incriminate three entirely different people, only one of whom can be guilty, and your faith in circumstantial evidence dies of overcrowding. I never see a shivering, white-faced wretch in the prisoners' dock that I do not hark back with shuddering horror to the strange events on the Pullman car Ontario, between Washington and Pittsburg, on the night of ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... being abruptly questioned. When to this singular combination of incidents it was added that the rumor tallied exactly with Mr. Higginbotham's character and habits of life, and that he had an orchard and a St. Michael's pear tree, near which he always passed at nightfall, the circumstantial evidence appeared so strong that Dominicus doubted whether the autograph produced by the lawyer, or even the niece's direct testimony, ought to be equivalent. Making cautious inquiries along the road, the pedler further learned that Mr. Higginbotham had in his service an Irishman of doubtful ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... destined to take it up, defend him and demand the truth. But, swamped by a perfectly overwhelming capitalist press, not only naturally hostile but in this case already heavily subsidized; shattered by the close-knit, circumstantial evidence; hamstrung and hampered in every way by the power of unlimited money and Tammany pull, the Socialists might as well have tried to sweep back the sea with a broom as save this man from legal crucifixion. ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... being exhibited in the simplest and most effective way by the reproduction of charts made in the course of such voyages themselves: these charts sometimes speak more clearly to the reader than the circumstantial journals which usually, though not always, are of interest for our purpose only by specifying the route followed, the longitudes and latitudes taken, and the points touched at by the voyagers. These considerations ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... of Parliament. The generality of the persons who are frequent visitors to the house are termed Harponians, and by due qualification become citizens of Lushington. Although we cannot give a true and circumstantial history of this ancient city, we doubt not our numerous readers will discover that its title is derived from an important article in life, commonly called Lush. The four wards are also appropriately titled, as symbolical of the effects which are usually produced by ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... my expectations, and assailed in my character, what could I do but appeal to an impartial public, by giving them a circumstantial detail of what was most memorable in my adventures, that they might judge, from intrinsic evidence, whether I was deficient either in soundness of understanding or of moral principle? But let me first bespeak their candour, and a salutary diffidence of themselves, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... aloft as colossal and indestructible testimony, that whatever statement he chose to make was entitled to instant and unquestioning acceptance as a lie. And they furthermore stated their belief that he was not dead, and instanced the strong circumstantial evidence of his own word that he was dead—and beseeched the coroner to delay the funeral as long as possible, which was done. And so in the tropical climate of Lahaina the coffin stood open for seven days, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lost them later on, with all my papers and luggage. One or two items I remember quite well. One gave a vivid account of how the Queen of Holland had killed her husband because he had allowed the Germans to pass through Maestricht; another even more circumstantial story was that England had declared war on Holland, Holland had submitted at once, and England imposed many stringent conditions, of which I only remember two. One was, that all her trade with Germany should cease at once; secondly, ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... having confessed that he was suborned to give false evidence against them. One of these poor creatures, strange to say, had confessed the crime with which she was charged. In the Bodl. Lib. Dods. MSS. v.61, p.47, is the confession itself, wherein she gives a circumstantial and minute account of the transactions which took place between her and a familiar whom she calls Mamilian, describing the meetings, feasts, and all the usual routine of witchery and possession.—(See ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Cumberland's account of the "Retaliation" which is very amusing from the closely circumstantial manner in which the incidents are narrated, although they have so little relationship to truth: "It was upon a proposal started by Edmund Burke, that a party of friends who had dined together at Sir Joshua Reynolds's ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... as also was that of his assailant. Being forewarned by William Rossetti of his brother's peculiar sensitiveness to critical attack, and having, moreover, observed something of the kind myself, I tried to avoid a circumstantial statement of what passed. But Rossetti was, as has been said by one who knew him well, "of imagination all compact," and my obvious desire to shelve the subject suggested to his mind a thousand inferences infinitely more damaging than the fact. To avoid such ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... affability, which, while it gratified, could not fail to remind them of his superior position in society. But, death, fires, and burglary, make all men equals; so Mr. Giles sat with his legs stretched out before the kitchen fender, leaning his left arm on the table, while, with his right, he illustrated a circumstantial and minute account of the robbery, to which his bearers (but especially the cook and housemaid, who were of the party) listened ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... narrative containing more of the marvellous than all the rest. The miracle was wrought on the south-eastern side of the lake—St Matthew says, upon two demoniacs; St Mark and St Luke make mention only of one. The accounts given by the latter Evangelists are much more circumstantial than that by the former. It was a case of peculiarly frightful character. The man, possessed of many demons, was ferocious, and of marvellous strength, breaking chains and fetters, and untameable. It is impossible to analyse the phenomena, saying which were the actions of the man, ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... of the Greek republics, and of the Persian empire was the effect of the irresistible superiority which a standing arm has over every other sort of militia. It is the first great revolution in the affairs of mankind of which history has preserved any distinct and circumstantial account. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... is ingenious and plausible; every trifle becomes circumstantial evidence, and is received as conclusive proof both by the husband and wife. The dialogue is sprightly throughout, and the anxious desire of Sganarelle to kill his supposed injurer, whilst his cowardice prevents him from executing ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... who has not read Barere's Memoirs may be said not to know what it is to lie. Among the numerous classes which make up the great genus Mendacium, the Mendacium Vasconicum, or Gascon lie, has, during some centuries, been highly esteemed as peculiarly circumstantial and peculiarly impudent; and, among the Mendacia Vasconica, the Mendacium Barerianum is, without doubt, the finest species. It is indeed a superb variety, and quite throws into the shade some Mendacia which we were used to regard with admiration. The Mendacium Wraxallianum, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... those places on his return; but rumors reached him of some apparition having been seen by the natives. He knew these superstitious people only too well, however, and smiled at their credulity. At Ballena he stayed for the night, and was entertained with a more circumstantial account of a parti-colored demon who had been chased out of the village at arrow's point: but as he had not had time to check up the shortage in his clothes before leaving home, he did not recognize ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... A Collection of the most remarkable Casualties and Disasters which happened in the late Dreadfal Tempest, both by Sea and Land, may be set down as the first of his works of invention. It is a most minute and circumstantial record, containing many letters from eye-witnesses of what happened in their immediate neighbourhood. Defoe could have seen little of the storm himself from the interior of Newgate, but it is possible that the letters are genuine, and that he compiled other details from published accounts. ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... Parliament, to support any one of the determinations given by the Judges, and adopted by the Lords, against the evidence which your Committee offered, whether direct and positive, or merely (as for the greater part it was) circumstantial, and produced as a ground to form legitimate presumption against the defendant: nor, if they were to admit (which they do not) this Civil Law to be of authority in furnishing any rule in an impeachment ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... he. "But as to how it happened, come in to the library, sir. It was in his ain library he was killed! The Fiscal and Superintendent is there now and we've been going into the circumstantial evidence. Most extraordinary mystery, ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... would not trust the great book to outside hands. A Warfield had written it, and a Warfield should keep the edition up. Her revision was now in the hands of a publisher in Boston, and it was sound and comprehensive, the critics said; the ablest textbook on circumstantial evidence in America. I looked in a sort of wonder at this girl, carried off her feet ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... Sumerian culture has also been urged of late with much circumstantial detail. It breaks quite fresh and interesting ground. Recent scientific expeditions in Russian and Chinese Turkestan have accumulated important archaeological data which clearly establish that vast areas of desert country were at a remote period most verdurous and fruitful, ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... incident; we speak of trifling incidents, great events; incidents of daily life, events of history. Circumstance agrees with incident in denoting a matter of relatively slight importance, but implies a more direct connection with the principal matter; "circumstantial evidence" is evidence from seemingly minor matters directly connected with a case; "incidental evidence" would be some evidence that happened unexpectedly to touch it. An occurrence is, etymologically, that which we run against, without thought of its origin, connection ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... remedy." As originally prepared, the resolutions were found in Jefferson's handwriting after his death. Hildreth's conjecture that Madison, as well as the brothers Nicholas, was consulted in the preparation of these resolutions, rests only on circumstantial evidence. The Kentucky resolutions were passed in November; those of Virginia in December; the former were written by Jefferson, the latter by Madison; and the doctrines in each are essentially the same. It would have been a perfectly natural thing for the two friends to consult together upon a ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... compliment, which I hope you pay me on circumstantial evidence. But it's deceiving. My mother, I believe, was the only nice person in her family. These cousins, husband and wife, brought mamma to Europe to live with them when she was a young girl, quite rich and an ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... idea of leaving was insupportable to me. That I wanted him to stay until I had had time to think and adjust myself to these new conditions. Instinctively, I did not feel as certain of Arthur's guilt as he did. My own case had taught me the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence to settle a mooted fact. Besides, I knew Arthur even better than I did his sisters. He was as full of faults, and as lacking in amiable and reliable traits as any fellow of my acquaintance. But he had not the ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... a thing is grafted a story of a vampyre, and the marks of his teeth being in her neck, and all the circumstantial particulars." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... imagine what were the feelings of the poor old man as he sat in the dark corner of the cave listening to this circumstantial relation of his most secret affairs. When he heard Long Orrick's last words, and felt how utterly powerless he was in his weakness to counteract him in his designs, he could not prevent the escape ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... work of doubtful authority, entitled, The Life, Writings, Opinions and Times of the Right Hon. G. G. Noel Byron, London, 1825 (iii. 123-132), there is a long and circumstantial narrative of a "defeated" attempt of Byron's to rescue a Georgian girl, whom he had bought in the slave-market for 800 piastres, from a life of shame and degradation. It is improbable that these verses suggested the story; and, on the other hand, the story, if true, does ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... our lord, the Governor hath come upon him dead and hath ordered his murderer to be hanged; but, as the hangman was about to hoist him up there came a second and a third and a fourth and each one said, 'It is I, and none else killed the Hunchback!' and each gave a full and circumstantial account of the manner of the jester being killed." When the King heard this he cried aloud to the Chamberlain in waiting, "Go down to the Governor and bring me all four of them." So the Chamberlain went ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... told that a man who lived, nobody knows when, saw many very strange sights, and we can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of the romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, resident at Rotherhithe, tells us of pygmies and giants, flying islands, and philosophising horses, nothing but such circumstantial touches could produce for a single moment a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... writer in any department can find work across the water, I would advise no one to go abroad with this assurance solely. My success—if so that can be called which yielded me life, not profit—was circumstantial, and cannot be repeated. I should be loth to try it again upon ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... aloud to his devoted Nell: "The old house has been vacant, an object of almost superstitious dread to the neighborhood," said the Times, "ever since the tragic death of Armand Lascelles in the spring of 1868. In police annals the affair was remarkable because of the extraordinary chain of circumstantial evidence which for a time seemed to fasten the murder upon an officer of the army then stationed at Jackson Barracks, but whose innocence was triumphantly established. Madame Lascelles, it is understood, is now educating her daughter in Paris, whither she removed immediately ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... Poppleton could easily believe that she would be ready to break bounds if she found a suitable opportunity; and though hitherto Gipsy had been strictly truthful, her previous reputation for honour could not do away with the circumstantial evidence of the damp ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... would like to keep him with her, for she won't trust either of us alone, and when we come back she examines us separately to see whether we have skipped anything. This makes us faithful in the smallest things. She says she is determined that Uncle Jack shall have a full and circumstantial report from me of all that he wants to know about the celebrated places here, and I really think he will, if I go on, or am goaded on, in this way. It's pure devotion to the cause in Fanny, for you know she doesn't care for such things herself, and has no ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... Guilden Morden, in the same neighbourhood, a burning took place of Mr. Butterfield's stacks to the amount of L1,500 damage. Mr. Butterfield was Overseer, and the Magistrates have committed, on strong circumstantial evidence, a man to whom he had denied relief, because he had refused to work for it. I have found that the apprehension of this dreadful and easily perpetrated mischief has greatly affected the minds of the ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... in these words! Nature proclaims a life beyond the grave, but Christ proves it by His resurrection. Nature gives circumstantial evidence that would seem conclusive; but Christ is the living witness whose testimony establishes beyond controversy that the mortal can put on immortality. He comforts those who mourn; He dispels the gloom by making death but a narrow, star-lit strip between the companionship of yesterday ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... —Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham added. That's the maxim of the law. Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent person to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... he tells you," Boyd broke in, seating himself. "He is the most circumstantial liar in the Northwest, and if you don't watch him every minute he will sell you a hydraulic mine, or a rubber plantation, or a sponge fishery. Underneath his eccentricities, however, he is really a pretty decent fellow, and I am indebted to him for ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... destroyers hopped to twenty-five knots, dumped over a 300-pound "ash-can," and got Mister U-boat. At least, the British admiralty later gave her 100 per cent on the circumstantial evidence. Two other destroyers—the 396 and the 384, we will call them—went at once to the job of taking off passengers ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... at this time (July 17th) that the intense anxiety of the civilized world with regard to the fate of the besieged reached its culminating point. Circumstantial accounts of the fall of the legations and the massacre of their inmates were circulated in Shanghai and found general credence. It was not till near the end of the month that an authentic message from the American minister proved ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... hands before our eyes and weep. This saint of God misjudged by those for whom he lives! Yet this is no solitary pathos. Were all hearts' history known, we should know how many died misjudged. All Jean Valjean does has been misinterpreted. We distrust more and more circumstantial evidence. It is hideous. No jury ought to convict a man on evidence of circumstances. Too many tragedies have been enacted because of such. Marius thought he was discerning and of a sensitive honor. He thought it evident that Jean Valjean had slain Javert, and had slain Monsieur Madeleine, whose ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... really enabled us to form wellnigh as distinct an idea of the portly and cheery old divine as if we had known him in the flesh. Faithful to rigid justice while reproducing the warmly eulogistic judgments which have been passed on Fuller, especially in this century, he has given us a circumstantial account of the censures which were denounced on him by microscopic and malevolent criticasters and Dryasdusts among his contemporaries. Some of the censures referred to were grounded on the multitudinous dedications in which Fuller indulged; and, in truth, it strikes one as rather singular ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... kind of subtlety is all right in print, but in real life it would put you on a false track in nineteen out of twenty cases. In ninety cases out of a hundred the obvious solution is the right one. In an investigation there may be coincidences of circumstantial evidence pointing in the wrong direction. But when you get first one coincidence, then a second, a third, and a fourth, you can be fairly sure you're on the right track. You don't add proof together. You ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... off, Mrs. Bentley sent and begged my wife to come again and see her. She went without me, while I was in town, but she was so circumstantial in her report of her visit, when I came home, that I never felt quite sure I had not been present. What most interested us both was the extreme independence which the mother and daughter showed beyond a certain ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... to dispose of them as I should think fit. I have carefully perused them three times. The style is very plain and simple; and the only fault I find is, that the author, after the manner of travellers, is a little too circumstantial. There is an air of truth apparent through the whole; and indeed the author was so distinguished for his veracity, that it became a sort of proverb among his neighbours at Redriff, when any one affirmed a thing, to say, it was as true as if ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... of our conference concerning which I insisted that the wretched man be minutely circumstantial. Our talk touching upon this point was much too painful for me to reproduce here in its entirety; but after I had almost literally dragged from him every minute detail of the actual tragedy, I felt justified in offering a word ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... of his proceedings, rendered by himself to the Admiralty, is vague and unsatisfactory; and had it not been for the journal of Morrison, and a circumstantial letter of young Heywood to his mother, no record would have remained of the unfeeling conduct of this officer towards his unfortunate prisoners, who were treated with a rigour which could not be justified on any ground ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... say that they are substantial, Mr. Harley. They are rather more circumstantial. Frankly, I have forced myself to come here, and now that I have intruded upon your privacy, I realize my difficulties more keenly ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... thought occurred to me, and I chucked it over the hedge, to serve as circumstantial evidence. Next I turned and went up the road, springing my rattle and flashing my bull's-eye lantern on every side, like Mr. Pickwick when he alarmed ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... is a memorandum of money received and disbursed to the division under my command. So soon as time will permit, another more detailed and circumstantial account shall be forwarded ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... I cannot conceive of a case where even the greatest intellect can conceive a story of crime covering years of duration, with constantly shifting scenes and changing characters, and maintain that story with circumstantial detail as to times, places, persons, and particular circumstances and under as merciless a cross-examination as was ever given a witness in an American court unless the witness thus testifying was speaking truthfully ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... a contradiction, Her window still stood open to conviction; And by short course of circumstantial labour, He fix'd the guilt upon his adverse neighbour;— Lord! how he rail'd at her: declaring how, He'd bring an action ere next Term of Hilary, Then, in another moment, swore a vow, He'd make her do pill-penance in the pillory! She, meanwhile distant from the dimmest dream Of combating ...
— English Satires • Various
... whereabouts of Maria, and finally sent her a message to come and see him. The laundry-maid was quite aware of the object of the summons. She went to the town as quickly as possible, and after making him promise not to make use of her name, she gave him a circumstantial account of what the innocent child was exposed to. He listened, pale and horrorstruck, unable to repress the violent, quick beating of his heart. When she came to certain hateful and terrible details, the count began to pace up and down the room like a caged wild beast, as he tore ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... for her than to go to her own room, obtain the poison, and put it into the glass? The jury will remember in the evidence of Mr Kilsip, the bottle was three-quarters empty, which argued some of it had been used. All the evidence against Miss Marchurst was purely circumstantial, for if she committed the crime, no human eye beheld her doing so. But the presumption of her having done so, in order to get rid of a successful rival, was very strong, and the weight of evidence was dead against her. The jury would, therefore, deliver their ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... place several days ago, and had been seen by a boy, who was tending sheep, to come down the lane to your house, and you were supposed to have lodgers (you take lodgers sometimes, I think, ma'am), because you had been buying some trifling articles of food not in your usual way of custom. Circumstantial evidence, ma'am: you can have no ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on the authority of Weed with much circumstantial detail including the full text of a letter written by McClellan. The letter was produced because McClellan had said that no negotiations took place. Though the letter plainly alludes to negotiations of some sort, it does not mention the ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... he is an emissary from France or the disaffected in Ireland."[294] The Scot who first advocated common action with the Irish malcontents should have paid good heed to his steps. Muir did not do so. Accordingly, though the direct evidence at the trial told in his favour, the circumstantial evidence weighed heavily against him.[295] At such a time men's actions count for more than their words. It was the visit to Paris and the dealings with the United Irishmen, far more than biassed witnesses and the bullying of Braxfield, which led to the condemnation of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... conclusively demonstrated that Manoa was not situated upon the shore of Lake Guatabita, its existence began to be doubted for a while; but the belief, and the desire to discover it, were revived somewhere about the middle of the 16th century by a circumstantial story related by one Martinez, a lieutenant of Diego de Ordaz, who declared that, having been shipwrecked, he was taken inland to the city—which he called Omoa—and there entertained in regal fashion by El Dorado himself. So circumstantial and full of gorgeous detail was his story, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... any scientific evidence in its support. By far the majority of the accounts which have been published of full form "materialisations" are destitute of any evidential value, and in many cases the circumstantial evidence for fraud is strong. Were it not for a small number of cases which present prima facie evidence of a different character, the question of the reality of this phase of "mediumship" would be scarcely worth raising. But the existence of even ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... slightly puzzled. The tale was well sustained, and certainly circumstantial. After all, the boy might have really seen something. How was the poor man to know—though the chaste and lofty diction might have supplied a hint—that the whole yarn was a free adaptation from the last Penny Dreadful lent us by the ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... London, there are no fewer than ten logs of Cook's voyage; three of these are anonymous, but six of them are signed by the ship's officers, and one, from circumstantial evidence, is no doubt by Green, the astronomer. The signed logs are by Hicks, Cook's first lieutenant; Forwood, the gunner; and Pickersgill, Clerke, Wilkinson, and Bootie, mates. Hicks, as we have ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... Hubertusstock and it has frequently been asserted that he takes advantage of the complete absence from public observation which he then enjoys, to make secret trips abroad. It was his absence at this place for a period of ten days while the czar was at Paris that led to the very circumstantial story in the German and foreign press about his having been in the French capital, in the strictest incognito, for several days during the Russian emperor's stay on the banks of the Seine. A number of people claim to have recognized ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... denial checkmated his powers of thought. As is often the case, details achieved what mere bald asseveration of fact would have failed in. The circumstantial statement that her son lay buried beside his father in Chorlton Churchyard corroborated the denial past reasonable dispute. But nothing could convince his eyesight, while his reason stood aghast at the way ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... am not in a humour to describe, or give way to any poetical flights, but I must endeavour to give a faithful, sober, and circumstantial account of our last night's expedition, while the impression is yet fresh on my mind; though there is, I think, little danger of my forgetting. We procured horses, which, from the number of persons proceeding on the same errand with ourselves, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... why that spot was inspected, or rather no account of how, or by whom, sprinkled blood was detected on the rail. Nobody saw the murder committed. Chief-Justice Forbes said, in summing up (on February 2, 1827), that the evidence was purely circumstantial. We are therefore so far left wholly in the dark as to why the police began their investigations at a ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... himself at this artless story. For the truth is, our dear friend Rebecca had given him a most circumstantial narration of Briggs's delight at receiving her money—eleven hundred and twenty-five pounds—and in what securities she had invested it; and what a pang Becky herself felt in being obliged to pay away such a delightful sum of money. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are generally erroneous—so erroneous, indeed, as to have led some readers of his journal very seriously astray in following out his course. This, in reality, is all the evidence to be found as to the ownership of the lost astrolabe. Taken by itself, it is reasonably strong circumstantial evidence. On the other hand it may be contended that astrolabes had pretty well gone out of use before the year 1613, and Champlain was a man not likely to be behind his times in the matter of scientific appliances. But the strongest argument is to be found in the fact that Champlain's ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... provoking report,—Friedrich, confident in Heucking, had transmitted to his Supreme Board of Justice (KAMMERGERICHT) the impartial Heucking's account of the affair, with order, "See there, an impartial human account, clear and circumstantial (DEUTLICHES UND GANZ UMSTANDLICHES), going down to the true roots of the business: swift, get me justice for these Arnolds!" [Preuss, iii. 480.] Scarcely was this gone, when, September 29th, the Custrin impertinence, "Perfectly right as it stood," ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Captain Bayley, having met your nephew at your house several times, I cannot for a moment believe him guilty of taking the note; still, I must admit that the evidence is strongly circumstantial, and were it a stranger who was accused, I should say at once ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... of human perfection is more circumstantial and more prosaic. "The function of man is an activity of soul in accordance with reason," and his happiness or well-being will consist in the fulness of rational living. But such fulness requires a sphere of life ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... an entirely different aspect upon the affair," Miss Williams observed, when she concluded. "I am more than glad, too, because my sympathies are with Miss Wild, in spite of her tendency to bubble over now and then. Circumstantial evidence is not always true evidence, is it?" she added, with a smile. "I was highly indignant with her last night, for I felt sure she was prominent in it—and she certainly was ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... months in a South African field hospital the year before. He halted for a cup of tea at Llandeilotalybont ... Wales has many place names like this ... and being there not many miles from Pontystrad was able to glean more recent and more circumstantial information about the man he proposed ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... to escape the encroaching nepotism of Giovanna, the flower of serving-women. The experience now, in Cambridge, Mass., refuses to consort with ordinary remembrances, and has such a fantastic preference for the company of rather vivid and circumstantial dreams, that it is with no very strong hope of making it seem real that I shall venture to ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... mainly with literary work, and it was then, in 1719, he produced his world-famous "Robinson Crusoe"; has been described as "master of the art of forging a story and imposing it on the world for truth." "His circumstantial invention," as Stopford Brooke remarks, "combined with a style which exactly fits it by its simplicity, is the root of the charm of his great ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood |
