"Accidentally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... characteristic of inflammable gases in general; one of which is that it is always liable to take fire in presence of a spark or naked light, and another of which is that it is always liable to become highly explosive in presence of a naked light or spark if, accidentally or otherwise, it becomes mixed with more than a certain proportion of air. On the contrary, in the complete absence of liquid or vaporised water, calcium carbide is almost as inert a body as it is possible to imagine: for it will not take fire, and cannot in any ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... He accidentally pressed his knee against hers, she immediately looked at him fondly, and her breasts rose and fell tumultuously as she mechanically pressed ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... moment the doctor stepped back and accidentally struck his foot against the side of the stovepipe, which brought another howl of agony from Zip. The doctor picked up the pipe and quickly disjointed it in the middle and out fell the dirtiest but most delighted little dog you ever saw, for he was free once ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... question accidentally; and for the rest, be discreet, my dear sir. I thank you for your confidence. I will watch well over my poor young pupil. She must not, indeed, be sacrificed to a man whose affections are ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the new "celebrity"—and now that he was actually present, no one knew what to say to him; moreover, there was a very general tendency in the company to avoid his direct gaze. People fidgeted on their chairs and looked aside or downward, whenever his glance accidentally fell on them,—and to the analytical Voltairean mind of M. le Duc there was something grimly humorous in the whole situation. He was a great admirer of physical strength and beauty, and Alwyn's noble face and fine figure had won his respect, though of the genius of the poet he knew ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Feuerbach, at the popish superstition 'of his early attendants' (we only hear of one, and about his theological predilections we learn nothing), and he also laughed at ghosts. In his new homes Kaspar lied terribly, was angry when detected, and wounded himself—he said accidentally—with a pistol, after being reproached for shirking the Commentaries of Julius Caesar, and for mendacity. He was very vain, very agreeable as long as no one found fault with him, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... accidentally struck an enemy wire and had tapped it! That part of the message which ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... territories of the confederate cantons of Switzerland. Under these circumstances, for the first time, he entered the city of Geneva, then but recently delivered from the yoke of its bishop and of the Roman Church. He had intended to spend there only a single night.[407] He was accidentally recognized by an old friend, a Frenchman, who at the time professed the reformed faith, but subsequently returned to the communion of the Church of Rome.[408] Du Tillet was the only person in Geneva that detected in the traveller, Charles ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... principles I may give a simple example. Supposing a species of bird with a soft slender beak to be placed on an island, where the only food they could obtain was fruit enclosed in a hard or tough shell or covering. Supposing some birds accidentally possessed of a beak that was shorter and stouter than the others', these would be able to break open the shell and get at the fruit, while the others would starve. Some of the descendants of the birds with ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... of this unfortunate event was never clearly known; but it was conjectured that the gunner might have let fall some powder near the fore-magazine, which accidentally igniting, had communicated with the magazine itself. The gunner had been suspected of stealing the powder, and on that day he is said to have been intoxicated, and was probably less careful than usual. He was amongst the ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... trial of a boy, whose first thought of crime occurred whilst he was witnessing an execution. . . And one grown man, of great mental powers and superior education, who was acquitted of a charge of forgery, assured me that the first idea of committing a forgery occurred to him at the moment when he was accidentally witnessing the execution of Fauntleroy. To which it may be added, that Fauntleroy is said to have made precisely the same declaration in reference to the origin ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... cannot recover my authority, of some emigration of the inhabitants of those countries, caused by a failure of the stream on which they depended. And we know for certain that the Oxus has been changed in its course, accidentally or artificially, more than once. Disputes have arisen before now between the Russian Government and the Tartars, on the subject of one of these diversions of the bed of a river.[26] One province of Khorasan, which once was very fertile, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... table, suddenly burst out into groans and lamentations. "What is the matter with you?" cried the host, in alarm. "Ah," replied his guest, "my feelings overcame me. My poor father, when dining with a friend who had cups like yours, lost his life, by accidentally swallowing one." ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... Arads[396]. Prof. Alex. Braun has studied this subject in some detail[397]. In Calla palustris the shoot which continues the growth of the plant proceeds from the axil of the last leaf but one; the very last leaf producing no bud, but if accidentally a shoot is developed in this latter situation it produces flowers at once. No leaves are formed, but, on the contrary, two or three spathes surround the spadix, so that the presence of an increased number of spathes in this ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... confusion of the covenants. Another of his comrades asking him at the stable-green port, where he was going, he answered, To carry King to hell. But this poor wretch had not gone far whistling and singing, till his carbine accidentally went off, and killed him on the spot. God shall shoot at them with an arrow, suddenly shall they be ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... mewed and purred almost in the same breath. Such demonstrations of joy and affection led us at once to conclude that this poor cat must have known man before, and we conjectured that it had been left either accidentally or by design on the island many years ago, and was now evincing its extreme joy at meeting once more with human beings. While we were fondling the cat and talking about it, Jack glanced round the open space in the midst of ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... looked in vain for Fujisan, and failed to see it, though I heard ecstasies all over the deck, till, accidentally looking heavenwards instead of earthwards, I saw far above any possibility of height, as one would have thought, a huge, truncated cone of pure snow, 13,080 feet above the sea, from which it sweeps upwards in a glorious curve, very wan, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... and "estimates" give the total number of human beings murdered in the four year period as 8,538,315. (The legal definition of "murder" is killing, not accidentally but with ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... Adj. casual, fortuitous, accidental, adventitious, causeless, incidental, contingent, uncaused, undetermined, indeterminate; random, statistical; possible &c. 470; unintentional &c. 621. Adv. by chance, accidentally, by accident; casually; perchance &c. (possibly) 470; for aught one knows; as good would have it, as bad would have it, as luck would have it, as ill-luck would have it, as chance would have it; as it ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... She went accidentally to walk in the same wood where she met Riquet with the Tuft, to think, the more conveniently, what she ought to do. While she was walking in a profound meditation, she heard a confused noise under her feet, as it were of a great many people ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... us many things which we did not previously intend to learn directly from them. From foreign romances e.g. we learn, first of all, while we read them for entertainment, the foreign language, history or geography, &c. We must distinguish from such books as those which bring to us, as it were accidentally, a knowledge for which we were not seeking, the books which are expressly intended to instruct. These must (a) in their consideration of the subject give us the principal results of any department of knowledge, and denote the points from which the next advance must be made, because ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... defence: the oath of federation was renewed, and a decree was passed calling out the Federal army. It was now announced by the French that they would support the Vaudois revolutionary party, if attacked. The Bernese troops, however, advanced; and the bearer of a flag of truce having been accidentally killed, war was declared between the French Republic and the Government of Berne. Democratic movements immediately followed in the northern and western cantons; the Bernese Government attempted to ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... ingratiate himself with a great general, a descendant of one of the most ancient and illustrious families in France; having attracted his notice by some remarks he had written on Folard's Polybius, which were accidentally shown to that great man by one of his aides-de-camp, who was a particular friend of M—. The favour he had thus acquired was strengthened by his assiduities and attention. Upon his return to London, he sent some of Handel's newest compositions to the prince, who was particularly ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... independence shown by the architects of the houses, and to the persistent and successful efforts made to avoid anything like a straight line in the formation of the streets. The houses cluster "anyhow" round the old church, and seem to have dropped accidentally down in all sorts of odd nooks and corners. They face all ways, and stand at angles, several going the length of turning their backs upon the streets and placidly opening out from their front door ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... whatever any number of persons may think or declare to the contrary—that there is a right or best way of laying colours to produce a given effect, just as there is a right or best way of dyeing cloth of a given colour, and that Titian and Veronese are not merely accidentally admirable but eternally right. ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... velvet. He wore a steel casque exquisitely chiselled and embossed; his scimetar and dagger of Damascus were of highest temper; he had a round buckler at his shoulder and bore a ponderous lance. In passing through the gate of Elvira, however, he accidentally broke his lance against the arch. At this certain of his nobles turned pale and entreated him to turn back, for they regarded it as an evil omen. Boabdil scoffed at their fears as idle fancies. He ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... when, reader, judge of my astonishment—this ghostly spectre proved to be nothing more than a large new flannel dressing-gown which had been sent home to me in the course of the day, and which had been hung on some pegs against the wainscot at the foot of my bed. One arm accidentally crossed two or three of the adjoining pegs, and the other was nearly parallel by coming in contact with some article of furniture which stood near. Now the mystery was developed: this dreadful hobgoblin, which a few minutes before I began to think ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... telephone he had accidentally pushed aside a book. Beneath it was a slip of paper on which had been penciled a note. He read it, without ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... "In the flurry of the moment, Turnbull may have accidentally put two capsules in the handkerchief, meaning only to ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... of the distance which the pursuers had to go, and the haste with which the Indians had retreated, the expedition failed in its object; they however accidentally came on a party of six or seven Mingoes, on the head of Cross Creek in Ohio (near Steubenville)—these had been prowling about the river, below Fort Pitt, seeking an opportunity of committing depredations.[18] ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... tribunals of another kind, where that authority was not acquired. In some cases (and they are frequently the most important ones), the American judges have the right of deciding causes alone.[198] Upon these occasions they are, accidentally, placed in the position which the French judges habitually occupy: but they are still surrounded by the reminiscence of the jury, and their judgment has almost as much authority as the voice of the community at large, represented by that institution. Their influence extends beyond the limits of the ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking, propped by great beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown and jumbled together, lay topsy-turvy at the bottom of a steep unnatural hill; there, confused treasures of iron soaked and rusted in something that had accidentally become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere; thoroughfares that were wholly impassable; Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their height; temporary wooden houses and enclosures, in the most unlikely situations; carcases of ragged tenements, and fragments of unfinished ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... depose ministers; therefore he cannot give this power to others. For nemo potest plus juris transferre in alium quam sibi competere dignoscatur,(1128) the king may sometimes inflict such a civil punishment upon ministers, whereupon, secondarily and accidentally, will follow their falling away from their ecclesiastical office and function (in which sense it is said that Solomon deposed Abiathar, as we heard before), but to depose them directly and formally ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... in the room belonged to Mr. Horace Dinsmore; and Elsie, knowing that many of the articles were rare and costly, and that he was very careful of them, begged Enna and the boys to go out, lest they should accidentally do ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... platinum from the crucible, the metal formed a grey powder and was far from pure; but in 1845 he improved his process and succeeded in producing metallic globules wherewith he examined its chief properties, and prepared several compounds hitherto unknown. Early in 1854, H. St Claire Deville, accidentally and in ignorance of Wohler's later results, imitated the 1845 experiment. At once observing the reduction of the chloride, he realized the importance of his discovery and immediately began to study the commercial production of the metal. His attention ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... dropped accidentally rolled into it," was the reply. "I reached in to get it and now I ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... was nothing to Fan, as she very rarely saw him, but on the few occasions when she accidentally met him, in the house or when out walking, he always had that curious smile on his lips, and studied her face with a bold searching look in his eyes, which made her uncomfortable and even ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... plantation proverb current among the negroes which is very expressive. Thus, when one accidentally steps in mud or filth, he consoles himself by saying "Good thing foot aint got no nose." Among the Kaffirs there is a similar proverb,—"The foot has no nose,"—but Mr. Theal's educated natives have given it a queer ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... not very likely I should hear from Yarmouth before you, because our Yarmouth letters generally go to London first; but if I should, accidentally, your Ladyship shall depend ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... Jones was to take command. Five vessels were thus provided, including the American frigate Alliance. An old Indiaman, the Duke de Duras, fell to the lot of Jones. In compliment to Dr. Franklin, one of the commissioners, and especially in gratitude for a hint which he had accidentally lighted upon in an odd number of that philosopher's almanac, to the effect that whoever would have his business well done must do it himself—a suggestion by which Jones had greatly profited in giving a final spur ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... connection between Dantzic and Nancy, he was obliged to stop at Berlin. M. Hirtz, whom he met accidentally, told him that the scientific societies of the city were preparing an immense banquet in his honor; ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... heart of Germany. I had formed an acquaintance with Mr. Langer, a lively and ingenious scholar, while he resided at Lausanne as preceptor to the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick. On his return to his proper station of Librarian to the Ducal Library of Wolfenbuttel, he accidentally found among some literary rubbish a small old English volume of heraldry, inscribed with the name of John Gibbon. From the title only Mr. Langer judged that it might be an acceptable present to his friend—and ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... life. Do you remember my comical correspondence about getting my passport? Well, I was wounded in an absurd fashion too. And if you come to think of it, what self-respecting person in our enlightened century would permit himself to be wounded by an arrow? And not accidentally—observe—not at sports of any sort, but ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... upon Clara of the information she had received was very serious. Deeply as she had been afflicted, the consciousness of having done right in refusing to marry a man who was destitute, as she had accidentally discovered, of virtuous principles, sustained her. But now it was revealed to her that he was as excellent as she had at first believed him, and that she had been made the victim of a pleasant joke! There was no longer any thing ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... mostly noxious, have been accidentally naturalized, and some have been deliberately introduced, like the honey-bee, now feral in Australasia and North America, and the humble-bee, imported into New Zealand to effect the fertilization of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... returned to the cave of his guest-friend Pholus. There among others his host lay, and stark dead. He had drawn an arrow from the body of one who had died from its wound, and, while examining it and wondering how so slight a shaft could be so fatal, had accidentally dropped it out of his hand. It struck his foot and he ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the fearful and horrible enemy, whom they had hitherto suffered so shamefully to oppress them. Since the latter part of the summer of 1528 he had been engaged upon a pamphlet 'On the War against the Turks,' the publication of which was accidentally delayed till March, when he ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... the like; its third perfection is to rest in its own place. This triple perfection belongs to no creature by its own essence; it belongs to God only, in Whom alone essence is existence; in Whom there are no accidents; since whatever belongs to others accidentally belongs to Him essentially; as, to be powerful, wise and the like, as appears from what is stated above (Q. 3, A. 6); and He is not directed to anything else as to an end, but is Himself the last end of all things. Hence it is manifest that God alone ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... gleaming on the draperies of the lofty canopy over his head. Conscious that there was no fire in the grate—that the curtains were closed—that the chamber had been in perfect darkness but a few moments before, he supposed that some intruder must have accidentally entered his apartment; and, turning hastily round to the side from which the light proceeded—saw—to his infinite astonishment—not the form of any human visiter—but the figure of a fair boy, who seemed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... sent," he said, "it will be brought here to me, of course, and I will bring the messenger in. If a cheque is presented from Mayes, I have told the cashier to slide that big ledger off his desk accidentally with his elbow. That will be your signal, and then you can do whatever you think proper. I don't think I can ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... upon such slender matters as that "Poor Captain Powlett met with a misfortune on the way to Kedah. His servant laid the dinner things on the deck of the gunboat, then went below for something and, coming up again, accidentally walked into the middle of the crockery and glass, causing considerable destruction." Also, I think he quotes his testimonials—those never very candid and always very dull documents—much too freely. The best of the book is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... hazardous undertaking, wished to accomplish his object rather by the labour than the risk of his men. Accordingly he formed a rampart, prepared his vineae, and advanced towers up to the walls; but an opportunity which accidentally presented itself, prevented the occasion for them. For Marcius Fabius, a Roman prisoner, when, having broken his chains during the inattention of his guards on a festival day, suspending himself by means of a rope which was fastened to a battlement of the wall, he let himself down ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... to her sister-in-law, 'Why, there's Tom!' and went downstairs thinking to meet him entering the house. He was nowhere to be seen. Not long afterwards there arrived the news that her husband had been shot accidentally and considerably injured. Directly they met she related to him her curious vision, and on comparing notes it was discovered that it had certainly taken place more or less at the same hour as the accident, the husband declaring that as he fainted away his wife was most distinctly present in ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... Las Casas describes the finding of this nugget by an Indian girl, who accidentally turned it up while idly prodding the ground with a sharp instrument. He gives its weight as 3600 castellanos, equivalent to thirty-five pounds. The vessel which was to carry it to Spain was wrecked in a violent storm, just outside the harbour, and the famous nugget was ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... words will have a purely objective effect, like that of a finished picture in oils; whilst the subjective style is not much more certain in its working than spots on the wall, which look like figures only to one whose phantasy has been accidentally aroused by them; other people see nothing but spots and blurs. The difference in question applies to literary method as a whole; but it is often established also in particular instances. For example, in a recently published work I found the following sentence: ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... referred to, the name Barras was accidentally substituted for Henriot, in connection with the insurrectionary movement for rescuing Robespierre. Barras led ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... cared for him as he hoped, to be somewhat troubled, but to understand that he would do no mean thing, and that all would be well in time. Then came the sorrow of it, for Jean Cornish learned, quite accidentally, that Grant Harlson was a man with ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... Tawa was on dry land, but when he died, killed accidentally by his wife's bodkin, the nobles quarrelled among themselves, and some of them founded the present pile-built town of Bruni. It was to this Malay capital and court that Pigafetta paid his visit in 1521 with the surviving companions of Magellan. His is the first good account ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... so that nothing solid will go into the trap and plug the pipes. The Girl Scout uses boiling water, and plenty of it, to flush the sink. She takes pains that no grease gets into the drain to harden there. When grease is accidentally collected, soda and hot water will wash it away, but it should never collect in ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... conduct. When I want to consult you, I will pass along the square at half-past nine, just as you are coming out after breakfast. If you see me carry my cane on my shoulder, that will mean that we must meet—accidentally—in some open space which you ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Whitechapel, turning over my plans for the removal of the casks. At first I had thought of taking them to Pickford's receiving office. But there was danger in this, though it was a remote danger. If one of the casks should be accidentally dropped it would certainly burst, and then—I had no particular objection to being killed, but I had a very great objection to being sent to Broadmoor. So I decided to effect the removal myself with the aid of the builder's truck that I had allowed the owner to keep in my yard. But this ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... doors are in all cases of the greatest importance," said Count Ostermann, earnestly. "Through back doors one often attains to the rooms of state, and had your palace here accidentally had no back door for the admission of us, your devoted servants, who knows, your highness Anna, whether you would on ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... movement could be detected. The patient had, in fact, what is known as a tremulous iris, a condition that is seen in cases where the crystalline lens has been extracted for the cure of cataract, or where it has become accidentally displaced, leaving the iris unsupported. In the present case, the complete condition of the iris made it clear that the ordinary extraction operation had not been performed, nor was I able, on the closest ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... grew more and more frequent. He did not dare to disobey Leone; he did not dare to go to her house, or to offer to see her in the opera house. He tried hard to meet her accidentally, but that happy accident never occurred; yet he could not rest, he must see her; something that was stronger than himself drew him ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... praiseworthy than forming such a resolution—except keeping it." Lady Anne had a high opinion of Mr. Hervey; but she had no doubt, from Belinda's account, and from her own observations on Mr. Hervey, and from slight circumstances which had accidentally come to Mr. Percival's knowledge, that he was, as Belinda suspected, attached to another person. She wished, therefore, to confirm Miss Portman in this belief, and to turn her thoughts towards one ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... on my back I tramped away, my man following in the rear. The "still" man, who had left me after feeding the villagers, had been prowling around getting pictures. Accidentally he ran into me, so together ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... his acquaintance accidentally; the chance which led to it was caused by the peculiar conditions of the Yakut spring. My readers will probably only have a very imperfect knowledge of ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... were by this time concluded, and nothing now remained but the last summons of the sexton. At this juncture, while the coffin was being lowered into its resting place, my eyes, accidentally, it may be said, but in reality by some fatal instinct, fell full upon the lid, on which I instantly recognised a name, long and fearfully known to me—the name of the Mysterious Tailor of High Holborn. Oh, how many thrilling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... or is it; perhaps, a truth which failed to reveal itself? It would be strange if after the lapse of half a century the hiding-place were to open and give up the fruit of his rapine. Who knows whether some of this treasure, accidentally discovered, may not have founded fortunes whose origin is unknown, even to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... yielded to those who surrounded him, they would certainly have taken it from him by force, and he would have perished, the victim of his selfishness. We also disputed for about thirty cloves of garlic, which had been found accidentally in a little bag: all these disputes were generally accompanied with violent threats, and if they had been protracted we should, perhaps, have come to the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... circling about in the small amphitheatre, walled around by shouting, grinning human beings, wanton youngsters from the rear shy several stones, and the officer comes near giving me a header by accidentally inserting his willow staff in the front wheel while pointing out to the crowd the action of the pedals and the modus operandi of things in general. The officer evidently regards me as the merest dummy, unable to speak ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... back; he heard a rustling, nevertheless, among the bushes, which announced to him that his manoeuvres had succeeded; and, as soon as he was about fifty yards from the road, he took the wheel from Joey, desiring him to look back, as if accidentally. Joey did so, and saw Miss Mathews following ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... to sing before our window, but I found they were not villagers; they were Viennese mountaineers, to whom one could not offer money. I bought two bunches of edelweiss and other Alpine flowers, and giving one to Aniela I accidentally, as it were, unloosened the other and the ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... I surprised and annoyed myself, when, in passing accidentally before some tell-tale mirror, I saw the reflection of a distressed and impatient scowl: usually, too, I was conscious of my step being quick and angry, I was not aware, however, that it was a growing deformity of my moral nature, oozing out thus in ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... occurrence, and had almost forgotten it, when one day, about a week later, during which time I had not had a glimpse of my chum, while he was out hunting with another friend, W. McC., in following him over a rail fence, the latter's gun was accidentally discharged in Willie's face and neck, resulting in instant death. With this shocking news the memory of the dream I had had came back to me vividly and puzzled me very greatly, and indeed has puzzled me ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... clear the table and were about to remove a bouquet containing two small flags, Everett would not allow them to do it, and that later in the evening, during his speech, just at the proper point, he caught up these flags, as if accidentally, and waved them. He said that everything with Everett and Choate seemed to be cut and dried; that even the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... in response to the generous genius which gives us Mr. Pecksniff's parenthesis to the mention of sirens ("Pagan, I regret to say"); and the scene in which Mr. Pecksniff, after a stormy domestic scene within, goes as it were accidentally to the door to admit the rich kinsman he wishes to propitiate? "Then Mr. Pecksniff, gently warbling a rustic stave, put on his garden hat, seized a spade, and opened the street door, as if he thought he had, from his vineyard, heard a modest rap, but was not quite certain." The visitor had thundered ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... Finn. Herr Mack had met him accidentally on board the steamer; he had come from Spitzbergen with some collections of scales and small sea-creatures; they called him Baron. He had been given a big room and another smaller one in Herr Mack's house. He caused quite a ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... cheered both the Generals lustily; and they were complimentary afterwards, though I knew that the regiment could not have appeared nearly so well as on its visit to Beaufort. I suppose I felt like some anxious mamma whose children have accidentally appeared at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... man-of-war, while he refused to pay them their wages. Not long after, they found means to leave the man-of-war, and went on board a small ship in the West Indies. They were taken by a pirate, and brought to Providence, and from thence sailed as pirates with Captain England. Thus accidentally meeting their old captain, they severely revenged the ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... Portugal come into existence, almost accidentally and without there being any division of race or of language between its inhabitants ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... remarked, and the remark was founded on observation of our eldest daughter when a very young child, "Your little baby loves the pussy, and pussy sheathes her claws most carefully, but should baby draw back her arm suddenly, and pussy accidentally scratch that tender skin, how the little girl cries! It is, perhaps, her first lesson that sweets and bitters, pleasures and pains, meekness and ferocity, are mingled in ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... that she caught six, but put them all back again, because they were merely two or three-pounders, and not worth the trouble of carrying. The pretty girl of Art plays croquet with one hand, and looks as if she enjoyed the game. SHE never tries to accidentally kick her ball into position when nobody is noticing, or stands it out that she is through a hoop that ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... sold. Among what were brought to Thrums was a little exercise book, in which Margaret had tried, unknown to Gavin, to teach herself writing and grammar, that she might be less unfit for a manse. He found it accidentally one day. It was full of "I am, thou art, he is," and the like, written many times in a shaking hand. Gavin put his arms round his mother when he saw what she had been doing. The exercise book is in my desk now, and will be my little maid's ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... chapel with its Flemish windows showing the story of Jacob and Esau, and oak carvings and almsbox dated 1619, is especially attractive. Here the founder retired in sadness and sorrow after his unfortunate day's hunting in Bramshill Park, where he accidentally shot a keeper, an incident which gave occasion to his enemies to blaspheme and deride him. Here the Duke of Monmouth was confined on his way to London after the battle of Sedgemoor. The details of the building are worthy of attention, especially the ornamented ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... most and therefore more dangerous. Such cases actually occur at present. This evil would not be remedied, but rather intensified, under state socialism, because, where the State is the only employer, there is no refuge from its prejudices such as may now accidentally arise through the differing opinions of different men. The State would be able to enforce any system of beliefs it happened to like, and it is almost certain that it would do so. Freedom of thought would be penalized, and all independence ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... Plunkett suffered much in prison, and his friends pitied him; but dared not attempt his release. However, there was a young girl of great beauty and strength of mind, who resolved to release the suffering soldier, at all hazards. It accidentally happened, that the uniform of Captain Plunkett's regiment bore a striking resemblance to that of a British corps, which was frequently set as a guard over the prison in which he was confined. A new suit of regimentals was in consequence procured and ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... put Varvara Pavlovna into her carriage he pressed her hand, and cried after her, "au revoir!" Gedeonovsky sat beside her all the way home. She amused herself by pressing the tip of her little foot as though accidentally on his foot; he was thrown into confusion and began paying her compliments. She tittered and made eyes at him when the light of a street lamp fell into the carriage. The waltz she had played was ringing in her head, and exciting her; whatever position she might find herself in, she had only ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... "that a young lady has come into school, and has accidentally left her book in the entry—the book from which she is to study during the first half hour of the school. She sits near the door, and she might, in a moment, slip out and obtain it. If she does not, she must spend the half hour in idleness, and be unprepared ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... would have helped me in a great difficulty. Sefton has always been my friend. Miss Lambert, I confess I don't clearly see my way. I can hardly present myself at Glenyan Mansions, and yet how am I to see Edna? If we could only meet, as it were, accidentally, it would be better for both ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... did not know her own poverty, for she had no lover to portray. There was not one lord in the neighbourhood; no, not even a baronet! There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door; no, not one young man whose origin was unknown. Her father had no ward, and the squire of the parish no children. But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... ran up to the group with the intelligence that Bradshaw had been injured by a shot from his own rifle, which had accidentally gone off, and which circumstance Malcolm had not, in the first instance, explained. I told my companions that the man was seriously wounded in the leg; that I had merely bandaged it up with a handkerchief, and, leaving him in Malcolm's charge, had hastened forward to let them know the ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... far from displeased at being accidentally discovered by these people while following out her capricious whim of the morning. One or two elder ladies, who had fought shy of her frocks and her frankness the evening before, were quite touched now by this butterfly who was willing to forego the sunlight of society, ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... taking advantage of the ebbing tide, and made their way down the Savannah River. It was very dark, the Moravians were unaccustomed to rowing, and Mr. Johnson, who steered, went to sleep time after time, so when they accidentally came across a ship riding at anchor they decided to stay by her and wait for the day. When dawn broke they hastened on to Thunderbolt, where a fort had been built, and some good land cleared, and there they found two Indians, who claimed to know the ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... our shield-straps would burst and our weapons crack like glass. If only, when we took Grangioia Castle, a sword had accidentally ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... hard to distinguish from connection without design; as when a man treads on another's corns, it is not always easy to say whether he has done so accidentally or on purpose. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... I'll engage," says Sheriff F., as he thrust "the documents" into his pocket and proceeded to hunt up the transgressor. Accidentally, as it were, who should the Sheriff meet, turning a corner into the grand trottoir, Chestnut street, but our gallant hero of ye ballot-box in the rural districts, once upon ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... battleship had sent the Vogarian cruiser fleeing through the unexplored Whirlpool star cluster—Y'Nor and Kane the two surviving commissioned officers—with results of negative value to those most affected: the world of the Saint had been accidentally discovered and he, Kane, had risen from sub-ensign to the ...
— The Helpful Hand of God • Tom Godwin
... following legend, for which I cannot produce any better authority. A young nobleman, of high hopes and fortune, chanced to lose his way in the town which he inhabited, the capital, if I mistake not, of a German province. He had accidentally involved himself among the narrow and winding streets of a suburb, inhabited by the lowest order of the people, and an approaching thunder-shower determined him to ask a short refuge in the most decent habitation that was near him. He knocked at the door, which was opened ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... remember me with Kindness because accidentally associated with your old Freestone in those pleasant Days, that also were among the last of your Sister's Life. Her too I can see, with her China-rose complexion: in the Lilac ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... the destruction of his plant with feelings of mingled glee and disgust. He was insured against loss, and his rash workmen, who had turned upon him so unexpectedly, had accidentally settled the strike and their own future by starting the fire during their drunken orgies. There being no longer a mill to employ them they went elsewhere for work, rather glad of the change and regretting nothing. As for the manager, he stood to lose temporary profits but was not ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... write down a plain account of facts and doctrines, that is a good test of their having taken in the teaching. George Sarawia's little essay on the doctrine of the Communion is to me perfectly satisfactory. It was written without my knowledge. I found it in one of his many note-books accidentally. ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... remarkable precision. There was no error in the counting of the votes at Pretoria during the whole of the operations, and the same remark holds good of Johannesburg, save that one ballot paper which had been accidentally torn was omitted to be counted. The two pieces had been pinned together, and the paper, which in consequence had been rendered shorter than the others, was overlooked. The omission was quickly discovered, and no other error took place during the whole of the proceedings. ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... in those bluntly complimentary terms, Captain Helding drew the lieutenant aside a few steps, accidentally taking a direction that led the two officers close to the place at which Clara was standing. Both the captain and the lieutenant were too completely absorbed in their professional business to notice her. Neither the one nor the ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... related of serpents, crocodiles, bears, cuckoos, swallows, and such like. To this purpose, Mendoca reckons up divers strange relations, as that of Epimenides, who is storied to have slept seventy-five years; and another of a rustic in Germany, who, being accidentally covered with a hay-rick, slept there for all the autumn and the winter following, without any nourishment Or, if we must needs feed upon something else, why may not smells nourish us? Plutarch, and Pliny, and divers other ancients, tell us of a nation in India, that lived only upon pleasing odours; ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... soon. He must find her while it was still light enough to follow her tracks. The disasters that might have fallen upon her crowded his mind. A bear might have attacked her. She might be lost or tangled in the swampy muskeg. Perhaps she had accidentally shot herself. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... entirely free from pressure under ordinary conditions of flight, but which even if not moved at all from its original position becomes an efficient lifting-surface whenever the speed of the machine is accidentally reduced very much below the normal, and thus largely counteracts that backward travel of the centre of pressure on the aeroplanes which has frequently been productive of serious injuries by causing the machine to turn downward and forward ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... to the hearts of all was the loss of Dorothea Bradford, who, when all the men of the party were absent on an exploring tour, accidentally fell over the side of the vessel and sunk in the deep waters. What this loss was to the husband and the little company of brothers and sisters appears by no note or word of wailing, merely by a simple entry which says ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... you sure, my dear? Wouldn't it be safer, after all, here in the house? How can you be certain that no one but yourself will accidentally discover it?" ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... other—and that in my opinion it has contributed materially to the attainment of such skill as I possess. The favour which I accord to my method might be viewed with suspicion if it had been my natural or original grip, which came naturally or accidentally to me when I first began to play as a boy, so many habits that are bad being contracted at this stage and clinging to the player for the rest of his life. But this was not the case, for when I first began to play golf I grasped my club in what is generally regarded as the orthodox manner, ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... Bonaventura, or to the doctrine of either of the Bernardins. It would, however, be unprofitable to dwell on this subject at any great length. I will, therefore, only briefly refer to two publications of this sort, to which my own attention has been accidentally drawn: "The Imitation of the Blessed Virgin,"[144] and "The Little Testament ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... During the war, however, the price of grapes was quite high and we left the grapes, pulling the last of them out this Spring. Due to cultivation of the grapes an appreciable number of the nut trees were cut out accidentally, and have later been filled in with seedlings, with the result that the orchard has a rather peculiar appearance. The mature trees, this year, have been doing, we think, very well, and a great majority of them are bearing from a light crop to a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... party at Dock Square came with an intention only to beat the soldiers, and began to affray with them, and any of them had been accidentally killed, it would have been murder, because it was an unlawful design they came upon. If but one does it they are all considered in the eye of the law guilty; if any one gives the mortal stroke, they are all principals here, therefore there is a reversal of ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... very slender women is gracefully rounded in comparison with that of man. Bischoff found the following relation between muscle and fat in a man of 33, a woman of 22, and a boy of 16, all of whom died accidentally ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... pounds, and ties it in a bag; but I gets worse and worse in health and spirits and in confusion of mind, my daughter; and when I comes accidentally across my son in a Bedfordshire lane, and his wife is drinking, and he is in much bewilderment with the children, I takes up again with them, and I was with them when Christian comes ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... there. As the months went on and he did not try to find me, I got used to the round, to the school, the living on, dead and alive. I thought of getting a divorce, of finding some country school in another state. Dr. Leonard urged me to. I might have—I don't know. But accidentally he was brought back. I was going home from a teachers' meeting that night. I saw him lying on the pavement, thrown out of the saloon, as he told you. A crowd gathered. He was unconscious. I wanted to run away, to leave him, to escape. He groaned. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... were issued at St. Augustine, and in a short time they were attended with beneficial effects. Such wise steps served not only to prevent slaughter and misery among these savages themselves, but an English vessel being accidentally shipwrecked on the coast of Florida, the Indians did the crew no harm, but, on the contrary, conducted them safe to Augustine, where the commandant furnished them with provisions, and sent them to the ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... names given them had come in the same accidental way as had the name of Ab. The brother, when very small, had imitated in babyish way the barking of some wolfish creature outside which had haunted the cave's vicinity at night time, and so the name of Bark, bestowed accidentally by Ab himself, had become the youngster's title for life. As to Beech-Leaf, she had gained her name in another way. She was a fat and joyous little specimen of a cave baby and not much addicted to lying as dormant as babies sometimes ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Yrujo officially presented, as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary from Spain, to him at Mount Vernon; but although Mr. Yrujo went there for the purpose, the ceremony of presentation was prevented by Mr. Yrujo's having accidentally ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... time to time from the calm form of a historical narrative I must pause on current events. Thus I will permit myself to acquaint my readers in a few lines with a rather interesting specimen of the human species which I have found accidentally in our prison. ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... him noting down even the peculiar little wild flowers and herbs that accidentally grew round and on the side of a bold crag near his intended Cave of Grey Denzil, and could not help saying, that, as he was not to be upon oath in his work, daisies, violets, and primroses would be as poetical as any of the humble plants he was examining. I laughed, in short, at his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... failed to mention in its place, I might as well allude to here. On recovery from that state of physical exhaustion in which the humane captain of the Dutch East Indiaman had found me, my hand rested accidentally upon the pocket of my father's coat, which hung up in the state-room that had been assigned to them. His pocket-book was there. It instantly occurred to me to examine it, and see how much money it contained, ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... a dissolute soldier who blew his head off, accidentally, his friends claimed, and he was buried on what was supposed to be his own land just north of Raften's, but it afterward proved to be part of the highway where a sidepath joined in, and in spite of its diggers the grave was at the crossing of two roads. Thus by the hand of fate Bill ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... conversation with his Irving talk, and both Carrie and I came to the conclusion one can have even too much imitation of Irving. After supper, Mr. Burwin-Fosselton got a little too boisterous over his Irving imitation, and suddenly seizing Gowing by the collar of his coat, dug his thumb-nail, accidentally of course, into Gowing's neck and took a piece of flesh out. Gowing was rightly annoyed, but that man Padge, who having declined our modest supper in order that he should not lose his comfortable chair, burst ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... pretty rich clusters. But besides these there are also nebulae in abundance and globular clusters in every state of condensation." It can hardly be doubted that the two nubeculae, which are, roughly speaking, round, or, rather, oval, are not formed accidentally by a vast number of very different objects being ranged at various distances along the same line of sight, but that they really represent two great systems of objects, widely different in constitution, which ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... years ago—in the century before the last I think it was—a member of the Teutonic racial stock was accidentally caught out in the fresh air and some of it got into his lungs. And, being a strange and a foreign influence to which the lungs were unused, it sickened him; in fact I am not sure but that it killed him on the spot. So the emperors of Germany and Austria got together and issued a joint ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... little pensive as she looked round for some one who was not there, but trying hard to enjoy herself and seem glad. Besides these intimates there was Mr Headland, feeling like a father to everybody; Dr Brandram, in professional attendance; and the Vicar himself, accidentally present to congratulate his young parishioner on ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... was that Miss Rachel put on her things, and accompanied the captain. She was prevailed on to take the captain's arm at length, greatly to Jack's amusement. He was still more amused when a boy picked up her handkerchief which she had accidentally dropped, and, restoring it to the captain, said, "Here's your wife's ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... 29th instant about eleven at night of a raging fever. I had some sort of knowledge of him when I was employ'd in the Revenue, because he used every year to present me with his almanack, as he did other gentlemen, upon the score of some little gratuity we gave him. I saw him accidentally once or twice about ten days before he died, and observed he began very much to droop and languish, tho' I hear his friends did not seem to apprehend him in any danger. About two or three days ago he grew ill, and was confin'd first to his chamber, and in a few hours after to his bed, where ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... understand exactly. You know people always roar if they have nothing particular to say, but if it is interesting they whisper. I distinctly heard the word 'floating.' I don't know whether it's one of his regular organs, or something he swallowed accidentally." ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... meeting—the arrangements were such as to give it the air of an imprevu. It was on the road some distance from Fontainebleau that the emperor met the Pope: the potentate alighted from his horse, the pontiff from his traveling chaise, and a coach being at hand, as if accidentally, they ascended its steps at the same moment from opposite sides, so that precedence was neither taken nor given. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... that he had photographed, in the observance of his principle never to kill an animal whose picture he had taken. Subsequently it was gravely reported that one of the restive horses of the outfit had "accidentally" killed that rattler by ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... had been accidentally kindled on Three Hummock Island, when we were last there, was still burning. This conflagration had almost been fatal to Mr. Bynoe, who was out in the scrubs when it burst forth, having with great difficulty forced his way among them in search of specimens ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... went toward the chapel of Saint Nepomeck, that is in the corner of the garden near the wall; you know, it is that saint that every peasant takes his hat off before, and we cannot play with our balls or our tops near him, for if we should accidentally hit the saint, a great curse would come on us, because this saint preserves us and all the villages from floods; he is a ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... and limitation of the shoulders made him look like a big man; and the devastating bore of being photographed when you want to write poetry made him look like a lazy man. Holding his head back, as people do when they are being photographed (or shot), but as he certainly never held it normally, accidentally concealed the bald dome that dominated his slight figure. Here we have a clockwork picture, begun and finished by a button and a box of chemicals, from which every projecting feature has been more ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... their antagonists, for, in addition to the fighting spirit roused within them, they were inflamed with the idea of the large stores of smuggled goods that they would capture: velvets and laces and silks in endless quantities, with kegs of brandy besides. That they had hit accidentally upon the party who had seized Mr Leigh they had not a doubt, and so they fought bravely on till they reached a narrower pass amongst the rocks than any they had yet gone through. So narrow was it that they could only approach ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... men. Hence they are to be dreaded, to be appeased—if possible, to be outwitted—even, sometimes, to be punished. We may observe this childish habit of thought in our nurseries to-day when one of our little ones accidentally runs against the table, and forthwith turns round to beat the senseless wood as if it had voluntarily and maliciously caused his pain; or when another, looking wistfully out of window, adjures the ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... soon as the weather got warm, the old dame turned them out into the yard, where the whole troop squatted down on the ground. The teaching of Mrs. Bullimore did not make much impression upon little John, except a slight fact which she accidentally told him, and which took such firm hold of his imagination that he remembered it all his life. There was a white-thorn tree in the school-yard, of rather large size, and the ancient schoolmistress told John that she herself, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... Accidentally he had stumbled on an ideal camp site. It was one of those natural clearings that are so often found in the densest forests. Nearby was a clear spring, with cold water that trickled into an ever ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... describe to your lordship the merit of Sir James Saumarez, which cannot be surpassed. In a conversation I accidentally had with him last evening, I learned that his ambition had been much disappointed in not being created a baronet; and he thought I was wanting, in not pointing to this object in the letter I had the honour to write your lordship by him, after the battle of the Nile, where ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... counteract the exclusive character which that influence was assuming, imposed on the divan the necessity of giving satisfaction to all the competitors for favour. During this year an English merchant of Constantinople, of the name of Churchill, while shooting in the neighbourhood of Scutari, accidentally wounded a Turkish boy. He was dragged to the guardhouse of Scutari, where the officer on duty ordered him first to be bastinadoed, and then sent to the governor of Scutari. The governor declined interfering, and caused him to be conveyed to the office of the reis effendi, or foreign minister, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... squadrons or divisions of such leaders, and to follow them as long as the triangular flag is flying, and every flag officer is to be considered as the commander of the squadron or division in which he may be accidentally placed. ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... thus renders mankind more subject to the stone, than if he had preserved his horizontality: these philosophers, with Buffon and Helvetius, seem to imagine, that mankind arose from one family of monkeys on the banks of the Mediterranean; who accidentally had learned to use the adductor pollicis, or that strong muscle which constitutes the ball of the thumb, and draws the point of it to meet the points of the fingers; which common monkeys do not; and that ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... resemblance: it was that of the clever, the accomplished man; it was the very specialty of the speaker, and a deal of expensive training and experience had gone to producing it. Densher felt somehow that, as a thing of value accidentally picked up, it would retain an interest of curiosity. The three stood for a little together in an awkwardness to which he was conscious of contributing his share; Kate failing to ask Lord Mark to be seated, but letting him know that he would ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... the capitana "San Pablo," which left this port on the first of July in the past year 1568, I wrote at length to your Majesty regarding events which had happened up to that time; and I refer you to the letters which will go on this despatch-boat in the general budget, which is thus accidentally increased. Now I shall relate the history of this ship, and what happened to us after it left, with as much brevity as possible, both to avoid prolixity and because the governor Miguel Lopez will give your Majesty a longer and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... rode near the center of the column, surrounded by troopers. For a time they were both silent. Barney was wondering if he had accidentally tumbled into the private grounds of Lutha's largest madhouse, or if, in reality, these people mistook him for the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was murdered. He found me there taking measurements; for I had a theory about the crime—a theory of which I need only say here that, though right in the main, it missed certain details of which Harry's engaging conversation put me on the scent. I had read of the murder quite accidentally; but it happened that I knew something of Coffin—enough to explain his fate—and of the man who had murdered him. But of Major Brooks I knew nothing; and what I gathered by inquiry made the whole affair ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... lady, who looked as though she were made for happiness, but whose life, though prematurely ended, had had time since then to become entangled in tragedy. I had often, since I left Hungary, wondered what had become of her; but not till some years later did I learn, quite accidentally, what her story and her end had been. I was told few details, but these sufficed to enable me, by a mere use of the imagination, to reconstruct it, and see in it certain general meanings. Of this reconstructive process the result was my novel, A Human Document. It was not, indeed, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... t'ete-'a-t'ete which I accidentally had with Mr. Pepys before the company was assembled, he told me his apprehensions of an attack, and entreated me earnestly to endeavour to prevent it; modestly avowing he was no antagonist for Dr. Johnson; and yet ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... "I can't think of THAT man as being YOU at all. THAT was something that the accident of your being a thief did to you,—like catching cold, and being sick, after accidentally ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... tale in the Old Shepherd's Recollections is founded on an event which happened in Ireland; and that last spring I suppressed the song ending in page 65 [The Old Man's Farewell], some time after it had been in the hands of the composer, from meeting accidentally with a quotation in ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... long time thought that Defoe was ignorant, that he accidentally happened to write Robinson Crusoe because he had been told of the recent experience of Alexander Selkirk on a solitary island in the Pacific. It is now known that Defoe was well educated, versed in several languages, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... seem to be a subject for poetry—disgusting and annoying creatures as they are. But there are more poems about the house-fly than about the dragon-fly. Last year I quoted for you a remarkable and rather mystical composition by the poet Blake about accidentally killing a fly. Blake represents his own thoughts about the brevity of human life which had been aroused by the incident. It is charming little poem; but it does not describe the fly at all. I shall not quote it here again, because we shall ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... me—but ghosts I fear almost as much as the Austrian Observer[52]. What is fear? Does it originate in the brain or in the emotions? This was a point which I frequently disputed with Dr. Saul Ascher, when we accidentally met in the Cafe Royal in Berlin, where for a long time I used to take dinner. The Doctor invariably maintained that we feared anything, because we recognized it as fearful, by a certain process of reasoning, for reason alone is an active power—the emotions are not. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... where the physical and intellectual elements mix most closely together, with a kind of languid visionariness, deep-seated in the very constitution of the "narcotist," who had quite a gift for "plucking the poisons of self-harm," and which the actual habit of taking opium, accidentally acquired, did but reinforce. This morbid languor of nature, connected both with his fitfulness of purpose and his rich delicate dreaminess, qualifies Coleridge's poetic composition even more than his prose; his verse, with the exception of his avowedly political poems, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... remembered. It seems as much a matter of chance as when single specimens of a whole race of animals now extinct are discovered in the layers of a rock; or when, on opening a book, we light upon an insect accidentally crushed within the leaves. Memories of this kind are always sweet ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... have not come in contact with human beings or modern weapons. The birds, he tells us, were indifferent as to his presence. They sang almost within arm's reach, and their rich plumage completely fascinated him. He continued in his hunter's paradise until he accidentally stumbled upon an Indian camp. No Indians were present, but the smouldering camp-fires warned him that they were not far distant. Later, he saw two Indians, who were evidently Arapahoes, carrying a deer between them, and he knew that the delightful ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... downstairs with the cigar-case in his hand, she met him (accidentally, of course) at the bottom, with the boy in her arms, and exclaimed, 'O Mr. Sponge, here's Gustavus James wants to tell you ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... placid admiration, from a recess, upon a brilliant tableau of beautiful women and celebrated men that had accidentally arranged itself before me, Dalton touched ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various |
