"Singular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... next few days, Tot asked—preserving that singular reticence regarding her illusions, so common to children—to be taken to Sugar River; but grandpapa was busy ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... slaughter was so great in our front, that nearly, if not as many, Yankees were killed by their own men as by us. The brave ones, who tried to storm and carry our works, were simply between two fires. It is a singular fanaticism, and curious fact, that enters the mind of a soldier, that it is a grand and glorious death to die on a victorious battlefield. One morning the Sixth and Ninth Regiments came to our assistance—not to relieve us— but only to assist us, and every member of our regiment—First ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... will not quarrel with him, nor will he quarrel with them. Some of them of high estate and some extremely low; some of them learned persons and some of them simple, country men. For while the bookman counteth it his chief honour and singular privilege to hold converse with Virgil and Dante, with Shakespeare and Bacon, and suchlike nobility, yet is he very happy with Bailie Nicol Jarvie and Dandie Dinmont, with Mr. Micawber and Mrs. Gamp; he is proud when Diana Vernon comes to his room, and he has a chair for ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... insolently and cruelly forced upon those who are attacked by illness, on the strength of that odious foreknowledge often imparted by science, before the white fruit whose core is ashes, and which we call death, has set beneath the pallid and drooping flower of sickness. There is a singular sagacity very often shown in a patient's estimate of his own vital force. His physician knows the state of his material frame well enough, perhaps,—that this or that organ is more or less impaired or disintegrated; ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Europe for painting in color, distemper, tempera and oil, led to an exact study of form, the colors employed by the Orientals—at times brilliant, at times subdued with an almost studied restraint—preserved a singular fluidity and lent themselves to undefined evanescences which gave ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... incredulity, and shewed me a number of testimonials, which I might possibly have read, if the first which met my eye had not been from a lady who protested to all and singular that M. Tadini had cured her of amaurosis. At this I laughed in his face and told ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... attention to their comfort they were not required to descend from their carriage, by George, and when it drove away they remained in an easy, genteel posture, with their hands behind their backs, in a sort of an ecstasy, and showed their good humour by dancing a reel together with singular lightness and agility, and keeping it up till they were both out of breath, when they remained quiet for about half an hour to cool, and then went off to pay their respects to the President of the College of Surgeons,' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... also blessed their efforts in many respects, notwithstanding the existence of these and other principles and practices which we judged to be unscriptural, yet it appeared to us to be His will, that we should be entirely separate from these societies, (though we should be considered as singular persons, or though it should even appear that we despised other persons, or would elevate ourselves above them), in order that, by the blessing of God, we might direct the attention of the children of God in these societies ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... light that proceed from the Lord as a sun are what in an eminent sense are called the spiritual, and they are called the spiritual in the singular number, because they are one; when, therefore, the spiritual is mentioned in the following pages, it is meant both these together. From that spiritual it is that the whole of that world is called spiritual. Through that ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the form that in the fish is permanent. In a short time, however, the structure is become more complex, the parts more distinct, the spinal marrow better marked; it is now the brain of a reptile. The change continues; by a singular motion, certain parts (corpora quadragemina) which had hitherto appeared on the upper surface, now pass towards the lower; the former is their permanent situation in fishes and reptiles, the latter in birds and mammalia. This is another ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... at this time a singular idea. He was a member of several of the most aristocratic clubs. He organized a chosen group of men from the elite of his companions, and formed with them a secret association, of which the object was to fix and maintain ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... a mirror with a deep filigreed frame hanging over the mantel-piece in this room. The glass was cracked and the quicksilver rubbed off or discolored in many places. When it reflected your face you had the singular pleasure of not recognizing yourself. It gave your features the appearance of having been run through a mince-meat machine. But what rendered the looking-glass a thing of enchantment to me was a faded green feather, tipped with scarlet, which drooped from the top ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... The singular phrase at the head of this Essay came to me from a correspondent who wrote in great perplexity. This unhappy man was quite miserable because he found that his own views of the masterpieces of literature differed from those generally expressed; his modesty prevented ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... tablespoons and the other with an empty gasolene-can. The holder of the spoons jingled them in perfect harmony with the accordion, and the can-operator tapped and thumped the tin, so that the three made a singular and tingling music. It had a timbre that got under one's skin and pulsated one's nerves, arousing dormant desires. I felt like leaping into the arena and showing them my mettle on alternate feet, but ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Mrs. Allison, "it is singular that so poor a specimen of manhood as my nephew, Arthur Conly, should have so fine a son. But he may have got his good looks from his mother; though I do not perceive that ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... December and the end of January, not, as Moore lists it, "before 26 December 1710."[10] Internal evidence suggests an even narrower range of probable dates of publication. The last four pages of Atalantis Major deal with the Duke of Argyll being given command of the English forces in Spain and the singular lack of grace with which he undertook this command. Since Argyll was not given command of the Peninsula campaign until 11 January 1711, it could not be until after this date that the manuscript could have been ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... year of our Lord 66, the Emperor Nero, being at that time in the twenty-ninth year of his life and the thirteenth of his reign, set sail for Greece with the strangest company and the most singular design that any monarch has ever entertained. With ten galleys he went forth from Puteoli, carrying with him great stores of painted scenery and theatrical properties, together with a number of knights and senators, whom he feared to leave behind ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a branch of the Grand Harbour, from which it runs at right angles, on the opposite side to Valetta. Most deservedly is the Grand Harbour so called, for in beauty, size, and security it is unsurpassed; and it is singular that it should exist in an island of dimensions so limited. Malta has an individuality of its own. It is like no other spot in the world; and when one looks at the magnificent lines of batteries, bristling with cannon, and the mass of ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... understood or appreciated. An uncultured child of the frontiers, with no educational advantages, isolated in youth in his wilderness home, with few associates and without family traditions, he knew not his own lineage and connections. Nor was this singular in the then condition of unsettled frontier life. His grandfather, with Daniel Boone, left the settled part of Virginia, crossed the Alleghany mountains, penetrated the "dark and bloody ground," and ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... bank of the Kosi, near Varaha Chhatra, is found a singular black ferruginous earth, of which the elephant is said to eat greedily, when indisposed; and the natives use it, rubbed with a little water, to supply the ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... was shorter than the first and a longer stake had to be driven in order that the top should be on a level with the first. As he went on, the rods were inserted without any seeming regularity of spacing. Passers-by stopped to gaze at the singular construction and ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... thumb, so that they could be bound to the palms of the hands. A kind of sandal, shaped somewhat like the palettes, was fastened tightly to each foot. When rigged for a swim, Benjamin presented a very singular appearance, and ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... comments and exclamations, to the story of the unseen lady, the legend of the fair witch, the dagger that was a paper-knife by day and the severed tresses. She did not hear of the singular nightmare or hallucination that had been my second visitor. My reason had accounted for the experience and dismissed it. Some other part of myself avoided the memory with that deep, unreasoning sense of horror sometimes left ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... uttered a little squawk of delight, and went at each other like two little tigresses, and kissed in swift alternation with a singular ardor, drawing their crests back like snakes, and then darting them forward and inflicting what, to the male philosopher looking on, seemed hard kisses, violent kisses, rather than the tender ones to be expected from two ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... of feeling was destin'd to be arrested and revers'd by a terrible shock—the battle of first Bull Run—certainly, as we now know it, one of the most singular fights on record. (All battles, and their results, are far more matters of accident than is generally thought; but this was throughout a casualty, a chance. Each side supposed it had won, till the last moment. One had, in point of fact, just the same right to be routed as the other. By ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Brunt moved off without another word to do what was desired of him,—apparently quite confounded at having a passenger instead of his more wonted load of bags and barrels. And his face still continued to wear the singular, doubtful expression it had put on at first hearing the news. Ellen's trunk was quickly hoisted in, however; and Mrs. Forbes presently appeared with a little armchair, which Mr. Van Brunt with an approving look bestowed in the cart, planting it with its back against the trunk to keep it steady. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... human sacrifices to the gods where none have been offered; but, where the gods have been accustomed to them, they are naturally annoyed when the rite is abolished, and visit the place and people with all kinds of calamities.' He did not seem to think that there was anything singular in this mode of reasoning, and perhaps three Brahman priests out of four would have reasoned in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of episodes in these records attracts the mind, and one finds there a train of singular adventures, any one of which would make a book. The experiences which go to make up the volume "Ashton-Kirk, Investigator" were chosen because they dealt with a rather arabesque murder, the hidden features of which were brought to light in an ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... speak as if an army could charge in and charge out again like your regiment of hussars. If Soult were here with thirty thousand men—but he will not come. I sent for you, however, Colonel Gerard, to say that I have a very singular and important expedition which I intend to place ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... broad reality which is interpreted in them. What they tell us, and tell us on the basis of an incontrovertible experience, is that the forgiveness of sins is for the Christian mediated through the death of Christ. In one respect, therefore, there is nothing singular in the forgiveness of sins: it is in the same position as every other blessing of which the New Testament speaks. It is the presence of a Mediator, as Westcott says in one of his letters, which makes the Christian religion what it is; and the forgiveness of sins is mediated to us through ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... repaired in the summer to one of her estates in the country which lay very near to that of Federigo. And so it befell that the urchin began to make friends with Federigo, and to shew a fondness for hawks and dogs, and having seen Federigo's falcon fly not a few times, took a singular fancy to him, and greatly longed to have him for his own, but still did not dare to ask him of Federigo, knowing that Federigo prized him so much. So the matter stood when by chance the boy fell sick; whereby the mother ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... linen-draper; "then do you not retire? Can you suppose that in opposition to the candidacy of Monsieur Minard (whose presence in these precincts seems to me rather singular) you have ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... a most singular feature in slave-holding morals, that if the parents be robbed of their liberty, deprived of the rights with which their Creator has endowed them, the perpetrator of these wrongs becomes entitled to repeat them upon the children of their former victims. There ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... was somewhat singular, owing to his carrying his head a little on one side; but his walk was square and firm, and his manner self-respecting and reserved. A fashionable boy of the present day might have seen something to amuse him in the new student's appearance; but had he indicated this he would have rued it, for ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... begun already to know the exquisite, the intoxicating joys of self-surrender. Every hour had revealed to her something more of Newbury's lofty and singular character. The books and occupations amid which his home life was passed, the letters of his Oxford friends to him, and his to them; one letter in particular, from his chiefest and dearest friend, congratulating him on his engagement, which had arrived that morning—these things had been for ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to Jesus Christ aright is an effect of their being, of God, given to Christ before. Mark, They shall come. Who? Those that are given. They come, then, because they were given, "thine they were, and thou gavest them me." Now, this is indeed a singular comfort to them that are coming in truth to Christ, to think that the reason why they come is, because they were given of the Father before to him. Thus, then, may the coming soul reason with himself as he comes. Am I coming, indeed, to Jesus Christ? This coming of mine is not to be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Joanna and Pulcheria wondered at her singular behavior, but it did not displease them, and Marv was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... constantly mulcted in fines, sometimes imprisoned, was full of faults, which were forgotten in his conversational qualities and dry sallies of genuine wit, particularly his Dutch stories. After years of singular vicissitudes, Helmbold joined the army as a common soldier, fought bravely during the late war, obtained a commission, and died. Our little company soon dwindled away; the expenses were too heavy for our pockets; our writings and ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... something like thirty canoes surrounding the schooner, each manned, as before, by from two to five men, they made no attempt to force their way alongside, but lay off at a distance of two or three fathoms, the men holding up their wares for our inspection and shouting their merits in that singular "pidgin" which passes for English among the Polynesians. And when at length Brown selected a particular canoe, the assortment of fruit in which appeared to be of a temptingly varied character, and ordered her owner to come alongside, the rest, instead of ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... and hue, with an edging of gold embroidery, hung at the windows. But the lads' eyes could not take in all these matters at once, being fixed upon the lady who rose from her chair to meet them. She was some thirty-five years old, and of singular sweetness of face. There was but little about her of the stiffness that they had expected to find in the wife of a London citizen. She was dressed in a loose robe of purple silk, with costly lace at the neck and sleeves. By her side stood Ursula, who was dressed, as became her age, in lighter ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... is the chief entrepot for ostrich feathers. The value of this article of export for 1886 was over half a million sterling. The process of selling the feathers by auction is one of the most singular business transactions at which it has been my lot to assist. One of the buyers in attendance, on the occasion of our visit, represents a London firm, and is said to be making an income of over 1,000l. per year. A spirited effort is being made to establish an entrepot for the Cape ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... mangosteen, though even an unlimited diet of this luscious fruit would hardly reconcile the average person to a perpetual steam bath, and to an intensely enervating atmosphere. Nature must have been in a sportive mood when she evolved the durian. This singular Malay fruit smells like all the concentrated drains of a town seasoned with onions. One single durian can poison out a ship with its hideous odour, yet those able to overcome its revolting smell declare the flavour of the fruit ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... since 1859, he had rapidly acquired the most brilliant reputation. Laborious, patient, and acute, he knew with singular skill how to disentangle the skein of the most complicated affair, and from the midst of a thousand threads lay hold to the right one. None better than he, armed with an implacable logic, could solve those terrible problems in which X—in algebra, the unknown quantity—represents ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... any reply, both of the belligerents followed me forward. I was quite as anxious to ascertain what had become of Cornwood and Nick Boomsby as I was to have Captain Blastblow explain his singular conduct. I found Captain Cayo on the forecastle, holding his prisoner by the collar of his coat, while Nick was in the care of Buck, on the port side of the house on deck. The former seemed disposed to resist, though he was not ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... she, in a firm tone; "I don't intend to give up to any such nonsense. I believe that people can keep up if they try. I do feel a little fatigued and nervous; it's caused, no doubt, by the long drive of this morning—although I think it singular that a drive should affect me in this manner." Thus speaking, she sat down by the bulwarks of the vessel, and a despairing look gradually crept over her face. At last she suddenly rose, to look at the water, as we may imagine. The effect of her scrutiny, however, ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... see that right credit and justice be done towards Jock Farquharson of Inverey, commonly called the Black Colonel. He and I alone knew beforehand where exactly the escalade was to be, and it was a singular joy to share a large, potential secret with another able to make it good, as General Wolfe most handsomely did, though, once being shown ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... did not cling to life: it had been sad and burdensome to him by the mere fact of his own melancholy and singular character, not that God had denied him prosperity or success. He had the windows opened of his chamber in the new castle of St. Germain looking towards the Abbey of St. Denis, where he had, at last, just laid the body of the queen his mother, hitherto resting ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... (they might not have seen each other for a week); exchanging a pleasant word with a friend; making a hurried appointment to meet him somewhere aloft on the morrow, or passing group after group without deigning the slightest salutation. Indeed, I was not at all singular in having but comparatively few acquaintances on board, though certainly carrying my ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... growing girl, and far yet from womanhood and the thoughts that come with it. But it may be some years before the paper comes to you, for except my poor father, we are a long-lived race; and I find singular comfort, now that I cannot keep myself exercised as much as formerly, by reason of growing years, in this writing. And I trust to say nothing that you may not with ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... by a secounde marriage with a younge lady of the family of the Beaumonts, he had this gentleman, and two other Sunns, and a daughter, who all came afterwards to be raysed to greate titles and dignityes. George, the eldest Sunn of this secounde bedd, was after the death of his father, by the singular affection and care of his Mother, who injoyed a good joynture in the accounte of that age, well brought up, and for the improvment of his education, and givinge an ornament to his hopefull person, he was by her ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... straight up to Elsie Cameron, began to talk to her in the friendliest manner. Gilbert stood watching her, puzzled and dismayed, and wondering desperately what he should do, when the attention of all was called by a singular proceeding on ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... her portable residence and ever-present tatting grows ordinary when besieged by Time, and Wyoming no longer regarded her as a phenomenon. She was just plain Martha Bumps, to whom many a rural community owed much. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that her singular customs of living were considered most eccentric by strangers who often laughed long and uproariously at the portable house. Three amused Vigilantes found in her the best theme material imaginable, and on the day when Mr. Crusoe reported having passed her house and her on the road from Elk ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... inherited a certain degree of cold stateliness from her ancestors; but her experience after the war, and Trunion's unaffected ways, had acted as powerful correctives, and there was nothing in the shape of indifference or haughtiness to mar her singular beauty. ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... at this time in Judea, a man of singular character, whose name is Jesus Christ. The barbarians esteem Him as their prophet; but His followers adore Him as the immediate offspring of the immortal God. He is endowed with such unparalleled virtue as to call back the dead ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... the banks of the Tagus, have a singular antipathy to trees. When Garcia Moreno made a park of the dusty Plaza Mayor, he was ridiculed, even threatened. To plant a fruit or shade tree (a thing of foresight and forethought for others) in a land where people live for self, and from hand to mouth, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... fowl and every hideous reptile, every singular plant and every tangled jungle, will tell the American boy how far he is to the south. Florida is, in fact, his corner of the tropics; and the clear waters of its rivers, stained to brown and wine-color with the juices of a tropical vegetation, will tell him, if he reads nature's ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... his own ears. Now it fortuned that he heard one night from a certain of his nocturnal reciters[FN5] that among women are those who are doughtier than the doughtiest men and prower of prowess, and that among them are some who will engage in fight singular with the sword and others who beguile the quickest-witted of Walis and baffle them and bring down on them all manner of miseries; wherefore said the Soldan, "I would lief hear this of their legerdemain ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... singular, but such is the inconsistency of human nature, that a guest of this fanciful and capricious disposition gave much more satisfaction to Mrs. Dods, than her quiet and indifferent friend, Mr. Tyrrel. If her present ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... a free translation which convulsed Amanda behind her paper. Coming to this passage, 'Plusieurs faits graves sont arrives,' the reader rendered it, 'Several made graves have arrived,' adding, 'Dear me, what singular customs the French have, to be sure!' A little farther on she read, 'Un portrait de feu Monsieur mon pere,' adding, 'A fire portrait means a poker sketch, ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... dark, deep eyes, so full of shadowed fire,—the Arabian complexion,—the sharp-cut, intense lines of the face,—the light, tall, erect stature,—the quick axial poise of the movement,—all these answered with singular accuracy to the picture of those preacher-races which had been shaping itself in our imagination. Indeed, the impression was so strong as to induce some little feeling of embarrassment. It seemed slightly awkward and insipid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... said, there was nothing singular or marked about her face or figure by which one could have distinguished her from the general run of old women of her modest but apparently respectable class. A little thin, whitish hair, parted in the middle, showed under her bonnet; her eyes, of the faded no-color of the old, stared ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... under the law." Herein is the explanation of that perilous combat which Paul waged so many years, and in which he proved victorious, the great battle between the Gentile Christians and the Judaizing Christians; a subject of altogether singular importance, without a minute acquaintance with which a large part of the New Testament cannot be understood. "Christ gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... It is truly singular that Plato,—whose philosophy and religion were but exotic at home, and a mere opposition to the finite in all things, genuine prophet and anticipator as he was of the Protestant Christian aera,—should have given in his Dialogue of the Banquet, a justification of our Shakespeare. For he ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... person who has enlisted as a soldier is engaged to my only daughter, who is much in love with him. Set him free again. I shall be glad to present you with a hundred rix-dollars, if you do. I admit that at first I was delighted myself that he had been punished in such a way, for his singular behavior had exasperated me, and all the good folk here in the village, against him. But when I saw him in this plight, and at the same time heard him lament his former folly and promise amendment, my heart was ready to burst ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... sounds which was being worsted, but the fact that the wolves were so numerous led us to believe that they could finally tear to pieces any bear. Then, while we were checking off the howls, quite a singular snarl came ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... another shutter away, violently depositing them, as they ran to and fro, in a rack at the corner of the veranda. Added to an extraordinary and unnecessary clattering with their feet, they accompanied their movements with a singular hissing sound, supposed to indicate in one breath the fury of the elements, the bustle of the eager crew, and the wild excitement of the coming conflict. When the last shutter was cleared away, John Milton, with the cry "Man the starboard guns!" dashed into the store, whose floor was marked ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... curiously at the singular man who spoke thus. What a strange sort of love, to be entirely free from that quality of selfishness which is frequently the chief constituent of the passion, and sometimes its only one! The reddleman's disinterestedness ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... four o'clock in the afternoon, and we may go to see our lottery drawn. The ceremony takes place every Saturday, in the Tribunale, or Court of Justice—this singular, earthy-smelling room, or gallery, as mouldy as an old cellar, and as damp as a dungeon. At the upper end is a platform, with a large horse-shoe table upon it; and a President and Council sitting round—all judges of the Law. The ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... fine flower of an English university, low-voiced and urbane, it was difficult to imagine what impression he would produce upon those rugged types of which South Africa is so peculiarly prolific. But behind the reserve of a gentleman there lay within him a lofty sense of duty, a singular clearness of vision, and a moral courage which would brace him to follow whither his reason pointed. His visit to England for three months' rest was the occasion for a striking manifestation of loyalty and regard from his fellow-countrymen. He returned ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ha' been from the unhandiness of their movements an' the way they clutched at us an' at one another as we pulled 'em ashore. Hows'ever, blind they were; an' I don't remember that it struck us as anyways singular, after what we'd been through a'ready. We fished out a concertina, too, an' a silver-mounted flute that ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... can you say it is her only amusement while she has the privilege of living with us! If it were not my happy lot to be your wife, I should like to be your daughter. I will never leave you, not I! Did you say for the last eighteen months? That is singular! Well, when I come to think of it, she has begun to care more about laces, jewels, and other ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... fifteen you studied Euclid, and were enraptured with it. It is a little singular that all this time you never showed any self-esteem; or spoke of getting into employment at some future day, among the learned. The pleasure of intellectual exercise in demonstrating or analyzing a geometrical problem, or solving an algebraic equation, seemed to be your only object. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... of George the Fourth believed that the marriage had taken place. We must not attach too much importance to a story which in itself is so very unlikely. It is in the last degree improbable that a statesman like Pitt would have lent himself to so singular a proceeding. Even if an enamoured young Prince were prepared to sanction his affections by a marriage, he would scarcely have found an assistant in the ablest politician of the age. The story of the Axford marriage is far more probable. If Hannah Lightfoot had been married ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... one very singular habit; namely, dragging every hard object to the mouth of its burrow: around each group of holes many bones of cattle, stones, thistle-stalks, hard lumps of earth, dry dung, etc., are collected into an irregular heap, which frequently amounts to as much as a wheelbarrow would contain. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... this strange ceremony was singular enough. It was the solemn administering of an oath to each of the combatants, by which oath they severally swore that the cause in which they were to fight was true, and that they did not deal in any witchcraft or magic art, by which they expected to gain the victory over their adversary; and ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... art finished—for the living pictures were art in which he had a proprietary interest, and he could afford to talk for it once in a while—the one-eyed man cast his glance over his table and saw the small bets. By some singular fortune all of the bettors won. They pocketed their winnings with grins as they pushed out among the ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... singular, too, with what comparatively small means the Medici were enabled to do such great things. Cosmo, unquestionably the greatest and most successful citizen that ever lived,—for he almost rivalled Pericles in position, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... this place was a singular phenomenon, which is among the curiosities of the country. It is called the chimney. The lower part is a conical mound, rising out of the naked plain; from the summit shoots up a shaft or column, about ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... By a singular coincidence, on the very night that this vision appeared to Legree, the house-door was found open in the morning, and some of the negroes had seen two white figures gliding down the avenue towards ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... {194} its full value maintained without its being convertible at pleasure into hard cash. This supposed principle has been proved again and again to be a mere fallacy and paradox; but it always finds enthusiastic believers who have plausible arguments in its support. It appears, indeed, to have a singular fascination for some persons in all times and communities. It might seem an obvious truism that under no possible conditions can people in general be got to give as much for a promise to pay as for a certain and instant payment; and yet this truism would have to be proved a falsehood ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... asked, coming close, and looking at me with the most singular eyes that were ever on earth." He stopped a moment. "Not like yours, in the least," he continued. "'Cassandra is very handsome now, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... windows, the house-tops, the steeples, and the chimney-stalks—all were crowded with human beings, whose eager upturned faces were rendered intensely bright against the surrounding darkness by the fierce glare of the fire. But the Thames presented the most singular appearance of all—now reflecting on its bosom the inky black clouds of smoke; anon the red flames, as fresh fuel was licked up by the devouring element, and, occasionally, sheets of silver light that flashed through the chaos when sulphur and saltpetre explosions occurred. Mountains of flame ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... certain root, too, was of sovereign efficacy in the prevention of rabies in human beings who had been bitten by a mad dog. In Gerard's Herbal, a medical work published in 1596—"Gathered by John Gerarde of London, Master in Chirurgerie"—it is laid down that "the root of the Briar-bush is a singular remedy found out by oracle against the biting of a mad dog." Then, as now, rabies was regarded with a sickening dread, but in that remote day there had arisen no Pasteur, and dread too frequently degenerated into panic, and panic, as it ever does, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... all the perfection of their nature—in all the energy of their deeply-felt conviction—in all the potency of their strength—in all the splendor of their magnificence, and in all the glory of their triumph; it is because of all this that this singular man—who was born and has lived at such a distance from Rome—is now admired, is now wept for by you, as if he had been born in the midst of you. Hence it is that this great character, this sublime nature, has awakened ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... agree with the nouns which they qualify. This and that qualify nouns in the singular; these and those belong ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... After this singular peroration, the speaker pauses to see what may be the effect of his words. As this cannot be gathered from any reply— since none is vouchsafed—he continues; "Dona Carmen Montijo, you and I are old acquaintances; though, it may be, you do not remember my voice. With the sound of the sea so long ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... The writing of Persius was that of a student who gathered the types he satirised from books rather than from life. Juvenal brought to his task not only a wide knowledge of the world—or, at least, of the world of the capital—but a singular power of mordant phrase, and a mastery over crude and vivid effect that keeps the reader suspended between disgust and admiration. In the commonplaces of morality, though often elevated and occasionally noble, ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Another singular observation made on the Mahakam was the effect of dry weather on the jungle. At one place, where it covered hills rising from the river, the jungle, including many big trees, looked dead. From what I later learned about the burning ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... and introduced the leek into Nassau about the year 1718, and was a very remarkable personage, although, from some singular imperfection in his moral constitution, he never could distinguish clearly between ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... express in speaking of chance. And of an anarchical world, in which phenomena succeed each other capriciously, I should say again that it is a realm of chance, meaning that I find before me wills, or rather decrees, when what I am expecting is mechanism. Thus is explained the singular vacillation of the mind when it tries to define chance. Neither efficient cause nor final cause can furnish the definition sought. The mind swings to and fro, unable to rest, between the idea of an absence of final cause and that of an absence of efficient ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... generation, a life (to some eyes) of wasted leisure and deep futility, but common enough, and getting from its permitted commonness a justification from life, who is wasteful but roughly just. Miss Mayor tells this story with singular skill, more by contrast than by drama, bringing her chief character into relief against her world, as it passes in swift procession. Her tale is in a form becoming common among our best writers; it ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... had preceded or followed some important event. She succeeded by sheer force of attention, by force of memory and of concentrated will power in bringing back to mind almost completely her two first years at Peuples. Distant memories of her life came back to her with a singular facility, bringing a kind of relief; but the later years seemed to lose themselves in a mist—to become mixt one with another: and sometimes she would stay for an indefinite time, her head bowed on one of the calendars, her mind full of the past, and yet not being able to remember whether ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... the olive branch of peace in the hope of stopping the slaughter. His noble effort cost him his life. He was shot dead. They showed us a cast of his face taken after death, the bullet that killed him, and the two vertebrae in which it lodged. These people have a somewhat singular taste in the matter of relics. Ferguson told us that the silver cross which the good archbishop wore at his girdle was seized and thrown into the Seine, where it lay embedded in the mud for fifteen years, and then an angel appeared to a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that we have the witness Paul speaking to us directly in the Epistles. There is little doubt that we have, and a very singular witness he is. According to his own showing, Paul, in the vigour of his manhood, with every means of becoming acquainted, at first hand, with the evidence of eye-witnesses, not merely refused to credit them, but "persecuted ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... as at the time of his death. In the arsenal at Berlin, five hundred cannon, several hundred thousand pounds of powder, and several thousand muskets, were found in excellent condition. It has been noticed as a singular coincidence that the emperor arrived in Potsdam on the same day and at the same hour, and occupied the same rooms, as the Emperor of Russia during the latter's visit—a visit last year which has had such fatal consequences for Prussia. Since that moment the queen has forgotten to take care of her ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... earlier, had taken very kindly to the soil, and overspread the county much as hops did some few centuries later. He was plump and portly, a little thick-winded, especially after dinner, stood five feet four in his sandals, and weighed hard upon eighteen stone. He was, moreover, a personage of singular piety; and the iron girdle, which, he said, he wore under his cassock to mortify withal, might have been well mistaken for the tire of a cart-wheel. When he arrived, Sir Robert was pacing up and down by the side of ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... of provincials whom Caesar had enfranchised. The demonstrations of sorrow were most remarkable among the Jews, crowds of whom continued for many nights to collect and wail in the Forum at the scene of the singular ceremony. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... usually falls to the lot of a captive. And here let me tell you that your own escape from torture and death was little less than miraculous. In my long experience with the tribe, I have never known of a similar incident. But Wakometkla is a very singular man, and so greatly is he reverenced by his nation, that he can do many things which Tonsaroyoo himself would ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... one point of righteous indignation, our little Burmese lady became as bright and cheery as a child, wearing her collection of pretty native dresses, which could all have been packed easily into a fair-sized doll's trunk, with singular grace and charm. When the tender arrived to disembark us in Calcutta, her husband came with it, and ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... singular cases of conversion I ever heard described was the following: A monk, famous for his oratorical gifts, was preaching in a crowded church to a congregation which was listening to him with devout admiration. Suddenly he was ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... you approach it from Woodford. But no lake in Lombardy or Piedmont is so peculiarly and exquisitely tinted as the lough on which it stands. The delicate grey-green of the sparkling waters reminded me of the singular and well-defined belts and stretches of chrysoprase upon which you sometimes come in sailing through the dark azure of the Southern Seas. I have never before seen precisely such a hue in any body of fresh water. The lake is incorrectly described, ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... was beginning to share her surprise; and I began to turn over in my old head the singular thought of this young girl—"One is uneasy about what ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... developed into one of singular kindness and self-sacrifice. He is known to have worn a coat six months longer than he otherwise would have done, in order that he might spare a little money to help some one less fortunate than himself. ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... say much of Peas, but it may be worth a note in passing that in old English we seldom meet with the word Pea. Peas or Pease (the Anglicised form of Pisum) is the singular, of which the plural is Peason. "Pisum is called in Englishe a Pease;" ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... great evil of this neglect will further yet appear from considering the real causes whence it proceedeth, whereof the first I take to be an evil conscience. Many men come to church to save or gain a reputation, or because they will not be singular, but comply with an established custom, yet all the while they are loaded with the guilt of old rooted sins. These men can expect to hear of nothing but terrors and threatenings, their sins laid open in true colours, and eternal misery the reward of them; therefore, no wonder they ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... species of self-representation, the power of considering our own life and position as from the outside; from it arise both the cheerful hopes and schemes of the sound mind, and the shadowy anxieties and fears of the mind which lacks robustness. It certainly does seem singular that this deep and persistent element in human life is left so untrained and unregarded, to range at will, to feed upon itself. All that the teacher does is to insist as far as possible on a certain concentration of the mind on business at particular times, and if he has ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... their almost perfect immunity from colds to the use of woollen underclothing, who previously had been martyrs to colds and coughs, and had been constantly imprisoned in the house during quite mild seasons. In England the climate (need I say so?) is fickle and changeable, and, singular to say, we may be, and many people are, apparently wrapped up carefully and seasonably, and yet we may all err on every hygienic point, in regard to the ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... lake, but it was now a crater, to the bottom of which his eyes could not penetrate. The hills encircling it were torn, as if by heavy gunfire. A few thunderclouds were floating in the air at no great height, from which branched lightning descended to the earth incessantly, accompanied by alarming and singular crashes. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... woman, to pile a bird-cage on a bandbox surmounting a bag. The old woman was clad in a black alpaca frock, made with the voluminous draperies of years ago, but with the uncreased folds and the brilliant gloss of a new gown. She wore a bonnet of a singular shape, unknown to fashion, but made out of good velvet. Beneath the bonnet (which was large) appeared a little, round, agitated old face, with bobbing white curls and white teeth set a little apart in the mouth, a defect that brought a kind of palpitating frankness ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... which I had been troubled with for many years; I was also cured of a very bad cough which I had been troubled with for many years, and of dyspepsia of long standing. I was entirely cured of a very singular and severe itching on my back, between my shoulders, which our doctor's called winter itch and which they pronounced incurable. I had suffered with this for twenty years; it would come in the winter and go away in the summer. I was also cured of the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... who is an intelligent German, and to all appearances an able instructor, testifies to the wonderful efficacy of music in softening the rugged nature of the boys, who are sent to school usually because they are uncontrollable by their parents or guardians. He says he has noticed the singular fact, that boys whose aversion to learning was so great that they could not or would not acquire even a knowledge of their 'a, b, abs,' took hold with evident relish of the comparatively difficult study of theoretical music, and in a very short space of time mastered the notes sufficiently ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... dog," says Cuvier, "is the most complete, the most singular, and the most useful conquest that man has gained in the animal world. The whole species has become our property; each individual belongs entirely to his master, acquires his disposition, knows and defends his property, and remains attached to him until death; and all this, not through constraint ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... thou art a singular God! and a most amazing philosopher! Thou goest shooting about with thy electrically charged arrows, bringing to one common level human hearts, however diverse in clime, caste, ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... as though they had not been seen before, and describes them with singular directness and vividness, not with morbid acuteness, with a large, wholesome joy of life. Nowhere is this more evident than in his insistent use of environment. I recall the passage in which he describes the street in which ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... a singular preference for Mademoiselle de Nantes, but my daughter, brimful of wit and fun, often makes merry at the expense of ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Now comes a singular thing: the oddest thing, the strangest thing, the most baffling and unaccountable marvel that Australasia can show. At the frontier between New South Wales and Victoria our multitude of passengers were routed out of their ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... two great humourists would perhaps show as many points of contrast as of similarity, but there is a strong superficial resemblance between them. They both possessed an inexhaustible supply of broad humour and an imagination of singular vividness. Both had the power of seeing the ridiculous side of common things, and the talent of producing caricatures that had a wonderful semblance of reality. A little calm reflection would suffice to show that the characters presented are for the most ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... replied at last, but not in a tone that satisfied me. His manner intrigued me so much that I felt inclined to pursue the subject, but at that moment we were interrupted in a singular way. ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... anyone so singular in personal appearance as my friend, Miss Wilson. Medicine-man as I am, I could never behold her suddenly without a sensation of shock: she suggested so inevitably what we call "the other world," one ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... "A singular young fellow!" Major Browne remarked as the door closed behind him. "I don't quite know what to make of him, but I don't think he could have committed that murder. It was a cowardly business, and although I believe he might ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... Champagny, two decrees relating to the taking possession, pure and simple, of the States of the Pope. He explained the reasons of this to his minister in a long letter, which was to serve as a basis for Champagny's report, and which, by its singular mixture of thoughts and principles, showed the historical heredity connecting the power of Napoleon with that of Charlemagne, united to the sovereign power which disposed in the name of conquest of territories and states, were ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... against him; and upon the whole concluded, that what was called the furor brevis was, in my opinion, of rather too long - a continuance, to come within the indulgence of the law. I then tho't, and I believe I am far from being singular in thinking it; that for a man repeatedly to say, that he had wanted an opportunity of firing upon the inhabitants ever since he had been in the Country and that he would never miss an opportunity of doing it; and afterwards, when forewarn'd against it, to fire upon the inhabitants, kill one ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... Somewhat singular is her costume, as the equipment. As already said, she bestrides her mustang man-fashion, the mode of Mexico; while a light fowling-piece, suspended en bandouliere, hangs ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... he told us, was Tamaku. He and Dicky Popo soon became great friends, and both made themselves very useful on board. It was singular that they should have joined us much in the same way. Tamaku was likely to prove of service in acting as interpreter with the natives of Polynesia; for the language of the Sandwich group differs but slightly from the dialects ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... etudiait partout, je l'ai moi-meme rencontre sur les grandes routes avec un auteur rabinnique a la main." He made a mappemonde in which the globe is divided in two hemispheres, one occupied by the continents, the other by the oceans, and by a singular coincidence he found that the meridian of the continental hemisphere passed through Paris. Some such rearrangement of hemispheres is one of the commonplaces of modern geography. He furnished such articles as, Deluge, Corvee, Societe ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... wearied by the life he led, by all his procession of sweethearts, by all his explorations in the kingdom of love, awoke before this singular child, so fresh, irritating, and inexplicable. He heard one o'clock strike, then two. He could not sleep at all. He was warm, he felt his heart beat and his temples throb, and he rose to open the window. A breath of fresh ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... is time to prepare. The others have gone. It is singular that the oldest and the youngest should have loved her best. Ay! Dios de mi alma! I never thought that Concha Argueello would die. Grow old she never did, in spite of the faded husk. We will ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... that colors had nothing to do with the conduction of electricity. "Mr. Gray says, towards the end of one of his letters," he writes, "that bodies attract more or less according to their colors. This led me to make several very singular experiments. I took nine silk ribbons of equal size, one white, one black, and the other seven of the seven primitive colors, and having hung them all in order in the same line, and then bringing the tube near them, the black one ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... representatives of these earliest Vertebrates. Of these two groups one consists chiefly now of the Gar-Pikes of our Western waters, though the Sturgeons share also in some of their features. In these fishes there is a singular union of reptilian with fish-like characters. The systems of circulation and of respiration in them are more complicated than in the common fishes; the structure of the skull resembles that of the skull in reptiles, and they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... marvellous mimic, and pretty beyond belief; fragile, and yet with something common about her even in her fragility. Her wrists had a certain flat angularity that bespoke a peasant ancestry, but she had a singular freshness and youthful bloom. The line of her side face from the eye socket to the chin was a delicious thing that curved with the grace of a wing. The high cheekbone sloped down so that the outline ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... through the Streets of Florence, startled the Royal Academy, and proved that a 'prentice work could be in its way something of a masterpiece. This picture, the work of an unknown young artist of twenty-five, painted chiefly in Rome, showed at once a new force and a new quality, and in its singular feeling for certain of the archaic Italian schools, showed, too, where for the moment the sympathies of the painter really lay. How far the potentiality disclosed in it was developed during the forty years following, how far the ideals ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... validity or otherwise of the impressionist doctrines of art. Not that of all this painting came anything very wonderful, although in the evening the Colonel would take out his canvases and contemplate their rigid proportions with singular pride and satisfaction. It was a little weakness of his to think that he could paint, and one of which he was somewhat tenacious. Like many another man he could do a number of things exceedingly well and one thing very badly, and yet had more faith in ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... all he needed to know, for in them he recognized the voice. In the instant between hearing the words and obeying, a singular change took place in the Falling Wall ranchman's eyes. Looking over at Tenison his eyes had been keen and clear. Slowly and with a faint smile he turned his head. When his eyes met those of Tom Stone, who confronted ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... large whelk, is another, but far larger and coarser. It is Sagartia parasitica, one of our largest British species; and most singular in this, that it is almost always (in Torbay, at least,) found adhering to a whelk: but never to a live one; and for this reason. The live whelk (as you may see for yourself when the tide is out) burrows in the sand in chase of hapless ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... in general, and the bourgeois intellect in particular, present singular enigmas. We know, and we have no desire to conceal it, that from the shopkeeper up to the banker, from the petty trader up to the stockbroker, great numbers of the commercial and industrial men of France,—that is to say, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... to England he was called to the bar, in June 1790; and but for a singular circumstance might have passed through life as a literary barrister, with middling ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... There is a singular and conspicuous interest attaching to Osborne's Hotel in the Adelphi, for the almost pathetic reason that it was in one of its rooms that Mr. Pickwick first made the momentous announcement of his intention of abandoning his nomadic ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... is at fever heat in the Milford neighborhood, in the southern portion of this county, over the mysterious appearance of the most wonderful faces and figures upon the window glass of the houses in that section. The first appearance of these singular and most extraordinary pictures on the glass was at the residence of William Showalter, where the window panes all at once showed the colors of the rainbow, on which two days later the heads of people and animals were clearly visible. On the glass of another ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... longingly: for she occasionally found it necessary to place a certain check upon a healthy appetite. She was, however, not singular in this respect, since the practice of such self-denial is, unfortunately, not a very unusual thing in the case of a good many young women in our cities who work remarkably hard. Then she resolutely ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... odd—books and stockings. The combination is very odd." But it seemed to recommend itself to him. Mary gave a little laugh, expressive of happiness, and the particular stitches that she was now putting into her work appeared to her to be done with singular grace and felicity. She held out the stocking and ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Romans, like the Greeks, thought that the will of the gods was communicated to men by means of oracles, and by strange sights, unusual events, or singular coincidences. There were no true oracles at Rome. The Romans, therefore, often had recourse to those in Magna Graecia, even sending for advice, in great emergencies, to the Delphian shrine. From ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... folio, but not above fifty pages are filled. It comprises the period between the 11th and the 28th December, 1688, both days inclusive, and appears to be a perfect Record of every act of that memorable Assembly. The indorsement on the cover merits notice: it states with singular minuteness the precise hour of James's abdication, namely at one in the morning of ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various
... year when the Company became a great potentate. It has been the fashion indeed to fix on the year 1765, the year in which the Mogul issued a commission authorising the Company to administer the revenues of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, as the precise date of the accession of this singular body to sovereignty. I am utterly at a loss to understand why this epoch should be selected. Long before 1765 the Company had the reality of political power. Long before that year, they made a Nabob of Arcot; they made and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all others who came to wait upon him, either by invitation or of their own accord, he made liberal presents; not neglecting even the freed-men and slaves, who were favourites with their masters and patrons. He offered also singular and ready aid to all who were under prosecution, or in debt, and to prodigal youths; excluding from (19) his bounty those only who were so deeply plunged in guilt, poverty, or luxury, that it was impossible effectually to relieve ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... given evidence of her sincerity by expressing in public her abhorrence of her idolatrous belief. But she was fortunate indeed, for soon after she had been baptized they killed her, which is certainly a singular blessing from our Lord. The other old woman who was about seventy years of age had also been baptized a little while before. They did no damage in our church, although I am told that they disinterred some bodies—why, I know ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... to me. But a deadly disease preyed on my heart. My extraordinary companion, who gave himself out to be the humble attendant of the richest individual in the world, was remarkable for his dexterity; in short, his singular address and promptitude admirably fitted him to be the very beau ideal of a rich man's lacquey. But he never stirred from my side, and tormented me with constant assurances that a day would most certainly come when, if it were only ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... height, and, looking at me steadily, said: "You are John Sherman! Well, I am taller than you; let's measure." Thereupon we stood back to back, and some one present announced that he was two inches taller than I. This was correct, for he was 6 feet 31/2 inches tall when he stood erect. This singular introduction was not unusual with him, but if it lacked dignity, it was an expression of friendliness and so considered by him. Our brief conversation was cheerful, and my hearty congratulations for his escape from the Baltimore "roughs" were ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... his Adventures at Home and Abroad. The Second Part; wherein are set forth the misfortunes in which he was involved upon the Appin Murder; his troubles with Lord Advocate Prestongrange; captivity on the Bass Rock; journey into France and Holland; and singular relations with James More Drummond or Macgregor, a son of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an old man, yet he seemed to have a certain dignity about him. Frank's curiosity was now greater than ever. He made up his mind that there was something singular about this party of Crees who seemed to be wandering in the wilderness without guns, or any means for obtaining food, and, if possible, he meant to discover what ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... is simply the Genius, one of those singular and powerful characters whom we are still, with all our learning, unable to account for without falling back on the primitive conception of gift as arising from direct communication with the gods. That she becomes a Medicine Woman is due to the circumstance of being born into a time which ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... rented Davenport Hall in Cheshire, where they lived a quiet retired life, spending a good deal of their time with their friends Sir Charles and Lady Holte at Brereton. Edgeworth amused himself by making a clock for the steeple at Brereton, and a chronometer of a singular construction, which, he says,'I intended to present to the King ... to add to His Majesty's collection of uncommon clocks and watches which I had seen at ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... package that lay on the ground. On examination, they found the envelope to be composed of a dried snakeskin, which was quickly opened, and disclosed several Indian arrows. Squanto gazed on these with a significant look; and on being questioned by Bradford as to the meaning of so singular an offering, he informed him that it was the native ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... It is a singular fact in the history of arms, that the successive improvements in their construction have occurred at long intervals, and have made but slow progress towards general adoption even when their advantages were apparent. It was more than a century ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... intellectual stagnation, and when the national spirit which took the great Queen for its representative was finding leaders in the Burleighs and Raleighs and Drakes. The connection is emphasised by the singular brevity of the literary efflorescence. Marlowe's Tamburlaine heralded its approach on the eve of the Spanish Armada: Shakespeare, to whom the lead speedily fell, had shown his highest power in Henry IV. and Hamlet ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... For, in what do these principles consist? They are not grounded on reason or religion; they must, therefore, have a basis of incredulity for everything which they do not understand: the foolish vanity of being thought singular; ignorance, which boldly repudiates what it knows nothing of; keeping company with libertines; a conformity of feeling with heretics, and the spirit of the world, which is the enemy of all piety. Such calamitous causes give room to fear the ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... long nose, which offered an excellent straight line to its owner's burin, sat on a throne in the costume of a Roman general, while Vulcan and Bacchus, Minerva and Poinona, offered him gifts. Klaus Van Aken, or as he preferred to be called, Nicolaus Aquanus, was a singular man, who had received good gifts from more than one of the Olympians; for besides his business he zealously devoted himself to science and several of the arts. He was an excellent silver-smith, a die-cutter and engraver ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... accomplished the voyage from the Atlantic Ocean. Thus Nordenskiold had gained considerable knowledge of the Northern Seas, and he was now in a position to lay a plan of his schemes before King Oscar, who had always interested himself in Arctic discovery. His suggestions to the King are of singular interest. ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... is singular that Marco should make no mention whatever of the peculiar beverage of the Chinese, tea, though particularly described both in name and use, by the Mahometan travellers in the ninth century, four hundred years earlier, as used in all the cities ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... a ghastly region, on which clouds and tempests for ever rest, and which is well known to its continental neighbours as the abode to which departed spirits are sent after this life. On one side of the strait dwell a few fishermen, men possessed of a strange charter, and enjoying singular privileges, in consideration of their being the living ferrymen who, performing the office of the heathen Charon, carry the spirits of the departed to the island which is their residence after death. At the dead of night, these fishermen ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... several five or seven or four. Another remarkable fact was that the one or two in the more self-denying were as bad as the whole five or seven or nine or eighteen of those which had more freely indulged themselves in verse. Yet another singular feature of the inquiry was that one woman had a poem in five or six of the magazines, and, stranger yet, always a good poem, so that no editor would have been justified in refusing it. There was a pretty frequent recurrence of names in the title-pages, and mostly these names were ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells |
