"Account for" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... house that had 'taken' wonderfully; but this was no impediment to his arranging it according to a plan of his own. It was a great dingy house with a quantity of dim side window and blank back premises, and it cost his mind a world of trouble so to lay it out as to account for everything in its external appearance. But, this once done, was quite satisfactory, and he rested persuaded, that he knew his way about the house blindfold: from the barred garrets in the high roof, to the two iron extinguishers before the main door—which seemed to request all lively ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... account for representing "the Goodwin affair" as having had "a very important relation to the Salem troubles," and attempts to controvert ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... father. "God knows if I have done right," she said, "but I am doing what you have taken me to account for not doing." ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and in the best order; and a weary day was that to the chambermaid in which her lynx eye discovered any neglect of the strict cleanliness which she constantly enforced. Indeed, considering Meg's country and calling, we were never able to account for her extreme and scrupulous nicety, unless by supposing that it afforded her the most apt and frequent pretext for scolding her maids; an exercise in which she displayed so much eloquence and energy, that we must needs believe it to have ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... is as abundant "as the dust," and which he needs for his buildings at home. He tells the Egyptian king how his father Kuri-galzu had refused to listen to the Canaanites when they had offered to betray their country to him, and he calls Khu-n-Aten to account for treating the Assyrians as an independent nation and not ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... word or a situation will create this peculiar state of mind. Father and son! The phrase actually hypnotized Jane, and she remained in the clutch of it until hours later, which may account for the amazing events into which she permitted herself to be drawn. Father and son! Her actions were normal; her mental state was not observable; but inwardly she retained no clear recollection of the hours that intervened ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... gives that God of his exemption from all important business. But as the priests of the gods have a holiday, how much more reasonable is it that the gods should have one themselves? He then asserts that he has no need of the aid of the gods to account for the making of the world. Everything that exists, he says, was made by Nature: not agreeing with that other philosopher who teaches, that the universe is a concrete mass of rough and smooth, and hooked and crooked bodies, with the addition ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... about the world in broad-cloth and fustian, shooting-jackets, ulsters, and what not—swaying hearts at will, though it may be all unconscious of their power; and only the existence of some such psychological fact as this will account for the incident which ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM
... title, and, suitably capitalized, would enable us to pay our lions sufficiently. Private enterprise is powerless under modern conditions. It's as much as I can afford to pay for a dinner, without running up an expense account for guests; and unless we get up a salon trust, as it were, the whole affair must go ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... Silence received this communication almost cheerfully. It seemed more like a relief to her than anything else. Her one dread in this world was her "responsibility "; and the thought that she might have to account for ten talents hereafter, instead of one, had often of late been a positive distress to her. There was also in her mind a secret disgust at the thought of the hungry creatures who would swarm round her if she should ever be in a position to bestow patronage. This ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... carried with him, as indispensable parts of his personal baggage, the little lozenges and squares of ivory, and other costly materials, which were wanted for the tessellated flooring of his tent. Habits such as these will easily account for his travelling in a carriage rather than ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... this term in the denunciation against Jehoiakim, more than six centuries B.C., and the previous enumeration of crimes in the 22nd chapter of Jeremiah, would seem sufficiently to account for its origin and use in regard to the disposal of the dead bodies of excommunicated or notorious malefactors, by the earliest Christian writers or judges. The Hebrew name of the ass, says Parkhurst, is "derived from ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... station in the city, and took every possible step for the discovery of the child. It occurred to him with tremendous force that the boy might have been stolen. Such things did happen. It seemed almost the only way to account for such a sudden ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... been added to by recent discoveries, but it is still quite insignificant. It is the same thing with the kitchen-middings and the Lake settlements. This paucity of actual human remains forms a gap in the evidence relating to prehistoric man, which disturbances and displacements do not sufficiently account for, and to which we shall refer again when speaking of ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... account for your letters remaining so long unacknowledged; and, having given you the history of a day, it will serve for a year, and I am persuaded you will not require a second edition of it. But it may strike you ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Immaculate Conception. The ever-increasing devotion to Mary had become greater than ever. It was to the unbelieving a phenomenon in the moral world of the nineteenth century, which they could neither comprehend nor account for. They could only see that it was as a source of new life ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... course, and yet so full of reactions, of contradictory incidents and of contrary examples. Without the reasons I have related the French would never have made the revolution; but it must be confessed that all these reasons united would not have sufficed to account for such a revolution ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... Irenaeus continually, and mark the contrast in the manner of dealing with the Evangelical narratives and the Apostolic letters. He will probably allow that an interval of two generations or more is not too long a period to account for the difference of treatment.' ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... village in which she had been reared caused some excitement; but it soon reduced itself to a very trifling affair. Indeed, white trash like this was considered little else than rubbish, not worth bringing up respectably. And while suspicion pointed to Romescos, as the person who could account for her mysterious disappearance, such was the fear of his revenge that no one dared be the accuser. Quietly matters rested, poor virtue was mean merchandise, had its value, could be bought and sold-could be turned to various uses, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... at the beginning, is Zu-Vendis, from Zu, 'yellow', and Vendis, 'place or country'. Why it is called the Yellow Country I have never been able to ascertain accurately, nor do the inhabitants themselves know. Three reasons are, however, given, each of which would suffice to account for it. The first is that the name owes its origin to the great quantity of gold that is found in the land. Indeed, in this respect Zu-Vendis is a veritable Eldorado, the precious metal being extraordinarily plentiful. At present it is collected from purely alluvial diggings, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... trouble to ascertain if any traditional notion exists amongst the natives which would in any way account for their having first obtained a knowledge of the means by which they could render the deleterious pulp of the Zamia nut a useful article of food; but in this, as in all other similar instances, they are very unwilling to ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... Hartright's perfectly intelligible prejudices infected me without my suspecting their influence? Does that letter of Anne Catherick's still leave a lurking distrust in my mind, in spite of Sir Percival's explanation, and of the proof in my possession of the truth of it? I cannot account for the state of my own feelings; the one thing I am certain of is, that it is my duty—doubly my duty now—not to wrong Sir Percival by unjustly distrusting him. If it has got to be a habit with me always to write ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... to indignation and horror. I protested my innocence I declared that Mr. Falkland knew I was innocent, and that while I was wholly unable to account for the articles found in my possession, I firmly believed that their being there ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Law of Mass-action.—The theory developed by Torbern Olof Bergman in 1775 must be regarded as the first attempt of importance to account for the mode of action of chemical forces. The essential principle of this may be stated as follows:—The magnitude of chemical affinity may be expressed by a definite number; if the affinity of the substance A is greater for the substance ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... library—so long that at first I felt impatiently that she might have remembered that I had an appetite as well as the strangers within my gates with whom it apparently pleased her to trifle, and I felt obliged, during an awkward pause, to account for the delay by explaining for whom we were waiting. If she were in earnest about wishing to make a sensation or attract special attention to herself, she had gained her end, for the moment I mentioned ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... moment when the taxicab drove away and left her in the deserted street, Maggie was conscious of a strange sense of suppressed excitement, something more poignant and mysterious, even, than the circumstances of her adventure might account for. It was exciting enough, in its way, to play the part of a marauding thief, to find herself unexpectedly face to face with a possible solution of the great problem of Prince Shan's intentions. But beneath all this there was another feeling, more entirely ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... how the seeds of this story were sown. Of course the facts got out, for those Atlantic salesmen were not wanting in a sense of humor, and Hanford was joshed in every quarter. To make matters worse, his firm called him to account for his wasted time, implying that something was evidently wrong with his selling methods. Thus began a lack of confidence which quickly developed into strained relations. The result was inevitable; Hanford saw what was coming and was wise ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Paris gave a peculiar sense of emptiness, hard to account for when all about men and women and vehicles were moving, when it was best to look carefully before crossing the streets. It could not be due wholly to the absence of men and the diminution of business—there was ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... their form. The author dwells instructively upon the antiquity, excavation, access, exterior masonry, orientation, and general construction, furniture, and ornaments of these remarkable chambers, and upon the rites connected with them. He also gives an original and acute suggestion to account for the persistence of the structural plan of the kivas by ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... white outcastes will often be ruled by female chiefs, and it is likely that the habit of prostrating themselves before a woman who has not the power of cutting off a single head, may account for their unusual degeneracy and uncleanness. They will consider no occupation so noble as running after a jackal; they will dance for themselves, holding on to strange women, and they will take a pride in playing upon instruments, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... however, owing to heavy shell fire, when the Turks re-occupied it. During the day there was a certain amount of bombing and sniping on both sides, during which Pte. Joiner was killed. He had been trying to account for the sniper himself, and upon being ordered to go down the hill to see about the rations for his sub-section he was hit as soon ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... or pretences availed. A man seen limping painfully along the street would, after a brief examination of his leg to see if there was any external mark which would account for the lameness, be sent at a round trot down the road, amid peals of laughter from the women ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... scarcely any of which could lay claim to native purity of blood. The satire was in many parts very severe; and though it gave high offence, it claimed a considerable share of the public attention. The reader will perhaps be gratified by a specimen of this production, wherein he endeavours to account for— ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... in the history of the English Morris, which by this time may be called impossible to account for with any exactitude, is that in the elder days the Mummers and their plays, the Robin Hood games and other ancient diversions with their characters and customs, became allied—or rather mixed up—with ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... other animal facts, which are difficult to account for, have been referred to an inexplicable instinct; which is supposed to preclude any further investigation: but as animals seem to have undergone great changes, as well as the inanimate parts of the earth, and are probably still in a state of gradual improvement; it is not unreasonable to ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... unearthed him here in the Northborough Hotel. He had meant to ask him—he had asked him actually, and the General had not explained. But it did not matter, after all. Some coincidence, some easily understandable explanation, of course, would account for it. ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... 28th of November, 1416, the ominous horn sounded without the moat, and the Sheriff of the county, armed with all the power of the law, entered the Castle of Cardiff, to call the Lady Le Despenser to account for her repeated and contumacious neglect of ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... capacity had carried to a successful conclusion the brilliant operations that gave Hilton Head and Port Royal to the forces of the Union. Neither in his previous history was there any thing to his personal discredit as a man or as a soldier. The fact remains, however, account for it how we may, that when about noon, greatly disturbed by the check on the right, and still more by the silence on the left, Banks himself rode almost unattended to Sherman's headquarters, he found Sherman at luncheon in his tent, surrounded by his staff, while in front the division lay idly under ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... therefor does not require from them any fees, alguacil, or scrivener. The magistrates are also under obligation to receive and keep any prisoner in their jails, to take good care of him, and to account for him, but without exacting therefor any prison-fees. Accordingly the commissary will, when occasion arises, notify the magistrates and request their assistance; and if necessary he will command it, under pain of excommunication and a money ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... with him, either in the way of his profession or otherwise. I was solely actuated by public duty, without the slightest cause for personal dislike to the lawyer. Perhaps those who have read what I have written since I came here, will not now be at a loss to account for the vindictive hostility of the venerable Judge towards me, when I was brought up for judgment, and since I have been here. They may now account for that Judge's voting for my having SIX YEARS imprisonment, and for his having afterwards come the western circuit, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... was doubtless influenced by the numerous 'Eric' jokes in the Monty Python oeuvre. There do indeed seem to be considerably more mustachioed Erics in hackerdom than the frequency of these three traits can account for unless they are correlated in some arcane way. Well-known examples include Eric Allman (he of the 'Allman style' described under {indent style}) and Erik Fair (co-author of NNTP); your editor has heard from about fourteen others by email, and the organization line 'Eric Conspiracy Secret Laboratories' ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... it was Goethe who said that Greek was the sheath into which the dagger of the human mind fitted best; and it is true that one finds among the Greeks the brightest efflorescence of the human mind. Who shall account for that extraordinary and fragrant flower, the flower of Greek culture, so perfect in curve and colour, in proportion and scent, opening so suddenly, in such a strange isolation, so long ago, upon the human stock? The Greeks had the wonderful combination of childish zest side by side with mature ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hither from Asia. De Nadaillac judges it probable that the ocean was thus crossed not at Behring Strait alone, but along a belt of equatorial islands as well. We may think of successive waves of such immigration—perhaps the easiest way to account for certain ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the original entrance to these caves," Ralph said, "but it was covered up when the rocks came down from above. That would account for the place not being known to the coast-guards. I thought the passage we came in by looked as if it had been enlarged by the hand of man. No doubt it was originally a small hole, and when the entrance was blocked the men who made up their minds to establish a still here thought that ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... said roughly, from the time of her war with Spain (1898); the increase of her influence in the world, mainly through the efforts of brave, benevolent, and able statesmen; the expansion of her trade and commerce; the increase of the European tourist traffic;—these factors also to some extent account for the growth of ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... had completed his attentions to the patient, the pandita (priest) appeared, and asked him to account for the strange happenings that had occurred in the community. The village was in a state of panic, and unless a stop were put to the proceedings soon, there was no telling what the end might be. It seemed that during the night a number ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... would take the trouble of going to that remote stair-case, for the purpose of fastening a door. If it was not fastened, when you entered the chamber, the wind, perhaps, shook the door and made the bolts slide. But I know not why I should undertake to account for ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... downstairs. The men were more sensible; they took it quite calmly, and just set to work to put the fire out. It was in a little room on the second floor, and the strange thing was that it hadn't been used for months, and no one could account for there being a fire there at all. After a little time one of the men came out into the corridor, and said: 'There's something wrong about this—this is not the result of accident! I don't like the look of it at all.' Then he turned to the ladies, who were all huddled together, ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... true, then I know not what truth is. If it is not a perfectly plain and patent truth, on the very face of it, then I am utterly incapable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood. Yet, if it is true, how account for the tight-lacing among women who are in a position to be just as intelligent as the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... midshipman on board her, cannot fail to prove interesting. "She was," says Admiral Mitford, "the favourite frigate of his majesty George the Third, who, from his courtesy and kind manner towards the ship's company, had endeared himself to them. This may in some degree account for the loyalty of the men, strengthened by their unbounded attachment to one of the most humane, brave, and zealous commanders that ever walked a deck—one to whom every man looked up as a father, the late Admiral Sir ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... energies of imagination to account for the destinations of millions upon millions of human beings, the countless host that has occupied the surfaces of this earth through all the historic and prehistoric ages, we can, upon this assumption, reduce the number of individuals immensely, allowing that spirits are constantly arriving, constantly ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... himself before God, to be overwhelmed at His feet, to spread himself in a passion of gratitude; he knew and wished it! And without knowing how, he was exercising himself in seeking natural causes which might account for the substitution of ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... potash, nitrates, etc.; comparatively few and unimportant copper deposits; and important placer deposits of gold, tin, and other metals, and precious stones. With the aid of organic agencies, sedimentary processes also account for the primary deposition of ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... of Miss Glenn's puzzled Agnes exceedingly: she could not decide in her own mind whether the girl was trying to frighten them, whether she was asleep, or whether she had turns of derangement at night. Neither of these suppositions seemed exactly to account for her singular actions. Her evident, and, Agnes doubted not, real distress, at the possibility of Mrs. Arlington being informed of her nocturnal performances, and the sacrifices of every kind that she was willing to make to ensure silence, convinced Agnes that ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... Cherokee and the Choctaw, which may account for the persistence with which, in one form or another, a measure for filling vacancies in the Indian representation came up for discussion or for reference [See Journal, vols. iii, vi]. It became law in January, 1864 ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... narrow, sandy promontory on which the modern Soor is built, is a rich black loam, which a little proper culture would turn into a very garden. It helped me to account for the wealth of ancient Tyre. The approach to the town, along a beach on which the surf broke with a continuous roar, with the wreck of a Greek vessel in the foreground, and a stormy sky behind, was very striking. It was a wild, bleak picture, the white minarets of the town standing out ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... pretty much at his option!... [Your letter] leads me to think that Mr. Pitt and he may not have understood each other. Lord Grenville's attachment to Mr. Pitt has been so conspicuous, and I am persuaded his communications have been so frank and so explicit, that I cannot account for Mr. Pitt using any reserve with him, and must be of opinion that greater openness, where there is such solid ground of confidence, would lead to more satisfactory results. [Lord Carysfort then says that Pitt should not keep public opinion so ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... helpless; but the doctor had succeeded in arresting, by the use of ice, the distressing nausea that had followed consciousness. They looked at me in a bewildered manner as I entered, and could not seem to account for my presence at once. Nor did they, apparently, try to do so long, for their eyes turned toward little Zillah with a deeply troubled and perplexed expression, as if they were beginning to realize that the child was very ill, and that events of ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... Shakespeare's variations from the normal blank verse are to be interpreted from this point of view. Hence what the metricists call "irregularities" are not irregularities at all. Collin examines the more important of these irregularities and tries to account for them. ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... Hepworth, "I just tried to account for the various boats, and when I found one was missing, I thought you must have gone on the water somewhere. And so I got a field glass and looked all around, and though I thought I saw your white flags fluttering. I wasn't sure, but I put over ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... he said at length as though to account for breaking down, albeit, by the confession, which but a short time before he would never have made, that his strength ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... emptiness and dissatisfaction, which from time to time will persist in making itself felt in their hearts, is nothing else than the pressing forward of the spirit within to declare that inner side of things which alone can satisfactorily account for what we observe on the exterior, and without the knowledge of which we can never perceive the true nature of our inheritance in the Universal Life which is the ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... of the transgression in Eden, as set forth in Genesis; but it affirms that none but Adam is or shall be answerable for Adam's disobedience; that mankind in general are absolutely absolved from responsibility for that "original sin," and that each shall account for his own transgressions alone; that the Fall was foreknown of God—that it was turned to good effect by which the necessary condition of mortality should be inaugurated; and that a Redeemer was provided, before the world was; that general salvation, ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... have said, the downward cutting would tend to check itself from age to age, while the widening process would go steadily forward. Hence, when we look into the great abyss, we have only to remember the enormous length of time that the aerial and subaerial forces have been at work to account for it. ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... that, save the solitary interruption we have specified, reigned around, the learned disciple of Vatel rose gently from the bed, hurried on his clothes, stole on tiptoe to the door, unbarred it with a noiseless hand, and vanished. Sweet reader! while thou art wondering at his absence, suppose we account for his appearance. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not official, but of a private nature, or at least written in his private capacity, and apparently with his own hand. I could account for their being included in the heap of Custom-House lumber only by the fact that Mr. Pue's death had happened suddenly; and that these papers, which he probably kept in his official desk, had never come to the knowledge of his heirs, or were supposed to relate ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... who followed upon his period have treated his name with a neglect that leaves but scanty gleanings for his personal history. His father owned landed property in Oxfordshire, and Jethro was a University-man; he studied for the law, (which will account for his address in a wordy quarrel,) made the tour of Europe, returned to Oxfordshire, married, took the paternal homestead, and proceeded to carry out the new notions which he had gained in his Southern travels. Ill health drove him to France a second ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... ballast, but was thrown overboard, near a rock and afterwards recovered by divers; this was done to prevent detection. The captain, mate, and carpenter had a conversation respecting the attempt of the latter, to blow her up, who could not account for the circumstance, that an explosion had not taken place; they told him he ought to have burst a barrel of powder over the deck and down the stairs to the magazine, loaded a gun, tied a fish line to the lock and pulled it when he came off ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... officers, who are often obliged to journey through the island on affairs connected with the government. To my great surprise I found, however, that they had all some extraordinary reason why it was impossible for me to accompany them at that particular time. I was at a loss to account for this incivility, until one of the officers themselves told me the answer to the riddle, which was this: every gentleman always ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... special reporter with some interesting and significant facts in connection with the last Cabinet Council. Lord SALISBUY arrived early, walking over from the Foreign Office under cover of an umbrella. The fact that it was raining may only partly account for this manoeuvre. Lord CROSS arrived in a four-wheeled cab and wore his spectacles. Lord KNUTSFORD approached the Treasury walking on the left hand side of the road going westward, whilst Lord CRANBROOK ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... he had been privileged to have such a friend, with sorrow at his loss. It is a chapter of his heart. There was an element of necessity about it, as there is about all the great things of life. He could not account for it. It came to him without effort or choice. It was a miracle, but it happened. "If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I can only answer, because it was he, because it was I." It was as some secret appointment ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... originally migrated from Atlantis, carrying its language, and ways and customs with them? Moreover, since the Atlanteans were so deeply versed in magic and everything appertaining to the occult, this migration would account for the mysticism that has always been so closely associated with Egypt and Ireland, and for the psychic faculty so strongly observable in the inhabitants of these ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... Rambler to the dustiest shelves of libraries, and account for the wonder expressed by such a critic as M. Taine at the English love of Johnson. Certainly if that love were nourished, as he seems to fancy, by assiduous study of the Rambler, it would be a curious phenomenon. And yet with all its faults, the reader who can plod through its pages ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... object threatens to enter it, only much more complex. They are due to the compounding and adding together of simple reflexes, in greater and greater number, and with increasing efficiency. This theory attempts to account for instinct entirely in terms of nervous action. It goes with that view of evolution which holds that the nervous system has had its growth from generation to generation by the continued reflex adjustments of the organism to its environment, ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right. The purpose of the machinery, the design and the designer, might be evident in whatever way we accounted for the irregularity of the movement, or whether we could account for it at all." "Nor would it bring any uncertainty into the argument if there were a few parts of the watch concerning which we could not discover, or had not yet discovered, in what manner they conducted to the general effect; or even some parts concerning which we could not ascertain whether they ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... elk are so numerous at the Horton Plains, the sport at length becomes monotonous from the very large proportion of the does. The usual ratio in which they were killed was one buck to eight does. I cannot at all account for this small proportion of bucks in this particular spot. At Newera Ellia they are as two or three compared with the does. The following extract of deaths, taken from my game-book during three months of the year, will give a tolerably accurate ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... to account for the present neglect of decent cookery and the triumph of the sham French cookery (for it is not French at all!) which is at present foisted on a long-suffering public. Probably the enormously increased number of visitors to foreign resorts and of frequenters of restaurants ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... I have little doubt that he is Oliver Crofton, and I can fully account for his being on board the privateer," said the commander. "She must have captured the prize of which he was in charge. I fear that the rest of the men who were prisoners on board ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... rather more for one's self than for society Loftily condescending Lunch was dinner and that dinner was supper Man in love is poor company for himself and for everybody else Nearsighted, you know, about seeing people that are not Not to care about anything you do care about Notion of duty has to account for much of the misery in life People who haven't so many corners as our people have People who leave home on purpose to grumble Pet dogs of all degrees of ugliness Satisfy the average taste without the least aid from art Seemed only a poor imitation of pleasure Shrinking little man, ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... to ask further, or try to account for the wildness of the sea on that coast; but I can tell you all about it, although it must be in a sort of half whisper—The place was on the borders of Fairy Land! that is to say, many many unknown numbers of miles out at sea, right opposite to the Castle, there was a Fairy Island, and it was ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... language, Mr. Gladstone calls the Powers to account for the action they are taking. He declares that they are listening to the advice of two ambitious young rulers, the Emperor of Germany and the Czar of Russia, and allowing themselves to be guided by the desires of these young ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... credit; give faith to, give credit to, credence to; see, realize; assume, receive; set down for, take for; have it, take it; consider, esteem, presume. count upon, depend upon, calculate upon, pin one's faith upon, reckon upon, lean upon, build upon, rely upon, rest upon; lay one's account for; make sure of. make oneself easy about, on that score; take on trust, take on credit; take for granted, take for gospel; allow some weight to, attach some weight to. know, know for certain; have know, make no doubt; doubt not; be, rest assured &c. adj.; persuade oneself, assure oneself, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... paraded; when it was ascertained that no one was missing. Though the sailors were at a loss to account for the singular appearance, the alarm soon subsided; and nothing more was thought of the matter. Shortly after, one of the men,—Ben Brace himself, it was,— chanced to ascend the rigging; and while aloft he perceived ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... ascertained that in presence of a considerable proportion of water, wheat flour under the influence of heat undergoes a low degree at least of lactic fermentation, which will account for the souring of the ordinary samples when exposed to warm or humid climates. The same result will inevitably follow from their careless exposure in the holds of vessels. That this is particularly the case with many of the cargoes of wheat flour shipped to Great Britain, there is little reason ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... for a moment, and to turn to ordinary social intercourse. I am convinced that the only thing that can account for the large number of bad talkers in the world is the wide-spread belief that prevails among individuals as to their power of contributing interest and amusement to a circle. One ought to keep this in mind, and bear faithfully and patiently the stream of tiresome talk that ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... carries with it its own refutation. It would be manifestly impossible for the city to be "built" in so short a time, and, moreover, it would have been sheer waste of time for the Prince to have employed himself in such a way. The sentence was probably introduced merely to account for that city having been built ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... but he hurried through the ample supper that was set before him, urged on by curiosity and astonishment. The only way he could account for his presence there in a ranger's camp was that MacNelly hoped to get useful information out of him. Still that would hardly have made this captain so eager. There was a mystery here, and Duane could scarcely ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... Travels, p. 644, he writes respecting the Gypsies: "We found this people in Nauplia, under the name they bear in Moldavia, of Tchinganes. How they came thither no one knew; but the march of their ancestors, from the North of India to Europe, so lately as the beginning of the 15th century, will account for their not being found further towards the South; and this is now so well ascertained, that no one would expect to meet a Gypsey, upon any of the ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... than any recent writer, has helped to define the peculiar virtues of the short story. He has shown how possible it is to use surprise as an effective element, and to make the turn of a story rather than the crisis of a plot account for everything. It may be said in general that Mr. Stockton does not rely often upon a sudden reversal at the end of a story to capture the reader, but gives him a whimsey or caprice to enjoy; while he works out the details in a succession of amusing ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... of you not to ask me, Admiral! The family of the lady have implored me to reveal as little of the truth as possible. They have taken their own measures, and they are good measures, to account for her—her disappearance." The unhappy man spoke with ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... You can chew regular beef. Besides which, there's gravy to regular beef, and you never see a drop to ours. Another of our fellows went home ill, and heard the family doctor tell his father that he couldn't account for his complaint unless it was the beer. Of course it was the beer, and ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... farcical bathos, be buried in a black coat, and hidden under a chimney-pot hat. He could not see why the harmless man who desired to be an artist in raiment should be condemned to be, at best, a black and white artist. It is indeed difficult to account for the clinging curse of ugliness which blights everything brought forth by the most prosperous of centuries. In all created nature there is not, perhaps, anything so completely ugly as a pillar-box. Its shape is the most unmeaning of shapes, its height ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... had borne off the most of it. Presently, in came the peasant's wife and, seeing much of the grain gone, stood awhile wondering; after which she sat down to watch and find out who might be the intruder and make him account for her loss. After a while, out crept the ichneumon to carry off the grain as was her wont, but spying the woman seated there, knew that she was on the watch for her and said in her mind, "Verily, this affair is like to end blameably; and sore I fear me this woman is on the look-out for me, and Fortune ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... founding the city of Marseilles, created a narrow, bright border of Greek civilization along the southern edge of the benighted land. It was a brief illumination, lasting only a century or more, and leaving few traces; but it may account for the superior intellectual quality which later distinguished ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... of a character that was astounding to those who received them. They could scarcely credit their senses as they read the fact, that the executors of the late John William Stanley, Esquire, were called upon to account for all past proceedings, to William Stanley, his son and heir. Hazlehurst was also summoned to resign that portion of the property of which he had taken possession two years since, when he had ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... grasses are killed by the frosts in September. The western timber limit is on Kodiak Island. The Aleutian Islands (q.v.) are almost destitute of trees, but are covered with a luxuriant growth of herbage. Climatic differences cannot account for the treeless condition of the country W. of this point, and the true explanation lies probably in the fact that in winter, when the seeds of the coastal forests ripen and are released, the prevalent winds W. of Kodiak are damp and blow from the S. and S.W., while the spread ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that the wolves and buzzards had been busy there. But he stripped quite clean the wagon which had fallen in the gully, even carrying away the canvas cover, which was rainproof. Albert wondered that the Sioux had not returned, but Dick had a very plausible theory to account for it. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... of the Inquisition—had, indeed, perplexed the good uncle greatly; but she was in no state, even when partially recovered from physical weakness, to enter into explanation then. He saw she was unhappy, and the loss of her husband might well account for it. To the rumors which had reached him in Segovia, as to the suppositions of the real cause of Stanley's enmity to Morales, and Marie's self-sacrifice, he would not even listen, so completely without foundation did ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... Bosambo, watching his face through half-closed lids, saw the dismal droop of the other's mouth, and came to the conclusion that whatever might be the cause of the visit, it was not to hold the Ochori or their chief to account for known misdeeds. ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... which is indisputable, has, at first sight, a most extraordinary appearance, that is to say, seems difficult to account for; but a little examination into circumstances will render ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... Some weeks ago they had sent to our agent to ask if he knew the origin of this wonderful tapestry. He had consulted with the designer of the pattern, who had first claimed the discovery of the combination of colors by which such an effect was produced, but he could not account for its not appearing throughout the whole work. My master had then examined some of the workmen, and learned, in the midst of his inquiries, what had been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... "I couldn't account for my performance. It was little short of a miracle. Actually it was so unusual that I hardly felt like talking about it. I know that may sound improbable to a golfer, but it is a fact. Except that I did want to tell Alexander McQuade. ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... account for your frequent absence during the last two months—for the mystery which surrounds you—for refusing, as you do, once or twice weekly, to join our nightly meetings. We confess, Gaston, all this has made us uneasy; by a word you ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... to understand the words of Jesus by searching back, as it were, for such thoughts and feelings in him as would account for the words he spoke, the perception awoke that at least he could not have meant by the will of God any such theological utterances as those which troubled him. Next it grew plain that what he came to do, was just to lead his life. That he should do the work, such as recorded, and much besides, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... to law; and I endeavour to remember his precepts. He avowed his marriage on his death-bed, made all due atonement to my respected and injured mother, and informed me in whose hands I should find this very certificate; I only obtained it this morning, which fact will account for its being in my pocket, at this melancholy and unexpected crisis, in my ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... watches made it 133 degrees 19 minutes 40 seconds, which was finally adapted, since it accorded better with the chronometrical difference between its meridian and that of Cassini Island. I have never been able to account for this extraordinary disagreement between the results of the lunar distances and the chronometers, since the former were taken with the sun on both sides of the moon, and seemed to be ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... in the oil industry, and that his enterprises were immensely successful. With a sneer Nelson flung the paper aside. So, that was how it had happened. The well had been fired—Henry believed he could account for that—but a miracle had quenched the flame. Falling drill stems! Who ever heard of such a thing? Such luck was uncanny—enough to give one the creeps. If Gray were tied hand and foot and thrown into a river, somebody would ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... He was wishing Nan had found it easy to tell him she was going. "I don't account for Nan. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... we are not now concerned, and I will pass them by with only one remark. The ground on which Kant's theory stands is not sufficient, for this simple reason. It accounts for one fact; it does not account for another fact. It accounts for the fact that we attach and cannot help attaching a conviction of necessity to all mathematical reasoning. We not only know that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, but we know that this is so ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... a matter of fact it would signify little to me as artist to know whether this music is originally from India or Tartary. That which has appeared to me worthy the study of an artist is this music itself, its meaning, and the feelings it is destined to reproduce.—It is in trying clearly to account for these latter that I have only found it possible to connect them with people placed in the exceptional conditions of the Bohemians; and it is through asking myself what the poetry of this wandering life would be (a question so often raised), that I have become convinced that it must be identical ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... a little distance, still perplexed and thoughtful, but refraining from the least attempt to account for her very unusual behaviour. What she did not choose to tell him he ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... gallantry; the gentleman is commonly called a man of good fortune, sometimes in French and sometimes in English. But is this the tone which would become a person in a court of justice, calling these people to an account for that horrible crime which destroys the basis of society? No, my Lords, this is not the tone of such proceedings. Your Lordships know that it is not; the Commons know that it is not; and because we have acted ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... pine was just completing his one hundred and thirty-fifth ring of growth, he met with an accident which I can account for only by assuming that a large tree that grew several yards away blew over, and in falling, stabbed him in the side with two dead limbs. His bark was broken and torn, but this healed in due time. Short sections of the dead limbs broke off, however, and were embedded in the old pine. Twelve years' ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... wind-stars, St. John's wort, willow herb, lords and ladies, bachelor's buttons,—most curious names, some of them. "The flowers are all different in South Africa, y'know," he was explaining with a happy fluke of his imagination to account for his ignorance. Then suddenly, heralded by clattering sounds and a gride of wheels, Dangle had flared and thundered across the tranquillity of the summer evening; Dangle, swaying and gesticulating behind a corybantic black horse, had hailed Jessie by her name, had backed towards ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... against the possibility of any of the men idling or wasting their time, each one was given a time-sheet on which he was required to account for every minute of the day. The form of these sheets vary slightly with different firms: that of Rushton & Co., was ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... sooner did they reach the reef, than to work they went, and commenced picking up something with the greatest avidity, as if let loose in the best supplied poultry-yard. Confident there was nothing for even a hen to glean on the rocks when he left there, the young man could not account for this, until turning his eyes inboard, he saw the ducks doing the same thing on deck. Examining the food of these last-mentioned animals, he found there were a great number of minute mucilaginous particles on the deck, which no doubt had descended with the late rain, and which all ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... Christians with the burning of Rome, he has patience for no more than the cursory remark that the sect originated with a Jew who had been put to death in Judea during the reign of Tiberius. This province was small and despised, and Tacitus could account for the influence of the sect which sprang thence only by the fact that all that was infamous and abominable flowed into Rome. The Roman's scornful judgment failed to grasp the nature and power of the movement whose unpopularity ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... clak-claks screamed and dived at the slanting nose of the Terran ship. Then that same slashing energy he had watched quarter the camp snapped from the far plate across the stricken scout. The man who had piloted her, if not dead already (which might account for the lack of defense), must have fallen victim to that. But the Throg was going to make very sure. The second flyer halted, remaining poised long enough to unleash a second bolt—dazzling any watching eyes and broadcasting ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Thus much to account for my omissions and compressions. I am afraid, however, there will be some readers who will be so far from asking any apology on those heads, that they will facetiously regard them as my only merits: and ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... is a large fire burning on the hearth now; how do you account for that? It's a trick of the savages," he muttered, as he put spurs to his steed; "and yet," he added, "it is not like the Indians to go into a house and make a fire. If they had discovered our retreat, they would be too cunning thus to let us know that they had found it out; we should see them ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... transfixed in astonishment. There were no windows open, no draughts that he could feel, nothing to account for the flame expiring as it had, suddenly, without one flicker of warning. An insane thing to happen to one, at such an hour, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... to appear like a great fire; the moon rises red, but its deep color gradually fades as it rises, and when well up in the heavens we perceive that this deep coloring was an illusion and merely the influence of its surroundings. I never, though, knew of any one to attempt to account for this by "meteoric dust;" and yet it is an embodiment of the same principle. Place the sun where the moon is, and from its far superior abundance of light we ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... record. Nevertheless, the broad scope of ethnography provides the kind of study for which the data supply a rather full picture of life on this frontier. Political, economic, and social patterns are discernible, although no day-by-day account for any extended period ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... called. He could discover nothing wrong with the child, except this fading and drooping. He failed to account for that. It was some vague disease of the mind, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... form of evil or any evil person from without. This story of the fall of man came into the world undoubtedly to account in some philosophical fashion for the existence of pain, of evil, and of death. We account for it on this new theory much more naturally, rationally, more honorably for God, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... made fast, that you can't lead the horse round?" And he felt inclined to bid a servant-boy go on the errand, but fearing again lest he should subsequently be found out, and be at a loss how to account for his conduct he felt compelled to proceed in person; so mounting his steed, he started on ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a sufficiently naive way to account for a chastisement which had now strung out for ninety-six years. But nobody found fault with it. There was nobody there who would not punish a sinner ninety-six years if he could, nor anybody there who would ever dream of such a thing as the Lord's being any shade less stringent ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... It is the only rational way to account for the injustice, the sorrows, and the miseries of earth. It gives long opportunities for the modification of character; it acts as retribution to the evil and the vicious and the selfish; it gives a far deeper sense of responsibility than the shallow acceptance of mere creeds, because a ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... There were so many closely wedged together as to obstruct my vision of what was occurring, yet I felt no doubt but that they watched a game of cards; a desperate struggle of chance, involving no small sum to account for such intense feeling on the part of mere onlookers. Gambling was no novelty on the great river in those days, gambling for high stakes, and surely no ordinary game, involving a small sum, would ever arouse the depth of interest displayed by these men. Some instinct ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... - by occupation: most people are employed in agriculture and herding; services, construction, industry, and commerce account for less than one-fourth of the ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... grinned Will. "Your father couldn't help associating with them if they insisted upon it! I can see no reason why they should want to molest him, but one can never account for the mental processes of ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... nothing in the face of nature to account for this; not a cloud was on the sky. The town, too, lay still in the mists of breaking morning, its houses dim, its ways deserted. Alarm seemed unreasonable, but her heart quivered with it, and shrunk within her ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... Shakspeare's eminence is his own, and not that of his age;—even as the pine-apple, the melon, and the gourd may grow on the same bed;—yea, the same circumstances of warmth and soil may be necessary to their full development, yet do not account for the golden hue, the ambrosial flavour, the perfect shape of the pine-apple, or the tufted crown on its head. Would that those, who seek to twist it off, could but promise us in this instance to make it the germ of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge |
