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Mitigating   Listen
adjective
mitigating  adj.  Serving to reduce blame; of situations; as, mitigating factors; mitigating circumstances. Opposite of aggravating. (Narrower terms: exculpatory)
Synonyms: extenuating.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mitigating" Quotes from Famous Books



... will make his blood freeze. Many of the more distant gambia-plantations have been deserted by their proprietors in consequence of the ravages of these monsters. Government, in the hope of remedying or mitigating the evil, offered a reward of one hundred dollars for every tiger brought in alive or dead; but so dense are the jungles in which they seek shelter, that their pursuers have hitherto been far from successful. One is brought in now ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson

... and gentlemen, there are mitigating circumstances attending this offence, which, in my opinion, should be duly weighed before making ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... I, 'is first-class for mitigating the lack of noise around a sheep-ranch. For my part,' I says, 'I shouldn't like anything better than to ride home of an evening and listen to a few waltzes and jigs, with somebody about your size sitting on the piano- stool and rounding ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... induced, in conjunction with others, to solicit the exercise of royal clemency in mitigating the severity of that punishment which the law denounces: and it gladdened the sympathetic feelings of his heart to know that these petitions were not unavailing; but the modesty of his character made him regret the publicity which had been ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various

... his mother. This pleaded for him with the old lady, aided as it was by the pride that she secretly felt in the early celebrity which the young clergyman had achieved as a writer and a preacher. Thanks to these mitigating circumstances, and to Julian's inexhaustible good-humor, the aunt and the nephew generally met on friendly terms. Apart from what she called "his detestable opinions," Lady Janet was sufficiently ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... felt by the Hindoos for this worship is naturally explained by their intense anxiety and desire for having children who might perform those ceremonies to their manes which they firmly and piously believe will have the effect of mitigating their punishment in the world to come. They worship the Lingham, therefore, for the sake of having progeny, and husbands, whose wives are barren, send them to adore that symbol, and, if report be true, the ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport

... reasonably conducted, had been surprisingly difficult. At the same time that he had felt no necessity to apologize for his marriage he had known that Taou Yuen must surprise, yes—shock, his family. She was Chinese, to them a heathen: they would be unable to comprehend any mitigating dignity of rank. Where they'd actually suffer, he realized, would be in the attitude of Salem, the stupid gabble, the censure and cold pity ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... of comparatively soft metal larger than the bore; the gas then acting on the base of the projectile, forces the band through the grooves, sealing the escape, entering the projectile, and, to a great extent, mitigating the erosion of surface. This is, of course, universally known. It is also pretty generally known among artillerists that the effect of the resistance offered by the band or sheathing on the powder is to cause more complete combustion of the charge before the shot moves, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... delay a campaign of conquest extremely diverting to observe. To Lanyard it seemed that her methods were crude and obvious enough; but it did something toward mitigating the long-drawn boredom of the cruise to watch them work out, as they seemed to invariably, with entire success; and then remark the insouciance with which, another raw scalp dangling from her belt, Liane would address herself to the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... held; and the eyes of the whole court were directed towards the dock. Jones spoke in a deep, clear voice, and in a deliberate harangue pointed out some defects in the evidence, though without the slightest hope, he said, of mitigating the sentence now to be pronounced on himself and fellows. Three of the others also spoke. Whelan said, 'that he was not one of the men properly belonging to the boat's crew, but had been called upon to fill ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous

... ourselves and our neighbours of the presence and burden of the devouring soldiery, our friends, to enable us, made a gathering among them, and brought us the means, for we had not a sufficiency of our own. But this, instead of mitigating the oppression, became a reason with the officer set over us to persecute us still more; for he pretended to see in that neighbourliness the evidences of a treasonous combination; so that he not only took the money, but made a pretext of the readiness with which it was ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... sundering of those whom the church had bound together; but which implied also by the absence from it of any intense clerical severity, that as the separated wife was allowed to live with so very respectable a lady as Mrs. Stanbury, there must probably be some mitigating circumstances attending this ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... to be trusted," he explained, "and only a fool trusts. I let no one trust me; I trust no one. But I believe evil of no man. Even when he has been convicted, I see the mitigating circumstances." ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... as he had believed. That is to say, he found that in regard to the crimes of the past, Doellinger's position was more like that of Creighton than his own—that, while he was willing to say persecution was always wrong, he was not willing to go so far as Acton in rejecting every kind of mitigating plea and with mediaeval certainty consigning the persecutors to perdition. Acton, who had as he thought, learnt all this from Doellinger, was distressed at what seemed to him the weakness and the sacerdotal prejudice of his master, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... the air of a card-player who trumps his opponent's ace, he placed on the pouch a pipe. And, to make the matter, if possible, worse, the pipe was not a new pipe. It was caked within and coloured without, a pipe that had seen long service. The only mitigating circumstance that could possibly have been urged in favour of the accused, namely that of 'first offence', ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... the above-named Committee ordered all the iron-works to be suppressed and demolished. Six years later a Bill was brought in and passed, signed by the Protector Richard, for mitigating the rigour of the Forest Laws, and for preserving the timber, which all contemporary testimony on the subject states to have gone miserably to wreck during the civil wars. On the 11th of May, 1659, Colonel White reported ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... The state must not go back to the psychological ethical genesis of a negative deed. It must assign to a secondary rank of importance the biographical moment which contains the deed in process and the circumstances of a mitigating character, and it must consider first of all the deed in itself. It is quite otherwise with the educator; for he deals with human beings who are relatively undeveloped, and who are only growing toward responsibility. So long as they are still under the care of a teacher, the responsibility ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... could not summon up energy enough to build another. Since that dire Sabbath, a room in the adjoining building had been used as a church. Father Zalvidea's greatest desire, next to seeing the vineyards brought up to their proper condition, was to build a new church, and these were the only mitigating circumstances in his regretted change of residence; but he had been only a few days at his new home, when he gave up his purpose with regard to the church; it was beyond his power, as he saw. San Juan Capistrano had been too long on the decline, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... am deeply concerned to hear the result of that mission which, with unparalleled kindness and generosity, you undertook in the hope of mitigating the affliction of a friend, and conducing possibly to the salvation of a wife and mother. Your errand has not been a fruitless one, for it affords the conclusive proof that everything that the forbearance and tender ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... Donald Randolph less to admire. Mentally arraigning this aristocrat for his poor taste, he blames the silly father for having such a daughter. Finally, deciding not to be unduly harsh in his judgment, as there might have been mitigating circumstances, he is feeling a sense of self-approval, when voices ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... feel at parting with me, and the incessant sorrows to which her tender bosom would be exposed during my absence, without being pierced with the deepest affliction! As my imagination was daily and nightly upon the rack to invent some method of mitigating this cruel stroke, or at least of acquitting my love and honour in the opinion of this gentle creature, I at length stumbled upon an expedient, with which the reader will be made acquainted in due time; and, in consequence of my determination, became less ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... he asked, a bit sharply, looking from one physician to the other "Is this all you came to tell—that Mr. Carwell was a suicide? Isn't there any mitigating circumstance?" ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... gentleness and 'douceur', use some expressions of diffidence of your own opinion, and deference to other people's; such as, "If I might be permitted to say—I should think—Is it not rather so? At least I have the greatest reason to be diffident of myself." Such mitigating, engaging words do by no means weaken your argument; but, on the contrary, make it more powerful by making it more pleasing. If it is a quick and hasty manner of speaking that people mistake 'pour ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... aimed at civilizing a people whose barbarism had been for centuries the curse of the neighboring countries, and at the same time communicating to the cruel savages, who shed the blood of their enemies less in the battle than in the sacrifice, the bland and mitigating spirit ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... murmur against the soldiers quartered with them, he sent out an open letter to them, declaring that he had instructed his officers to be as courteous to them as they could. It may be noted, however, that he showed no signs of mitigating their distress.[152] ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... to be utterly without the restraint imposed by conscience. In less than a month he was detected in the crime of theft, having stolen a watch from a fellow-patient. Upon his arrest, stimulated by the hope of in some degree mitigating his punishment, he confessed to have been carrying on a series of petty thieving for weeks before he was finally detected, having scores of stolen articles in his possession. The last time we saw the wretched fellow he was being led away in irons to prison. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... were extraordinarily delicate conductors of sensation. And his eye—his eye too. He hasn't used it to dominate people: he didn't care to. He simply looks through 'em all like windows. Makes me feel like the fellows who think they're made of glass. The mitigating circumstance is that he seems to see such a glorious landscape through me." Wade grinned at the thought ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... right, there, Nolla," added Mrs. Fabian. "I do not see a trick in giving a person exactly what they ask for a thing—whether they realize the true value of it, or not. That is their affair. In Law, the Judge says there is no excuse or cause, for mitigating a sentence because the prisoner claims he was ignorant of consequences of a deed. So it is in other lines: Ignorance can never claim excuse from consequences—whether it be a sale of a candle-stick or a piece of old land that turns out to have ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... instances, have very little effect in modifying the general tendencies of the situation; for their power only lasts while the woman is young and attractive, often only while her charm is new, and not dimmed by familiarity; and on many men they have not much influence at any time. The real mitigating causes are, the personal affection which is the growth of time, in so far as the man's nature is susceptible of it, and the woman's character sufficiently congenial with his to excite it; their common interests as regards the children, and their general community of interest as concerns third ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... mitigating circumstances. I could see that Fulkerson meant to keep the whip-hand himself, and that was reassuring. And, besides, if the Reciprocity Life should happen not to want my services any longer, it wouldn't be quite like giving up a certainty; though, as a matter of business, I ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... by offences of a deeper dye—the concealment of property, the falsifying of books, the manufacture of fictitious debts and the giving of illegal preferences. Both kinds of bankruptcy are punishable, fraudulent bankruptcy by penal servitude, or in case of mitigating circumstances, by imprisonment for not less than three months. Accessories in fraudulent bankruptcies are liable to penal servitude—for instance, a creditor who conspires with the debtor to secure an advantage ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... obtained all the powers of dealing with property which Roman jurisprudence had allowed, and this local law has been largely followed by the Code Napoleon; but the state of the Scottish law shows that scrupulous deference to the doctrines of the Roman jurisconsults did not always extend to mitigating the disabilities of wives. The systems however which are least indulgent to married women are invariably those which have followed the Canon Law exclusively, or those which, from the lateness of their contact with European civilisation, have never had their archaisms ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... The normal, healthy child thinks very little of himself apart from the other boys and girls, the games, the studies, the animals, the nature wonders, the hardships that come to him from the outside. So true is this that one of the best means of mitigating or curing many ailments is to divert the child's attention from himself to things outside of himself that he can look at, hear, enjoy. The power to concentrate attention upon oneself is a sign either of a diseased body, a diseased mind, or a highly trained mind. To ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... digression for the sake of mitigating the inference that is likely to be drawn from that characteristic of Dr. Cumming's works to which we have pointed. He is much in the same intellectual condition as that professor of Padua; who, in order to disprove Galileo's discovery ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... Carter came to the end of her story. She had made no attempt to justify herself, had uttered no word of regret, no signal of repentance, no plea for forgiveness. The cold, unfaltering truth, without a single mitigating alloy in the shape of sentiment, had issued from her tired but unconquered soul. She went through to the end without being interrupted by the girl, whose silence was eloquent of a strength and ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... law, often, with tears, wishes that it were in his power to mitigate the punishment: the decisions of opinion may and must vary with circumstances, else the degree of reprobation which they inflict cannot be proportioned to the offence, or calculated for the good of society. Among the mitigating circumstances, I should be inclined to name even, those which you bring in aggravation. Talents, and what is called genius, in our sex are often connected with a warmth of heart, an enthusiasm of temper, which expose to dangers, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... party in Ireland will not do. One of the ways in which religious animosity is being kept alive (and I regret to say is being steadily increased) is by the teaching in the Roman Catholic schools of exaggerated accounts of the penal laws without referring to any of the mitigating circumstances. Even in the present year—1913—the Lenten pastoral of one of the bishops goes back to the same old subject. If other countries acted in a similar manner, how could the grievances of bygone centuries ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... Rutherford county, where the principal officers held a court-martial over the "most audacious and murderous Tories." Thirty-two were condemned to be hung; after nine were thus disposed of, three at a time, the remainder, through mitigating circumstances and the entreaties of their Whig acquaintances, were respited. Several of the Tories, thus leniently dealt with, afterward joined the Whig ranks, and made good soldiers to the end of ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... all afford strong confirmation of the truth and accuracy of his story. There seems to have been no effort, on his part to make his picture of Slavery one of entire darkness—he details every thing of a mitigating character which fell under his observation; and even the cruel deception of his master has not rendered him unmindful of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... to contribute to either the improvement of theology or the religious growth of the people. To reconcile the various sects was the dream of his whole life. Referring to his early desires in this direction, he thus wrote in later years: "I was cogitating methods, even at that early age, for mitigating the feuds and dissensions of Christians.... One thing, however, is clear, that if men's minds were not bound by prejudices, they would remit a great deal of rigor."[12] Those were sincere words, too, which he said on beholding the rancor of sectarianism: "If ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... separated the franchise question from their redistribution scheme, which ought to have been an integral part of any Reform Bill capable of meeting the needs of the country. The grievances which such a Bill would aim at mitigating, although less gigantic than those which called for removal at the time of the first Reform Bill, were still serious enough. In 1865 "there was not one elector for each four inhabited houses, and five out of every six adult males were without a vote." [61] ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... of the enemy in enlisting the savages into a war with a nation desirous of mutual emulation in mitigating its calamities has not been confined to any one quarter. Wherever they could be turned against us no exertions to effect it have been spared. On our southwestern border the Creek tribes, who, yielding to our persevering endeavors, were gradually ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson

... could be made available in the absence of a sufficient number of ambulances, the suffering was intense, the heat of the season and dusty roads adding much to the discomfort. Each day we halted many times to dress the wounds of the injured and to refresh them as much as possible, but our means for mitigating their distress were limited. The fortitude and cheerfulness of the poor fellows under such conditions were remarkable, for no word of complaint was heard. The Confederate prisoners and colored people being on foot, our marches were necessarily made short, and with frequent ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan

... might have resisted the temptation to read on after I had discovered your address, and although she grants the mitigating circumstances, still she must resent, just a little, my knowledge ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... human misery, that to Mr. Kirkwood they seemed to epitomize absolutely, if not happily, the various circumstances attendant upon the predicament wherein he found himself. Inevitably an extremist, because of his youth, (he had just turned twenty-five), he took no count of mitigating matters, and would hotly have resented the suggestion that his case was anything but altogether ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... just enough. But, you see, Doctor, that woman was so unconsciously dishonest that she talked to her husband about the fancy she had taken to me. That's what makes it dangerous, this very unconsciousness of their instinctive dishonesty. That is a mitigating circumstance, I admit, but it cannot nullify ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg

... to guard against dreaded contingencies. So when the society in the Virginia Colony had made up its mind that the Negroes in their midst were mere heathen,[142] they stood ready to punish any member who had the temerity to cross the line drawn between the races. It was not a mitigating circumstance that the white servants of the colony who came into natural contact with the Negroes were "disorderly persons," or convicts sent to Virginia by an order of the king of England. It was fixed by public sentiment and law ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... for Spring to have a little more rest," thought Stephen, thus mitigating his own longing to escape from the monks and friars, of whom Winchester ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... famine. Evictions for non-payment of rent had been steadily increasing for several years past. In 1877 the number stood at 463; in 1878 it swelled to nearly 1,000; at the end of 1880 it had actually reached 2,110. A bill was introduced by one of the Irish members with a view to mitigating the rigors of the law as regarded the impoverished tenantry. The government refused to adopt the measure, but sought to meet the case by framing a remedial scheme of their own which was introduced under the name of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. This bill, which was vigorously assailed ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... with Cases, Showing the Remarkable Effects of Water in Mitigating the Pains and Perils of the Parturient State. By Dr. Shew. Paper. ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... distinctly in advance of his age as regarded the recognition of the principle of religious equality. He was not only anxious to put the Protestant Dissenters as much as possible on a level with Churchmen in all the privileges of citizenship, but he was even strongly in favor of mitigating the severity of the laws against the Roman Catholics. In his "History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles," Lord Stanhope, the descendant of the minister whose career and character have done so much honor to a name and a family, claims for him the credit ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... stations, the new quarter, with its handsome streets and villas, has far outgrown the original limits. Aplain, 2m. wide, is between the town and the sea. The beautifully-wooded Maure mountains surround it on the land side, mitigating the keenness of the north, north-east, and east winds, but affording indifferent protection from the mistral or north-west wind. The Toulon road, extending east and west, forms the principal thoroughfare. ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... architect's fee had been saved but when, a little later, the owner wanted to sell, it took several years to find a buyer and then only at a price of half the money invested. The new owner consulted an architect with a gift for rearranging and so succeeded in mitigating the worst features and in taking advantage of the cheerful aspects inherent with the site. Like a good doctor or lawyer, an able architect can usually get you out of trouble; but the ancient slogan, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice—for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not—involved ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... earlier contest, mutual animosities had been so keen that the prisoners on either side had been contumeliously branded [315], it was, perhaps, the festive and easy manner in which the siege was afterward carried on, that, mitigating the bitterness of prolonged hostilities, served to procure, at last, for the Samians articles of capitulation more than usually mild. They embraced the conditions of demolishing their fortifications, delivering ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the good Squire's project for mitigating public discontent; and, indeed, he had once attempted to put his doctrine in practice, and a few years before had kept open house during the holidays in the old style. The country people, however, ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving

... view to mitigating these manifold perils, the towns early began to form unions for mutual defense. The most famous of these was that of the German cities, called the Hanseatic League. Lbeck was always the leader, but among the seventy towns which at one time ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... incumbent duty to separate from their communion all those persons who, after they have been faithfully warned in the spirit of the gospel, continue in the sin of enslaving their fellow-creatures, or holding them in slavery—a sin, by the commission of which, with whatever mitigating circumstances it may be attended in their own particular instance, they give the support of their example to the whole system of compulsory servitude, and the unutterable horrors ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... seriously curtailed by sectarian jealousy. Most of the protestant clergy frowned upon the national schools, as the Roman catholic priesthood had frowned upon the schools of the Kildare Place Society, and a noble opportunity of mitigating religious strife in Ireland was to a great extent wasted. Thus ended the eventful session ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... I was,' she returned. 'She has been dying for your sake several weeks, and raving about you this morning, and pouring forth a deluge of abuse, because I represented your failings in a plain light, for the purpose of mitigating her adoration. But don't notice it further: I wished to punish her sauciness, that's all. I like her too well, my dear Heathcliff, to let you absolutely seize ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... took delight in killing men with slow tortures, that, as he expressed it, they might feel themselves dying, being always present at such executions himself, directing the duration of the punishment, and mitigating the tortures merely to prolong them. 3. In fact, he valued himself for no quality more than his unrelenting temper, and inflexible severity, when he presided at an execution. 4. Upon one occasion, being incensed with the citizens, he wished ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... accused of mitigating the persecution of the Covenanters, will appear from the following simple, but very affecting narrative, extracted from one of the little publications which appeared soon after the Revolution, while the facts were fresh in the memory of the sufferers. The imitation of the scriptural ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... psychology through regulated hypnotic doses at repeated intervals, administered in bottles with moral labels upon them of soothing colours. In fact, man has been able to make his pursuit of power easier to-day by his art of mitigating the obstructive forces that come from the higher region of his humanity. With his cult of power and his idolatry of money he has, in a great measure, reverted to his primitive barbarism, a barbarism whose path is lit up by the lurid light of intellect. ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore

... so far are not controverted or affected by any exculpatory or mitigating testimony, show the murder of a number of Chinese subjects in September last at Rock Springs, the wounding of many others, and the spoliation of the property of all when the unhappy survivors had been driven from their habitations. There ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... two boys is not a very pleasant subject with which to deal. In this particular circumstance there were, however, mitigating conditions that would almost make it a pleasure to describe the battle. Hugh was standing up for the rights of the weak, and had only plunged into the scrimmage when he saw that Nick had treated Owen in a most ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... trance, then jumping up as in a frenzy, and representing with their hands and feet, before the people, whatever work they have unlawfully done on feast days; you may see one man put his hand to the plough, and another, as it were, goad on the oxen, mitigating their sense of labour, by the usual rude song: {50} one man imitating the profession of a shoemaker; another, that of a tanner. Now you may see a girl with a distaff, drawing out the thread, and winding ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... seating capacity for but two, and, though convenient and handy beyond any other wheeled thing until the coming of the automobile, the gondola of London was undeniably dangerous to the occupant, and ugly withal, two strongly mitigating features. ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... to the region east of the Mississippi, might eventually make possible a servile insurrection, particularly if foreign war should break out. All of these difficulties would be met, in the opinion of the south, by scattering the existing slaves and thus mitigating the evil without increasing the ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... several useful arts, they are in many respects the most barbarous and savage race now existing upon the globe. Having had considerable intercourse with white men, some effect has been produced in their political condition, but it has had no effect in mitigating the ferocity of their character. Messrs. Lythe and Hunt, missionaries at Vuna, one of the Feejees, have given a circumstantial account of a cannibal feast, for the preparation of which they were eye-witnesses. The missionaries having heard rumours that the king had sent for some ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... teaching of Epicurus be true it is evident that those who offered hecatombs with the idea that they were thereby mitigating anger, or securing special dispensation, were playing the fool. They were appealing to a fictitious motivity, one not grounded in "the nature of things." To one for whom the walls of the world had parted asunder, such a procedure was no longer possible; though he might choose to "call the ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... no owner, every man was his master. He knew that he was the object of suspicion, and therefore all his slender resources (ah! how pitifully slender they were!) were devoted to winning, not kindness and appreciation, but toleration; all his efforts were in the direction of mitigating the circumstances that tended to make his condition so much worse than that of the negroes around him—negroes who had friends because ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris

... fate, which he considered as linked with and strengthening his own; and reposed, besides, considerable confidence in Josephine's tact and address in political business. She had at all times the art of mitigating his temper, and turning aside the hasty determinations of his angry moments, not by directly opposing, but by gradually parrying and disarming them. It must be added to her great praise, that she was always a willing and often a successful advocate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various

... had actually been engaged in stealing turkeys. He was guilty of an act of which, a few weeks before, he would have deemed himself absolutely incapable. All the mitigating circumstances of the case, which had lately stood out so clear and strong as almost to hide the offence from his moral vision, now faded, and shrunk away, and the wrong itself stood forth, alone, in its ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... to the impression on the mind of the man in the street; and to the man in the street God, as he understands Him, is neither a very friendly nor a very comprehensible element in life. Instead of mitigating fear He adds to it, not in the Biblical sense of "fearing God," but in that ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... more precise words, a tale with a moral. They are not the critics predestined to bring me out, and develop my morals:—that is the secret. By and by the "North American Quarterly Humdrum" will make them ashamed of their stupidity. In the meantime, by way of staying execution—by way of mitigating the accusations against me—I offer the sad history appended,—a history about whose obvious moral there can be no question whatever, since he who runs may read it in the large capitals which form the title of the tale. I should have credit ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Lamar so touched the hearts of the people of the North that they may fairly be said to have been of themselves an important influence in mitigating ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... forehead with the tips of his fingers. He had come to no result when the negro requested an audience for some visitors. These were the heads of the senate of Memphis, who had come as a deputation to ask counsel of the old sage. He, if any one, would find some means of averting or, at any rate, mitigating the fearful calamity impending over the town and country, and against which prayer, sacrifice, processions, and pilgrimages had proved abortive. They were quite resolved to leave no means untried, not even if heathen magic should be the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... brought in also several other superstitions: such as were the doctrine of Ghosts, and of their punishment in Purgatory, with prayers and oblations for mitigating that punishment, as Tertullian teaches in his books De Anima and De Monogamia. They used also the sign of the cross as a charm. So Tertullian in his book de Corona militis: Ad omnem progressum atque promotum, ad omnem aditum & exitum, ad vestitum, ad calceatum, ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton

... knowledge of it would have served to increase her alarm. She was surrounded by the usual circle of habitues who endeavoured in vain to calm her fears, but my presence re-assured her a little, and Count Valeski, who came in soon after, succeeded in mitigating her terror. Having witnessed the horrors of the former revolution, it is no wonder she should tremble at the thoughts of another, and she looks on my calmness and courage ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... dignity and elevation in and about the conduct of public affairs, and insensibility to the nobler aspects and finer responsibilities of national life." Then he goes on to say[37] that representative and parliamentary system "provides the means of mitigating the evils to be feared from ignorance or haste, for it vests the actual conduct of affairs in a body of specially chosen and presumably qualified men, who may themselves intrust such of their functions as need peculiar knowledge ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... sickening, physical loathing that in rare instances affects certain human beings toward others of their species, and toward certain animals—then there are no calculable bounds to the ferocity of such a blind instinct, no possibility of mitigating, by considerations of reflection or feeling, an inherent, integral element of a morbid organization. And Shakespeare, in giving this aspect to the last exhibition of Shylock's vindictiveness, cancels the original appeal to possible ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... poverty, and cold, skinny wretchedness one sees in Ireland, and (what freezes our sympathies) the groveling, swiny shiftlessness that pervades these hovels, no traveler can be prepared for. It is the bare prose of misery, the unheroic of tragedy. There is not one redeeming or mitigating feature. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... for Coningsby, the mitigating hour that softens the heart made his spirit brave. Amid the ennobling sympathies of nature, the pursuits and purposes of worldly prudence and conventional advantage subsided into their essential nothingness. He willed to blend his life and fate with a being beautiful as that ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... be confessed, only provocative of very indirect and long-distance advances. Cephas Cole, to the amazement of every one but his (constitutionally) exasperated mother, was "toning down" the ell of the family mansion, mitigating the lively yellow, and putting another fresh coat of paint on it, for no conceivable reason save that of pleasing the eye of a certain capricious, ungrateful young hussy, who would probably say, when her verdict was asked, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... without interruption by the above-mentioned anti-German press, which we embrace under the name "Pearson and Harmsworth Press." In England, as well as in Germany, societies were organized with the object of mitigating and, if possible, entirely abolishing the differences and antagonisms which existed between the two nations; these were the so-called "Friendship Committees." In England the Duke of Argyll and Lord ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... drama supreme in fashionable regard, devoted himself to the drama. He also devoted himself to the cultivation of Ben Jonson, then at the summit of renown, assisting in an amateur way in the preparation of the court pageants, and otherwise mitigating the Laureate's labors. From 1632 to 1637, these aids were frequent, and established a very plausible claim to the succession. Thomas May, who shortly became his sole competitor, was a man of elevated pretensions. As a writer of English historical poems and as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... the sea, or by gnawing at a piece of metal, we could always, or at least often, do something that cheated us into believing that we were mitigating the pains of thirst; but with hunger it was different. The prospect, too, of rain seemed hopeful, while for getting food there appeared no chance; and, as we knew that nothing could compensate for the lack of nutritive matter, we were soon all cast down again. Shocking to confess, it would be ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... a new and pleasant boat, almost 6,000 tons and fitted up with every contrivance for mitigating heat. But there are far too many persons on board: nearly 1,200: and as they simply can't breathe between decks, the decks are as crowded as a pilgrim ship's. There are over forty units represented: including drafts ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer

... also gone beyond his own artistic convictions, and thus, while compassing a remarkable pictorial achievement, lost his true balance. Tintoretto, creating his own atmosphere, as far outside and above mere physical realities as that of Michelangelo himself, might have succeeded in mitigating this impression, which is, on the whole, a painful one. Take for instance the Martyrdom of St. Christopher of the younger painter—not a ceiling picture by the way—in the apse of S. Maria del Orto. Here, too, is depicted, with sweeping and altogether ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... development of Mr. Errington's 'Mission' to the Vatican. On December 1st, 1880, Mr. Errington wrote—in pursuance of a conversation of the previous day—to solicit Sir Charles's offices with the French Government towards mitigating the severity with which expropriation of the unauthorized congregations might be carried out under M. Ferry's Article 7. The letter dealt also with the matter on which ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... tinsel before the footlights dazzle the vision of a child; the rapid growth of the saloon, rendered well-nigh impregnable by the wealth of the liquor power; the wonderful labor-saving inventions, which in the hands of greed and avarice, instead of mitigating the burdens of the people, have greatly augmented them, by glutting the market with labor; the opportunities given by the government through grants, special privileges, and protective measures for rapid accumulation of wealth by the few; the power ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... had saved his life from assassins in the attack on the palace. Kiaking died on September 2, 1820, in the sixty-first year of his age, leaving to his successor a diminished authority, an enfeebled power, and a discontented people. Some mitigating circumstance may generally be pleaded against the adverse verdict of history in its estimation of a public character. The difficulties with which the individual had to contend may have been exceptional and unexpected, the measures which he adopted may have had untoward ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... and nervously, and drank claret cup. He said they were getting on famously, his uncle's chief strength being expended in drawing out the voice of the buccaneer captain, and mitigating the boatswain. Where were the little boys? Happily disposed of. Little Felix had gone through his part, and then Fergus had carried him and Adrian off together to Clipstone to see his animals, antediluvian ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... them employment? The existing laws cannot repress the cruel outrages which they commit. Can an act of Parliament humanize their minds, or impart mercy to their hearts? The law cannot fix a maximum for rent; and if it could, it would be only to increase their turbulence, without any mitigating comforts. Extend the franchise, it will only enable them to accomplish more political mischief—for they reject as nothing all measures, however beneficial, which do not tend to the dismemberment of the empire; endow their church, and they accuse you of corrupting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... became too scandalous for official forbearance, and he was rusticated, "on account of constant neglect of his college duties," as the faculty records state. He was sent to Concord, where his exile was not without mitigating profit, as he became acquainted with Emerson and Thoreau. Here he wrote the class poem, which he was permitted to circulate in print at his Commencement. This production, which now stands at the head of the list of his published works, was curiously unprophetic of his later tendencies. It ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... never has been any sympathy, since he has not usually been the victim of parental despotism in the matter of selecting a spouse, or, when he has been, he has had certain privileges of excursion. The excursion is still a popular form of mitigating the severities of an unsuccessful marriage. Some commit murder, some commit suicide, some commit other things. Marriage is the one field in which instinct is least trustworthy and it is the one field in which it is accounted immoral to repent errors ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... naked term of "taxation" is, however, so odious to the people, that it may be curious to observe the arts practised by governments, and even by the people themselves, to veil it under some mitigating term. In the first breaking out of the American troubles, they probably would have yielded to the mother-country the right of taxation, modified by the term regulation (of their trade); this I infer ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... integrated incident management capability. In the end, prevention of catastrophic terrorism is dependent upon interdiction of people and materials. However, solid plans, preparations, and immediate response remain key to mitigating acts of terrorism. Unity of effort requires coordination not only at the apex of the federal government, but also at the operational/tactical level, where response and intervention actions may be taken by diverse authorities, acting independently or in coordination ...
— National Strategy for Combating Terrorism - February 2003 • United States

... prison-pen at the Waterfall, some ten or twelve miles up the Pietersburg line. They numbered in all about three thousand eight hundred, and for a while fared badly at their captors' hands. But ultimately a small committee was formed in Pretoria and L5000 subscribed, to be spent in mitigating their lot and ministering in many ways to their comfort. In these ministrations of mercy the Wesleyan minister, whose grateful guest I for a while became, as afterwards of the genial host and hostess at the Silverton Mission Parsonage, took a prominent and much ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... the judge said, "Denis Halligan, I have purposely reserved the consideration of your case to the last. Your crime is doubtless of a grievous nature, yet I cannot avoid taking into consideration the mitigating circumstances that attend it. By the evidence of the witness it clearly appears that you were the only one of the party who showed any mercy to the unfortunate deceased. You took him to a vacant seat, and wiped him with a clean napkin, and you laid him down with the gentleness one shows ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... express the distinctive gentleness of the period. It was quite peculiar to the crowded townsmen of that time, and different altogether from the normal experience of any preceding age, that they never saw anything killed, never encountered, save through the mitigating media of book or picture, the fact of lethal violence that underlies all life. Three times in his existence, and three times only, had Bert seen a dead human being, and he had never assisted at the killing of anything bigger ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... Haviland is another noble woman worthy of mention. She has given a busy life to mitigating the miseries of the unfortunate. She helped many a fugitive to elude the kidnappers; she nursed the suffering soldiers, fed the starving freedmen, following them into Kansas,[324] and traveled thousands ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... occasion, when the subject of discussion was not of any such serious import as Socialism, but more a question of who could win a debate on a subject of small merit, I defeated my opponent by a trick that I am heartily ashamed of, even under those mitigating circumstances. I record it here, not as an example to be followed, but as a warning not to let anyone else use ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis

... their own hands of avoiding its constant presence by properly draining their city. I have since, from the observations I have made in my course through life, come to the belief that there is not an ill which afflicts mankind which they have not the means of mitigating, if not of avoiding altogether.—But to return to my narrative. As there was nothing more to detain us at Smyrna, the two vessels made sail, and shaped a course ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... perhaps no country where acts of suicide occur more frequently than in China, among the women as well as the men: such acts being marked with no disgrace, are not held in any abhorrence. The government, indeed, should seem to hold out encouragement to suicide, by a very common practice of mitigating the sentence of death, in allowing the criminal to be his own executioner. The late viceroy of Canton, about two years ago, put an end to his life by swallowing his stone snuff-bottle, which stuck in the oesophagus; and he ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... while, upon the other hand, certain other classes of persons, particularly those engaged in dangerous or unhealthful employments, have been found to be in need of additional protection. Even before the adoption of the constitution, much had been done toward mitigating the severity of the common law, particularly in the administration of its criminal branch. The number of capital crimes, in this country at least, had been largely decreased. Trial by ordeal and by battle had never existed here, and had fallen into disuse in England. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of tacit acknowledgment by others of its value. As a soldier he disliked disorder and believed in discipline. As a commander in the war he had not spared the rod, and had even complained of Congress for mitigating the severity of military punishments. It may be that the "Whiskey Insurrection," which he suppressed with prompt and drastic energy, led him for the first time to lean a little to the Hamiltonian side. At any rate he was induced, though reluctantly ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... board with us, appears to be greatly interested in his work, though the life is rather rough. He has a good deal of riding about the country to vaccinate the natives, who seem fully to understand the value of the operation in mitigating the ravages of smallpox—a disease by which the country was at one time decimated. Our regret at not having been able to stop at Gaya was increased when we heard from Dr. Lamb that the Assistant Resident, Mr. Little, had just returned from a successful ascent of Kina Balu, having reached ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... your desire, you can see it any day in summer. You will find them tenting out at the Mtropole and all the expensive hotels. I bivouacked with an invader there some weeks ago, and he was enduring the rigours of camp life with great fortitude, mitigating his trials with ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... crown-piece, and very incorrect. Those who have not been in situations in which their existence was exposed to extreme peril, can have but a faint knowledge of the price one attaches then to the simplest objects—with what avidity one seizes the slightest means capable of mitigating the rigour of that fate against which they contend. The compass was given to the commander of the raft, but an accident deprived us of it forever: it fell, and disappeared between the pieces of wood which formed our machine. We had kept it ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... communication, they have realized what ought to be the highest aim of science,—the improvement of the condition and comforts of every class of his fellow-creatures. Thus, beautiful theories were illustrated by inventions of immediate utility, as in the safety-lamp for mitigating the dangers to which miners are exposed in their labours, and the application of a newly-discovered principle in preserving the life of the adventurous mariner. Yet splendid as were Sir Humphry's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction—Volume 13 - Index to Vol. 13 • Various

... expressing unpopular opinions in this country without social persecution, which is now so nearly complete, that he himself was at last astonished by it. The manner of his dialectic, firm and vigorous as the dialectic was in matter, has gradually introduced mitigating elements into the atmosphere of opinion. Partly, no doubt, the singular tolerance of free discussion which now prevails in England—I do not mean that it is at all perfect—arises from the prevalent scepticism, from indifference, and from the influence of some of the ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley

... husband. Undaunted by the awful fate that had befallen her father, she followed Mendel into the thickest of the danger and like a ministering angel brought comfort and relief. Their example was contagious. Young and old, male and female, vied with one another in doing good and in mitigating suffering. The superstitious dread with which they had formerly regarded the disease had disappeared and with it much of the danger which fear or an over-wrought imagination causes. A large building was secured ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... no sympathy with that false sentiment that forbids one to speak the unpleasant truth of a dead person. If a man were a fool while alive, his dying doesn't absolve him of his folly. Young Parmalee's death was a mitigating circumstance, however. He killed himself; which shows that he had some manhood left. But he should have had the decency to choose another place for his self destruction." He was silent for a moment; at length he went on: "A man is what he is, and he was what he was. His dying can change nothing ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne

... root of Irish discontent, and in removing the true grievance of the Irish tenants will diminish the strength of the party which depends for its power on the revolutionary elements in Irish society. But all chance of mitigating the inconvenience inflicted upon England by the presence of the Irish members vanishes for ever when they are changed into an Irish delegation, and are compelled by their position to be the mere mouthpiece ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... that she would speak and bring some mitigating shadow across his own cruel speech, which seemed to stand staring at them both in mockery of any attempt at revived fellowship. But she said nothing, and at last with a desperate effort over himself, he asked, "Shall I come in and see ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... fine spectacle, apart from all its indissoluble associations of awe and beauty. The mitigating hour softens the austerity of a mountain landscape magnificent in outline, however harsh and severe in detail; and, while it retains all its sublimity, removes much of the savage sternness of the strange ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... Father Marco, who had been permitted to visit them occasionally, dropped sundry hints of coming aid, and powerful, though invisible, protection—thereby cheering their hearts to some little extent, and mitigating the intensity of their apprehensions. Flora was very pale—but never, perhaps, had she appeared more beautiful—for her large blue eyes expressed the most melting softness, and her dark brown hair hung disheveled over her shoulders, while her bosom heaved with ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... nor exaggerating nor putting down in malice. I know so much of myself as to be sure of it. Even as it is, the 'insolence' which people blame me for and praise me for, ... the 'recklessness' which my friends talk of with mitigating countenances ... seems gradually going and going—and really it would not be very strange (without that) if I who was born a hero worshipper and have so continued, and who always recognised your genius, should find it impossible to bring out critical doxies ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... than to say, at the present time, that such IS; for it is certain that civilization in its approaches, while it has in many particulars even degraded the red man, has had a silent effect in changing and mitigating many of his fiercer customs—this, perhaps, among the rest. It is probable that the more distant tribes still resort to all these ancient usages; but it is both hoped and believed that those nearer to the ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... mashed into a pulp, when applied directly to a putrid, indolent sore, will sweeten and heal it. The Carrot poultice was first used by Sulzer for mitigating the pain, and correcting the stench of foul ulcers. Raw scraped Carrot is an excellent plaster for chapped nipples. At Vichy, where derangements of the liver and of the biliary digestion are particularly treated, Carrots in one or another form are served at every meal, whether in soup, or as a ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... insurgents, are withheld from the Suffragette. Anyone who is genuinely out to assert a principle, at the cost of quarrelling with established authority, has a certain merit of altruism which even the most law-abiding may count as a mitigating circumstance, however unworthy the end in view; but the egoism of a young lady (like Miss MARGARET LEGGE'S heroine) who in whatever cause defies all institutions with the latent motive of asserting herself will induce even the most lawless to support warmly the powers of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various

... sickness, and condescending in more than one instance to assume the office of executrix on their decease. [64] Her heart, indeed, was filled with benevolence to all mankind. In the most fiery heat of war, she was engaged in devising means for mitigating its horrors. She is said to have been the first to introduce the benevolent institution of camp hospitals; and we have seen, more than once, her lively solicitude to spare the effusion of blood even of her enemies. But it is needless to multiply examples of this ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... way to slumber during the lesson. At such a moment Anthony slipped out of the window and snapped the tuning-fork several times,—just enough to save his soul from death,—and then slipped in again. He was caught occasionally, but not often; and even when he was, there were mitigating circumstances, for he was generally put under the teacher's desk for punishment. It was a dark, close, sultry spot, but when he was well seated, and had grown tied of looking at the triangle of elastic ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... her own hand, with the power to coin her will into law, a woman might do a far more effective work in preventing human misery and crime, than she ever can accomplish by indirect influence, in merely mitigating the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... with the sanctity of his character. Witness, ye various regions of the earth! with what surprize, delight, and veneration, ye beheld an unarmed, and unassuming traveller instructing you in the sublime science of mitigating human misery, and giving you a matchless example of tenderness and magnanimity! O, England! thou generous country! ever enamoured of glory, contemplate in this, the most perfect of thy illustrious sons; contemplate those virtues, and that honour, ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley

... world abusing Nevil and casting him out, as those electors of Bevisham had just done, and impulsively she pleaded for him, and became drowned in criminal blushes that forced her to defend herself with a determination not to believe the dreadful story, though she continued mitigating the wickedness of it; as if, by a singular inversion of the fact, her clear good sense excused, and it was her heart that condemned him. She dwelt fondly on an image of the 'gallant and handsome Colonel Richard Beauchamp,' conjured up ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... partly or wholly restored. It may well be understood how all this might be very wisely and fitly done. The authority which inflicted the penance may rightly have been entrusted with the power also of mitigating or removing it. But gradually this remission of the temporal punishment for sins done in the past became applicable, not seldom, to future sin also: and it soon was no uncommon thing to grant Indulgences for 500, or 10,000, and even for 50,000 years. And, since these ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson

... elected to dab and peck at and half-strangle the enemy, to let him go and choke him again. It is no lie that we continue on our inexplicable path animated, we will try to believe till other proof is given, by a cloudy idea of alleviating or mitigating something for somebody—not ourselves. [Here, of course, is where our racial snobbery comes in, which makes the German gibber. I cannot understand why he has not accused us to our Allies of having secret commercial understandings ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... enlightened era, as the newspapers call it, that any woman should be at once so inhuman and so frivolous as to swear away the life of a fellow-creature upon an idle fancy; and yet, even in regard to this, there were slightly mitigating conditions. Consider only the position of that handful of Europeans in this vast wilderness, as it then was. The forests came down to the sea-shore, and brought with them all the weird fancies, terrors and awful forebodings which ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... have passed their censures upon him, however just may be those very censures; for when we look narrowly into their representations, as surely we find, perhaps without an exception, that an invective never closes without some unexpected mitigating circumstance, or qualifying abatement. At the moment of inflicting the censure, some recollection in opposition to what is asserted passes in the mind, and to approximate to Truth, they offer a discrepancy, a self-contradiction. James must always be condemned on a system, while his apology ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... an opportunity of mitigating the rigour of Fouche's orders, which, indeed, were sometimes so absurd that I did not attempt to execute them. Of this an instance occurs to my recollection. A printer at Hamburg had been arrested on the charge of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... his instructions to the leader-writer, and the leader-writer, presuming that he is not a fool or a headstrong egoist or a man determined to flout his Editor's wishes, obeys them. That is the theory. But there are several mitigating circumstances. In the first place, it is often difficult for an Editor to make his policy quite clear to his staff. Next, the leader-writer, no matter how strong his intention to obey his instructions and to enter into the spirit of his chief, may fail to do so, from want of that complete clarity ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... combined the graces of a singularly kind and tender heart. He held, of course, that there was nothing like leather, especially for mitigating the distress of the orphan and causing the widow's heart to sing for joy. Every year he received confidentially from the school-mistress a list of the worst-shod children in the school, from whom he selected a dozen belonging to the poorest families, that he might ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... been the earl himself. He had tried one of his accustomed stratagems to lead the smith to speak to him. For it is well known that either for the purpose of abridging or of mitigating his period of enchantment, he seeks to lead people to accost him. But what, in the event of his succeeding, would befall the person whom he had thus ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu

... for meliorating the condition of the slaves on his plantation in French Guiana, his philanthropic thoughts soon turned homeward. He saw France groaning under oppression and the people suffering from a thousand antiquated abuses. Some of these he succeeded in mitigating, in his capacity of member of the Assembly of the Notables, in 1787, but, as nothing of permanent value was accomplished by that body, he urged the convocation of the States General. In this assemblage, which met at Versailles, on May 4, 1789, he sat at first among the nobility, but ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... of Italy, with which our relations were of the most friendly character. The fury of the mob was directed against these men as the supposed participants or accessories in the murder of a city officer. I do not allude to this as mitigating in any degree this offense against law and humanity, but only as affecting the international questions which grew out of it. It was at once represented by the Italian minister that several of those whose lives had been taken by the mob were Italian subjects, and a demand was made for the punishment ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... unnatural darkness, through which the ship was rushing at a speed which I am certain she had never before attained. The only mitigating circumstance was that the wind-lashed sea emitted a certain ghostly radiance that, despite the deluge of spindrift and scud- water with which the air was saturated, enabled one dimly to discern objects as far forward as the foremast. But to rush, at the speed at which ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... palace was a temple of charity. Hospitality stood at his gate, and invited the stranger and beggar to a plenteous repast. The day he devoted to benevolence, and the night to piety. His revenue was dedicated to the poor and needy; and, not contented with relieving the wants, and mitigating the woes of mankind, he was solicitous, by precept and example, to conduct his little flock to the kingdom of heaven. He died in the ninety-second year of his age, justly revered and lamented by the whole island; while his grave was watered with the tears ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various

... mitigating feature in the situation. The hand of home authority was rigid and its beckonings were precise; but as a practical matter it could be, and sometimes was, disregarded altogether. Not that the colonial officials ever defied ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... Florian Reicher, twenty-three years old, is accused of shooting at Fritz Schlipitska's affianced wife, with the clear intention of killing her. It's a case of premeditated murder, and the provisions of the law are perfectly clear. Has the accused anything to say in his defence, or can he plead mitigating circumstances? ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... which resolve themselves into facts, interests, and principles. As these three professions are bound to deal with these issues of human life, it seemed to me that they must be the most powerful civilizing agencies of our time. They alone afford to a man of wealth the opportunity of mitigating the fate of the poor, with whom they ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... to-morrow." Mrs. Wortle was going with him, not with the view of being present at his interview with the lawyer, which she knew would not be allowed, but on the pretext of shopping. Her real reason for making the request to be taken up to town was, that she might use the last moment possible in mitigating her husband's wrath against ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... Another mitigating circumstance in Schubart's lot was the character of his gaoler. This humane person had himself tasted the tender mercies of 'paternal' government; he knew the nature of a dungeon better even than his prisoner. 'For four years,' we are told, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... they insisted, that the clerical functions would be better performed than at present by fifteen thousand parish priests, paid at the rate of seven marks apiece of yearly stipend.[*] This application was accompanied with an address for mitigating the statutes enacted against the Lollards, which shows from what source the address came. The king gave the commons a severe reply and further to satisfy the church, and to prove that he was quite in earnest, he ordered a Lollard to be burned before ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... legitimate lay-figure, and we all approximate to him at times. The natural man, in his unsophisticated hours, takes the Universe at its surface value, neither rejecting the delicate compensations, nor mitigating the cruelty of the grotesque farce. The natural man accepts what is given. He swallows the chaotic surprises, the extravagant accidents, the whole fantastic "pell-mell." He accepts, too, the traditional ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... though he had never striven for the favor of the populace, was still their favorite. He passed for a humane and magnanimous man; and his popularity had increased, especially since the affair of Pedanius Secundus, when he spoke in favor of mitigating the cruel sentence condemning all the slaves of that prefect to death. The slaves more especially loved him thenceforward with that unbounded love which the oppressed or unfortunate are accustomed to give those who show them even small sympathy. ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... He had privately told the Duchess of Parma that he had always been desirous of seeing the edicts thoroughly enforced; and he denounced as enemies all those persons who charged him with ever having been in favor of mitigating the System. He was reported, to be sure, at about the time of Granvelle's departure from the Netherlands, to have said "post pocula, that the quarrel was not with the Cardinal, but with the King, who was administering the public affairs very badly, even in the matter ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... would have been different, and Bolivar Bowers and his callow brood of little Bowerses would have reason to bless the rod that smote them. Ah, friend Baker, the International Mutual Tontine has done a glorious work toward mitigating the wrath of the grim destroyer; under the grace of its soothing balm bereavement becomes an actual pleasure, death loses its sting, and the ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... before the advancing wall of water that burst from Mill River Dam in 1874, shouting to the unsuspecting people as he rode: "The reservoir is breaking! The flood is coming! Fly! Fly for your lives," was the one mitigating circumstance in that scene of woe and destruction. When the full story of the Conemaugh calamity is told it will, doubtless, be found that there were many deeds of heroism performed, many noble sacrifices made ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker



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