His posture--flat upon his back, with his hands crossed upon his stomach and tied with something that he easily broke without profitably altering the situation--the strict confinement of his entire person, the black darkness and profound silence, made a body of evidence impossible to
controvert and he accepted it without cavil.
Meserve complacently; a remark which there seemed no disposition on the part of any of the company to
controvert.
For all thou dost and hast done to blight and curse the nobleness of his nature, I have done and shall continue to do all in my power to
controvert. As thou hast been his bad angel, so shall I try to be his good angel, and when all is said and done and Norman of Torn swings from the King's gibbet, as I only too well fear he must, there will be more to mourn his loss than there be to curse him.
"Madam," cries Sophia, "I have never presumed to
controvert any opinion of yours; and this subject, as I said, I have never yet thought of, and perhaps never may."
I shall have to
controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted.
"A bank-robber, and what you call a murderer, likewise, has his rights, which men of enlightened humanity and conscience should regard in so much the more liberal spirit, because the bulk of society is prone to
controvert their existence.
"I have a witness to the fact, whose testimony even you, sir, will scarcely
controvert."
“Yes, must,” repeated the youth; when, turning his head proudly around him, as if to see who would dare to
controvert his rights, he met the astonished gaze of Elizabeth, and proceeded more mildly: “That is, if a man is allowed the possession of that which his hand hath killed.
Nobody attempting to
controvert this position, he took a small brown-paper parcel out of his hat, and putting on a pair of horn spectacles (the writing being crabbed) read the direction half-a-dozen times over; having done which, he consigned the parcel to its old place, put up his spectacles again, and stared at everybody in turn.
I did not venture to
controvert this opinion, but I made a good supper, which it greatly satisfied her to see me do.
The one is, when the matter of the point
controverted, is too small and light, not worth the heat and strife about it, kindled only by contradiction.
These pleadings, and the counter pleadings, being duly heard, the very learned judge in set terms decided, to wit, --That as for the boat, he awarded it to the plaintiffs, because they had merely abandoned it to save their lives; but that with regard to the
controverted whale, harpoons, and line, they belonged to the defendants; the whale, because it was a Loose-Fish at the time of the final capture; and the harpoons and line because when the fish made off with them, it (the fish) acquired a property in those articles; and hence anybody who afterwards took the fish had a right to them.