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Ngan-king, however, was a place of great strength for Chinese warfare; it formed the point d'appui of all Ti-ping movements either to the northern or north-western provinces, and previous to any attack upon their capital, Nankin, or its fortified outposts, its reduction was an absolute necessity.

But for the moment the point to be noted is that all of this idealistic doctrine is an inference, or a development which finds its point d'appui in the fact of sensation.

I have looked at the picture, as it were, given me by all your material, as a picture—the image or evocation, charming, heterogeneous, and a little ghostly, of a great cluster of people, a society practically extinct, with Mr. and Mrs. Story, naturally, all along, the centre, the pretext, so to speak, and the point d'appui.

Austria, however, needed our protection both in war and peace, and had no other point d'appui.

It was left severely alone in the Gettysburg campaign,—an admission by both sides of its uselessness as a point d’appui.