( Dickens The Pickwick papers ) 'The wind blew--not up the road or down it, though that's bad enough,but sheer across it, sending the rain slanting down like the lines theyused to rule in the copy-books at school, to make the boys slope well.
You have nowan opportunity, on easy terms, of placing yourself in a much higherposition than you ever could, by remaining here; which would only beimputed, by people who didn't know you, to sheer dogged, wrongheaded,brutal obstinacy; nothing else, my dear Sir, believe me.
But Hunter thought it all sheer fraud and wanted to show it up.
They become criminals out of sheer conventionality.