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More "Butt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... corps' front, and then B Company passed through them and advanced the line to Rues des Vaches Farm. So rapid had been our advance that a party of Germans, still under the impression that they were behind their own lines, bumped right into a section of Mr Wood's platoon in a "grouse butt." On being challenged, the Bosche sergeant-major called out, "Welche Kompanie ist das?" (which company is that?) which seemed to annoy one Jock who replied "Welsh Company be damned. Take that, you ——, it's the Black Watch you're up against this time." Their carelessness cost them five ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... cussedness natural with the native horses, he abandoned all hope of instant success and gave way to brutality. Dropping the reins and reversing the whip in his hands, he began to beat the horse unmercifully, bringing the heavy butt down again and again, each mighty thwack echoing down the canyon. The result was inevitable. The horse began to kick—straight back at first, then, finding his hoofs striking the cart, he swung sideways to the tongue and kicked straight ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... I'd as lief her throat were cut! She almost ripped my bowels up, I vow, Running amuck with horns well set to butt: Nathless I've locked her in the stall below: She's blown with grass, I ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... knight galloping towards me. All in black was he, and he rode a black horse. Not a word we spoke, but we dashed against each other, and at the first encounter I was unhorsed. Still not a word spoke the Black Knight, but passing the butt-end of his lance through my horse's reins, rode away, leaving me shamed and on foot. So I made my way back to the castle, and there I was entertained again that night right hospitably, none questioning me as to my adventure. The next morning, when I ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... the entrance of a narrow alley. And his shots seemed to be a signal for a general salvo of random musketry. I saw a woman cross the roadway with a rifleman close behind her; he swung up his rifle, holding it by the muzzle, and clubbed her between the shoulders with the butt. ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... called me up to whip me; called me into his dining-room, locked the doors, then ordered me to pull off my shirt. I told him no, sir, I wouldn't; right away he went and got the cowhide, and gave me about twenty over my head with the butt. He tore my shirt off, after I would not pull it off; he ordered me to cross my hands. I didn't do that. After I wouldn't do that he went and got his gun. and broke the breech of that over my head. He then seized up the fire-tongs and struck me over the head ever so often. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... words followed, and then in uncontrolled rage Werner and Glutts attacked Jack and Gif. Half a dozen blows were exchanged, and then Glutts attempted to run away while Werner attempted to use the butt of his gun as a club. Andy tripped Glutts up, and Spouter caught Werner from behind, and as a consequence of the general mix-up the two bullies received a well-deserved drubbing. Then their weapons were discharged and their ammunition was ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... along upon the shore, keeping abreast of the boats as well as they were able, crying out taunts and imprecations; and one, more zealous in his passion, went to the top of a hill and struck the earth three times with the butt of his gun,—the registration of a mighty oath against the ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... third man jabbed the spike of his pole in, and they all lifted together, and the butt end of the log slipped a little ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... his large frame lurched closer. He wore a heavy gun and a knife in his belt. Also there protruded the butt of a pistol from the inside of his open vest. Allie felt the heat from his huge body, and she smelled the whisky upon him, and sensed the base, faithless, malignant animalism of the desperado. Assuredly, if he had any fear, ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... had almost anticipated his thoughts, Laskar's right hand swept toward the butt of ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... culture, without opportunities for self-improvement, even if his bitter toil had left him energy or time for it. For this reason the dwellers in the towns looked down upon him as one belonging to an inferior race. In all lands, in all ages, the countryman has been considered a proper butt by the most loutish townsman. The starving proletarian of the city pavement scoffed at the farmer as a boor. Voiceless, there was none to speak for him, and his rude, inarticulate complaints were met with jeers. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... a case of happenedicitis," said Poky Rodgers, fency rider of the Largo Verde /potrero/. "Somebody ought to happen to give you a knock on the head with the butt end of a quirt. I've rode in nine miles for some tobacco; and it don't appear natural and seemly that you ought ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... coffer, or buffet, about three paces each way, exquisitely wrought with figures of animals, finely carved and gilt. The middle is hollow, and in it] stands a great vessel of pure gold, holding as much as an ordinary butt; and at each corner of the great vessel is one of smaller size [of the capacity of a firkin], and from the former the wine or beverage flavoured with fine and costly spices is drawn off into the latter. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... velocities are very little lower, with Mark II. bullet. The Belgian Mauser perforates 55 inches of fir-wood at 12 metres distance. With regard to the penetration of bullets of smaller calibre that of the Roumanian Mannlicher (.256) may be taken as typical. When fired into a sand butt at 25 yards the bullet enters 9 ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... and spear to his left hand and laid his right hand on the butt of his pistol, looking sternly at Dorita. If any of them tried to dispute his claim, it would be she. But instead, she gave him the nearest thing to a real smile that had ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... into the road. He sprang at Pauline and wrested the gun from her. As Harry rushed him, he had no time to fire, but the butt of one revolver crashed on the young man's forehead. Harry sank unconscious in ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... prayers, adding that we are on the point of going to Glory with our boots on. I think perhaps there may be some truth in this, as the mouth of a horse-pistol almost grazes my forehead, while immediately behind the butt of that death-dealing weapon I perceive a large man with black whiskers. Other large men begin to assemble, also with horse-pistols. Dr. Hingston hastily explains, while I go back to the carriage to say my prayers, where there is more room. The men were miners on a prospecting tour, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... ignorant of the language he held respecting the Bourbons, and in which he indulged as freely after he became the Minister of Louis XVIII. as when he was the Minister of Bonaparte. It was universally known that in his conversation the Bourbons were the perpetual butt for his sarcasms, that he never mentioned them but in terms of disparagement, and that he represented them as unworthy of governing France. Everybody must have been aware that Fouche, in his heart, favoured a Republic, where the part ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... I'm rattled, that's all. I've just got a cowardly desire to flee and butt my head against the nearest wall. That's what I ought to do. I don't know what possessed me. I don't know what you'll ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... a Hoplite.—The hoplites have donned their armor. Now they assume their offensive weapons. Every man has a lance and a sword. The LANCE is a stout weapon with a solid wooden butt, about six feet long in all. It is really too heavy to use as a javelin. It is most effective as a pike thrust fairly into a foeman's face, or past his shield into a weak spot in his cuirass. The sword is usually ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... the things he carried in a closet partly filled with rubbish. Then he flashed his light around carefully. Adam Adams got down out of sight and placed his hand on the butt of his pistol. He was resolved to take no more risks than ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... their colleagues in the Cafe Cardinal across the way. Ambroise alone sat apart and patted and smoothed the salt in its receptacles. He was a young man from some little town in Alsace, a furious patriot, and the butt of his companions—for he was the latest comer in the Cafe Riche. Though he told his family name, Nettier, and declared that his father and mother were of French blood, he was called "the German." ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... At first the "bunch" laughed and made him the butt of many rude jests, then they laid plans to trap him. One day one of them stuck an open whisky-bottle under his nose, saying, "Smell it, Bill; ain't it a fine odor?" Bill stepped back, all smiles, and said quietly, "Well, Tom, drink was my master a long ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... some of the gentlemen urging him, perhaps rather mischievously, to answer, he retorted angrily,—"I'm master of mathematics as well as of other sciences; but I see there's an intention to make fun of me. I don't choose to be made a butt of, and I'll show you that I can be as savage as other people." This threat had the effect of producing a total silence for the remainder of the journey; but Mr. Latham took an opportunity of explaining to me that in ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... painful Sewel's ancient tome, Beloved in every Quaker home, Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom, Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint,— Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint!— Who, when the dreary calms prevailed, And water-butt and bread-cask failed, And cruel, hungry eyes pursued His portly presence, mad for food, With dark hints muttered under breath Of casting lots for life or death, Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies, To be himself the sacrifice. Then, suddenly, as if to ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... which Peterkin had cut was full twelve feet long, being a very strong but light and tough young tree, which merely required thinning at the butt to ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Kewa. Kalu-kalu may mean a species of soft, smooth grass specially fitted for sliding upon, which flourished on the inclined plain of Kewa, Kauai. One would sit upon a mat, the butt end of a coconut leaf, or a sled, while another dragged it along. The Hawaiian name for this sport is pahe'e. Kalu-kalu is also the name applied to "a very thin gauze-like kapa." (See Andrews's Hawaiian Dictionary.) If we suppose the poet to have clearly intended the first meaning, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... gravely on and on, till Alfred began to think he would butt the wall; but he put his hand out and opened a door that might very well escape a stranger's notice; for it was covered with looking-glass, and matched another narrow mirror in shape and size. This door led into a very long room, as plain and even sordid as the drawing-room ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... wide-awake in her, and, smiling at Uppy, she told him to hold up the end of his driving whip. He obeyed. The revolver flashed, and a muffled yell came from him as he felt the shock of the bullet as it struck fairly against the butt of his whip. In the same instant there came a snarling deep-throated growl from Wapi. From the sledge Peter gave a cry of warning. Uppy shrank back, and Dolores cried out sharply and put herself swiftly between Wapi and the Eskimo. The huge dog, ready to spring, slunk ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... distinguished visitors were often victims to the rough horseplay of the baser sort, and of the wanton young gentleman at court. The food was simple, boiled beef and pork, and mutton without sauce, ale served in horns from the butt. Roast meat, game, sauces, mead, and flagons set on the table, are looked on by Starcad as foreign luxuries, and Germany was ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... shirt, which I accordingly did. The boy was so fond of his new dress, that he went all over the ship, presenting himself before every one that came in his way. This freedom used by him offended Old Will, the ram goat, who gave him a butt with his horns, and knocked him backward on the deck. Will would have repeated his blow, had not some of the people come to the boy's assistance. The misfortune, however, seemed to him irreparable. The shirt was dirtied, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... the slab; others with the butts of their muskets striking the slab with all their might to break it, while the priests remonstrated against our desecrating their holy and beautiful house. While thus engaged, a soldier, who was striking with the butt of his musket, struck a spring, and the marble slab flew up. Then the faces of the inquisitors grew pale as Belshazzar when the hand writing appeared on the wall; they trembled all over; beneath the marble slab, now partly up, there was a stair-case. I stepped to the altar, and took ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... painful scene the door opened, the clash of the butt ends of muskets brought sharply to the ground was heard, and a corporal and three soldiers ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... of newly-hewed wood, lit my pipe again without interference. But I was sorry to miss that conference outside in the open air. I wanted to hear, even if I could not understand. Holaf still remained by my side, and his hand did not leave the oddly-carved butt of the tapered tube-gun. ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... general sound, and are without branches for eighty or ninety feet, but the upper part is too knotty and hard to be useful; indeed, it frequently happens, that after twenty feet have been cut off from the butt, the trees becomes rotten and shaky, and is also very brittle; for which reason, no dependance can be put on them for masts or yards. The turpentine which exudes freely from the bark, is of a milk-white glutinous substance; but it is rather remarkable, that there ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... of this unbounded benevolence, and this exalted genius, deserve such honours as were never paid before; they deserve to bestride a butt upon every signpost in the metropolis, or to have their countenances exhibited as tokens where this liquor is to be sold by the license which they have procured. They must be at least remembered to future ages, as the happy politicians who, after all expedients ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... you mean bring him up here?" Philip cried. "If you wouldn't butt in at all I intended to take him to my sister's a ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... humble a demeanour as he could assume, Felix doffed his cap and began to speak to the guard at the gateway of the entrenchment. The nearest man-at-arms immediately raised his spear and struck him with the butt. The unexpected blow fell on his left shoulder, and with such force as to render it powerless. Before he could utter a remonstrance, a second had seized his boar-spear, snapped the handle across his knee, and hurled the fragments ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... street,—where we can look into each other's faces. So much has happened the last two days that here in the dark I begin to feel as if it all were a nightmare. Ah! how cosey and home-like this room seems after prowling in the dangerous streets with my hand on the butt of a revolver! Come now, Marian, sit down quietly and tell the whole story. I can't trust Merwyn at all when he is the ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... hadn't eaten a good meal, and felt almost as low as the derelicts whom he had for companions. He would have enjoyed a smoke, but turned away as two men dove for a cigarette-butt; discarded by ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... was not locked. Laramie rose, his fingers resting on the butt of his revolver, and stepping lightly into the dining-room, turned down the lamp. He stood in the shadow and beckoned Kate to him. His ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... only wait a little until I can make me a pair of horns like you. So the goat waited, and away went the Ghoul to make her horns. She made two horns of dough and dried them in the sun until they were hard, and then came to "butt" with the goat. At the first shock, when the goat butted her with her horns, the horns of dough broke all to pieces; then the goat butted her again in her bowels and broke her in twain, and out jumped Sunaisil and Rabab, frisking and leaping and calling out "ya imme," oh, my mother, Oh, my mother! ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... that might serve to confirm their suspicions as to the purpose of their cruise. As Harry stepped up to the door and brought the man's entire body into view, he noticed with amazement that he wore a cartridge belt and pistol holster from which the butt of a revolver peeped. ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... about ordinary people. I should think the Duke of Clarence must even have found malmsey nauseating, when he choked and went purple and was really asphyxiated in a butt of it. And ordinary people are no malmsey. Just ordinary tap-water. And we have been drenched and deluged and so nearly drowned in perpetual floods of ordinariness, that tap-water tends to become a really hateful fluid to us. We loathe its out-of-the-tap tastelessness. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... hand on the butt of his revolver at his hip, meaning to whip out the weapon and fire before the miscreant had finished his high-sounding tomfoolery. His daughter had also grasped hers, intending to obey to the letter the command of her parent, when the Ghoojur ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... be doubted if Byron would have made a good husband to any woman; his wife and he were even more than usually ill-assorted. A model of the proprieties, and a pattern of the learned philanthropy of which in her sex he was wont to make a constant butt, she was no fit consort for that "mens insana in corpore insano." What could her stolid temperament conjecture of a man whom she saw, in one of his fits of passion, throwing a favourite watch under the ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... then, with brutal and unreasoning violence, they were hauled and pushed down the steep, winding path to where the camels were waiting below. The Frenchman waved his unwounded hand as he walked. "Vive le Khalifa! Vive le Madhi!" he shouted, until a blow from behind with the butt-end of a Remington ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... St. Peter's, and a government mail route to St. Eleanor's, there was nothing but bridle-paths and rough trails through the woods. Men came to market with horses in straw harnesses, dragging carts with block-wheels sawn from the butt of a big pine; and often when twenty or thirty of them were drinking into old Katty Frazer's, the beasts would get hungry, and eat ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... he was swimming in red wine he really looked as though murdered. Both the flunkeys wanted to throw themselves on the murderer, and one of them, a burly fellow, tried to grasp him, when M. Coignard gave the fellow such a butt that he rolled in the stream ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... forehead; fawn skin hair, a fawn's nose, a fawn's mouth, a fawn's eyes. You saw her at Lena's garden parties, staring at Hippisley over the rim of her plate while she browsed on Lena's cakes and ices, or bounding about Lena's tennis court with the sash ribbons flying from her little butt end. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... The "Scuttle Butt Navigators," or, as the "Yankee" boys called them, the Rumor Committee, were very busy that bright day in May. According to them we were to sail seaward and discover Cervera's fleet, the whereabouts of which was then unknown. We were to sail south and bombard Havana. The older, wiser heads laughed ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... ground, which required him to devote earnest attention to the badger-holes, he could not manage this. Without knowing very well what to do, he continued the chase, meditating as to whether it were better to try to ride over the bear, or to attempt the breaking of its skull with the butt end of his gun. As, however, it was all he could do to keep pace with the brute, he ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... under water. He likewise sprung his main-mast, and the ship made so much water that she could not be freed by four pumps assisted by bailing. On the 9th the wind became calm, but the sea continued so high that the ship, in rolling, opened all her upper works and seams, and started the butt ends of her planks, and the greatest part of her top-timbers, the bolts being drawn by the violence of the roll. In this condition, with additional disasters to the hull and rigging, they continued beating westward to the 12th, when they were in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... placed, even when he was a brute and his guilt far from doubtful. How much more, then, must he feel the claims of this surly but chivalrous-hearted boy, son of a good father and pious mother, who had been made the butt of circumstances, and of whose innocence he was hourly becoming more and ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... shall have been so developed as to justify such being made. To this practice, at least, I am safe in attributing the rarity, if not the positive absence, with the Indian, of that unhappy condition of bow-leggedness, of not too slight prevalence with us, and which renders its victim often a butt for not very charitable ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... one to learn hog-Latin, hog-wash, and how much the neighbors are worth. Of course, the rich children are going to say that they're pushing little kids, but they've got to learn to push and to shove and to butt right in where they're not wanted if they intend to herd with the real angora billy-goats. They've got to learn how to bow low to every one in front of them and to kick out at every one behind them. It's been my experience that it takes ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... pretensions of modern criticism that it must not be criticised. Although to buffet an anonym is to beat the air, still the very effort does good. A well-known and popular novelist of the present day was a favourite butt for certain journalists who, with the normal ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... yards, of the Austrian front line. Here every one spoke in a low whisper or by signs. They warned me to keep well down, as the Austrians hated khaki worse even than "grigio-verde," as one is always apt to hate third parties who butt in against one in what one conceives to ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... the costard with the hilts of thy sword, and then throw him in the malmsey-butt in ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... nought again until I was close to the spot whence the spark shone, and then I caught it once more, and hastily I cleared aside the rank grass with my spear butt, and lo! even as she had seen it in dreams the sword of Owen was there, and it was the gleam from the gem in its hilt, which no damp could dim, which had caught my eye. But a little while longer and we should never have seen even that, ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... this afternoon. Charley and I made our lucky up the wash-us chimney, and Bolter got into the empty water-butt, head downwards; but his legs were so precious long that they stuck out at the top, and ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... John Bedell was speaking, he tore and flung away a letter, reached for his long rifle on its pins above the chimney-place, dashed its butt angrily to the floor, and poured powder into ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... being in such close quarters to me, and my holding my rifle with one hand, while I endeavoured to free myself with the other, I could not point the muzzle at my assailant, and my only way of clearing myself from his hold was by battering his head with the butt end of the weapon with my right hand, while he still clung round my left side. At last I disengaged myself, and he let go suddenly, and slipped instantly behind one of the thick acacia bushes, and got away, just as the army in front was wavering. All this did not occupy many ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... to butt in after all," I said. "He'll meet Edwin there, and they can fight it out in the smoking room. You've only to drop him a ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... what happened to either. If they were pitted against each other, my bet would be laid on the tiger, though my sympathy might be with the lady. I am not a prophet. I cannot tell you the end of the story. Maybe the fool moose-calf will butt its brains out against the trunk of the tree. That would be no fault of the tree. The tree was there first, and was minding its own business. Maybe the calf will butt and get hurt, and scamper for home. Maybe it will succeed in eluding the fangs of ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... it was he—the last-comer. And once more Fred suffered all the pangs of jealousy. It seemed to him that in his loneliness, between sky and sea, those pangs were more acute than he had ever known them. His comrades teased him about his melancholy looks, and made him the butt of all their jokes in the cockpit. He resolved, however, to get over it, and at the next port they put into, Jacqueline's letter was the cause of his entering for the first time some ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... the Revolutionary War Committee, who escorted us, entered the quarters of the General Staff, noisily dropped his rifle-butt to the floor and resting upon it, announced: "General Krassnov, you and your staff are prisoners of the Soviet authorities." Immediately armed Red Guards barred both doors. Kerensky was nowhere to be seen. He had again fled, as he had done before from the Winter ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... some kind; that America was so new, and crude, and spick and span, that it was obnoxious to any aesthetic soul; that our tendency to erect hideous public buildings and then keep them in repair afterwards would make us the butt of ridicule among future generations. I even proposed the founding of an American Ruin Company, Limited,—in which the stockholders should purchase favourably situated bits of land and erect picturesque ruins thereon. To be sure, I said, these ruins wouldn't have any associations at first, ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... are many ways butt down upon this, and they are crooked and wide. But thus thou mayest distinguish the right from the wrong, the right only being straight and narrow ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... did the company feel the moody growing youth to be one of themselves. He would sit with his pint before him, silent, his great black eyes roving round the persons present. His tongue was sharp on occasion, and his fists ready, so that after various attempts to make a butt of him he was generally let alone. He got what he wanted—he learnt to know what smoking and drinking might be like, and the jokes of the taproom. And all by the help of a few shillings dealt out to him this winter for ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... muster up fresh energies for a blow—with a heavy head sea, that prevented our sailing even when we got aslant. On the afternoon of the day we quitted Stornaway, I got a notion how it was going to be; the sun went angrily down behind a bank of solid grey cloud, and by the time we were up with the Butt of Lewis, the whole sky was in tatters, and the mercury nowhere, with a heavy swell ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... connected with some curious results. One of the favourite objects of ridicule of the past essayists was the virtuoso. There was something to them inexpressibly absurd in a passion for buying odds and ends. Pope, Arbuthnot, and Gay made a special butt of Dr. Woodward, possessor of a famous ancient shield and other antiquities. Equally absurd, they thought, was his passion for fossils. He made one of the first collections of such objects, saw that ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... in Shakspeare; yet he is always in measure here; never what Johnson would remark as a specially 'good hater.' But his laughter seems to pour from him in floods; he heaps all manner of ridiculous nicknames on the butt he is bantering, tumbles and tosses him in all sorts of horse-play; you would say, with his whole heart laughs. And then, if not always the finest, it is always a genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty; never. No man who can laugh, what we call laughing, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... right-angled triangle, with a parallelogram below its base; the hypothenuse or head of the sail is secured to a yard, like an enormous fishing-rod; the halyards are secured to it about a third of the way from the butt-end, and it is hoisted close up to the head of the mast. A tackle brings down the lower end of the yard to the deck, and serves to balance the lofty tapering point, while the sheet is secured to the ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... time to think o' trifles. I gave the butt an extra bang on the pommel to send the ball home, shoved the muzzle right in among the hair an' pulled the trigger. There was a bang that sounded to me as if the ship's magazine had blown up. It ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... just a here-a-wa man, by your tongue," said she; "an', if I'm no mista'en, ye've seen better days; for, when I was bringin butt your wet claes to get them dried, though your bit jacket an' your breeks were just corduroy, I couldna help noticin that there is no a bit bonnier linen inowre our door than the sark ye ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... opinions. His career in parliament was marred by his irregular habits, which resulted in pecuniary embarrassment, and between 1865 and 1870 he returned again to his work at the law courts. The result, however, of the disestablishment of the Irish Church was to drive Butt and other Irish Protestants into union with the Nationalists, who had always repudiated the English connexion; and on 19th May 1870, at a large meeting in Dublin, Butt inaugurated the Home Rule movement in a speech demanding an Irish parliament for local affairs. On this platform ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... I dyd. Ande of alle foulishnesse, thys playe dyd beare away ye prize. Conceive ye Absuerditye of laying ye Sceane in Italy, it ys welle knowne that Awdiences will not abear nothyng that is not sett neare at Home. Butt woarse stille, thys fellowe presumes to kille offe Boath Heroe ande Heroine in ye Laste Acte, wch is Intolerabble toe ye Publicke. Suerley noe chaunce of Success in thys. Ye awthour dyd reappeare in ye aufternoone, and dyd seeke to borrowe a crowne ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... the man had the narrowest possible escape from being stoned to death—as he richly deserved to be; what business had he to be the only sane man in a crowd of madmen, and needlessly make himself the butt of Paphlagonian infatuation? ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... boy; then came up straight at close quarters. Benson's sudden grapple deprived the driver of a chance to use the butt of his whip in the manner ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... prayer was not unmixed with a desire for action of a very vigorous and immediate variety, seized an old rifle hung from a nail on the wall. She had no idea whether there were any loads in it, but she had made up her mind to use the butt-end on the first man who entered the room. In the meantime, the axe had crashed through one of the thick, hardwood panels, making a slit broad enough ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... for Ben, nothing more would have been done or said about, the matter. Butt it was not in his nature to be sensible of an inconvenience without using his best efforts to find a remedy. So, as he and his comrades were returning from the water-side, Ben suddenly threw down his string of fish with a ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... little chaps had been worked out with ears and kernels of corn. One class in arithmetic calculated the percentage of inferior kernels at tip and butt to the full-sized grains in the ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... unusually busy," I said, "and there is a long queue of clients waiting for me in the ante-room. An extremely long queue—almost a half-butt in fact." ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... one of the horses. Another followed him, and in twenty seconds the line was broken and they were upon us. One wolf jumped at the rear of the sleigh and caught his paws upon it. Rasloff struck him with the butt of his gun, and at the same instant he delivered the blow, Paul let the horses have their way. Rasloff fell upon the edge of the vehicle and over its side. Luckily, his foot caught in one of the robes and held him for an instant—long ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... it when I sit Among the broadcloth'd heirs of BUMBLE! But Foreign Minister too humble Were butt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... battle, to his somber eyes. "Send Arnold up here," he shouted to the men below, and Arnold came, clambering past rock and bowlder until he reached the captain's side, took one look in the direction indicated, and brought his brown hand down with resounding swat on the butt of his rifle. "Treed 'em!" said he exultantly; then, with doubtful, backward glance along the crouching file of weary men, some sitting now and fanning with their broad-brimmed hats, he turned again to the captain ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... the field, but, as just stated, it had better be delayed until the heads are carried to the place for packing. To trim them, take hold of a head near the butt with one hand, holding it upright against you, then with a turning motion, cut clear around the head, leaving the cut ends of the leaves projecting about an inch above the edge of the head. This ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... he began presently. "This has been goin' on fer days. Ther's Injuns out most every night, an' they are lyin' this side o' the fort. They're all about it, an' them soldier-fellers ain't wise to it. What's more we darsen't to put 'em wise. They're li'ble to butt right in, an' then ther' won't be any stoppin' them pesky redskins. Y' see ther's only a handful at the fort, an' ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... the same spirit, Nelson went into Aboukir with six colours flying; so that even if five were shot away, it should not be imagined he had struck. He too must needs wear his four stars outside his Admiral's frock, to be a butt for sharpshooters. "In honour I gained them," he said to objectors, adding with sublime illogicality, "in honour I will die with them." Captain Douglas of the Royal Oak, when the Dutch fired his vessel in the Thames, sent his men ashore, but was burned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on my hip through thick and thin, stranger. Three years she's shot close an' true. There ain't a butt in the world that hugs your hand tighter. There ain't a cylinder that spins easier. Shoot? Lad, even a kid like you could be a killer with that six-gun. What ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... a boulder, from which vantage ground he would stand looking down at the herd. In a moment several of the flock would rush forward, butt him from the rock, and one of them would take his place, only to be driven down and succeeded by the next victor. The sheep often played this for ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... functionary the flour was obtained, and the raisins; the beef-fat, or "slush," from Old Coffee; and the requisite supply of water from the scuttle-butt. I then went among the various cooks, to compare their receipts for making "duffs:" and having well weighed them all, and gathered from each a choice item to make an original receipt of my own, with due deliberation and solemnity I proceeded to ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... simply could not see the beautiful schoolgirl of sixteen, the blonde gipsy who had bent forward, cigarette in mouth, to his match, who had leaned back and blown rings to the moon above Drouva. Had she ever set the butt of a gun against her shoulder? Something in this woman's eyes made him suddenly feel as if he ought to leave her alone. Yet her arm still lay on his, and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... abuses; it was in vain to think that he would either remedy them, or alter his conduct, which was arbitrary and violent in the extreme. His prompt reply to all complaints and remonstrances was—the butt-end of a handspike, so convincingly administered as effectually to silence ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... the front door, a capped and uniformed urchin with a special delivery letter. "Miss Clare Crosby live here?" he inquired. Behind his back, in his other hand, the butt of a cigarette sent up a ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... crossing the open ground at his full speed to gain the main body of his comrades. A ball struck him just as he had arrived within a few feet of the spot where Henry stood, yet still leaping onward, he made a desparate blow at the head of the officer with the butt end of his rifle. A quick movement disappointed the American of his aim, yet the blow fell so violently on the shoulder that the stock snapped suddenly asunder at the small of the butt. Stung with pain, Henry Grantham turned to behold his enemy. ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... the file behind the Empress and held him there; the Grand Duchess Olga was flung bodily after him; the other children, in their hospital dresses, were shoved brutally toward their places, menaced by butt ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... right close along after him. Every time he looked around, he would see them, and he could hear the creature's feet pat in the road, too, as it ran after the wagon. He kept the horse trotting along pretty fast and held the butt of his whip all ready to strike, if the creature jumped into the wagon. It didn't jump in, but kept near the hind end of the wagon; and it followed father for as much as two miles, till he met a man with an ox team. He was so taken up watching for those eyes, back there in ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... friend of his own to whom he may impart the delightful intelligence. A woman (with more or less skill) buries her secret away from her kind. For days and weeks past, had not this old Maria made fools of the whole house,—Maria, the butt of the family? ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... instead of being praised to the skies would have sunk into oblivion under the heap of public scorn. Sometimes it happens that a man accidentally becomes a hero, but it was no accident that he was able to become one. He must have had initiative—he must have had self-reliance. Archibald C. Butt was such a man. He went down on the Titanic. The last act of his life was to help women and children into the boats and calm their minds as they were lowered away. Astor was of the same metal—both sublimely oblivious to the terrible fate which hung over them. Here was initiative and self-reliance ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... way—adventures which the soldier endures in silence as part of his everyday life. On this occasion, however, the episode was all our own, and had a sporting flavour in it which made it dramatic. I know now the feeling of tense expectation with which the driven grouse whirrs onwards towards the butt. I have been behind the butt before now, and it is only poetic justice that I should see the matter from the other point of view. As we approached Ronchi we could see shrapnel breaking over the road in front of us, but we had not yet realised that it was ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... twelve tons, now I come to think of it—in exactly the same place as you are. He pulled out in a bit of a bobble of a sea, not half as bad as this, and he started all his friends on the same butt-strap, and the plate opened like a furnace door, and I had to climb into the nearest fog bank ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... grandmarm used to say my tongue was loose at both ends and hung in the middle, and I guess she wa'n't fur off the course. Good-by. Take care of yourself. You can put what's left of that mock mince pie on the top shelf in the butt'ry and you'd better heave a dish towel or sunthin' over it to keep the ants out. There's more ants in this house than there is dollars, a good sight. Betsy B., she's got a plan for keepin' of 'em out by puttin' sassers of brimstone round the shelves, but I told her, s' ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the fire started into activity. A hasty glance round the encampment showed that their captives were not within its circle. With an exclamation of fury, the captain seized his gun, and with the butt-end struck the sentry to the ground. Then in furious tones he ordered every man off in instant pursuit. Snatching up their arms, some hurried off one way, some another, shouting threats of vengeance as ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... exclaimed, growing angry with her, too. "Do you know what time it is? Three o'clock, you write me, and it's now a quarter past five. I have sat here doing nothing for over two mortal hours. It seems to me that's enough, without being made the butt of your friends' wit into the bargain. I'm sick of the whole ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... countries; but a ewe-sheep is not worth milking under those circumstances, as her yield is a mere nothing. Goats are very mischievous—they make their way out of all enclosures, and trespass everywhere. They butt at whatever is bright or new, or strange to them; and would drive an observer, who employed astronomical instruments on stands, to distraction. In an open country, where there are no bushes for a kraal, nets must ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... He brought the butt of the rifle smashing up. It struck the man under the chin and there was a sharp cracking sound as his jawbone snapped. For a fraction of a second there was an expression of stupefied amazement on his face ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... victims. His muscles seemed benumbed, as the huge head swayed from side to side and mesmerised him with its uncanny power. The gun almost dropped from his nerveless fingers. But with a fierce effort he regained the mastery of himself, brought the butt to his shoulder, ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... a German soldier was seen to fire three times at a little girl 5 years old. Having failed to hit her, he subsequently bayoneted her. He was killed with the butt end of a rifle by a Belgian soldier who had seen him commit this murder from ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... When it reached the second path it stopped, briskly moved itself its own width sidewise, and rolled back. On the way it competently manicured the lawn. It picked up leaves, retrieved a stray cigarette-butt, and snapped up a scrap of paper blown from somewhere. Its tactile units touched a new-planted shrub. It delicately circled the shrub and went on ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... of their party, (which, till he found attractions elsewhere, was generally the case,) their more elevated subjects of conversation were almost always put to flight by the strange sallies of this eccentric young man, whose vanity made him a constant butt for Lord Byron's sarcasm and merriment. The son of a highly respectable Italian gentleman, who was in early life, I understand, the secretary of Alfieri, Polidori seems to have possessed both talents and dispositions which, had he lived, might have rendered him a useful ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... not be your boon companion, and drink and generally conduct myself in a way unworthy of an English officer in the high position I hold in this country, I have been constantly marked out as the butt for your offensive sarcasm, even as far back as the time when, if you had possessed a spark of manliness or feeling, you would have respected me and shown consideration for one who was passing through such an ordeal as I pray Heaven ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... outburst, she was quiet—the quiet that is deliberative, threatening. Then she slowly closed her fingers about the whip butt. Fixing her gaze in passionate anger upon him, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... and pole game as played by the Apaches. With them the pole is marked with divisions throughout its whole length and these divisions are stained different colors. The object of the game is to make the hoop fall upon the pole as near the butt as possible, graduated values being applied to the different divisions of the pole. The women are not permitted to approach within a hundred yards while the game is going on. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.] Those who have described this game ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... "Faithful Friend" steered a course that was taking her rapidly away from me upon the freshening wind. Perceiving which bitter truth, beholding myself thus befooled, bubbled and tricked (and my head throbbing from the blow of Penfeather's pistol-butt) a mighty anger against him surged within me, and shaking my fists I fell to fierce curses and revilings, like any madman, until what with my aching head and lack of breath, I cast myself face down and lay there spent with my futile ravings. Yet even so, bethinking me of all my fine ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... adapted to his preconceived comedy with Tira. Martin, hearing the step behind her, started, unprepared. He had passed Tenney, slowly making his way homeward, and counted on a few minutes' speech with her and a quick exit, for his butt, the fool of a husband, to see. But as Raven appeared, the fellow's face broke up in a flouting amusement. Here was another, the satiric lips were ready to swear. Deepest distrust of Tira shone forth in the half smile; a low community of mean understanding ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... butt and ben the change-house fills Wi' yill-caup commentators, Here's crying out for bakes and gills, And there the pint-stoup clatters. Wi' thick and thrang, and loud and lang,— Wi' logic and wi' scripture, They raise a din that ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... John Dangerous can boast of. Which makes me so mad against your fine Scholars and Scribblers, who, because they can turn verse and make Te-to-tum into Greek, must needs sneer at me at the Coffee House, and make a butt of an honest man who has been from one end of the world to the other, and has fought his way through it to Fortune ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... through the mob. But the dalal stiffened with increasing dignity. Some of that laughter seemed to touch himself, and he was not a person to be made the butt of mirth. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... cottage where he and Jenny had spent the summer; the bleary-eyed old peacock was the chicken he had dosed with cayenne pepper, hoping to cure its rheumatism; the pool with the white threads for sunlight was the water-butt into which Tom had fallen from the tiles—"those are the hairs out of his own old tail." The nymphs were Laura, Maggie, Emily, &c. Mike asked Lady Helen to come into the dancing-room, but she did not appear to hear, and her laughter encouraged Muchross to further excesses. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... at the sides and top of the door. That at the hinged side can be as shown at A, Fig. 5, the closing side as at B, and the top as at C in the same drawing. These are all in section and are self-explanatory. In hinging the door, three butt hinges should be used so as ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... entertain him. That young gentleman quite distinguished himself by the variety and extent of his resources. He devised butting matches between himself and a large gourd, which he suspended from the ceiling, and almost blinded himself by his attempts to butt it sufficiently hard to cause it to rebound to the utmost length of the string, and might have made an idiot of himself for ever by his exertions, but for the timely interference of Mr. Ellis, who put a final stop to this diversion. Then he dressed himself in a short gown and nightcap, and ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... superficial aspects of recent English history. Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt, and the whole line of witnesses before the Special Commission, tell a different tale. The very name of the Land League is significant. Home Rule was a mere theme for academic discussion in the mouth of Mr. Butt. Repeal itself never touched the strongest passions of Irish nature, though advocated by the most eloquent and popular of Irish orators. Not an independent Parliament, but independent ownership of land, has always been ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... course was to place Saxe's ice-axe across, with head and butt resting in the two holes, and he had judged so accurately that the head went in with not half an inch to spare after he had thrust in the butt spike ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... maneuvering with interest, and no sooner did the gun begin to shift than three leaped forward, snarling angrily. One snapped at the barrel of the piece, one at the butt, and a third at the trigger. An instant later came the report heard by the ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... club had outlined a careful itinerary in that borough for proximate pursuit. Lawton told that he had at one time written an essay on the effect of Brooklyn on the dialogue of the American drama. "It is the butt end of Long Island," he cried, with cruel mirth. Lovers of Brooklyn in the club ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... speaking to YOU," he said, with his eyes on Mosby, and slightly accenting the pronoun with a tap of his revolver butt on the bar. "Ye don't seem to ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... post of Poet-Laureate became vacant, and Dryden was appointed to it. He was also appointed historiographer-royal. The salary of these two offices amounted to L200 a year, besides the famous annual butt of canary, while his profits from the theatre were equivalent to L300. His whole income was thus, at the very least, equal to a thousand pounds of our money—a great sum for a poet in that or in ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... are to be pitied, for they are ever the butt, byword and prey of the untaught, who are often the knowing. As success came to Southey he lost the sense of values, that is to say, the sense of humor. He attacked Byron with great severity, and Byron's reply ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... happened to be Eleazer Butt that was left. 'Twas Eleazer's ill-luck. And Eleazer was up in years, and had fell behind coming over ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... circling round on the wing in their wonted manner, and poising themselves anon in mid-air above the ship, looking down to see whether it was dinner-time yet aboard, and there was a chance of any stray scraps being chucked over the side from the 'gashing-tub,' or waste butt in which the refuse of our meals was thrown on the ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... the squires fastened a live bird by the string to a stake in the distant sward; and "Pardex," said Duke William, "Conan of Bretagne, and Philip of France, leave us now so unkindly in peace, that I trow we shall never again have larger butt for our arrows than the breast of yon poor ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... something, and again I was afraid that I should be discovered after all, but by and by he went out and came back with a small suit-case. It was after he had gone that I saw poking out of the pocket of the overcoat which had been hung on the hook, the butt of a pistol. I didn't quite know what to make of it, but thinking that it was better in my pocket than in his if I were discovered, I lifted it out of the pocket and slipped it ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... I wondered that he could have heart to put on even the semblance of mirth. At last I ventured a home thrust. I determined to commence a series of covert insinuations, or innuendos, about the oblong box, just to let him perceive, gradually, that I was not altogether the butt, or victim, of his little bit of pleasant mystification. My first observation was by way of opening a masked battery. I said something about the "peculiar shape of that box"; and, as I spoke the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... course, as he makes off as if for Berwick and the sea. Once or twice he leaps clean into the air, a flying bar of silver. Then he sulks at the bottom, a mere dead weight, attempting devices only to be conjectured. A common plan now is to tighten the line, and tap the butt end of the rod. This humane expedient produces effects not unlike neuralgia, it may be supposed, for the fish is off in a new fury. But rush after rush grows tamer, till he is drawn within reach of the gaff, and so on to the grassy bed, where a tap on the head ends ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... exclaimed Zaidie, taking a couple of steps towards him, with her right hand on the butt of one of her revolvers. The movement brought her close to the open door, and in full view of ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... round shots struck the ground as I landed passing close over our heads. Desiring my coxswain to pull the boat back among the shipping and out of the line of fire, I walked to the gate and beat against it with the butt end of my sword; it was opened by one of the few officers of the Civic Guard who now wore his uniform. Saying a few civil words to him I passed on up the street to the ducal palace. This city was at this ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... men's blood while recording the deeds of the heroes who founded the English system of government in Ireland, and secured to themselves immense tracts of its most fertile soil. What then must be the effect of the eloquent and impassioned denunciations of such writers as Mr. Butt, Mr. A.M. Sullivan, and Mr. John Mitchell, not to speak of the 'national press'? Yet the most fiery patriot utters nothing stronger on the English rule in Ireland than what the Irish may read in the works of the greatest statesmen and most profound thinkers in England. The evil ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... angrily driving some of the swimmers away from his fishing location at that moment. It was plain the members of the moving picture company used the hermit as a butt ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... in the castle the thundering blows which the Tyrolese struck with the butt-ends of their rides against the door of the room where Ulrich ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... or at night, and secure their approaching prey by an easy shot. Skill with the rifle and success in the chase were points of friendly emulation. In many localities the boy or youth who shot a squirrel in any part of the animal except its head became the butt of the jests of his companions and elders. Yet, under such conditions and opportunities Abraham was neither a hunter nor a marksman. He ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... transcontinental Siberian railway. When you take "The Flying Scotchman" from London to Edinburgh you ride in a Pullman car, with all the appurtenances, even to a Gould coupler, a Westinghouse air-brake, and a dusky George from North Carolina, who will hit you three times with the butt of a brush-broom and expect a bob as recompense. You ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Duchess's, she desired her 'valet de chambre' to bring her billiard cue into her closet, and ordered me to open the box that contained it. I took out the cue, broken in two. It was of ivory, and formed of one single elephant's tooth; the butt was of gold and very tastefully wrought. "There," said she, "that is the way M. de Vaudreuil has treated a thing I valued highly. I had laid it upon the couch while I was talking to the Duchess in ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... taken out of the boat, showed none of these symptoms of emotion, but running instinctively to the scuttle-butt, asked eagerly for a drop of water. As the most expeditious method of feeding and dressing them, they were distributed among the different messes, one to each, as far as they went. Thus they were all soon provided ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... rather die than live without ruins of some kind; that America was so new, and crude, and spick and span, that it was obnoxious to any aesthetic soul; that our tendency to erect hideous public buildings and then keep them in repair afterwards would make us the butt of ridicule among future generations. I even proposed the founding of an American Ruin Company, Limited,—in which the stockholders should purchase favourably situated bits of land and erect picturesque ruins thereon. To be sure, I said, these ruins wouldn't ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... prances to the one end of making the most of the misery. She gets up early and sits up late, and is loud, and restless, and noisy, and unpitying. She drags her husband on to the woolsack, or pushes him into Parliament. She drives him full butt at the dear, lazy machinery of government, and knocks and buffets him about the wheels, and cranks, and screws, and pulleys; until somebody, for quiet's sake, makes him something that she wanted him to be made. That's why incompetent men sometimes sit in high places, and interpose ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... with drawers and shelves on one side, and an open space on the other for the hanging up of clothes. Very few clothes hung there at present; but it was in this portion of the closet that he stopped and began to try the wall of Brotherson's room, with the butt end of ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... always did. How else should I walk? How do I walk that makes me so funny?" I asked, mortified at the thought of my having been the butt of secret ridicule. Henrietta was ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... of their hands froze to the butt ends of their muskets, for it was freezing hard that night. I frequently saw a little soldier take off his shoes in order to walk barefoot, as his shoes hurt his weary feet; and at every step he left a track of blood. Then, after some time, he would sit down in a field for a few minutes' rest, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... any God for us! God's Laws are become a Greatest-Happiness Principle, a Parliamentary Expediency: the Heavens overarch us only as an Astronomical Time-keeper; a butt for Herschel-telescopes to shoot science at, to shoot sentimentalities at:—in our and old Jonson's dialect, man has lost the soul out of him; and now, after the due period,—begins to find the want of it! This is verily the plague-spot; ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... time they could find to a lively game of poker down at "the store," and their petition for "more time to themselves" brought down a reply from the oracular lips of the commander that became immortal on the frontier and made the petitioners nearly frantic. For a week the trio was the butt of all the wits at Fort Warrener. And yet the entire commissioned force felt that they were being kept at the grindstone because of the frivolity of these few youngsters, and they did not like it. All the same the cavalrymen stuck up ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... offer, and did present in miniature, the elements of a complete society. Among the inmates there was, as in the world at large, one poor discouraged creature—a butt on whom mocking pleasantries were rained. This patient sufferer was the old vermicelli maker, Goriot. Six years before, he had come to live at the Maison Vauquer, having, so he said, retired from business. He dressed handsomely, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... many temptations. At first the "bunch" laughed and made him the butt of many rude jests, then they laid plans to trap him. One day one of them stuck an open whisky-bottle under his nose, saying, "Smell it, Bill; ain't it a fine odor?" Bill stepped back, all smiles, and said quietly, "Well, ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... give Uncle Sam de name of Shadrock. When he reach Uncle Aleck, he 'low: 'I adds to your name Aleck, two fine names, a preacher's and a scholar's, Porter Ramsey.' 'Bout dat time a little runt elbow and butt his way right up to de front and say: 'Marse Henry, Marse Henry! I wants a big bulldozin' name.' Marse Henry look at him and say: 'You little shrimp, take dis then.' And Marse Henry write on de slip of paper: ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... their green. So bright and sunny was the morning that the late summer wore the air of spring. Cary stood still beside a log, huge and mossy, that lay beside the road. "Let us rest here a moment," he said, and, taking his seat, began to draw in the dust before him with the butt of his whip. "I do not remember seeing you that day. I did not know that you were ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... naturally suggest themselves again concern animals. Experience as interpreted by the English law has shown that dogs, rams, and bulls are in general of a tame and mild nature, and that, if any one of them does by chance exhibit a tendency to bite, butt, or gore, it is an exceptional phenomenon. Hence it is not the law that a man keeps dogs, rams, bulls, and other like tame animals at his peril as to the personal damages which they may inflict, unless he knows or has notice that the particular animal kept by him has the abnormal ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... milk the whayish part, in eggs wee observe the white, will totally freez, the yelk with the same degree of cold growe thick & clammy like gumme of trees; butt the sperme or tredde hold its former body, the white growing stiff that is nearest it.... Egges seem to have their owne coagulum within themselves manifested in the incrassations upon incubation.... Rotten egges will not bee made hard by incubation or decoction, as being ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... adjectives to Judas Maccabeus as to Jesus; and even St. Luke, who makes Jesus polite and gracious, does not make him meek. The picture of him as an English curate of the farcical comedy type, too meek to fight a policeman, and everybody's butt, may be useful in the nursery to soften children; but that such a figure could ever have become a centre of the world's attention is too absurd for discussion; grown men and women may speak kindly of a harmless creature who ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... between him and home with unexpected vivacity. We swung in the ruts, we shook like jellies on the merciless patches of broken stones, and Croppy stimulated the pace with weird whistlings through his teeth, and heavy prods with the butt of his whip in the region of ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... But at last I found that he wanted me to give him a white shirt, which I accordingly did. The boy was so fond of his new dress, that he went all over the ship, presenting himself before every one that came in his way. This freedom used by him offended Old Will, the ram goat, who gave him a butt with his horns, and knocked him backward on the deck. Will would have repeated his blow, had not some of the people come to the boy's assistance. The misfortune, however, seemed to him irreparable. The shirt was dirtied, and ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... entitled, perhaps, to such familiarity, but the solemn title of "chief clerk" is far too stiff and formal for that soul of good-heartedness striving in vain to hide behind a bluff exterior—"Eddie," I say, blew a last cloud of smoke from his lungs to the ceiling, tossed aside the butt of his cigarette, and motioned to me to take the chair beside ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... way it was burning," he said. "Though I can't see what object anyone could have, and I'm inclined to think a passing cow puncher—not one of your crowd but some one else—may have flipped a cigarette butt into the grass where it ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... black man clothed in white raiment? Our footman is warned—Beware then of bye and crooked paths that lead to death and damnation; the way to heaven is one, still there are many well-beaten bye paths that butt or shoot down upon it, and which lead to destruction. To prevent vain and foolish company from calling you out of the path, or from loitering in it, say, I am in haste, I am running for a prize; if I win I am made, I win ALL; if I lose ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... also came off with very doubtful honours from a wrestle with the uncombative Martyr; who is perfectly clear (and so are we, let us add) that scientific men are not the men for his purpose. Of course, he is the butt of "utter and acknowledged ignorance", and of "the most gross and foolish statements", and of "the unjust and dishonest", and of "the press-gang", and of crowds of other alien and ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... back an' sit down," was the Secretary's advice, "Rosie meant you're out of parliamentry order. We got a motion on the table an' it's too late for you to butt in on it. This ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... to speak. "Of course you won't think I'm trying to butt in, Mr. Denny, but there's a rule that the camp can call on all its people in an emergency. The first year the camp opened we had a bad fire here and every kid in the place was set to work. After that they made a rule. Sometimes things have to be done in a hurry. ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... with his fore-finger, himself looking the very picture of well-satisfied sagacity. We said nothing, but leaving the eloquence to him, followed him up to Edgerton's chamber. I struck the door thrice with the butt end of my whip, then called his name, but without receiving any answer. Endeavoring to look through the key-hole, I discovered the key on the inside, and within the lock. I then immediately conjectured the truth. William ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... anything!" Lance stood leaning against the wall by the stove, his arms folded, the fingers of his left hand tapping his right forearm. He did not know that this was a Lorrigan habit, born of an old necessity of having the right hand convenient to a revolver butt, and matched by the habit of carrying a six-shooter hooked inside the trousers band on ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... not left in this honourable but comparatively safe seclusion, and many years later, in 1874, all his plays and poems as known were issued by themselves in Mr. Pearson's valuable series of reprints. Since then Glapthorne has become something of a butt; and Mr. Bullen, in conjecturally attributing to him a new play, The Lady Mother, takes occasion to speak rather unkindly of him. As usual it is a case of ni cet exces d'honneur ni cette indignite. Personally, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... man jabbed the spike of his pole in, and they all lifted together, and the butt end of the log slipped a little ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... Means 'lowed Bud must want to have their barns burnt like some other folkses had been. Fer his part, he had sense enough to know they was some people as it wouldn't do to set a body's self agin. And as fer him, he didn't butt his brains out agin a buckeye-tree. Not when he was sober. And so they managed, during Bud's confinement to the house, to keep him well supplied with all ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... come cantering hastily up, reckless of parallels with John Gilpin, and only anxious to be in time to help me out at the halting-place; but more than once only coming in when the beefsteaks were losing their first charm, and then good-humouredly serving as the general butt for his noble horsemanship. Did any one fully comprehend how much pleasanter our journey was through the presence of one person entirely at the service of the others? For my own part, it made an immense difference to have one pair of strong arms and dextrous well-accustomed hands always ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... down on the edge of the mate's bunk, close against and facing the tiny table, he noticed the butt of a revolver just projecting from under the pillow. On the table, which hung on hinges from the for'ard bulkhead, were pen and ink, also ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... outpost, 'Bauchop's Hill,' and other Turkish positions. The native Maoris entered into the charge with great dash, making the darkness of the night hideous with their wild war cries, and striking terror into the hearts of the Turks with the awful vigor with which they used their bayonets and the butt end of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... word," Mr. Penzance commented, and his amiable fervour quite glowed, "I like that queer young fellow—I like him. He does not wish to 'butt in too much.' Now, there is rudimentary delicacy in that. And what a humorous, forceful figure of speech! Some butting animal—a goat, I seem to see, preferably—forcing its way into a group or closed ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... capsized over it—everything, in short, tending to confirm my original impression that the brig had been on her beam-ends. I looked into the coppers, and found them empty. Then I went to the scuttle-butt, but it also was so nearly empty that I did not care to use the small remainder of water in it. There were no more casks on deck, so I concluded that the ship's stock of water was kept below, most probably in tanks. And the thought ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... man brought the butt of the gun down with full force on Elaine's head. Only her hat and hair saved her, but ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... muscles seemed benumbed, as the huge head swayed from side to side and mesmerised him with its uncanny power. The gun almost dropped from his nerveless fingers. But with a fierce effort he regained the mastery of himself, brought the butt to his shoulder, and ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... frequently retired to weep over deficiencies which it was too late to repair. The wits of Paris seized upon these occasional developments of the want of mental culture as the indication of a weak mind, and the daughter of Maria Theresa, the descendant of the Caesars, was the butt, in saloon and cafe, of merriment and song. Maria was beautiful and graceful, and winning in all her ways. But this imperfect education, exposing her to contempt and ridicule in the society of intellectual men and women, was not among the unimportant elements which conducted to her ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... close up to the Captain, and crying "Don't shoe him, Alekper! Do nothing for him: here's news, my masters! What new prophets for us are these unwashed Russians?" The Captain was a brave man, and thoroughly understood the Asiatics. "Away, ye rascals!" he cried in a rage, laying his hand on the butt of his pistol. "Be silent, or the first that dares to let an insult pass his teeth, shall have them ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... than his huge wolf-dog, which never left his side. It was only on the morning of the third day, that we discovered something calculated to diminish our confidence in our new comrade. This was a number of lines and crosses upon the butt of his rifle, which gave us a new and not very favourable insight into the man's character. These lines and crosses came after certain words rudely scratched with a knife-point, and formed a sort of list, of which the following ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... not half done!" cried Serge, poking him in the ribs with the butt end of his crook. "Get up, will you, or I'll make the other fellows stand you in a corner ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... one time she had had one eye tied up for a week. A Mr. Winters was once passing along the street and saw one of the boys whipping the slave girl with a cowhide. Whenever she turned her face to him he would hit her across the face either with the butt end or small end of the whip to make her turn around square to the lash, in order that he might get a fair blow at her. A Mr. Say had noticed several wounds on her person, chiefly bruises. Capt. Porter, the keeper of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... of the forehead over the eyes, too, as they rose above the strong lower face, were emphasised, looking truly as though, if tongue and pen failed to make a way, the shoulders could push one, and, if worse came to worst, the head would butt one. Next to Luther was a head of Christ; then in the same line, with nothing in the position or quality of the pictures to indicate that the subjects were any less esteemed, a row of royal personages, whose military trappings were made particularly plain. It was ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the coming harvest. But above all, it doubles its guard and shows its bayonets. At Nancy, a traveler sees[42131] "more than three thousand persons soliciting in vain for a few pounds of flour." They are dispersed with the butt-ends of muskets.—Thus are the peasantry taught patriotism and the townspeople patience. Physical constraint exercised on all in the name of all; this is the only procedure which an arbitrary socialism can resort to for the distribution of food and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in danger of losing the healing influence of a kindly touch—has become an uncourteous monster of 35 heads and 3 appendices—I see no early end of it. The British Foreign Office has a lot of lawyers in its great back offices. They and our lawyers will now butt and rebut as long as a goat of them is left alive on either side. The two governments—the two human, kindly groups—have retired: they don't touch, on this matter, now. The lawyers will have the time of their lives, each smelling the blood ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... manner in which he distributed his patronage. In short, they were discontented with the share they received of the loaves and fishes, and thus the target of their adulation during the summer of hope, became the butt for their abuse in ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... it," said Dan, sticking the butt of his cane-pole in the mud. The fish slipped through his wet fingers, when Chad passed it to him, dropped on the bank, flopped to the edge of the creek, and the three boys, with the same cry, scrambled for it—Snowball falling down on it and clutching ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... tired, but these words renewed her strength, and her fingers clutched more firmly the butt of the revolver. Curly was fully aware that the girl was becoming wrought up to a high pitch of excitement, and he regretted that he had told her anything about Dan. What might not this girl do? he asked ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... glorious old castle dates from 1764, when it was burnt by lightning. It is built of red stone. If I live, I hope to visit this place again, and make a thorough exploration of this stupendous ruin. It is here, in a cellar, that the largest wine butt in the world is found, and it will contain eight hundred hogsheads. It has long been empty, however. I never longed to follow a river more than I do this same Neckar—it is so clear, and all my glimpses ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... place, to which he assented. It was now impossible for Harry to regain his place at the tree, and when it fell he acted and looked like a conqueror, and Harry patted him on the back as a token of his good work. A section of the butt of the tree was cut off, and loaded on the truck, and dragged to the sawmill. The end had to be squared off, and Chief insisted on doing this, the use of the exceedingly novel tool being the greatest pleasure, evidently, that he ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... number of birds in his trap, he will let a pair of them loose so that they may go on breeding. Women are not permitted to take any part in the work of hunting, but are confined strictly to their household duties. A woman who kicks her husband's stick is fined Rs. 2-8. The butt end of the stick is employed for mixing vegetables and other purposes, but the meaning of the rule is not clear unless one of its uses is for the enforcement of conjugal discipline. A Pardhi may not swear by a dog, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... to lay a finger on me, Binet, you would give me the only provocation I still need to kill you." Andre-Louis was as calm as ever, and therefore the more menacing. Alarm stirred the company. He protruded from his pocket the butt of a pistol—newly purchased. "I go armed, Binet. It is only fair to give you warning. Provoke me as you have suggested, and I'll kill you with no more compunction than I should kill a slug, which after all is the thing you most resemble—a slug, Binet; a fat, slimy body; foulness without ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... was exceedingly annoyed to find that Damie, though no one knew why, had become the general butt of all the joking and teasing in the village. She took him sharply to task for it, and told him he ought not to tolerate it; but he retorted that she ought to speak to the people about it, and not to him, for he could not stand up against it. But that was not to be done—in fact, Damie was secretly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... a butt, as a butt should be strod, I gallop the brusher along; Like a grape-blessing Bacchus, the good fellow's god, And a sentiment give, or ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... around the crown. A jacket of dark red velvet with broad brass buttons enclosed his strong shoulders and body, but his costume was finished off with trousers, leggings and moccasins of tanned deerskin. Will saw the butt of a pistol and the hilt of a knife peeping ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... in blasphemy, nor be the butt of an assembly; be not moody in an alehouse, and never forget ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... the sixth and seventh centuries, but never, to my knowledge, with any of a later age. They may, in fact, be considered as characteristic appendages, or accompanying features, to the ecclesiastical structures of those times. There is one at Rathmichael, near Dublin, where there is the butt of a round tower. I have seen many of them in various states of preservation, and I think all were about 4 feet both in breadth and height. They were, however, never arched, but roofed with large flags, laid horizontally, and their upper surface level with ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... Horace, and Goethe's 'Erl-Koenig.' After I had got through these, I allowed myself a more general range among everything that I could remember, both in prose and verse. In this way, with an occasional break by relieving the wheel, heaving the log, and going to the scuttle-butt for a drink of water, the longest watch was passed away; and I was so regular in my silent recitations that if there was no interruption by ship's duty I could tell very nearly the number of bells by ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... go from his brows while slowly the red seeped into his bronzed cheeks. For the first time in her life she saw him staggered by the shock of surprise, held hesitant and uncertain. For a little there was never a movement of his rigid muscles; one hand rested upon the butt of his revolver, the other was closed upon the stack of gold pieces. When at last he found his tongue it was ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... and in this respect the thickness of material employed is slightly in excess of standard practice. Another advance on standard practice is in the riveting of the circular seams, these being lap-jointed and double riveted. All longitudinal seams are butt-strapped, inside and outside, and secured by six rows of rivets. Manholes are only provided for the front heads, and each front head is provided with a special heavy bronze pad, for making connection to the stop and check ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... chiefly to the perception of the senses. For although the "jocular" part, originally subordinate, had been increased, it took so rude a form that the ludicrous was not always easily distinguished from the humorous. The Fool was a strange mixture of both, varying from a mere idiot and butt to a man of genius, far superior to his masters. He made shrewd remarks, and performed senseless antics, the city fool, on Lord Mayor's day, was to jump clothes and all into a large bowl of custard. To a certain extent he generally corresponded with his name in having some mental weakness ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... was stupid enough to talk and think about nothing but her husband; and when she went to Stow, and left the Don alone in one corner of the great house at Bideford, what could he do but lounge down to the butt-gardens to show off his fine black cloak and fine black feather, see the shooting, have a game or two of rackets with the youngsters, a game or two of bowls with the elders, and get himself invited home to ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... in Local Elections—Parnell succeeds Butt as President of the Irish Organisation ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... two brigades I was ordered to ride back quickly to Heth's headquarters, report the condition of affairs, and bring back his instructions. With a brusque manner, he said, "Tell General Pettigrew not to butt too hard, or he'll butt his brains out." I translated his command into politer terms, and we started again toward Gettysburg, knowing that Heth would follow with the other four brigades ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... whose only merit, if such it can be called, is the open disclaiming of any thing like honour or principle. And after having been a patron of such a set of wretches, you will end by becoming, according to circumstances, the object of their vulgar abuse, or the butt of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... snare the thoughtless rabbit; Break the next-door neighbour's pane; Cultivate the smoker's habit On the not-innocuous cane; Leave the exercise unwritten; Systematically cut Morning school, to plunge the kitten In his bath, the water-butt. ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... understand that I wished to get to where Arthur was. It was necessary to move very cautiously, for fear of slipping off into the water. We could not tell, indeed, whether the butt-end or the boughs of our tree had caught in the floating island; all we could see was a dark mass near us, and a few branches rising up towards the sky. I was afraid, however, that if we did not make haste we might be again separated from it ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... sailing out of the Irish ports laden with food reaped by the starving Irish. On the quays of Galway the unhappy people wailed as they saw their harvests borne away from them, and were admonished by the butt-ends of British muskets, the British Government meantime passing Relief measures which provided employment for hordes of English officials and Irish understrappers, and pauper-relief for those who surrendered their manhood and their property—the cost of this relief, like ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... diving to the right, breaking his fall with the butt of his auto-carbine, rolling rapidly toward the cover of a rock, and as he did so, the thinking part of his mind recognized what was wrong. The tank-tracks had ended against the vine-grown side of the ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... under, to the dome of the sky over, for no vessel of earth and sky is too large for the air-colour to fill. Thirty, forty, and more miles of eye-sweep, and beyond that the limitless expanse over the sea—the thought of the eye knows no butt, shooting on with stellar penetration into the unknown. In a small space there seems a vacuum, and nothing between you and the hedge opposite, or even across the valley; in a great space the void is filled, and the wind touches the sight like a thing tangible. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... himself, that he could have ever imagined acquiring merit in such company by exploiting an experience which should have been sacred to him. How could he have been so shabby? He was justly punished in the humiliating contrast between being the butt of these poor wits, and the hero of an incident which, whatever its real quality was, had an august character of mystery. He had recognized this from the first instant; he had perceived that the occurrence was for him, and for him ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... being crammed into the barrel over a charge of a couple of ounces of powder. On our inquiring why it was so heavily charged, the man told us with much naivete, that it was to kill nine men, illustrating the method by which this wholesale destruction was to be accomplished, by planting the butt on his hip and whirling the muzzle from right to left in a horizontal direction across us all, and telling us very pleasantly that if he were to fire we should all fall from the scattering of the different ingredients contained in the blunderbuss; had we not an instant ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... both sides. Tim had to tell how he had slipped himself out through the window, narrow as it was, and how, thanks to an old water-butt and some loose bricks in the wall, he had scrambled down like a cat, and made off as fast as his legs would carry him to the place where he had ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... the slope towards the Ashley valley. "Father always has them do that, so the seeds from the old trees will seed up the bare ground again. Gosh! You'd ought to hear him light into the choppers when they forget to leave the seed-pines or when they cut under six inches butt diameter." ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... my train; s'pose I'll have to be a-goin'; good-bye; cum down and see me some time if you kin, ev'ry one of ye; cum down about apple-butter time and jist butt in—good bye. ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... it out by butting our heads together. Very well, said the Ghoul, only wait a little until I can make me a pair of horns like you. So the goat waited, and away went the Ghoul to make her horns. She made two horns of dough and dried them in the sun until they were hard, and then came to "butt" with the goat. At the first shock, when the goat butted her with her horns, the horns of dough broke all to pieces; then the goat butted her again in her bowels and broke her in twain, and out jumped Sunaisil and Rabab, frisking and leaping and ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... she would not let me—Miss O'Shane, I shall not forget myself again—amuse yourself with being as capricious as you please, but not at my expense; little as you think of me, I am not to be made your butt or your dupe: therefore, I must seriously beg, at once, that I may know whether you wish me to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Duhobret, a disciple whom Durer had admitted into his school out of charity. He was employed in painting signs and the coarser tapestry then used in Germany. He was about forty years of age, little, ugly, and humpbacked; he was the butt of every ill joke among his fellow disciples, and was picked out as an object of especial dislike by Madame Durer. But he bore all with patience, and ate, without complaint, the scanty crusts ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... hair that I have." Words that command our thought—but yet it seems to us the speaker feels better than he knows. Why then did his heart quicken when one Friday night we passed the window of that Galician Jew, the erstwhile butt of many a jest between us, our college second-hand clothes man, and saw the flicker of his Sabbath candles? No flicker within the home of a brown-haired man would move him so. And even while he is speaking to us, though the length of our acquaintanceship is short, we detect an ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... the more readily that his Emir, he could see, regarded the most exquisite of dragomans simply as a standing joke. They laughed together at his superstition and his boastfulness. But their butt was really serviceable in small ways, knowing where to hire good horses at the lowest price, and pointing out in the course of their rides objects of interest of the very existence of which Iskender had ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... ask for the loan of one of the donkeys, and to start back toward Jerusalem. But I had not more than thought of it when men's footsteps pattered on the yard dung, and an indubitable rifle-butt ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... that. It was sprung, and there was a goose's quill stickin' in it. Now, I leave it to you if a wild goose ain't too smart to go in a trap. And if he did, he couldn't get a feather caught by the butt end, ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... box wide open and stuffed full of coloured rags. At the edge of this box there lies a great wooden doll, which, so far as mutilation is concerned, bears a strong resemblance to the finest Greek sculpture, and especially in the total loss of its nose. Near it there is a little chair, and the butt end of ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... then for the first time discovered that he had brought down the daughter of the intendant of the forest. There was no time to be lost, so Edward carried her into the stable and left her there, still insensible, upon the straw, in a spare stall, while he hastened to alarm the house. The watering-butt for the horses was outside the stable; Edward caught up the pail, filled it, and hastening up the ladder, threw it into the room, and ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... wynd to the left, he led my grandfather along between two dykes, till they were come to a house that stood by itself within a fair garden. But instead of going to the door in an honest manner, he bade him stop, and going forward he whistled shrilly, and then flung three stones against a butt, that was standing at the corner of the house on a gauntrees to kep rain water from the spouting image of a stone puddock that vomited what was gathered from the roof in the rones, and soon after an upper casement was opened, ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... of the new engine. There were many scenes of violence and excitement, and the new horror of all-night sittings became familiar to the House of Commons. Throughout the struggle Parnell showed equal audacity and coolness, and acquired a masterly knowledge of parliamentary forms. Mr. Butt, the Irish leader, disapproved of this development of the active or obstructive policy, but his influence quickly gave way before Parnell's, and in May, 1879, he died. The year before, Parnell had ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... my grandmother's cat, who, after living a blameless life for upwards of eleven years, and bringing up a family of something like sixty-six, not counting those that died in infancy and the water-butt, took to drink in her old age, and was run over while in a state of intoxication (oh, the justice of it! ) by a brewer's dray. I have read in temperance tracts that no dumb animal will touch a drop of alcoholic liquor. My advice is, if you ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... glare was truly awful. Our people told us, that these formidable animals frequently upset canoes in the river, when every one in them was sure to perish. These came so close to us, that we could reach them with the butt-end of a gun. When I fired at the first, which I must have hit, every one of them came to the surface of the water, and pursued us so fast over to the north bank, that it was with the greatest difficulty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... one of the guests, a seemingly unconscious, stolid Scotchman named Johnstone, with sneers and sarcasms which the Scotchman seemed to disregard or take in good part. On the next morning, however, Townshend's victim, enlightened by some friend as to the way in which he had been made a butt of, became belligerent and sent Townshend a challenge. Various opinions have been expressed of Townshend's action in the matter. He has been applauded for good sense. He has been reproached for cowardice. Certainly Townshend did not, would not fight his challenger. It required a great deal of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... this practice, at least, I am safe in attributing the rarity, if not the positive absence, with the Indian, of that unhappy condition of bow-leggedness, of not too slight prevalence with us, and which renders its victim often a butt for not ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... only now and then surrounds us in the horror of a nightmare—what a haggard eye you would have rolled over your reluctant shoulder towards the house on Beretania Street! Had you gone on; had you found every fourth face a blot upon the landscape; had you visited the hospital and seen the butt-ends of human beings lying there almost unrecognisable, but still breathing, still thinking, still remembering; you would have understood that life in the lazaretto is an ordeal from which the nerves of a man's spirit ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now on the ground and rested his head on his long arms to think. It was so hard for him to think, and dry sobs kept choking him; but the wonderful fact slowly possessed him that he had served her. Pete, the stupid dwarf, butt of rough jokes and ridicule, had saved the bright being he adored. He understood now her fervent efforts to convey thanks to him. He felt dimly that the angel whose kindness had brightened his life for those few days had gone back to the ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... of heavy footfalls, and a thud as a rifle-butt descended to the earth again. Brown moved the lamp, and its beams fell on a rifleman who stood close beside him at attention—like a jinnee ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... by the great gates. The Squire saw at a glance that two couples were missing, and in two seconds had their names on his tongue. He was like a madman. He shouted to Jim to open the doors. "Better not, maister!" pleaded Jim. The old man cursed, smote him across the neck with the butt-end of his whip, and unlocked the doors himself. Jim, though half stunned, staggered forward to prevent him, and took another blow, which felled him. He dropped across the threshold of Chorister's kennel; the doors of all opened outwards, and ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... confess that there was a good deal of her to be vain of!) gave Vance a shove into a corner to get him out of her husband's sight; and in the corner Vance was glad enough to stay hid while the giant ate an enormous supper, and drank a whole cask of ale which his wife drew for him from a huge butt in ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... rapped the bar with the butt of his gun: "Silence in the court!" he roared. "An' what's more, you're fined one round of drinks for contempt of court." Taking a match from his pocket he laid it carefully upon the bar, and continued: "The plaintiff will take the stand in his own behalf. Gentlemen of ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... Mexicans thought of asking for quarter. One of the infantrymen, retreating before Dalzell's deftly handled sword, and fighting back with his rifle butt, retreated so close to the edge of the roof that, in another instant, he had fallen to the street below, ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... sh'u'd I put th' late laminted out on th' back porrch till th' veterinary comes t' take its pulse? I wonder what th' ixpriss company wants a veterinary t' butt into th' thing fer annyhow? Is it th' custom nowadays t' require a certificate av health fer every cat that 's as dead as that wan is before th' funeral comes off? Sure, I do believe th' ixpriss company has doubts av Mike Flannery's ability t' tell ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... had been set on to sharpening the weapon points as all that they were capable of, and had been bidden by Smallbones to turn and hold alternately, but "that oaf Giles Headley," said Stephen, "never ground but one lance, and made me go on turning, threatening to lay the butt about mine ears ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from a tall clump of mesquite, and the traveler saw the faint light reflected from a gun barrel pointed straight at his breast. He stopped his horse, but did not respond to the other summons; instead, his fingers closed quickly over the butt of his revolver. ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... wounds, but the years seemed to bring to James Buchanan no surcease of sorrow. He was always under the cloud of that misunderstanding, and during his long political career, the incident frequently served as a butt for the calumnies of his enemies. It was freely used in "campaign documents," perverted, misrepresented, and twisted into every conceivable shape, though it is difficult to conceive how any form of humanity ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... a time had been a frisky little lamb, Diddie's special pet; but now he was a vicious old sheep, who amused the children very much by running after them whenever he could catch them out-of-doors. Sometimes, though, he would butt them over and hurt them, and Major Waldron had several times had him turned into the pasture; but Diddie would always cry and beg for him to be brought back, and so Old Billy was nearly always ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... Miss Dimpleton burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, so loud, that a fat man, who was walking before her, carrying a dog under his arm, turned round quite angrily, believing himself to be the butt. Miss Dimpleton, resuming her composure, made a half-courtesy to the stout person, and pointing to the animal under his arm, said: "Is your dog ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... in the midst of all his deficiencies, it appeared, was liked by the men, although he was the butt of the whole company; being esteemed by them as next of kin to a natural, though of a peculiar kind—a talking natural. This fancy of theirs was stoutly resisted by the love-sick swain, but the regimental logic prevailed; for, whatever they could do, with masterly dexterity, he could ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... smiled wearily. "Let's go and see the men at drill," he remarked. "We've got a corporal here who's A1 at instruction." As we passed, the sentry brought his right hand smartly across the small of the butt of his rifle, and, seeing the Major behind us, brought ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... of Captain Lorrimer sagged, and his whisper came out in jerking syllables: "God Almighty!" Then Blondy went for his gun, and Vic waited with his hand on the butt of his own, waited with a perfect, cold foreknowledge, heard Blondy moan as his Colt hung in the holster, saw the flash of the barrel as it whipped out, and then jerked his own weapon and fired from the hip. Blondy staggered but kept himself from falling by gripping the edge of the ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... the Mayor looked blue; So did the Corporation too. For council-dinners made rare havoc With Claret, Moselle, Via-de-Grave, Hock; And half the money would replenish Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish. To pay this sum to a wandering fellow With a gypsy coat of red and yellow! "Beside," quoth the Mayor, with a knowing wink, "Our business was done at the river's brink; We saw with our eyes ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... when the latter's work calls for the process, despite the pretensions of modern criticism that it must not be criticised. Although to buffet an anonym is to beat the air, still the very effort does good. A well-known and popular novelist of the present day was a favourite butt for certain journalists who, with the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... seen us; for as soon as we came near enough to be seen, some arrows were shot, and poor old Friday was wounded, though not dangerously. But our men gave them no time, but running up to them, fired among them three ways, and then fell in with the butt-ends of their muskets, their swords, armed staves, and hatchets, and laid about them so well that, in a word, they set up a dismal screaming and howling, flying to save their lives which way ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... But in a week he was back once more, as he had realised immediately what a distorted account he had received as to the state of things in Prague, where all he found ready for him was a mere handful of childish students. These admissions made him the butt of Rockel's good-humoured chaff, and after this he won the reputation among us of being a mere revolutionary, who was content with theoretical conspiracy. Very similar to his expectations from the Prague students were his presumptions with regard to the Russian ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... He fell dead, without a groan. The other Creek attempted to escape, while the other Choctaw snapped his gun at him repeatedly, but it missed fire. They then pursued him, overtook him, knocked him down with the butt of their guns, and battered his head until he also was motionless in death. One of the Choctaws, in his frenzied blows, broke the stock of his rifle. They then fired off the gun of the Creek who was killed, and one of them ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... and death, whether real or assumed, was the thing wanted. Here, at least, were two superiors who did not seem to consider the situation very serious. The young soldier shifted his rifle to the other shoulder, and grasped the butt with ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... the order from any position in the manual, the motion next to the last concludes with the butt of the piece about 3 inches from the ground, barrel to the rear, the left hand above and near the right, steadying the piece, fingers extended and joined, forearm and wrist straight and inclining downward, all fingers of the right hand grasping ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... with his legs apart, bent a little at the knees, as if he intended to make a jump. His right hand was near the butt of his gun, his fingers were clasping and unclasping, as if he limbered them for action. Taterleg slipped up behind him on his toes, and jerked the gun from Jim's scabbard with quick and sure hand. He backed away with it, presenting it with determined mien as Jim turned on him and ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... pretty cheeky, sir, for me to butt in here," replied Amy, with a smile, "but it's rather important, sir, and—and if anything's to be done about it it'll have to be ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... big as the place my old mis' hit me. She took a bull whip once—the bull whip had a piece of iron in the handle of it—and she got mad. She was so mad she took the whip and hit me over the head with the butt end of it, and the blood flew. It ran all down my back and dripped off my heels. But I wasn't dassent to stop to do nothin' about it. Old ugly thing! The devil's got her right now!! They never rubbed no salt nor nothin' in your ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the minute he sees you," cautioned Carson, his own revolver loose in the belt under his coat, his hard fingers like talons gripped about the butt. "Keep your eye peeled, Bud. Better cool off a speck before you tie into him. You're too mad, I tell you, for straight, ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... his meaning, snatched a rifle from beside one of the bodies, and with the butt of it began pounding frantically upon the side of the cave ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... about 1594, was educated at Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford; was a master at Magdalen School, the Free School at St. Albans, and at Westminster, and Professor of Greek at Oxford under the Commonwealth. He died 1670. Wood characterises him as a butt for the wits and a flatterer of great men, and notes that he was always called by the name of Doctor Harmar, though he took no higher degree than M.A. But in 1632 he supplicated for the degree of M.B., and Dr. Grosart's note—"Herrick, no doubt, playfully transmuted 'Doctor' into ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... said Francis, laughing, as he thought of those used by the paviors; and holding the mallet perpendicularly, he struck with the butt-end, first one stone, and then another, until at length the pavement was completed! It was solid, even and clean, and Francis, repeating in truth, "Where there's a will, with God's help, there's a way," gave thanks in his heart to that good heavenly Father, who gave ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... to die sword in hand, making a tomb for his body of his enemies on the field of battle, than to be hated of his own and poniarded by the hands of his nearest and dearest, or to die of poison or of drowning in a wine-butt." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the inmate of the chamber was heard drawing back a table, then the butt of a gun sounded upon the floor, and the ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... Blake?" I thought in an agony of uncertainty, but the hazard followed quick upon the thought, and bang, bang, went my two barrels. At the same time the Sikh dafadar, Gopal Singh, with all the characteristic bravery of this magnificent race, ran in and beat the animal about the head with the butt-end of Blake's shot-gun, which he ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... I } humble, poor, and lowly born, He The meanest in the port division— The butt of epauletted scorn— The mark of quarter-deck derision— Have } dare to raise { my } wormy eyes Has his Above the dust to which you'd mould { me him In manhood's glorious pride to rise, I am } an Englishman—behold { me He ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... these vessels, as I afterwards learned, was that no stated allowance of anything was made. Even the water was not served out to us, but was kept in a great scuttle-butt by the cabin door, to which every one who needed a drink had to go, and from which none might be carried away. No water was allowed for washing except from the sea; and every one knows, or should know, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... him a hundred thousand francs or some such small trifle? But Pache, an insignificant little fellow with a head running up to a point, who had come to them from some hamlet in the wilds of Picardy, received the other's raillery with the uncomplaining gentleness of a martyr. He was the butt of the squad, he and Lapoulle, the colossal brute who had got his growth in the marshes of the Sologne, so utterly ignorant of everything that on the day of his joining the regiment he had asked his comrades to show him the King. And although ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... The Regent comes from Mass. Guards, butt them on the toes—way there! give room! Prick ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... has had another momentous consequence. It has brought the Nationalist or Parnellite party into friendly relations with the mass of English Liberals. When the Home Rule party was founded by Mr. Butt, some fifteen years ago, it had more in common with the Liberal than with the Tory party. But as it demanded what both English parties were then resolved to refuse, it was forced into antagonism to both; and from 1877 onward (Mr. Butt ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... dining-room sat a group of anglers. They looked jovial fellows, and Dickson would fain have joined them; but, having been fishing all day in the Lock o' the Threshes, they were talking their own talk, and he feared that his admiration for Izaak Walton did not qualify him to butt into the erudite discussions of fishermen. The landlord seemed to think likewise, for he drew back a chair for him at the other end, where sat a young man absorbed in a book. Dickson gave him good evening, and got an abstracted reply. The young ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... am saying may not apply to nut growing. Foresters grow trees for the wood crop, with nuts as a by-product. The first 16 feet of trunk or the butt log is his main interest. It should be completely free of limbs, knots, and other defects for at least 16 feet. You can use the logs above the butt-cut but they usually ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... jabbed the spike of his pole in, and they all lifted together, and the butt end of the log slipped a little ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... man shot through the head or heart lies as if he were in a deep slumber; insomuch that when you gaze upon him you experience little else than pity. But of these, many had met their deaths from bayonet wounds, sabre cuts, or heavy blows from the butt ends of muskets; and the consequence was, that not only were the wounds themselves exceedingly frightful, but the very countenances of the dead exhibited the most savage and ghastly expressions. Friends and foes lay together in small groups of four or six, nor was it difficult to tell ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... he so much feared, the cold steel? The momentary hesitation ended the debate, for the Guard was almost upon him. Quickly he prepared for the shock, and, parrying the Hun's first thrust, he gave him the upward stroke with the butt of his gun; but the Hun kept coming, and he quickly brought his gun down—his second stroke cutting the head with the blade of his bayonet. The Prussian reeled but was not finished, and as he came again our friend pricked him in the left breast with the point of his bayonet ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... high as they can in the tallest tree. Meanwhile the other men gather gypsum, pound it fine, and throw it into a water-hole. This the Mura-muras see, and at once they cause clouds to appear in the sky. Lastly, the men, young and old, surround the hut, and, stooping down, butt at it with their heads, like so many rams. Thus they force their way through it and reappear on the other side, repeating the process till the hut is wrecked. In doing this they are forbidden to use their hands or arms; but when the heavy logs ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... seven-thirty, and while Morris examined the mail, Abe took up the Daily Cloak and Suit Record and scanned the business-trouble column. There were no failures of personal or firm interest to Abe, so he passed on to the new-business column. The first item caused him to gasp, and he almost swallowed the butt of ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... friend. He told the mate and some of the passengers that he had been in a great many fights, but that was the first time he was ever whipped. He said he "whipped himself when he hit my head; but when I gave him that butt, he thought he had been struck with a bar of iron." He told them they did not fight that way out where he lived, and he did not think it was fair. The mate told him everything was fair in a rough-and- tumble fight. ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... when, in a jiffey, there cam' sic a blast, an' a reek fit to smore ye, oot o' the bit fire, an' the shop was fu' o' reek, afore ye could hae pitten the pint o' ae thoom upo' the pint o' the ither. 'Preserve's a'!' cried Rob; but or he could say anither word, butt the house, scushlin in her bauchles, comes Nancy, rinnin', an' opens the door wi' a scraich: 'Preserve's a'!' quo' she, 'Robert, the lum's in a low!' An' fegs! atween the twa reeks, to sunder them, there was nothing ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... upon a comedy did fit, As elephants bring forth: and thy blots And mendings took more time, than fortune plots; That such thy draught was, and so great thy thirst, That all thy plays were drawn at Mermaid[1] first: That the King's yearly butt wrote, and his wine Hath more right than those to thy Cataline. Let such men keep a diet, let their wit, Be rack'd and while they write, suffer a fit: When th' have felt tortures, which outpain the gout; Such as with less ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... shee not in frennshe said 'Per ma fey, beau Sire, I wyll gladlie bee engagyd to ye, for itt is ye fashion to bee betrothed, but do not talke of marryage, since I woulde not have folks thinke I am of age to marrye!' Ah, Sainte Marye! butt shee was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... days earlier, and for the first time, in Odette's eyes. It was after dinner at the Verdurins'. Whether it was because Forcheville, aware that Saniette, his brother-in-law, was not in favour with them, had decided to make a butt of him, and to shine at his expense, or because he had been annoyed by some awkward remark which Saniette had made to him, although it had passed unnoticed by the rest of the party who knew nothing of whatever tactless allusion it might conceal, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Bullmer, and her first act when the dog-shores had been knocked away was a bull charge down the launching slip, resulting in the bursting of a hawser, the washing over of a boat and the drowning of two innocent spectators; her next was an attempt to butt the Eddystone over in a fog, and, being unbreakable, she might have succeeded only that she was going dead slow. She drifted out of the Bullmer line on the wash of a law-suit owing to the ramming by her of a Cape boat in Las Palmas harbour; engaged herself in the fruit ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... his twelve sons in double military rank, "I fought under good King Henriot, and can play at sword and pistol as well as the worthy 'ligueurs';" and shaking his head he leaned against a post, his knotty staff between his crossed legs, his hands clasped on its thick butt-end, and his white, bearded chin resting on his hands. Then, half closing his eyes, he appeared lost in recollections of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... like a right-angled triangle, with a parallelogram below its base; the hypothenuse or head of the sail is secured to a yard, like an enormous fishing-rod; the halyards are secured to it about a third of the way from the butt-end, and it is hoisted close up to the head of the mast. A tackle brings down the lower end of the yard to the deck, and serves to balance the lofty tapering point, while the sheet is secured to ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... bate though, but not till after there was a desperate fight on both sides. I was tould that Denis Kelly that day knocked down five-and-twenty men in about three-quarters of an hour; and only that long John Grimes hot him a polthoge on the sconce with the butt-end of the gun, it was thought the Orangemen would be beat. That blow broke his skull, and was the manes of his death. ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... (especially oak) than in conifers. In typical heart shake the centre of the hole shows indications of becoming hollow and radial clefts of varying size extend outward from the pith, being widest inward. It frequently affects only the butt log, but may extend to the entire hole and even the larger branches. It usually results from a shrinkage of the heartwood due probably to chemical changes in ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... wasn't I?" demanded Tony. "Only that fool Chris had to butt in. We got these here bags of doubloons, as I says, without havin' to dig for 'em—oncet we had found the cave, which it's no thanks to old Washtubs we ain't looking for it yet. We got these here bags right out of the fists of a skeleton. Most of him was under a rock, which ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... the ground assigned to our hundred. Andrews and I took possession of one side of the ten feet nearest the butt. Other boys occupied the rest in a similar manner. One of our boys had succeeded in smuggling an ax in with him, and we kept it in constant use day and night, each group borrowing it for an hour or so at a time. It was as dull as a hoe, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... silver-mounted bridle and spurs, silk neckerchief, and flat-brimmed hat of the style now made common by the Boy Scouts. His shirt was flannel, and his heavy roping saddle studded with silver conchas. He was belted with heavy cartridges, and a holster strapped down to his leg showed the butt of a six-shooter polished by ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... that he intended to do his part of the killing, but says that in his excitement his pistol went off prematurely and narrowly escaped wounding McMurdy; that Knight then shot one man, and with the butt of his gun brained a little boy who had run up to him, and that the Indians then came up and finished killing all the sick and wounded. McMurdy testified that Lee killed the first person in his wagon—a woman—and also shot ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... of the explosion had cleared away I saw Lieverle lying outstretched at the foot of the rock, and the woman fainting in the arms of the young man. Sperver, pale with concentrated rage and excitement, and eyeing the young baron darkly, dropped the butt of his gun to the ground, his features discomposed, and his eyes half-hid ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... new fervor by each writer. The destruction of images, the question of the real presence in the sacrament, justification by faith, and free will were disputed. Above all the Bible was lauded in the new translation, and the priests continued, as before, to be the favorite butt ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... as a butt should be strod, I gallop the brusher along; Like a grape-blessing Bacchus, the good fellow's god, And a sentiment give, or a song, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... from a belt worn loose resting upon the left hip and hanging low down on the right hip so that none of the weight came upon the abdomen. This was typical, for the cowboy was neither fancy gunman nor army officer. The latter carries the revolver on the left, the butt pointing forward. ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... out. Watch took charge of him at once, with an air of the noblest patronage, lying on his frozen fleece, and licking all his face and feet, to restore his warmth to him. Then fighting Tom jumped up at once, and made a little butt at Watch, as if nothing had ever ailed him, and then set off to a shallow place, and looked for something ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... talk. I heard the greetings of old friends, and their minute details of neighborhood affairs, their delightful jokes and Munchausen-like reports of tracts of timber-pines ever so many feet through at the butt. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... they examined the water-butt. It was new, and very solidly constructed for its office. If anything had been wanting to decide them, this eminently practical barrel would have turned the scale. A bargain was promptly struck, the month's rent was paid upon the nail, and about an hour later Finsbury brothers might ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he got a thousand pounds, which he spent or lost in three weeks, or, to be more exact, in nineteen days, for he was back begging on the twentieth. Then he was given a lodge to keep, exactly as he had feared upon the island; and he still lives, a great favourite, though something of a butt, with the country boys, and a notable singer in church ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cavalry stables, standing gable ends to the north, like so many companies in close column, and at the sixth of these, farthest from the bluff whereon stood the barracks and quarters, they stopped and banged at the door. No answer—even when the sentry came to their aid and hammered with the butt of his carbine. They went round and rattled at the window of the sergeant's room. Still no response, and at their beck the sentry yelled for the corporal-of-the-guard, who had followed ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... war struck the land! Why the barefooted band It just nailed up that door: and the very next day, With master for Cap'en, went marchin' away; And Bally the butt of the whole Wabash band. But he bore with it all, yet once firmly said, "When I get back home, I'm agoin' ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... would have fought if they had seen us; for as soon as we came near enough to be seen, some arrows were shot, and poor old Friday was wounded, though not dangerously. But our men gave them no time, but running up to them, fired among them three ways, and then fell in with the butt-ends of their muskets, their swords, armed staves, and hatchets, and laid about them so well that, in a word, they set up a dismal screaming and howling, flying to save their lives which way ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... under this charge alleged that Captain Wells did violently and without just cause or provocation assault First Lieutenant P.H. Breslin "by furiously striking and hitting him (Lieutenant Breslin) upon the head with a hickory stick, the butt end of a billiard cue, and did continue the assault (upon Lieutenant Breslin) until forced to desist therefrom by First Lieutenant Carl Veitenhimer, Fourth United States Infantry, thereby endangering the life of Lieutenant Breslin and disgracing himself (Captain Wells) as an officer ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... discharged at him, had been loaded with two balls, and both taking effect, crippled his arm a good deal. Two savages immediately ran towards him; and he, towards the door; and just as he was in the act of entering it, one of them had approached so closely as to strike at him with the butt end of his gun. The breech came first in contact with the facing of the door, and descending on his head, seemed to throw him forward into the house, and his wife closing the door, no attempt was made by the savages to force it open. Still, however, they did not feel secure; and as ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... mind," he persisted. "I—I made sure you'd know why I didn't—send you any word or—or anything. But if you didn't see it the right way, I've got to tell you now. It was because—of course, it was because—I just didn't dare butt in. I was afraid you'd feel, if I had the cheek to write a note, or follow up and speak to you in the hotel, that I was—kind of takin' advantage of what was an accident—my luck in gettin' a chance to do a little thing for you. A mighty small thing; 'twouldn't have been visible except ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... hedge, I've remembered that the Son of God when on the earth to teach us the sweet lesson of charity, 'had not where to lay his head.' The lesson he came to teach, you certainly have not learned, or you would never have made my poverty and my misfortunes the butt of your scoffings." ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... she's been on my hip through thick and thin, stranger. Three years she's shot close an' true. There ain't a butt in the world that hugs your hand tighter. There ain't a cylinder that spins easier. Shoot? Lad, even a kid like you could be a killer with that six-gun. What will you lay ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... difficult to cull language from a seditious speech more pertinent to the charge than that quoted by the attorney-general from the speech of Mr. O'Brien on the 15th of March. He was ably defended by Mr. Butt, an eloquent queen's counsel. The jury could not agree, and by the consent of the attorney-general they were discharged. It was not expected that the jury would agree in a verdict; there was a determination among the disaffected ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of construction is this: Open the trench to the depth required, and about 12 inches wide at the bottom. Lay into this poles of four or five inches diameter at the butt, leaving an open passage between. Then lay in brush of any size, the coarsest at the bottom, filling the drain to within a foot of the surface, and covering with pine, or hemlock, or spruce boughs. Upon these ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... undischarged. Two were fired—one, aimed at Bob Harvey, did not wound him, or at any rate only slightly, and Ayrton, profiting by the momentary retreat of his adversaries, rushed towards the companion-ladder to gain the deck. Passing before the lantern, he smashed it with a blow from the butt of his revolver. A profound darkness ensued, which favored his flight. Two or three pirates, awakened by the noise, were descending the ladder at the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... while the spare baggage was neatly piled along the walls of the central apartment. Thurstane's squad was quartered in one of the two outer rooms, and Coronado's squad in the other, each man having his musket loaded and lying beside him, with the butt at his feet and the muzzle pointing toward the wall. One sentry was posted on the roof of the building, and one on the ground twenty yards or so from its salient angle, while further away were two fires which partially lighted up the ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... she heard the soldier assigned to their home bang on the door with the butt of his rifle, fled to the kitchen, where she stood listening and watching. She nearly cried out when the soldier thrust the bayonet of his rifle at her father, and all the resentment of her race at such injustice rose up ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... some of the ridges and on crossing a large flat creek I observed two new trees or shrubs (they are both) from one I obtained some seeds like beans, and rather a nice tree; the other, when large, at a distance looks like a shea-oak, having a very dark butt and long, drooping, dark-green, narrow leaves, and did not appear to have any seeds at present. Started at 7.17 till twenty-two minutes to 10, nine miles, on a bearing of from 100 to 105 degrees; at 8.18 sighted a large timbered creek, ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... in order to wreak vengeance on their destroyers. He, however, did not seem to relish my interpretation of this very singular event, and, in fact, was inclined to resent what he called my ill-timed jesting; but the story spread, and our poor friend became for some time afterwards the butt and laughing-stock ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... dreams are over, your cunning plans are circumvented, your ambitious hopes are crushed for ever, you are blighted in the very spring of your life. Oh, may you never die! May you wander for ever, the butt of the world's malice; and may the slow moving finger of scorn point where'er you ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Parliament. Likewise to arrest the person of Dame Mary Woodley, widow, suspected of harbouring and concealing traitors:" and he advanced to lay his hand upon her. Walter, in an impulse of passion, rushed forward, and aimed a blow at him with the butt-end of the fishing-rod; but it was the work of a moment to seize the boy and tie his hands, while his mother earnestly implored the soldier to have pity on him, and excuse his thoughtless ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... alder bushes, and smoking his pipe. "You don't mean that the angler is there," exclaimed I. "Yes, I do though," replied mine host, "and see, he has just got a bite." Sure enough the sedentary sportsman put forth one of his hands just as these words were uttered, and grasping the butt of a willow wand, seemed to give it a slight hitch in the air; but no results followed. It was quietly laid aside again, and ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... to say, in the witty words of one of Cibber's comedies, "There is no arguing with Johnson, for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... of the school to butt in?" warned Jess. "Then keep quiet, can't you? Much taffy you'll get if Rachel catches us. Your only chance is to lie low, ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... sort of super-man towering over the minor magicians of his day. Contemporaries, however, take him less seriously and represent him rather as an expert charlatan whom the wits of the salons made the butt of pleasantries. His principal importance to the subject of this book consists, however, in his influence on the secret societies. According to the Memoires authentiques pour servir a l'histoire du Comte de Cagliostro, Saint-Germain was the "Grand Master of Freemasonry,"[446] and ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... on the north coast of Africa and capital of the eastern half of the Ottoman province of Bengazi or Barca. Situated below the eastern butt of Jebel Akhdar on a small but rich deltaic plain, watered by fine perennial springs, it has a growing population and trade, the latter being mainly in fruits grown in its extensive palm gardens, and in hides and wool brought down by the nomads ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... mine; <"Pastor est tui Dominus."> You find In this the pleasant pasture of our life Much you may eat without the least offence, Much you don't eat because your maw objects, 880 Much you would eat but that your fellow-flock Open great eyes at you and even butt, And thereupon you like your mates so well You cannot please yourself, offending them; Though when they seem exorbitantly sheep, You weigh your pleasure with their butts and bleats And strike the balance. Sometimes certain fears Restrain you, real checks since you find them so; ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... Themistocles. Whom did they make better? Nay, did not Pericles make the citizens worse? For he gave them pay, and at first he was very popular with them, but at last they condemned him to death. Yet surely he would be a bad tamer of animals who, having received them gentle, taught them to kick and butt, and man is an animal; and Pericles who had the charge of man only made him wilder, and more savage and unjust, and therefore he could not have been a good statesman. The same tale might be repeated about Cimon, Themistocles, ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... between the docks on the Thames and Camden Town, will enable a grocer in Manchester to have a hogshead of sugar or tobacco sent in answer to a letter by return of post, at a saving in expense which may be imagined from the fact, that it costs more to cart a butt of sherry from the London Docks to Camden Town, than to send it by rail all the way ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... especially after the money had been restored, continued to believe that he had, for a short while, been the butt of Richard's sense of humor, whereas Richard, on his side, was convinced that Moncharmin had amused himself by inventing the whole of the affair of the Opera ghost, in order to revenge himself for ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... a squad at a certain point where the spies were supposed to have hidden a quantity of petrol. The place in question was close to a rifle-butt. Men were detailed to guard all roads leading to the marsh, and to allow all traffic, whether motor-cars, carts, or pedestrians, to pass unchallenged. The sentries were on no account to show themselves, except to hold up everything and everyone ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... a fashionable private one to learn hog-Latin, hog-wash, and how much the neighbors are worth. Of course, the rich children are going to say that they're pushing little kids, but they've got to learn to push and to shove and to butt right in where they're not wanted if they intend to herd with the real angora billy-goats. They've got to learn how to bow low to every one in front of them and to kick out at every one behind them. It's been my experience ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... castle he identified as the cottage where he and Jenny had spent the summer; the bleary-eyed old peacock was the chicken he had dosed with cayenne pepper, hoping to cure its rheumatism; the pool with the white threads for sunlight was the water-butt into which Tom had fallen from the tiles—"those are the hairs out of his own old tail." The nymphs were Laura, Maggie, Emily, &c. Mike asked Lady Helen to come into the dancing-room, but she did not appear to hear, and her laughter encouraged Muchross ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... shots exploded before I could recover sufficient self-possession to loosen my hold of the butt. He fell without a word. I dropped the revolver and knelt by his side. I could tell he was dangerously wounded, and indeed I knew at that moment that nothing would save him. My pistol had been pointed in the region ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... moment of indecision before the plain, old-fashioned, brick house in which Senator Winter lived on the Capitol Hill. It was a confession of abject weakness to decline her invitation to dinner with his brother and jump at the first chance to butt ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... preceptor prevent them, in their freer hours, from playing him all kind of little pranks. Petrea was especially rich in such inventions; and he was too kind, too much delighted with their pleasure, not willingly to assist, or even at times allow himself to be the butt of ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... shadow, came Aunt Isabelle, and bringing up the rear, General Dick, and the four young people; Leila in a pair of mismated slippers, hippity-hopping behind with Barry, and Porter assuring Mary that he knew he "hadn't any business to butt in to a family party," but that he ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... wild, like a change of the wind and tide in a storm, everything torn and confused. Then perhaps the word came to go over the top and at them. That was furious. That was fighting with men, for sure—bayonet, revolver, rifle-butt, knife, anything that would kill. Often I sickened at the blood and the horror of it. But something inside of me shouted: 'Fight on! It is for France. It is for "L'Alouette" thy farm; for thy wife, thy little ones. Will you let them be ruined by those beasts ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... Macarthy, abandoned by his troops, rushed into the midst of the pursuers and very nearly found the death which he sought. He was wounded in several places: he was struck to the ground; and in another moment his brains would have been knocked out with the butt end of a musket, when he was recognised and saved. The colonists lost only twenty men killed and fifty wounded. They took four hundred prisoners, seven pieces of cannon, fourteen barrels of powder, all the drums and all the colours of the vanquished ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... acquaintance with a certain San Francisco character, who had something of a name beyond the limits of the city, and was known to many lovers of good English. I had discovered a new slum, a place of precarious sandy cliffs, deep sandy cuttings, solitary ancient houses, and the butt-ends of streets. It was already environed. The ranks of the street lamps threaded it unbroken. The city, upon all sides of it, was tightly packed, and growled with traffic. To-day, I do not doubt the very landmarks are all swept away; but it offered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bee makes when besmeared with honey. I saw it alight in the partially closed wound and crawl home; then came others and others, little bands and squads of them, heavily freighted with honey from the box. The tree was about twenty inches through and hollow at the butt, or from the axe-mark down. This space the bees had completely filled with honey. With an axe we cut away the outer ring of live wood and exposed the treasure. Despite the utmost care, we wounded the comb so that little rills of the golden liquid issued from the root of the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... since the war, a fine young Irish lawyer, with a family name which once belonged to a king but which, since hard times hit the old sod, has been a butt for song and jest. ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... floor, and then hurrying to the door, he endeavoured to repulse the crowd who strove to enter with us. This he effected, though not without considerable difficulty, being once or twice compelled to have recourse to the butt of his musket, to drive back unauthorized intruders. I now looked round the room. It was rather scantily furnished: I could see nothing but some tubs and barrels, the mast of a boat, and a sail or two. Seated upon the tubs were three or four men coarsely dressed, like fishermen ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... crystal ball was pictured a vast underground workshop somewhat like the one in the great dome through which they had entered the copper-clad world. In place of the telescope there was the butt of a gigantic cannon-like tube that towered and was lost in the shadows of the vaulted chamber. Tom Farley, moving jerkily and staring with glazed unseeing eyes, was working there with a cube of the glittering ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... the Superfluous Mansion. It was not the first time that she had thus stood afar and looked upon it, like our common parents at the gates of Eden; and the young man had already had occasion to remark the lively slimness of her carriage, and had already been the butt of a chance arrow from her eye. He hailed her coming, then, with pleasant feelings, and moved a little nearer to the window to enjoy the sight. What was his surprise, however, when, as if with a sensible effort, she drew near, mounted the steps, and tapped discreetly at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to chuckle. Mr. Franklin Sharp was the principal of Central High, and was very much admired by all the pupils; while Professor Dimp, because of his harshness and his queer ways, was the butt of more ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... to seek and find The seeds of latent evil, which may spring— And springing, grow, till they destruction bring. Even so it was with WILLIAM'S carnal heart, Some mischief settled in its fleshy part. Nor was this all; he oft became the butt Of journeymen or 'prentice, who would glut Their hardened hearts by showing greatest spite 'Gainst him for following what he thought was right. Often that wicked youth, in wantonness, Would try all means to give him sore distress. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... Meerbeek a German soldier was seen to fire three times at a little girl 5 years old. Having failed to hit her, he subsequently bayoneted her. He was killed with the butt end of a rifle by a Belgian soldier who had seen him commit this ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... such being made. To this practice, at least, I am safe in attributing the rarity, if not the positive absence, with the Indian, of that unhappy condition of bow-leggedness, of not too slight prevalence with us, and which renders its victim often a butt for not very charitable ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... gunner burst out of the hatch with blood running down his face, shouting that the Richard was sinking, and yelling for quarter as he made for the ensign-staff on the poop, for the flag was shot away. Him the commodore felled with a pistol-butt. At the gunner's heels were the hundred and fifty prisoners we had taken, released by the master at arms. They swarmed out of the bowels of the ship like a horde of Tartars, unkempt and wild and desperate with fear, until I thought that the added weight on the scarce-supported deck would land us ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... move in a direct Line with your Pike upward, with your Left-hand near your Side, your Right-hand almost as high as you can reach, keeping your Left by a Depression, as low as you can, your Fingers being strait out; and so raise the Pike till the Butt-end come to your Hand, then place it between your Breast and Shoulder, keeping the Butt-end close, that it may be ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... old fellow, that Mister Lambton, as stiff and as cold as an icicle on a water-butt. Of a morning he was scarcely out of bed when he knocked at the door of the ladies' cabin in his brocade dressing-gown, and Miss Lambton must come out and hear him read the whole morning service of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... implying "That when St Thomas built this church the king of Meliapour gave him the duties of all merchandize imported, which was the tenths[170]." Going still deeper, they came to a hollow place between two stones, in which lay the bones of a human body with the butt and head of a spear, which were supposed to be the remains of the saint, as those of the king and disciple were also found, but not so white. They placed the bones of the saint in a China chest, and the other bones in another chest, and hid both under the altar. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... same moment there was a crash of rifle shots, and the men around him fell by scores. It seemed almost miraculous that he himself was untouched, but, before he had time to say another word, a huge German struck him with the butt-end at his revolver, and he felt himself hastily ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... Hubba hewed at the spear shaft, splintering it a little as the quick-eyed spearman swung it away from the blow. Then the butt was over Odda's left shoulder, and before one could tell that its swing aside had ended, forward flew the point, darting from left to right over Hubba's arm that had not yet recovered from the lost axe blow, and ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... hill, walking their horses, and sitting loosely in their saddles. Each trooper had his reins in one hand, his rifle barrel in the other, with the butt of the ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... with one hand, while I endeavoured to free myself with the other, I could not point the muzzle at my assailant, and my only way of clearing myself from his hold was by battering his head with the butt end of the weapon with my right hand, while he still clung round my left side. At last I disengaged myself, and he let go suddenly, and slipped instantly behind one of the thick acacia bushes, and got away, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Flushing effectually did, and Walcheren, with its ophthalmia and its agues, was no longer a place for a gentleman. Besides, I plainly saw that if there ever had been any intention of advancing to Antwerp, the time was now gone by; and as the French were laughing at us, and I never liked to be made a butt of, particularly by such chaps as these, I left the scene of our sorrows ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... custom, knocked at the door, the visitor was alarmed at this having never previously had any such experience and was startled. She was consequently the subject of hearty laughter on the part of her sister and the rest alike and she was made a butt for jests as one not at home in an official atmosphere because her husband had never proved his capacity in any position of authority. She took it terribly to heart, as women, from their littleness of soul, usually do, and would not give up her resentment until ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... asked in ever-growing bitterness, till so-called altruism became to him a mockery; and he took a painful delight in twisting his wisdom into the most fantastic forms, which he also made the sport and butt of formal logic; knowing always, in his own heart, the evil that was wrought in him by those bitter reflections that formed the refuge of his idle hours. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... he knocked Higgins over with the butt of a revolver, jumped out of the window, and vanished. By the time the butler got his senses back, Anisty, presumably, was miles away ... Mr. ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... Lucketts' Place there was a stool made by sawing off about six inches of the butt of a small ash tree. The bark remained on, and it was not smoothed or trimmed in any way. This mere log was Cicely Luckett's favourite seat as a girl; she was Hilary's only daughter. The kitchen had perhaps originally been the ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... unexpected speech, energetically delivered and accompanied by action illustrative of the various exercises referred to, Phil Squod shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery, and abruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his head, intended to express devotion to his service. He then begins to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... guards. It was even reported; and generally believed, that Farnese himself had been in imminent danger, that Schenk had fired his pistol at him unsuccessfully, and had then struck him on the head with its butt-end, and that the Prince had only saved his life by leaping from his horse, and scrambling through a ditch. But these seem to have been fables. The alarm at last became general, the dawn of a summer's day was fast approaching; the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... berte wyll everr brenn The frostie vygyls of a cloysterr'd nun, Insteade of faerie[10] love's effulgentt sonne! Ne moe with myne wyll carolynge[11] beatt hie, Gyve throbb for throbb, and sygh returne forr sygh, Butt bee bie nyghtt congeall'dd bie lethall feares, Bie daie ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... chafed itself smooth by such constant attrition, he became, to all seeming, calmer; but it was only the calm of a broken and weary heart. Such was Major Jones at the time, when, "suadente diabolo," it seemed meet to Fathers Mooney and D'Array to make him the butt of their raillery. At first, he could not believe it; the thing was incredible—impossible; but when he looked around the table, when he heard the roars of laughter, long, loud, and vociferous; when he heard his name bandied from one to the other across the table, with some vile jest tacked ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... BAYONET.—The rifle is the principal infantry weapon, and the British "Short-magazine {165} Lee-Enfield" rifle is the best rifle in action. A trained rifleman can fire 15 aimed shots in a minute, reloading with the butt in the shoulder and eyes on the mark. With the bayonet affixed the rifle is the principal weapon of close combat for delivering or repelling an assault, and in Night Assaults infantry ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... saw. Scarce was I recovered from my confusion, when I saw a knight galloping towards me. All in black was he, and he rode a black horse. Not a word we spoke, but we dashed against each other, and at the first encounter I was unhorsed. Still not a word spoke the Black Knight, but passing the butt-end of his lance through my horse's reins, rode away, leaving me shamed and on foot. So I made my way back to the castle, and there I was entertained again that night right hospitably, none questioning me as to my adventure. The next morning, when I rose, there awaited me a noble steed, ready saddled ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... to hear the band at St. James's play on a Sunday, when he went out to his uncle. He had seen Tom Ricketts, of the fourth form, who used to wear a jacket and trousers so ludicrously tight, that the elder boys could not forbear using him in the quality of a butt or 'cockshy'—he had seen this very Ricketts arrayed in crimson and gold, with an immense bear-skin cap on his head, staggering under the colours of the regiment. Tom had recognised him and gave him a patronising nod. Tom, a little wretch ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... side looked down on cobbled streets thronging with ordered ranks of men standing ready to move. Here and there a few officers spoke together, or a man gave his chum a light from his fag, or straps were tightened. A rifle butt rang on the pavement, and the adjutant's horse moved his feet restlessly. These men had no illusions as to what they would probably have to face; but none guessed that there lay ahead the most dreadful test of physical endurance which the old ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... prayers transgress which find defect or flaw In things foredoomed by Thy divine decrees, Yet wilt Thou modify, by slow degrees Or swift, good times or bad Thy mind foresaw: I therefore pray—I who through years have been The scorn of fools, the butt of impious men, Suffering new pains and torments day by day— Shorten this anguish, Lord, these griefs allay; For still Thou shalt not have changed counsel when I soar from hence to ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... Cannon suddenly became angry. He jammed his own cigarette butt into the ash tray, turned toward Spanding, and snapped: "Harry, just for the sake of argument, let's suppose that Bossard wasn't actually guilty. Let's suppose that the Constitution of the United States is really true—that a man isn't ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... tide. D'Iberville was up the hull and over the deck with the quiet stealth and quickness of a cat. One sword-blow severed the sleeping sentinel's head from his body. Then, with a stamp of his moccasined feet and a ramp of the butt of his musket, d'Iberville awakened the sleeping crew below decks. By way of putting the fear of God and of France into English hearts, he sabred the first three sailors who came floundering up the hatches. Poor old Bridgar came up in his nightshirt, hardly awake, both hands up in surrender—his ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... if my glance had not taken in at the same instant the figure of Rudge crouching obstinately on the edge of the curb where he had evidently posted himself in distinct refusal to come any farther. In vain his master,—for the well-dressed man before me was no less a personage than the whilom butt of all the boys between the Capitol and the Treasury building,—signaled and commanded him to cross to his side; nothing could induce the mastiff to budge from that quarter of the street where he felt ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... at him with the butt end of my whip, which missed his head, but fell on his shoulder. My horse started, he fired and missed, but sprung suddenly forward, and seized hold of the bridle. He had another pistol which he was preparing, imagining I should be more intimidated when I found him so ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... various devices of Kinch to entertain him. That young gentleman quite distinguished himself by the variety and extent of his resources. He devised butting matches between himself and a large gourd, which he suspended from the ceiling, and almost blinded himself by his attempts to butt it sufficiently hard to cause it to rebound to the utmost length of the string, and might have made an idiot of himself for ever by his exertions, but for the timely interference of Mr. Ellis, who put a final stop ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... consistency. In him was eminently illustrated the characteristic strength and weakness of English religion, which naturally comes out in that form of it which is called Anglicanism; that poor Anglicanism, the butt and laughing-stock of all the clever and high-flying converts to Rome, of all the clever and high-flying Liberals, and of all those poor copyists of the first, far from clever, though very high-flying, who now give themselves out as exclusive heirs of the great name of Catholic; ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the King granted him after his condemnation was to leave him the choice of his death; and he was privately drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Tower—a whimsical choice, which implies that he had an extraordinary passion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... was thoroughly and wholly upset, so much so that at first he could not speak. He went pale and paler while we stood talking it over, and crossed himself—he was a Catholic—furtively behind the water-butt. ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... its wetness, ready to drop over should his wife come forward. But she only threw the contents of her pail on the garden and retired again. She might have seen him had she looked. He remained standing where he was, listening to the trickle of rain in the water-butt. The hollow countryside lay beyond him. Sometimes in the windy darkness he could see the red burn of New Brunswick bank, or the brilliant jewels of light clustered at Bestwood Colliery. Away in the dark hollow, nearer, the ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... whom he may impart the delightful intelligence. A woman (with more or less skill) buries her secret away from her kind. For days and weeks past, had not this old Maria made fools of the whole house,—Maria, the butt of ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... eaten a good meal, and felt almost as low as the derelicts whom he had for companions. He would have enjoyed a smoke, but turned away as two men dove for a cigarette-butt; discarded ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... Englishman to avoid saying "by God," but this common incident in Moslem folk-lore appeals to the peoples who are constantly using the word Allah Wallah, Billah, etc. The Koran expressly says, "Make not Allah the scope (object, lit. arrow-butt) of your oaths" (chaps. ii. 224), yet the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... while the drift-wedge, or that with its point downward, was driven with a hammer. The whole of what remained above the upper surface of the stone was then cut off with a saw or chisel: and generally, a couple of thin wedges were driven very moderately at the butt-end of the stone; whose tendency being to force it out of its dove-tail, they would, by moderate driving, only tend to preserve the whole mass steady together, in opposition to the violent agitation that might arise ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... together. Among boys little tenderness is shown to personal defects; and the ridicule excited by poor Oliver's appearance was heightened by a peculiar simplicity and a disposition to blunder which he retained to the last. He became the common butt of boys and masters, was pointed at as a fright in the play-ground, and flogged as a dunce in the school-room. When he had risen to eminence, those who had once derided him ransacked their memory for the events of his early years, and recited repartees and couplets which had ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... both to the paper and the society. But if he was largely responsible for the fighting temper of the early movement, he, at any rate, never shirked his share of the fighting. His name was the butt at which all shafts were aimed. As Lot "seemed like one that mocked to his sons-in-law," so seemed the Parson to the most opposite sections of the British nation. As a friend wrote of him at the time, he "had at any rate escaped ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... was always well content to be the least observed of all observers, and felt happy in the security that here I should at least be left alone; that no perfect stranger would attempt to put me at my ease by making me the butt of his friendly and familiar banter; that no gartered duke, or belted earl (I have no doubt they were as plentiful there as blackberries, though they did not wear their insignia) would pat me on the back and ask me if I would sooner look a bigger fool than I was, or be a ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... and limbs bursting out of their ill-fitting clothes. There would be loud talking and laughter, rough jokes that would make her wince, compliments that would disgust her—they not knowing how to take her, nor she them. She would be wholly out of her place—a butt for impertinence—perhaps worse. And there would be a certain sense of dragging a lady from her sphere—of making free with the old house and ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... such as Clara Butt, Dream, Gretchen, La Tristesse, La Tulipe Noire, Mrs. Potter Palmer, Philippe de Commines, Psyche, Rev. Ewbank, Suzon, should be planted ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... sent eight shots scattering through the trees in the direction in which Tudor had disappeared. Wishing he had a shot-gun, Sheldon dropped to the ground behind a tree, slipped a fresh clip up the hollow butt of the pistol, threw a cartridge into the chamber, shoved the safety catch into place, and ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... herself?' 'Oh fie,' said he, 'that had not been to have acted Octavio to the life, but would have made a discovery.' 'Ah,' said she, 'that was your aim to have acted Octavio to the life, I believe, and not to discover my lady's constancy to your lord; but I suppose you have been sworn at the Butt of Heidleburgh, never to kiss the maid, when you can kiss the mistress.' But he renewing his caresses and asseverations of love to her, she suffered herself to be convinced of all he had a mind to have her believe. After this she could not contain any secret from him, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... not before this thought it a grave disadvantage that our street was unlighted. Our street was not drained nor graded; no municipal cart ever came to carry away our ashes; there was not a water-butt within half a mile to save us from fire, nor more than the one-thousandth part of a policeman to protect us from theft. Yet, as I paid a heavy tax, I somehow felt that we enjoyed the benefits of city government, and never looked upon Charlesbridge as in any way undesirable for residence. ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... feede upon.—And it is moste fittinge y^t I come backe to y^s my Journall (wherein I have not writt a Lyne these manye months) on y^e 1^st of Aprile, beinge in some Sort myne owne foole and y^e foole of Love, and a poore Butt on whome his hearte hath play'd ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... she is here to butt into our game!" Jimmie said, as the white planes disappeared. "She'll start when we start, an' stop when we stop, an' there won't be any getting away from her. How does she get into the air so quick after we cut loose? That's what I'd ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... gripped his revolver firmly in his hand and turned towards Craig's tent. There was something in the breathless stillness of the place, at that moment, which seemed almost a presage of coming disaster. Without knowing exactly why, Quest's fingers tightened on the butt of his weapon. Then, from the thick growth by the side of the clearing, he saw a dark shape steal out and vanish in the direction of Craig's tent. He came to a standstill, puzzled. There had been rumours of lions all day, but the Professor ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... seat in mingled fear and wrath. Was he to be the butt of those overbearing sophomores? He thought he could do nothing but hang on with all his might. The ascending student jumped upon the fourth bench and, reaching up, laid hold of Ken with no gentle hands. His grip was so hard that Ken had ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... was not slow to follow her, and as soon as the light was out lay down by her side, and taking her in his arms, without the least demur on her part, began, to solace himself with her after the manner of lovers; which experience—she knew not till then with what horn men butt—caused her to repent that she had not yielded to his blandishments; nor did she thereafter wait to be invited to such nights of delight, but many a time declared her readiness, not by words, for she had none to convey her ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... "Colt's Army," while I had a double-barreled shot-gun, loaded with buckshot. I was sitting on the double-tree, on the right side of the tongue, which was propped up with the neck-yoke. Stewart sat on the tongue, about an arm's length ahead of me, I holding my gun between my knees, with the butt on the ground. Stewart was getting off one of his stories, and, had about reached the climax, when I saw something running low to the ground, in among the stock. Thinking it was an Indian, on all fours, to stampede the animals, I instantly leveled my gun, and, as ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... labor the warriors bore the heavy tree forward, so that the larger end was against the side of the fort. Then, instead of using it as a battering ram, they lifted it higher until, with an exertion that must have been very great, it was raised even with the log wall. A combined effort rested the butt on the support, the trunk sloping downward, until the top reached the ground, probably ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... reticence and pose, was wholly free from solemnity, and when he heard or saw what was ludicrous was not afraid to laugh at it. Sir Robert Peel was an excellent hand at what our fathers called banter and we call chaff. A prig or a pedant was his favourite butt, and the performance was rendered all the more effective by his elaborate assumption of the grand seigneur's manner. The victim was dimly conscious that he was being laughed at, but comically uncertain about the ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... carried he might have been saved from a whole lot of trouble. Perhaps this might prove to be a valuable lesson to the boy. He could not help but see how smartly the others kept themselves from slipping off the narrow ridge of ground by planting their staves against some convenient stump, or the butt of a tree, anywhere but in the ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... to justify such being made. To this practice, at least, I am safe in attributing the rarity, if not the positive absence, with the Indian, of that unhappy condition of bow-leggedness, of not too slight prevalence with us, and which renders its victim often a butt for not very charitable or ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... large frame lurched closer. He wore a heavy gun and a knife in his belt. Also there protruded the butt of a pistol from the inside of his open vest. Allie felt the heat from his huge body, and she smelled the whisky upon him, and sensed the base, faithless, malignant animalism of the desperado. Assuredly, if he had any fear, it was not ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... whipped unmercifully for the smallest offences, and that before their mothers. A large proportion of the blacks have their shoulders, backs, and arms all scarred up, and not a few of them have had their heads laid open with clubs, stones, and brick-bats, and with the butt-end of whips and canes—some have had their jaws broken, others their teeth knocked in or out; while others have had their ears cropped and the sides of their cheeks gashed out. Some of the poor creatures have lost the sight of one of their eyes by the careless blows of the whipper, or by ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... in the ground—not carelessly, nor even in any hurry; but as a sportsman makes all snug, when for a time he leaves off casting. For instance, the end fly was fixed in the lowest ring of the butt, and the slack of the line reeled up so that the collar lay close to the rod itself. Moreover, in such a rocky place, a bed to receive the spike could not have been found without some searching. For a ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... the three young-tigers took to her teats as if 'to the manner born.' The poor Nanny screamed tremendously at first sight of them, but she soon got accustomed to them, and when they grew a little bigger, she would often playfully butt at ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Presently do you lean forward on to the table and appear to fall asleep. As I am in the corner, I will lean back and seem to go off also. Unless I am greatly mistaken this is a regular thieves' den. Keep one hand on the butt of a pistol. We will both keep awake for a time, and if nothing comes of it we will then watch by turns. It is clear that they suspect that we are not ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... skill has riot failed me," he cried. "We enter the Frankish firth. See, there is the butt of England!" ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... to the north-west, over an undulating country of varied character, now extending in fine downs and plains, now covered with belts of thick Bricklow scrub, with occasional ridges of open silver-leaved Ironbark forest. Among the latter was a rather stunted gum-tree, with a black scaly butt; it was very frequent, and greatly resembled the Moreton Bay ash. The numerous watercourses which I crossed, were all dry; and, when the approach of night compelled us to select a camping place, which ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... Crispin saw and heard, and in the misery of it all, he for the while forgot his own sorry condition, and left unheeded the pike-butt wherewith the Puritan at his ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... a moment without speaking. I suppose he has often been made fun of,—slighted in conversation, taken as a butt for people who thought themselves witty, made to feel as we may suppose a cracked piece of china-ware feels when it is clinked in the company of sound bits of porcelain. I never saw him when he was carelessly dealt with in conversation,—for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Lord and of Gideon!" shouted Gifted Gilfillan, nothing daunted. And he was proceeding to lay about him stoutly, when the pedlar, snatching a musket, felled him to the ground with the butt. The scattered Whig party hurried up to support their leader. In the scuffle, Edward's horse was shot, and he himself somewhat bruised in falling. Whereupon some of the Highlanders took him by the arms, and half-supported, half-carried ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... his fathers. Is not the anxious voting with black and white beans still going on down there? Who are the Priori in these months, eating soberly—regulated official dinners in the Palazzo Vecchio, with removes of tripe and boiled partridges, seasoned by practical jokes against the ill-fated butt among those potent signors? Are not the significant banners still hung from the windows—still distributed with decent pomp under Orcagna's ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... lay on the ground assigned to our hundred. Andrews and I took possession of one side of the ten feet nearest the butt. Other boys occupied the rest in a similar manner. One of our boys had succeeded in smuggling an ax in with him, and we kept it in constant use day and night, each group borrowing it for an hour or so at ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... increased courage to the attack. The Germans did not await them quietly but threw themselves on them, so that in many cases it came to a hand-to-hand fight, and serious work was done with bayonets and the butt-ends of rifles. At length the French began to retreat, and the Germans with loud "Hurrahs!" flung themselves after them. But the pursuit was soon abandoned, as they had to withdraw under the fire from the Talant and Fontaine positions, and then, after a short ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... his little pony's flank. With a neigh of pain the animal leaped forward. For a moment there was a tangle of striking hoofs and wriggling coils of the foiled reptile, while Charley leaning over in his saddle struck with the butt-end of his riding whip at the writhing coils. Though it seemed an eternity to the helpless watchers it was really only a few seconds ere the pony sprang away from its loathsome enemy and Charley with difficulty reined him in a few paces ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... confusion, when I saw a knight galloping towards me. All in black was he, and he rode a black horse. Not a word we spoke, but we dashed against each other, and at the first encounter I was unhorsed. Still not a word spoke the Black Knight, but passing the butt-end of his lance through my horse's reins, rode away, leaving me shamed and on foot. So I made my way back to the castle, and there I was entertained again that night right hospitably, none questioning me as to my adventure. The next morning, when I rose, ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... "that you can—and often do—drop a fishing-line out of the window into the sea when you are tired of playing the goldfish in the water-butt. We know that the owner of the house is a rotten shot, and that the stone balls from the balustrade are not at this moment where they ought to be. We know that aeroplanes as well as ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... up-end and start a very devil's dance. This was a diversion from the profitless discussion, and Kohokumu and I dipped our paddles and raced the little outrigger canoe to the dancing pole. Kohokumu caught the line that was fast to the butt of the pole and under-handed it in until a two-foot ukikiki, battling fiercely to the end, flashed its wet silver in the sun and began beating a tattoo on the inside bottom of the canoe. Kohokumu ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... persons. This tyranny was too bad. Papa was quizzed, mamma flattered, and the daughters' simplicity amused these young lordlings. Rebellion was whispered in the small ears of the Gay weathers. The little heads, too, of the Gay-weathers were turned. They were the constant butt, and the constant resource, of ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... BUTT. The human voice was given us for fish-hawking and encouraging football-players, not ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... contract. The external width of opening, measured at the wall-plate, averaged about 19 ft. for the 141/2-ft. circular sewer and 191/2 ft. for the 15-ft. sewer. The arch timber segments in the cross-section were 10 by 12-in. North Carolina pine of good grade, with 2 in. off the butt for a bearing to take up the thrust. They were set 5 ft. apart on centers, and rested on 6 by 12-in. wall-plates of the same material as noted above. The ultimate strength of this material, across the grain, when dry and in good condition, as given by the United States ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... thought she flashed up a heavy paw, caught the log by one end, and pulled the butt under her chest. The purchase thus gained enabled her to free the other paw—and in a few seconds more the weight of the fore part of her body was on the end of the log, forcing it down to the mud. Greedy as that mud was, it was yet incapable of engulfing a full-grown spruce timber ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... insisted upon having two rifles slung upon his back, so that both Professors were armed when he had made his transit. I came next, and tried hard not to look down into the horrible gulf over which I was passing. Summerlee held out the butt-end of his rifle, and an instant later I was able to grasp his hand. As to Lord John, he walked across—actually walked without support! He ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lad was listening to her fibs, the others were discussing which form of execution would be the most practical and the least dangerous. The Bull suggested a good butt with the horns; the Beech offered his highest branch to hang the little Children on; and the Ivy was already preparing a slip-knot! The Fir-tree was willing to give the four planks for the coffin and the Cypress the perpetual ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... be at leisure to court heraldic honors, when he knew himself to be embarrassed, or apprehended that he soon might be so. A man whose anxieties had been fixed at all upon his daily livelihood would, by this chase after the armorial honors of heraldry, have made himself a butt for ridicule, such as no fortitude could enable ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... expedited Norah's love-letter to a happy close. But when Dan took her place at the counter Isaac assured him, not without satisfaction, that "they were cliver and clane run out of all their writin' paper, barrin' it might be a sort of butt-ind of loose sheets left litterin' at the bottom of the drawer, and they that thick wid dust you could be plantin' pitaties in them, forby gettin' mildewed lyin' up in the damp ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... then." Without turning his head, his right hand unconsciously dropping close to the butt of the automatic, Van Horn commanded: "You fella Tambi. Fetch 'm lantern. No fetch 'm this place. Fetch 'm aft along mizzen rigging and look sharp eye ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... to go to a fashionable private one to learn hog-Latin, hog-wash, and how much the neighbors are worth. Of course, the rich children are going to say that they're pushing little kids, but they've got to learn to push and to shove and to butt right in where they're not wanted if they intend to herd with the real angora billy-goats. They've got to learn how to bow low to every one in front of them and to kick out at every one behind them. It's been my experience that it takes a ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... finally stood on his feet, unsteady on his legs, and tottering like one drunken. Then his mother nursed him, and as the new milk warmed his stomach he gained sufficient assurance of his footing to wiggle his tail and to butt the feverish caked udder with his velvety muzzle. After satisfying his appetite he was loath to lie down and rest, but must try his legs in toddling around to investigate this strange world into which he had been ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... the Porter went on calling the same commodity by sundry other names, but whatever he said they beat him more and more till his neck ached and swelled with the blows he had gotten; and on this wise they made him a butt and a laughing stock. At last he turned upon them asking, And what do you women call this article?" Whereto the damsel made answer, "The basil of the bridges."[FN159] Cried the Porter, "Thank Allah for my safety: aid me and be thou propitious, O basil of the bridges!" They passed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... listen to the graphic country talk. I heard the greetings of old friends, and their minute details of neighborhood affairs, their delightful jokes and Munchausen-like reports of tracts of timber-pines ever so many feet through at the butt. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... on the butt of an alleged cigar, into which he had stuck a sharpened match as a visible means of support, a boy who was probably not so old as he looked sat upon the curbstone at the corner, and claimed the world for his cuspidor. He was an ill-favored runt of a boy, with a sedate ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... reply. As he still came towards me, brandishing the knife, I drew my gun, and said, 'Stop, or I'll shoot!' He did not stop, and I fired; still he did not stop, so I fired again; and as he did not fall, I knocked him down with the butt of my gun. After he was down, I shot him twice ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... that fed about Ladon and the Erymanthian water and the ridges of Pholoe haunted by wild beasts, Lycormas son of Thearidas of Lasion got, striking her with the diamond-shaped butt of his spear, and, drawing off the skin and the double-pointed antlers on her forehead, laid them before the Maiden of ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... then! If you think I'm a buttinsky, then I'll just butt in! I don't know who your May Arnold is, but I know doggone good and well that you and her weren't talking about tar-roofing, no, nor about playing the violin, neither! If you haven't got any moral consideration for yourself, you ought to have some for your position in the community. The idea ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... mark or butt; the most conspicuous, owing to his being in advance of his men, and perhaps on account of his stature also, if "eg gawr," or "yggawr" ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... pistol, and with the butt loudly smote the planks of palm-wood. Within, the echoes rumbled dully, but ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... enough, Hobart," he said quietly, taking the chance as though it was the most natural thing in the world. "I am not hunting trouble in any way, or seeking to butt in where I am not wanted. Your guess as to my purpose in coming here is about right. I had no other object but to be of some service to this young lady. If I can talk with her a moment alone, and thus assure myself as ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... ewes, There the spotted goats browse, And the kids shall arouse In their madness of play; They shall butt, they shall fight, They shall emulate flight, They shall break with delight O'er the mountains away. And there shall my Mary With her faithful one tarry, And never be weary In the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... ship by the main chains, I was knocked back by the butt end of the sentry's musket, and falling on a thole pin of the boat, it entered my back near the spine, inflicting a severe injury, which caused me many years of subsequent suffering. Immediately regaining my footing, I reascended the side, and when on deck, was shot through ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... slap on the back, and the grand squire's lady to pat on the head, with a smiling gratulation on his young and fair repute; he, who had already learned so dearly to prize the sweets of an honourable name,—he to be made, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye, a mark for opprobrium, a butt of scorn, a jeer, and a byword! The streams of his life were poisoned at the fountain. And then came a tenderer thought of his mother! of the shock this would be to her,—she who had already begun to look up to him as her stay and support; he bowed his head, and the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... little circle now of which somehow I found myself the centre, and they were attacking us on all sides. Stephen got a knock on the head from the butt end of a gun, and tumbled against me, nearly upsetting me. As I recovered myself ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... and drives the butt of his spear into the earth, and throws himself into the saddle, and ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... in the trail leaning over the butt of his rifle, which evidently he was utilizing as a crutch. He was pale but smiling. His hands were bloody. A scarf had been bound tightly round his left leg just above the knee. The leg hung limp, and ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... history of the Conquest, we must doubt the history of all the miracles of the Church, for all of them rest on the like untenable grounds. I did not wonder at finding the country abounding in unbelief. Now that the fires of the Inquisition have ceased to burn, the priesthood are made the butt and laughing-stock of those who are educated. Still, the national mind does not run toward the pure Gospel, which is here unknown and prohibited, but to infidelity and socialism. A sincere Protestant can have no sympathy ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... the damp, musty smell of an empty house; stale beer; a mangy fur coat; Katzenjammer; false teeth; the criticism of Hamilton Wright Mabie; boiled cabbage; a cocktail after dinner; an old cigar butt; ... the kiss of Evelyn after the inauguration ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... who loved Lancelot better than any being in the world save one, promised that if I were willing, and seemed a lad of spirit, I should go along with Lancelot and himself to help build the colony at the butt end of the world. As the ship was to sail from Sendennis—that being Captain Amber's native place—he promised Lancelot that he would seek me out, and see if I pleased him, and if the plan pleased me. And I, on fire with the thought of getting away from Sendennis ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in themselves honest, useful, and even estimable, for which society has agreed to entertain a feeling of contempt. It is, for instance, very difficult to think of a curate as anything except a butt for satirists, or to be respectful to the profession of tailoring, although many a man for private pecuniary reasons is meek before the particular individual who makes his clothes. Yet the novelist and the playwright, who hold the mirror ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... unstrapping his sword, carefully wiped and cleansed his spear, which he stands on its iron butt in the corner. We all sit around the fire, on which turnips and rice are boiling and omelet is frying. All around the ceiling from the smoky rafters hang strings of large dried persimmons, almost as sweet and luscious as figs. These we munch while ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... construction is this: Open the trench to the depth required, and about 12 inches wide at the bottom. Lay into this poles of four or five inches diameter at the butt, leaving an open passage between. Then lay in brush of any size, the coarsest at the bottom, filling the drain to within a foot of the surface, and covering with pine, or hemlock, or spruce boughs. Upon these lay turf, carefully cut, as close as possible. The ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... service belonging to the Church of the Petits-Peres. He went with his meerschaum pipe that cost nearly sixty pounds, and he took a girl from the Palais-Royal. He was lucky, for he managed to escape, but they took me to the police station, belabouring me with the butt-end of their guns. Fortunately ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... opened. His fingers touched the butt of the Ramblin' Kid's revolver and began to close slowly over ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... powerful spring they are for moving the affections. Why then are not theatrical representations here so regulated, that the stage may conduce to the amelioration of morals? Instead of this, in most French comedies, the husband is generally made the butt of ridicule, and the whole plot often lies in his being outwitted by some conceited spark. Marriage, in short, is incessantly railed at in such a lively, satirical manner as to ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... his fingers closed instinctively on the butt of the revolver that he had placed within easy reach. Puzzled, he lay awake for a time in the darkness, but finally nothing further happening, he fell ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... the way to his sports hovercar and as soon as the two were settled into the bucket seats, hit the lift lever with the butt of his left hand. Aircushion-borne, he trod down ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... dynamics; seismometer, accelerometer, earthquake detector. V. give an impetus &c. n.; impel, push; start, give a start to, set going; drive, urge, boom; thrust, prod, foin[Fr]; cant; elbow, shoulder, jostle, justle[obs3], hustle, hurtle, shove, jog, jolt, encounter; run against, bump against, butt against; knock one's head against, run one's head against; impinge; boost [U.S.]; bunt, carom, clip y; fan, fan out; jab, plug *. strike, knock, hit, tap, rap, slap, flap, dab, pat, thump, beat, blow, bang, slam, dash; punch, thwack, whack; hit hard, strike hard; swap, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the butt of the half-smoked cigar from between his teeth, tossed it into the gutter, and pushing past Mr. ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... leaned over the side to seize the girl in his arms, Truxton King brought the butt of the heavy revolver down upon his skull. Brutus dropped across the gunwale with a groan, dead to all that was to happen in the next ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... so crude. They didn't have to be crude. They just let him butt his head against a stone wall. Everything he tried was blocked, or else it didn't lead anywhere. Like this Berlin Conference. It's a powder keg. Dad gambled everything on going there, forcing the delegates to face facts, to ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... depends more upon the training of the eye than is generally supposed, and I have often found particularly good shots to possess an almost telescopic vision. In the ordinary use of the rifle, the barrel is guided by the eye, but there are sportemen who fire with the butt of the gun at the hip. In this case, as in the use of the sling, the lasso, and the bolas, in hurling the knife (see Babinet, Lectures, vii., p. 84), in throwing the boomerang, the javelin, or a stone, and in the employment of the blowpipe and the bow, the movements of the hand and arm are guided ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... gasped, drawing back and putting one hand to her breast—while the other, I noticed, fell mechanically to the butt of a revolver swung to her waist. Her eyes were wide with surprise, as her lips were parted in fear and utter wonderment. Truly, she was the incarnation of girlhood standing ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... when she heard the soldier assigned to their home bang on the door with the butt of his rifle, fled to the kitchen, where she stood listening and watching. She nearly cried out when the soldier thrust the bayonet of his rifle at her father, and all the resentment of her race at such injustice ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... even larger than common. The bony buttresses of the forehead over the eyes, too, as they rose above the strong lower face, were emphasised, looking truly as though, if tongue and pen failed to make a way, the shoulders could push one, and, if worse came to worst, the head would butt one. Next to Luther was a head of Christ; then in the same line, with nothing in the position or quality of the pictures to indicate that the subjects were any less esteemed, a row of royal personages, whose military trappings were ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... stopped whirring for half an hour and I sat and ate my frugal meal, listening eagerly to the talk going on about me. Sometimes the girls made me the butt of their jests, for they were envious of me, because of my easy job, and hinted that I was not getting this snap for nothing. All of this I did not in the least understand, for I was not much more than ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... barrister, is passing through Gordon Square one December night when he suddenly comes across the dead body of a man of about forty years. To his horror he recognises it to be that of his friend, Sir Eustace Butt, M.P., who has been stabbed in seven places. Much perturbed by the incident, Roger goes home and decides to lead a new life. Hitherto he had been notorious in the London clubs for his luxurious habits, but now he rises at 7.30 every morning and ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... being deeper than common. I had a little conversation about it, with a man in the forechains, who thought the same thing. This man leaned over, in order to get a better look, when he called out that he could see that we had started a butt! I went over, immediately, and got a look at this serious injury. A butt had started, sure enough, just under the chains, but so low down as to be quite out of our reach. The plank had started quite an inch, and it was loosened as much as two feet, forward and aft. We sounded the pumps, as soon ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... seen it balled to a small, angry fist, brown and dangerous; he had seen it gripping the butt of a revolver, ready for the draw; he had seen it tugging at the reins and holding a racing horse in check with an ease which a man would envy; but never before had he seen it turned palm up, to his knowledge; and now, ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... dogs, and uttering angry cries, rushed at him. Frank stood his ground, and discharged the four remaining barrels of his revolver at the foremost animals. Two of these dropped, but the others who were only wounded sprang upon him. Frank struck out with the butt end of his pistol, but in ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... the shot were not able to penetrate, this had no other effect than to irritate and encourage them. Several stones were thrown at the marines; and one of the Erees attempted to stab Mr Phillips with his pahooa, but failed in the attempt, and received from him a blow with the butt end of his musket. Captain Cook now fired his second barrel, loaded with ball, and killed one of the foremost of the natives. A general attack with stones immediately followed, which was answered by a discharge ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... Wolfville,' explains Dave, 'is too small for all that name. Archibald Willingham De Graffenreid Butt! It shorely sounds like a hoss in a dance hall. But it's too long for Wolfville, an' Wolfville even do her best. One end of that name is bound to protrood. Or else it gets all brunkled up like along nigger in a short bed. However,' goes on Dave, as he notes the shorthorn lookin' a little dizzy, ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... with a stick. The Town Councillors did not interfere, and the rabble passed bawling by the Pack-horse. Long before it came the Emigrant had recognised the ungainly man. It was Dicky Loony, the town butt. He had chivvied the imbecile a hundred times in just the same fashion, yelling "Black Cat!" after him as these young imps were yelling—though why "Black Cat" neither he nor the imps could have told. But Dicky had always resented ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Saxon lunged, and Hubba hewed at the spear shaft, splintering it a little as the quick-eyed spearman swung it away from the blow. Then the butt was over Odda's left shoulder, and before one could tell that its swing aside had ended, forward flew the point, darting from left to right over Hubba's arm that had not yet recovered from the lost axe blow, and behind the shield's rim. That ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... a similar fate, when the victorious right advanced to its assistance, took the enemy in flank and rear, and divided the Austrian line. The infantry on both sides stood firm as a wall, and when their ammunition was exhausted, maintained the combat with the butt-ends of their muskets, till at last the Imperialists, completely surrounded, after a contest of three hours, were compelled to abandon the field. The generals on both sides had more than once to rally their flying ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... that she spoke, and on behalf of May's possible children. Dymchurch, looking back into years long before he was born, saw a beautiful maiden of humble birth loyally wooed and wedded by a romantic artist, son of a proud baronet. Of course she became the butt of calumny, which found its chief support in the fact that the young artist had sculptured her portrait, and indiscreetly shown it to friends, before their marriage. Hearing these slanderous rumours, she wished all ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... thrust the butt of my gun ahead of me, and moved it up and down and right and left, trying the inequalities of the ground. To make no sound required the very greatest care; a slip of an inch might ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... transmutin' process, concerning which you have discoursed so beautiful. But barrin' the shearin' of our wool, we are the mildest, most sheepish fellows you could imagine. I don't reckon now there is a man among us who could be induced to blat or to butt, under the most tryin' circumstances. My Mary's got a little lamb, and all the rist of the boys are lambs. But all the lambs are waned, and clusterin' round the milk pail. Ain't that touchin'? Come on, now, Ruben, ile up and edify us ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and cursed her insensibility, for half the night. How trivial I thought her! and how trivial her sex! A man might be an angel or an Apollo, and a mustard-coloured coat would wholly blind them to his merits. I was a prisoner, a slave, a contemned and despicable being, the butt of her sniggering countrymen. I would take the lesson: no proud daughter of my foes should have the chance to mock at me again; none in the future should have the chance to think I had looked at her with admiration. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The butt of scandal having been, 'Tis dreadful—ye agree, I hope— To pass with reasonable men For a fictitious misanthrope, A visionary mortified, Or monster of Satanic pride, Or e'en the "Demon" of my strain.(81) Oneguine—take him up ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... missiles from all quarters, and for the practical jokes which the license of the Carnival permits. In fact, his sad and contracted brow so ill accorded with the scene, that the revellers might be pardoned for thus using him as the butt of their idle mirth, since he evidently could not otherwise contribute ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to the other side!" Venting these and many similar specimens of the humour of Cockaigne, the apprentices, however, followed their quondam colleague, and elbowed their way into the crowd gathered around the competitors at the butt; and it was at this spot, commanding a view of the whole space, that the spectator might well have formed some notion of the vast following of the House of Nevile. For everywhere along the front lines, everywhere in the scattered groups, might be seen, glistening in the sunlight, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... questions; she went so far as to speak of painting, of music, of dancing—even of sculpture! She proved herself equally familiar with the pencil, with tunes, and with books, until Thaddeus was petrified by so much learning, and feared that he might become the butt of ridicule, and stammered like a little lad before his teacher. Luckily the teacher was beautiful and lenient; his neighbour guessed the cause of his perturbation, and shifted the talk to less deep and difficult subjects, to the cares and troubles ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... as he gains in power. In spite of envy, poets cling to poets and artists to artists. Genius, like a magnet, draws only congenial natures to itself. Had a well-bred and titled fool been admitted into the Turk's-Head Club, he might have been the butt of good-natured irony; but he would have been endured, since gentlemen must live with gentlemen and scholars with scholars, and the rivalries which alienate are not so destructive as the grossness which repels. More genial were the festivities of a feudal castle than any banquet between ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... place in almost all places, and was rigorously prosecuted against the meetings of Dissenters in general, though the brunt of the storm fell most sharply on the people called Quakers; not that it seemed to be more particularly levelled at them, but that they stood more fair, steady, and open, as a butt to receive all the shot that came, while some others found means and freedom to retire ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... late in October, 1786, the Merchant of St. Elphege sat at the pine dinner-table in his kitchen, opposite his wife, resting his wooden soup spoon on its butt on the table. The windows, both front and rear, were wide open, for one of those rare fragrant golden days of late autumn still permitted it. He was listening, with some of the stolid Indian manner, to his wife reading ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... dead," said the boatswain. "Carew took 'is gun away, and 'it 'im over the eye with the butt of it. Laid 'im out, same as you. They let the lass take 'im into 'is room and stay there to nurse 'im. I seen it, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... and easy, would suddenly become hasty and violent, and would break out into terrible explosions when a sudden annoyance set him beside himself; for instance, when he was the butt of some ill-natured trick, or when, in spite of the lucidity of his explanations, he felt that he had not been properly understood. Perhaps he inherited this from his mother, a rebellious, crotchety, somewhat fantastic person, by whose ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... away the butt of his cigar and did not light another at the moment. For a time he stood looking out at the black water, at the craft plying back and forth, their lights flashing. He stepped upon a little dock and started walking its length. After a time he came near ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... returned to the fallen tree. There he picked up one of the long branches in his mouth, grasping it near the butt, twisted it over his shoulder and started to drag it to the canal. When he reached the latter he entered the water and began swimming, still dragging the branch in the same way. Once more Old Mother Nature stopped him. "You've shown us how you cut trees and move them, so now ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... could not see the beautiful schoolgirl of sixteen, the blonde gipsy who had bent forward, cigarette in mouth, to his match, who had leaned back and blown rings to the moon above Drouva. Had she ever set the butt of a gun against her shoulder? Something in this woman's eyes made him suddenly feel as if he ought to leave her alone. Yet her arm still lay on his, and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... machine is so well known in our Wheat-growing districts that I need only remark that it is the same lately ridiculed by one of the great London journals as "a cross between an Astley's chariot, a treadmill and a flying machine," and its uncouth appearance has been a standing butt for the London reporters at the Exhibition. It was the ready exemplar of American distortion and absurdity in the domain of Art. It came into the field at Mechi's, therefore, to confront a tribunal (not the official but the popular) already prepared ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... although the "jocular" part, originally subordinate, had been increased, it took so rude a form that the ludicrous was not always easily distinguished from the humorous. The Fool was a strange mixture of both, varying from a mere idiot and butt to a man of genius, far superior to his masters. He made shrewd remarks, and performed senseless antics, the city fool, on Lord Mayor's day, was to jump clothes and all into a large bowl of custard. To a certain extent he generally corresponded with ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... unknown man was found head down in a water-butt outside a country bungalow. There was an ugly bruise on his forehead, and the provincial police who were investigating the case made up their minds that there had been ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... an earlier use of this word, as descriptive of a malt liquor, will be found than the one noticed by our correspondent; for it was only about 1722 that Harwood, a London brewer, commenced brewing this liquor, which he called "entire," or "entire butt," implying that it was drawn from one cask or butt. It subsequently obtained the name of porter, from its consumption ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... fourteen years My father taught me carpentry, his trade, And made me work with him. I seemed to be The butt for jokes and laughter with the men— I know not why. For now and then they'd drop A word that showed they knew my secrets, knew I had heard voices, knew I loathed the lusts Of women, drink. Oh these were sorry years, God was not with me though I sought ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... of a red, clawing hand that was closed around the thick butt of a tube of steel ... then down, and still down, he plunged into a bottomless pit of whirling, red ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... the overwhelmed Mrs. Macleuchar, totally exhausted at having been so long the butt of his rhetoric, "take back your three shillings, and make me ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... glad when Jennie Bruce spoke to her. She was just a little afraid of Jennie's sharp tongue; and yet she had never been the butt of any of the harum-scarum's jokes. Perhaps Jennie had spared Nancy because the latter was so much alone. The fun-loving one ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... him with the corner of his eye. Little by little he drew nearer and nearer to Salar, and waited till the youngster came to a part where the water was not at all deep. Then suddenly his Papa gave Salar a butt with his head. Down went Salar under the water, ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... vowed the carter, striking the iron with the butt of his whip, "if you do not open ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... fire. His hand was already on the butt of his pistol; but, glancing behind, he saw that pale appealing face, and with an effort restrained himself, calmly ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... function of such importance, he had failed to offer the people as evidence of his power a brilliant spectacle of some sort. The very fact that Adrian VI did not understand and appreciate this requirement of the Renaissance made him the butt of the Romans. ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... did not discover till he was within ten feet of him. His horse started, and wheeling suddenly round, threw M'Neal almost immediately under the bear, which started up instantly. Finding the bear raising himself on his hind feet to attack him, he struck him on the head with the butt end of his musket; the blow was so violent that it broke the breech of the musket and knocked the bear to the ground. Before he recovered M'Neal, seeing a willow-tree close by, sprang up, and there remained while the bear closely guarded the foot of the tree until late ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... became angry. He jammed his own cigarette butt into the ash tray, turned toward Spanding, and snapped: "Harry, just for the sake of argument, let's suppose that Bossard wasn't actually guilty. Let's suppose that the Constitution of the United States is really true—that a man isn't guilty ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Manton returned, breathing hard as though his pursuit of the missing Wagnalls had been very determined. The butt in Kennedy's fingers attracted his attention ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... Hardy being at William Morse his house, affirm that ye earth in ye chimny cornar moved and scattered on us. I was hitt with somewhat; Hardy hitt by a iron ladle; somewhat hitt Morse a great blow, butt itt was so swift none could tell what itt was. After, we saw itt ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... will he butt alike the just and the unjust, the fat and bloated German merchant nor the herring-gutted Yankee skipper, nor the bare—ah—um—legged Samoan, nor the gorgeous consul in the solar topee. Gone is the glory of Samoa with Billy MacLaggan. Goodbye ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... double-dashed bottle-suckers who put on condemned tin spurs and rode qualified mokes at the hiatused heads of forsaken Black Regiments. He was a rude man and a terrible. Wherefore the remnant took measures [with the half-butt as an engine of public opinion] till the rumour went abroad that young men who used the Tail Twisters as a crutch to the Staff Corps had many and varied trials to endure. However, a regiment had just as much right to its ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... brace must be blocked together at intervals, and When they are spliced,—a butt joint Should be used—and it should come in the centre of a panel. Below are given the dimensions of ...
— Instructions on Modern American Bridge Building • G. B. N. Tower
... she said, turning her head lazily toward him, "it isn't necessary for you to butt in on ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... allow himself to be deprived by vote of his authority, and proclaimed a public enemy to the Roman state. But Geminius no sooner arrived in Greece but he was looked upon as one of Octavia's spies; at their suppers he was made a continual butt for mockery, and was put to sit in the least honorable places; all which he bore very well, seeking only an occasion of speaking with Antony. So, at supper, being told to say what business he came about, he answered he would keep the rest for a soberer ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... hear the ravening snap of those jaws out in the darkness. It was sickening. His hand went to the Colt .45 at his belt, and he thrust his empty rifle butt downward into the snow. With the big automatic before his eyes he plunged out into the darkness, and from his lips there issued a wild yelling that could have been heard a mile away. With the yelling a steady stream of fire spat from ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... Paradise. What! This hope that had haunted him from boyhood, wafting from the pages of the holy books, was not then a shadowy splendor on the horizon's rim. It was a solidity, within sight, almost within touch. He himself might hope to sit in peace under his own fig-tree, no more the butt of the street boys. And the vague vision, though in becoming definite it had been transformed to earthliness, was none the less grand for that. He had always dimly expected Messianic miracles, but in that magic afternoon the plain words of the soldier unsealed his eyes, and suddenly he saw ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... her father—and a young one, and that none other, to Christina's infinite disgust, than the very Count Ericson whose acquaintance she had already made, and whom she infinitely and unappeasably disliked. He was the most awkward, stupid-looking young man she ever saw, and had furnished her with a butt for her malicious pleasantries ever since she had known him. He rose to lead her to her seat. "How different from Adolphus! If he is no better performer in the battle-field than at the supper-table, the King must be very ill off for soldiers. What can papa ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... and went on, but none of them noticed that Tom Ross, who was last, turned softly aside from the path, and then swung the butt of his rifle with all his might. But all heard the impact and the sound of a fall, and, as they whirled ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... country CHEESE, O Giles! Whose very name alone engenders smiles; Whose fame abroad by every tongue is spoke, The well-known butt of many a flinty joke, That pass like current coin the nation through; And, ah! experience proves the satire true. Provision's grave, thou ever craving mart, Dependant, huge Metropolis! where Art Her pouring thousands stows in breathless rooms, Midst pois'nous smokes and steams, and rattling ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... descent goes on our suffering wretch is gradually changing in appearance: the piggish element that is latent in most of us comes out in him; his morality is sapped; he will beg, borrow, lie, and steal; and, worst of all, he is a butt for thoughtless young fellows. The last is the worst cut of all, for the battered, bloodless, sunken ne'er-do-well can remember only too vividly his own gallant youth, and the thought of what he was ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... child into the state berth, the bewildered pilot cocked a pistol, and snatching a cutlass from the arm stand fixed to the butt of the mast which penetrated the cabin, he burst open the door with his foot, and rushed to the companion ladder. Barker had retreated to the deck, and for an instant he thought the way was clear, but Lesly ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... The man's face was an unhappy one, and he seemed to be the butt of his comrades, for they poured forth such a volley of good-natured ridicule on his appearance that Teddy looked from one to the ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... Sam de name of Shadrock. When he reach Uncle Aleck, he 'low: 'I adds to your name Aleck, two fine names, a preacher's and a scholar's, Porter Ramsey.' 'Bout dat time a little runt elbow and butt his way right up to de front and say: 'Marse Henry, Marse Henry! I wants a big bulldozin' name.' Marse Henry look at him and say: 'You little shrimp, take dis then.' And Marse Henry write on de slip of paper: Mendoza J. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... me for a ten-cent piece. Later he took it upon himself to pity the natives of India. "Heathens," he called them—this woolly one, whose race has been the butt of every comedy on the native stage since the beginning. And I turned and saw by the head upon his shoulders that he was a Yoruba man, if there be any truth in ethnological castes. He did his thinking in English, but he was a Yoruba negro, and ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... Georgie and Mary Lou," he told her, "always bluffing yourself. But you've got more brains than they have, Sue, and it'd give the whole crowd of them a hand up if you made a marriage like that. Don't think I'm trying to butt in," he gave her his winning, apologetic smile, "you know I'm as interested as your own brother could be, Sue! If you like him, don't keep the matter hanging fire. There's no question that he's crazy about you— everybody ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... south-east of this returned with a good supply of grain. The sepoys won't come; they say they cannot,—a mere excuse, v because they tried to prevail on the Nassick boys to go slowly like them, and wear my patience out. They killed one camel with the butt ends of their muskets, beating it till it died. I thought of going down disarming them all, and taking five or six of the willing ones, but it is more trouble than profit, so I propose to start westwards on Monday the 4th, or Tuesday the 5th. My sepoys offered Ali eight rupees to take ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... ask of what use weapons could be, situated as we were, when I saw Deschamps with a sudden movement jump up from her bed, her eyes blazing. With an involuntary cry in my throat I hammered the glass in front of us with the butt of my revolver, but it was at least an inch thick, and did not even splinter. Sir Cyril sprang from the ledge instantly. Meanwhile Rosa, the change of whose features showed that she divined the shameful trick played upon her, stood up, half-indignant, half-terrified. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... of Washington Benjamin Boyce, Duke University Louis Bredvold, University of Michigan John Butt, University of Edinburgh James L. Clifford, Columbia University Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago Louis A. Landa, Princeton University Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota Ernest C. Mossner, University of Texas James Sutherland, ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... consisted of a long tapering shaft or beam, pivoted at a short distance from the butt end on a pair of strong pyramidal trestles. At the other end of the shaft a sling was applied, one cord of which was firmly attached by a ring, whilst the other hung in a loop over an iron hook which formed the extremity of the shaft. The power employed to discharge the sling was ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... main-mast, and the ship made so much water that she could not be freed by four pumps assisted by bailing. On the 9th the wind became calm, but the sea continued so high that the ship, in rolling, opened all her upper works and seams, and started the butt ends of her planks, and the greatest part of her top-timbers, the bolts being drawn by the violence of the roll. In this condition, with additional disasters to the hull and rigging, they continued beating ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... lightly; it was the middle-aged man, full of strength and his own importance, who sometimes tried to raise objections, but it was getting late, and no time for fooling, so we drove our arguments home with a gun butt, and the man obeyed. The rearguard crossed in the dark, and by nine o'clock I was able to report to Colonel Kelly that everybody had arrived in camp, just as ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... he possibly have gone?" cried one, striking the butt-end of his pike heavily upon ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... York had rallied his broken infantry, and while they faced the English, he charged the latter in flank at the head of his company of horse-guards. Though thrown into disorder, they continued to fight, employing the butt-ends of their muskets against the swords of their adversaries, and in a few minutes several squadrons of French cavalry arrived to their aid. James was surrounded; and, in despair of saving himself by flight, he boldly assumed the character of a ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... at Dravot's feet and kisses 'em. 'Luck again,' says Dravot, across the Lodge to me, 'they say it's the missing Mark that no one could understand the why of. We're more than safe now.' Then he bangs the butt of his gun for a gavel and says: 'By virtue of the authority vested in me by my own right hand and the help of Peachey, I declare myself Grand-Master of all Freemasonry in Kafiristan in this the Mother Lodge o' the country, and King of Kafiristan equally ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... of a joke if we should butt into that detective now, wouldn't it?" Sandy laughed, as they passed down from the ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... our present form of government rests; but it is strange to see what Daedalian complications, and wheels within wheels, we have contrived to work into the superstructure. A modern ward heeler in New York could have taken up the whole frame of government in Seventeenth Century New England by the butt end, and cracked it like a whip—provided of course the Pilgrim fathers had allowed ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... quarter was passed; before them hung the chain of one of those gates which gave access to the city of the Jews. With a jeer and an oath the bearded sentry watched them pass—the martyr and his torturers. One word to him, even then, and the butt of his heavy halberd would have broken Levi's arm and laid the boy's father in the dust. The word was not spoken. On through the filthy ways, on and on, through narrow courts and tortuous passages to a dark low doorway. Then, again, the vision showed but an empty street and ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... of Britain already," a fellow shouted. I knocked him over with the butt of my spear, and explained to these Roman-born Romans that, if there were any further trouble, we should go on with one man short. And, by the Light of the Sun, I meant it too! My raw Gauls at Clausentum had never ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... and home with unexpected vivacity. We swung in the ruts, we shook like jellies on the merciless patches of broken stones, and Croppy stimulated the pace with weird whistlings through his teeth, and heavy prods with the butt of his whip in the region of ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... of Brash the publican, who had been a special butt for some of the youthful pranks of R. L. S. and his friends, inspired in the next few weeks the sets of verses mentioned below (vol. 24, pp. 14, 15, 38) in letters which show that the fictitious Johnson and Thomson were far from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... where he goes by the name of "Cockey Smith". One night he tells his story to his companions. Harry Blythe, brother to Lillian, Lewis' old friend, and now sheriff of his home county, who arrived that night, overhears him. Blythe reveals his identity to "Sixty", the butt of the camp, and tells him that Tom did not die and that Lewis can go back home, where Lillian is still waiting for him. Sixty breaks the news to Lewis while the latter is mad with drink, and Lewis, thinking the sheriff has come for him, kills ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... words of Pitt himself. In one of his speeches, having accused his rival of filling his speech with everything that was personal, inflammatory, and invidious, he remarked:—"I am not surprised if he should pretend to be the butt of ministerial persecution; and if, by striving to excite the public compassion, he should seek to reinstate himself in that popularity which he once enjoyed, but which he so unhappily has forfeited. For it is the best and most ordinary resource of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... 'em over to the Off Islands, to practise 'em on the sea-birds; and last evening after dusk I walked through the town with 'em—yes, sir, right out past the church and back again, my blood being up, and came home and cut a square out of the old ones to wrap round the bung of the water-butt." ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... to meet, when there were some final difficulties between the King and his Liberal Ministers over the exact wording of the oath of allegiance. The excitable Neapolitan populace forthwith became unmanageable. The Swiss Guards, who had long been the butt of the people, put down the revolt without mercy. Once more King Ferdinand was master. He hastened to dismiss his Cabinet and dissolved the Parliament before it could come to order. Orders were sent to General Pepe, who had marched to the front in northern ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... many scenes of violence and excitement, and the new horror of all-night sittings became familiar to the House of Commons. Throughout the struggle Parnell showed equal audacity and coolness, and acquired a masterly knowledge of parliamentary forms. Mr. Butt, the Irish leader, disapproved of this development of the active or obstructive policy, but his influence quickly gave way before Parnell's, and in May, 1879, he died. The year before, Parnell had been elected president of the English Home Rule Association. He now threw himself with energy into ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... so badly frightened all month by threats to drag me out of my home and hang me, or otherwise measure me up for a crop of angelic pin-feathers that I've been unable to write anything worth reading. But as soon as I can swallow my heart and quit shivering I will grab the English language by the butt-end and make it crack like a new bull-whip about the ears of hypocrites and humbugs. Meanwhile I desire to state that there is nothing the matter with the ICONOCLAST's contributors. They are a bouquet of pansy blossoms of whom any publisher might well be proud. Should the editor chance to swallow ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... men are to be pitied, for they are ever the butt, byword and prey of the untaught, who are often the knowing. As success came to Southey he lost the sense of values, that is to say, the sense of humor. He attacked Byron with great severity, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... everything over—saw the butt of the boom was playin' free in the wooden socket, chucked in a lot of tallow so it could move easy, give an extra twist to the end of the guy, and hollered to Bill to go ahead. She went chuckety-chuck, chuckety-chuck for half a dozen ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Peggy, "but, luckily, there wasn't. As Lieut. Bradbury pointed out, it was a case of an emergency. It isn't as if I'd tried to 'butt in,' as you ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... At any rate, I ought to hide him. I reflected coolly, and then put my gun within easy reach and dragged him by the arm towards a place where the mud seemed soft, and thrust him in. His powder-flask slipped from his loin-cloth, and I went back to get it. Then I pressed him down with the butt of my rifle. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... studying the room while we got our bearings picked up a queer-looking revolver from the floor. As he held it up I could see that along the top of the barrel was a long cylinder with a ratchet or catch at the butt end. He turned it ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... statements. I said that I would rather die than live without ruins of some kind; that America was so new, and crude, and spick and span, that it was obnoxious to any aesthetic soul; that our tendency to erect hideous public buildings and then keep them in repair afterwards would make us the butt of ridicule among future generations. I even proposed the founding of an American Ruin Company, Limited,—in which the stockholders should purchase favourably situated bits of land and erect picturesque ruins thereon. To be sure, I said, ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... neighborhood for lurking figures while he crouched behind the trunk of a cottonwood. Every nerve of the man was alert, every muscle ready for action. One brown hand lingered affectionately close to the butt of his revolver. ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... helplessness, for now I saw the "Faithful Friend" steered a course that was taking her rapidly away from me upon the freshening wind. Perceiving which bitter truth, beholding myself thus befooled, bubbled and tricked (and my head throbbing from the blow of Penfeather's pistol-butt) a mighty anger against him surged within me, and shaking my fists I fell to fierce curses and revilings, like any madman, until what with my aching head and lack of breath, I cast myself face down and lay there spent ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the same with everybody. If he went out for a walk on the beach, Vigneau's dogs or Simard's dogs regarded it as an insult, and there was a fight. Men picked up sticks, or showed him the butt-end of their dog-whips, when he made friendly approaches. With the children it was different; they seemed to like him a little; but never did he follow one of them that a mother did not call from the house-door: ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... he feels an inclination for one of the other sex, seeks for a friend of his own to whom he may impart the delightful intelligence. A woman (with more or less skill) buries her secret away from her kind. For days and weeks past, had not this old Maria made fools of the whole house,—Maria, the butt of the family? ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... records Lieutenant Perkins, agreeing therein with the official reports of Captain Bailey and of his own commander, Lieutenant Harrison; "but a heavy charge from our eleven-inch gun settled the Governor Moore, which was one of them. A ram, the Manassas, in attempting to butt us just missed our stern, and we soon settled the third fellow's 'hash.' Just then some of our gunboats which had passed the forts came up, and then all sorts of things happened." This last expression is probably as terse and graphic a summary ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... and days they work on the body, examine it from head to foot, without becoming aware of the movable support, the cause of their misadventure. In vain do I prolong my watch; never do I see a single one of them push it with his foot or butt it with ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... but, these swords were of an awkward shape, and so soft that a heavy blow would bend one. They made light shields, short pointed daggers, and spears—which they jerked back after they had thrown them at an enemy, by a long strip of leather fastened to the stem. The butt-end was a rattle, to frighten an enemy's horse. The ancient Britons, being divided into as many as thirty or forty tribes, each commanded by its own little king, were constantly fighting with one ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... post a squad at a certain point where the spies were supposed to have hidden a quantity of petrol. The place in question was close to a rifle-butt. Men were detailed to guard all roads leading to the marsh, and to allow all traffic, whether motor-cars, carts, or pedestrians, to pass unchallenged. The sentries were on no account to show themselves, except to hold up everything and ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... she exclaimed bitterly. "I can understand Jimmy, because he likes me to drive him all the time, but you others, who aren't regular clients at all, why you should butt in and try to spoil my chances, I can't think. Mr. Wingate is just my conception of the ideal fare—generous, affable, and with trans-Atlantic notions about tips. I shall send you my card, ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... did that, Chick and Ten-Ichi dashed out of the woods and helped him; and Ten-Ichi, none too gentle, now that his anger was aroused, rapped the sentinel on the head with the butt of his pistol, so that he stiffened out and ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... high stage, And bore the pelting scorn of half an age; The very butt of slander and the blot For every dart that ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Raleigh, his firstborn. He died leading them on, when some, 'more careful of valour and safety, began to recoil shamefully.' His last words were, 'Lord have mercy upon me and prosper our enterprise.' A Spanish captain, Erinetta, struck him down with the butt of a musket after he had received a bullet. John Plessington, his sergeant, avenged him by running Erinetta ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... the soldier assigned to their home bang on the door with the butt of his rifle, fled to the kitchen, where she stood listening and watching. She nearly cried out when the soldier thrust the bayonet of his rifle at her father, and all the resentment of her race at such ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... but a little distance, and then, turning to the left, was drawn up before the doors of the warehouse. This waggon was low, built for the carriage of goods only, of hewn plank scarcely smooth, and the wheels were solid; cut, in fact, from the butt of an elm tree. Unless continually greased the squeaking of such wheels is terrible, and the carters frequently ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... you were caught stealing your horses' oats, and that your coachman,—that is the man who was before me,—gave you, in the dark, a good sound drubbing, of which you said nothing. In short, what is the use of going on? We can go nowhere but we are sure to hear you pulled to pieces. You are the butt and jest and byword of everybody; and never does anyone mention you but under the names of miser, stingy, mean, ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... one or two noted gun-fighters among them, there was now and then a shooting affray. A man who was a coward or who shirked his work had a bad time, of course; a man could not afford to let himself be bullied or treated as a butt; and, on the other hand, if he was "looking for a fight," he was certain to find it. But my own experience was that if a man did not talk until his associates knew him well and liked him, and if he did his work, he never had any difficulty in getting on. In my own ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... out to be filled, blew on it, sipped, and then hunted on the ledge under the desk for the butt of the cigar he had ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... every suspicion strengthened. Madame could hardly have hoped for a visit so completely in her favour, and after it Archie was entirely under her influence. It is true he was wretchedly despondent, but he was also furiously angry. He fancied himself the butt of his friends, he believed every one to be talking about his affairs, and, day by day, his sense of outrage and dishonour pressed him harder and harder. In a month he was quite ready to take legal steps to release himself from such a doubtful tie, and ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... while I was preparing it. I had had some instruction on a previous day as to how it should be made, but the two others had not. When they had put in the watling to within the proper distance of the top they began trimming off the twigs and butt ends of the withes. I happened to turn toward the gabion and observed what they were doing. In a tone of voice, and with a familiarity that surprised my own self, I exclaimed, "Oh, don't do that. Don't you see if ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... of which he was, was quite dark. Of course, he remembered, the Doctor was out. How fortunate! and the kitchen-windows looked the other way. The roof of the boot-house was about six feet below the window-ledge. At the corner stood a water-butt, and, against that, a large empty box turned up on end. Everything appeared to be put there to further his escape. The boot-house stood in a yard, which opened into Dr Palmer's garden, and from that he knew escape ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... who carried the keys to the mansion. "Gents goes early in the morning and comes in late at night, and that's all you ever see of 'em, half the time. I've tried ladies, an' they get me wild, always yellin' for hot water to wash their hair, or pastin' handkerchiefs up on the mirr'r or wantin' to butt into the kitchen to press this or that. I'll let you know if the gent don't take it, but I ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... would have taken water. I gave him my canteen, which he emptied at a gulp and called for more. There was a strange silence in the house—a silence in decided contrast to the screams I had heard, and I wondered if the wretches had shot the woman. I started to knock on the door with the butt of my pistol, but Jane ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... the cow-puncher says, "Jack, let me present my friends!" so the driver he shook hands with us and says, "Any friend of Billy's on your meal ticket! Where you crowd of sand skinners headed for?" So, after some talk, he understood. "You want a town," says he. "Well," p'inting with the butt of his whip, "eighteen miles over yonder you'll find your place, if you're looking to make the sidewalks stand perpendicular; and twenty mile over there, if you want to find some of the nicest people outdoors. Pretty girls there, bet cher life. Chip Jackson filled me full of lead two months ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... had cut was full twelve feet long, being a very strong but light and tough young tree, which merely required thinning at the butt to ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... fled from a Lion and ran into a cave where a Goat lived. The Goat tried to stop his entrance, and struck at him with his horns. The Bull, though cross at this, did not butt at the Goat on the spot, but just said, "Do not think that I fear you. Wait till the Lion is out of sight, and then I will treat you as you deserve." Never profit ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... up with a wan smile at his partner, sitting on the bottom of an upturned pail, as he said this. Then he reached for his hip pocket and drew out a revolver, which he handed, butt-end forward, to the professor, who, not knowing his friend carried such an instrument, instinctively ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... The he lifted his revolver from his breast pocket and dropped it into his side pocket, with his hand on the butt. Then with his left hand he quietly opened the door, pushed it back, and as ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... didn't butt in on my account, I'm much obliged, just the same. You're all right, Spring, old fel, and if I can do you a good turn I will. Perhaps I'll have the chance. Gee! I want ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... quietly. "Check the winch a little, and keep the butt down. He can't face the rapid, and you'll lose him unless you can keep a strain on when he ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... affectionate, and playful; but a single vice counterbalanced all his virtues: he took a drop. A year or two ago some light-hearted tempter taught him to sip grog; he took to it kindly, and was now arrived at such a pitch that at grog-time he used to butt his way in among the sailors, and get close to the canteen; and, -by arrangement, an allowance was always served out to him. On imbibing it, he passed with quadrupedal rapidity through three stages, the absurd, the choleric, the sleepy; and was never his own goat ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... 'ave wan iv our boys in for abjection an' rubbry—an' it seems is resolved to parsequte the poor boy at the nuxt 'Shizers—now dhis is be way av a dalikit hint to yew an' yoos that aff butt wan spudh av his blud is spiled in quensequence av yewr parsequtin' im as the winther's comin' on an' the wether gettin' cowld an' the long nights settin' in yew may as well prapare yewr caughin an' not that same remimber you've a praty ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... it; 'tis a passion that, though said to be so mighty and powerful, had never to do with me. As to the other, I know it by sight, and that's all. Beasts feel it; the shepherd Cratis, having fallen in love with a she-goat, the he-goat, out of jealousy, came, as he lay asleep, to butt the head of the female, and crushed it. We have raised this fever to a greater excess by the examples of some barbarous nations; the best disciplined have been touched with it, and 'tis reason, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... pressing against it, however, it began to yield, and I could then see that a heavy chest which was used to stand near the window had been pulled round in order to shut out any intrusion. This precaution, taken under my father's roof, as though he were in a den of thieves, angered me, and I gave a butt with my shoulder which cleared the box out of the way, and enabled ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... facon.* He made of her something supple and corrupt. Hers was an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration for him, of voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank into this drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in his butt of Malmsey. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... lying on the ground in the pasture rotting, that must have been five feet through at the butt end. I used to sit atop of them and think how big they would have been standing up with their tops waving.... Yes, wood was cheap ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... tail end, trying at intervals to peer around a khaki-covered Punjaub rump, alternately getting my head and fingers bruised by heels I could not see and a rifle-butt that only moved in jerks when you didn't expect it to. My nose was bleeding at ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... how tired you were, and though I hated to 'butt in' on your performance, I just felt I had to, to save ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... suited for breaking up earth. The human origin of both of these classes is contested. Flints of Strepy type are nodular and partly trimmed into cutting edges, the smooth surface being left as a handle. The Chelles types are remarkable for regularity and fine bold flaking; the worn butt (though best for handling) was eventually flaked away to obtain an artistic uniform finish. The St. Acheul series has finer flaking, the crust being completely removed: there is a tendency to ovate or almond shapes, and the edges are often curved, the reverse S-curve being preferred, ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... the trees,—then the rustling and tugging of the creatures, in getting the fallen trees out of the water,—and, finally, the surging and splashing with which they came swimming towards the ground-work of the dam, with the butt end of those trees in their mouths. The line of the dam they had begun, passed with a curve up stream in the middle, so as to give it more strength to resist the current; across the low-water bed of the river some five rods; and extended up over the first low bank, about as much farther, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... Brandes' features, and Stull snatched at the pistol he had whipped out. There was a struggle; Brandes wrenched the weapon free; but Neeland tore his way past Curfoot and struck Brandes in the face with the butt of ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... voluntariness in treading the path that leads to it. 'Voluntariness in treading the path that leads to it, and if so, there could have been no divine ordination of the end.' Not so! When human thought comes, if I may so say, full butt against a stark, staring contradiction like that, it is no proof that either of the propositions is false. It is only like the sign-boards that the iceman puts upon the thin ice, 'dangerous!' a warning that that is not a place for us to tread. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... already painting, Monet has exhibited at the Salon des Refuses, but criticism sees and attacks nobody but Manet. This great individuality who overwhelmed the Academy with its weak allegories, was the butt of great insults and the object of great admiration. Banished from the Salons, he collected fifty pictures in a room in the Avenue de l'Alma and invited the public thither. In 1868 appeared the portrait of Emile Zola, in 1860 the Dejeuner, works which are so powerful, that they enforced ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... trying to get a glimpse of the outside world, a final look at the sky, before the last journey to the place of death to-morrow. Then one of the soldiers, with a loud, angry oath, would struggle to his feet, and with the butt-end of his gun strike at the thin, wan fingers till their hold on the iron bar relaxed, and the pallid face beyond would sink back into the darkness with ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... might have gone on forever, to the bottom of a butt of Xeres wine; but finding the second glass better than the first, he called to Mrs. Jellicorse, who was in the garden gathering striped roses, to come and have a sip with him, and taste the yellow cherries. And when she came promptly, with the flowers in her ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... and while her breath seemed to choke her, Adelle saw the man in the glare of the flame pull himself up, inch by inch, until his head was level with the glass, butt his head against the heavy pane, and with a final heave disappear within while a black smudge of smoke poured from the vent ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... armed men here," said Ambrose. "Do what you're told without asking questions. If you make a racket you'll be cracked over the head with the butt of a gun." ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... PARNELL predominant; issues getting a little mixed; understood that Session summoned to decide whether, in view of certain proceedings before Mr. Justice BUTT, PARNELL should be permitted to retain Leadership. Everything been discussed but that. Things got so muddled up, that O'KEEFE, walking about, bowed with anxious thought, not quite certain whether it is TIM HEALY, SEXTON, or JUSTIN McCARTHY, who was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... Somewhere in the far interior of the gloomy mansion he could hear the tinkle of the answering summons. The sailor, as he waited for the door to open on he knew not what, reached back with his weather-beaten hand to his hip pocket. He nodded with satisfaction as his fingers encountered the butt of ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the history of all the miracles of the Church, for all of them rest on the like untenable grounds. I did not wonder at finding the country abounding in unbelief. Now that the fires of the Inquisition have ceased to burn, the priesthood are made the butt and laughing-stock of those who are educated. Still, the national mind does not run toward the pure Gospel, which is here unknown and prohibited, but to infidelity and socialism. A sincere Protestant can have no ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... station. I made use of their presence as much as possible for anthropological measurements, but I could not always find willing subjects. Everything depends on the humour of the crowd; if they make fun of the first victim, the case is lost, as no second man is willing to be the butt of the innumerable gibes showered on the person under the instruments. Things are more favourable if it is only fear of some dangerous enchantment that holds them back, for then persuasion and liberal gifts of tobacco generally overcome their fears. The best ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... necessary at the sides and top of the door. That at the hinged side can be as shown at A, Fig. 5, the closing side as at B, and the top as at C in the same drawing. These are all in section and are self-explanatory. In hinging the door, three butt hinges should be used so as to keep the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... treachery to one another. The temptation was great, and he was a match for any underhand design on the part of Nishioka. No safer place for him than Yoshiwara, in which his enemy might be still more involved. Samurai were particularly marked in the place. Meanwhile the chamberlain would be his butt for the evening. Jisuke's hints as to his source of revenue were broad enough to the companions of his evening pleasures. They would be delighted at a sight of this ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... through the good offices of a publisher among the guests, and became historic. Lucien was supposed to be the traitor who blabbed. His defection gave the signal for a terrific hubbub in the Liberal camp; Lucien was the butt of the Opposition newspapers, and ridiculed unmercifully. The whole history of his sonnets was given to the public. Dauriat was said to prefer a first loss of a thousand crowns to the risk of publishing the verses; Lucien ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... boats, xebecs from Africa, lying close to us. One of them was flying a red flag, and I noticed that our own boat was alongside of her. I thought nothing of it, but drew a little water from the scuttle-butt, and washed my face and hands in one of the buckets. One or two of the men were ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... cruelly into his little pony's flank. With a neigh of pain the animal leaped forward. For a moment there was a tangle of striking hoofs and wriggling coils of the foiled reptile, while Charley leaning over in his saddle struck with the butt-end of his riding whip at the writhing coils. Though it seemed an eternity to the helpless watchers it was really only a few seconds ere the pony sprang away from its loathsome enemy and Charley with difficulty reined him in a few paces away. The snake with a broken neck lay lifeless on the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... "steer for that canoe in the centre. We're going faster than they are. You, gentlemen, don't shoot, but use the butt-ends of your rifles if we should happen to get to close quarters. Every man take an oar or boathook, and use 'em like as if they were ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... specification under this charge alleged that Captain Wells did violently and without just cause or provocation assault First Lieutenant P.H. Breslin "by furiously striking and hitting him (Lieutenant Breslin) upon the head with a hickory stick, the butt end of a billiard cue, and did continue the assault (upon Lieutenant Breslin) until forced to desist therefrom by First Lieutenant Carl Veitenhimer, Fourth United States Infantry, thereby endangering the life of Lieutenant Breslin ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... one at a time: no ramming; hit the butt on the saddle; blaze away; one down, another ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... that better after he comes up," was the reply of the captain, who kept his hand at his hip, where it could rest on the butt of his revolver. "But there is reason to ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... the onward rush of his horse at the far end of the course, he heard faintly in the dim hollow recess of the helm the loud shout and the clapping of hands of those who looked on, and found himself gripping with nervous intensity the butt of a broken spear, his mouth clammy with excitement, and his heart thumping in ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... river man could have won to him in such a brief space of time; only an athlete could have made the last flying leap across six feet of dark water to a four-foot log that was bearing gently down, butt first, on the figure clinging to the boom-stick. His caulks bit far up the side of the log and the force of his impact started it rolling; yet even as he clawed his way to the top of the log and got it under control ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... he was accredited, in order to borrow money from the merchants of that city, he was too profligate to remain. He came back with Charles II., and was Master of the Revels, or King's Jester, as the court considered him, though without any regular appointment, during his life: the butt, at once, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... place." But it may be doubted if Byron would have made a good husband to any woman; his wife and he were even more than usually ill-assorted. A model of the proprieties, and a pattern of the learned philanthropy of which in her sex he was wont to make a constant butt, she was no fit consort for that "mens insana in corpore insano." What could her stolid temperament conjecture of a man whom she saw, in one of his fits of passion, throwing a favourite watch under the fire, and grinding it to pieces with a poker? Or how could her conscious virtue ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... rush, making for a narrow channel between two rocks, through which the stream ran like a mill-race. Should he pass this channel, I knew he would cut the line across the rock; therefore, giving him the butt, I held him by main force, and by the great swirl in the water I saw that I was bringing him to the surface; but just as I expected to see him, my float having already appeared, away he darted in another direction, taking sixty or seventy yards ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... abettor—people will say Jonathan Wild was but a type of me-boys will hoot at me as I pass along; and the cinder-wenches belch forth reproaches wafted in a gale impregnated with gin: I shall be notorious—the very butt of slander, and sink of infamy!" I was not in a humour to relish the climax of expressions upon which this gentleman valued himself in all his discourses; but, without any ceremony, took my leave, cursed with every ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... to the butt-end of the tree, and with the pole of his axe marked off the length of the log. Then he moistened his hands and drove the keen blade through the juicy bark deep ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... against the wall of the trench, its butt on the firing-step just out of water, the private proceeded painstakingly to examine the person of the prisoner; in course of which process he unbuttoned and threw open the gray overcoat, exposing a shapeless tunic and trousers of ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... God when on the earth to teach us the sweet lesson of charity, 'had not where to lay his head.' The lesson he came to teach, you certainly have not learned, or you would never have made my poverty and my misfortunes the butt of your scoffings." ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... after a good deal of Struggling and Difficulty, reach'd into the Ring and Centre of that mix'd Multitude. But how did I blush? with what Confusion did I appear? when I found one of my own Countrymen, a drunken Granadier, the attractive Loadstone of all that high and low Mob, and the Butt of all their Merriment? It will be easily imagin'd to be a Thing not a little surprizing to one of our Country, to find that a drunken Man should be such a wonderful Sight; However, the witty Sarcasms ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... glared at him. "You in this, Mr. Farrar? You're liable to have a heluvatime if you butt into my business without an ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... strings up the book-keep sharp who bumps off Spellin' Book Ben. Thar's a brief moment when said action runs a profound risk of bein' misconstrooed into becomin' the teemin' source of complications. You see we ain't lookin' for nothin' in the way of a play from Red Dog more del'cate than the butt of a six-shooter, an' it ain't ontil the Red Dog chief himse'f onlimbers in planations, an' all plenty loocid, that we ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... his riding-crop under one arm and stood watching them, buttoning his tan gloves. Then with the butt of his crop he rubbed a dry spot of mud from his leather puttees, freed the incrusted spurs, and turned towards the door, pausing there to ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... German soldier was seen to fire three times at a little girl 5 years old. Having failed to hit her, he subsequently bayoneted her. He was killed with the butt end of a rifle by a Belgian soldier who had seen him commit this murder from ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... submarine boy; then came up straight at close quarters. Benson's sudden grapple deprived the driver of a chance to use the butt of his whip in the manner ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... two more vigorous thrusts to which I responded with such vigor that it made his testicles butt against my bottom, and the next moment we ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... who are only kept from turning full-fledged freebooters by a wholesome fear of retributive justice. While I am discussing my bread and water one of these worthies saunters with assumed carelessness up behind me and makes a grab for my revolver, the butt of which he sees protruding from the holster. Although I am not exactly anticipating this movement, travelling alone among strange people makes one's faculties of self-preservation almost mechanically on the alert, and my hand reaches the revolver before his does. Springing up, I turn ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... grip; but he got it butt downward for a moment too long. Maybe it was I that pulled the trigger. Maybe we just jolted it off between us. Anyhow, he got both barrels in the face, and there I was, staring down at all that was left of Ted Baldwin. I'd recognized him in the township, and again ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... inexplicable part in the action to a close. Captain Pearson had, for a moment, towards the end of the action, a ray of hope. A gunner on the Richard, thinking the ship was actually sinking, called for quarter, but Jones stunned him with the butt end of a pistol, and replied to Pearson, who had again hailed to know if the Richard had struck, to quote his own report, "in the most determined negative." About the same time, the master at arms, also believing the ship to be sinking, opened ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... his hammered hand to his forehead courteously, and as lightly as if the hammer had been the butt-end of a whip. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... kept pretty busy for the next minute or so. He rushed, leaping and yelling, roaring and dodging, from side to side and corner to corner, and then made a frantic bolt for the outer staircase, but he had only got half-way up when his head fell with a splash into a water-butt below, while his body slid down to the bottom of the steps, where it lay in a ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... can never count change even when my mind is tranquil, and she knows that, and swoops threateningly upon me in booking offices and stationers' shops. When I am dodging cabs at crossings she will appear from behind an omnibus or carriage and butt into me furiously. She holds her umbrella in her folded arms just as the Punch puppet does his staff, and with as deadly effect. Sometimes she discards her customary navy blue and puts on a glittering bonnet with bead ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... his tent and a moment later reappeared with a blanket, which he spread close against the butt of a big spruce within half a dozen feet of the fire. When he turned toward her, the colonel's wife had thrown off her coat and turban and stood before him, a slim and girlish figure, bewitchingly pretty as she smiled her gratitude ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... fields: this hour shall end thy life-days and the war Here on this earth." Such words as these from witless Liger stray, But nought in bandying of words the man of Troy would play; Rather his mighty battle-shaft he hurled against the foe, While Lucagus his horses drives with spear-butt, bending low Over the lash, and setteth forth his left foot for the fight. Beneath the bright shield's nether rim the spear-shaft takes its flight, Piercing his groin upon the left: then shaken from his wain, He tumbleth down and rolleth o'er in ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... rolled his man over and getting his right arm free, dealt the baggageman a fierce blow with the butt ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... of "the big boy," the lout—the butt of every one, even of the masters, who, when any little imp did a thing well, always made the appropriate laudation tell to the detriment of the big boy, as if he were bound to be as superfluous in intellect as in flesh. He has sufficiently dinned into him to make him thoroughly modest, poor ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... whack over the nose with the butt of a gun, which will doubtless improve his looks. ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... black belt about his waist. Attached to the belt were at least a dozen weapons: several grenades, a pistol, another pistol with a flaring muzzle, a long knife, a glassy looking tube fitted to a pistol-butt, and a blue-black ugly thing which was shaped like ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... Curses upon my destiny! What, I— Ho! I have found my use at last—What, I, I, the great twisted monster of the wars, The brawny cripple, the herculean dwarf, The spur of panic, and the butt of scorn— be a bridegroom! Heaven, was I not cursed More than enough, when thou didst fashion me To be a type of ugliness,—a thing By whose comparison all Rimini Holds itself beautiful? Lo! here I stand, A gnarled, blighted trunk! There's not a knave So spindle-shanked, so wry-faced, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... of disorder that the mother State could succor her infant settlements scarcely more than had they lain on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, instead of the Alleghenies. Thus trammeled, Kentucky could do little more than, like a tethered bison, butt at the dangers which year in and year out beset her on every side. To be sure, conventions composed of her best men, and having for their object her erection into a separate State of the Union, had been for the last three years, and for the ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... tell him that she was going to be married: she gave him news of his mother, and sent him a basket of apples and a piece of cake to eat in her honor. They came in the nick of time. That evening with Christophe was a fast, Ember Days, Lent: only the butt end of the sausage hanging by the window was left. Christophe compared himself to the anchorite saints fed by a crow among the rocks. But no doubt the crow was hard put to it to feed all the anchorites, for he never ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... patients, taking them by and large. Besides, when they won't get well and bore you to death, you can send 'em off to travel. Mind me now, and take the tops of your sparrowgrass. Somebody must have 'em,—why shouldn't you? If you don't take your chance, you'll get the butt-ends as a ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... contemplation was situated, and at the distance of about twenty yards. Donald was startled by the apparition; and, recollecting his former associates, clapped his right hand instinctively on the hilt of his broadsword, and his left on the butt of a pistol—one of those stuck in his belt—and in this attitude awaited the re-appearance of the skulker; but he did not make himself again visible. Donald, however, felt convinced that there was danger at hand, and he determined to keep himself ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... I raked pine or spruce needles together for a bed, but in the winter I used green pine or spruce boughs, putting heavy, coarse ones on the bottom, planting their butt ends deeps in the snow. Upon these I placed smaller twigs, which gave "spring" to my couch, and finally I tufted it with the soft, tender tips of the branches. Never have I rested better on mahogany beds than I did on such pungent bunks! Lying there, physically ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... for a BAThrooM wallpaper? it could be produced verery cheaply and itcould be calld the CHER RYdesigN damn, imeant to put all that in capitals. iam afraid this articleis spoilt now but butt bUt curse . But perhaps the most excitingthing aLout this macLine is that you can by presssing alittle switch suddenly writein redor green instead of in black; I donvt understanh how Lt is done butit is very jollY? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... and berry bush. But once the leading klootsmah stopped and signed to her companions to keep still. Halting, they waited while she pointed to the root fangs of a cedar tree, where well within the hollow butt a western timber wolf had made her lair. Gone was the mother, perhaps in quest of deer with which to feed her four young pups who calmly slept within that sheltered cave, ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... object proceeded to dismount, but on bringing my leg to the ground, as I imagined, I made a rapid descent of about eight feet. On clambering up I was met with a sharp blow on the face from what I believe to have been the butt of a Turkish musket, and my horse was not to be found. About half an hour later, while feeling for the road, to my great satisfaction, I placed my hand upon my English saddle, and thus repossessed myself of ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... vision a picture that fascinated my youth in the Fliegende Blatter, representing "Friedrich Gerstaeker auf der Reise." That gallant man is depicted tramping on a serpent, new to M. Boulenger, while he attempts to club, with the butt end of his gun, a most lively savage who, accompanied by a bison, is attacking him in front. A terrific and obviously enthusiastic crocodile is grabbing the tail of the explorer's coat, and the explorer says "Hurrah! das gibt wieder einen prachtigen Artikel fur Die Allgemeine ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... very much indeed, and probably a butt suddenly gave way," answered Captain Jull. "In regard to the explosion, my wife had lit a fire in a stove aft, and I suppose a cask of gunpowder must inadvertently have been left in the neighbourhood. But this is merely conjecture. She herself will tell you ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... buttons. It may be well to explain that there is a latent meaning, apparent only to Galloway folk of the ancient time, in the word "cuif." It conveys at once the ideas of inefficiency and folly, of simplicity and the ignorance of it. The cuif is a feckless person of the male sex, who is a recognized butt for a whole neighbourhood to sharpen its ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... United States, it will be seen that they have already been adjusted in large degree, either consciously or unconsciously, to the climatic conditions. The young farmer should be careful that he does not undertake to butt his head against ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... enterprise, sat like a numbed thing. Dim visions of the face of this man, only a few feet away from his own, assailed him under some very different guise. It was Crawshay the man, stripped for action, whose lean, strong fingers were gripping the butt of that revolver, and whose eyes were holding ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... armed me a hundred fold for retaliation; but at present, chiefly, perhaps, because I had no effectual ally, and could count upon no sympathy in my audience, I was mortified beyond the power of retort, and became a passive butt to the lady's stinging contumely and the arrowy sleet of her gay rhetoric. The narrow bounds of our deck made it not easy to get beyond talking range; and thus it happened, that for two hours I stood the worst of this bright lady's feud. At ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... certainly if ever a pet of such a size was allowable, it must have been the gentle creature before us. But all things are deceitful—gentle-looking rams among the number,—for on the discontinuance of our gifts, he waxed all of a sudden very wroth, and favoured the youngest of the party with a butt, that made her not know whether she was on her head or her heels—which is an extraordinary specimen of ignorance, for she was exactly half-way between both. So, converting our admiration of the golden fleece into a kick, we raised the astonished victim of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... one independent of my people, and irresponsible to them not in name only, but in reality above them; receiving the homage due to the queenly character and office—would not reign at all. To sit upon a throne, a mere painted puppet, shaken by the breath of every conceited or discontented citizen, a butt for every shaft to fly at, a mere hireling, a slave in a queen's robe, the mouthpiece for others to speak by and proclaim their laws, with no will nor power of my own—no, no! It is not such that ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... sit down," was the Secretary's advice, "Rosie meant you're out of parliamentry order. We got a motion on the table an' it's too late for you to butt in on it. This meetin' is goin' ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... Butcher's Dog, in the corner of Mr. Mulready's 'Butt,' displays, perhaps, the most wonderful, because the most dignified, finish ... and assuredly the most perfect unity of drawing and colour which the entire range of ancient and modern art can exhibit. Albert Durer is, indeed, the only rival who might be suggested."—JOHN ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... you just go en butt up on de ax. Dat ain' no fault of he own den. Clean up dat face en gwine on way ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... Texan rapped the bar with the butt of his gun: "Silence in the court!" he roared. "An' what's more, you're fined one round of drinks for contempt of court." Taking a match from his pocket he laid it carefully upon the bar, and continued: "The plaintiff ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... use in our staying around here any longer, either, I should think," ventured Phil. "How do we know but what some of the men may just happen to butt in on us, while we're looking their old forge over? And if they did, I just guess they'd make things hum for us. So I say, into the woods again for ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... always aroused the world's attention, although this interest has fluctuated. Regarded at first as a wonderful achievement of genius, afterwards as a freak, then as the ready butt for universal ridicule, and finally with awe, if not with absolute terror—such in brief is the history of this ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... his hand in his trousers pocket, seized the butt of his revolver, cocked it with his forefinger, then suddenly produced the weapon and ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... sort of figure that no woman can resist. There was a delightful chappie who seemed inclined to empty the mustard-pot down my neck; him I could keep in order, but the beautiful lord I saw was attempting to make a butt of me. With his impertinences I did not for a moment intend to put up; I did not know him, he was not then, as he is now, if he will allow me to say so, a friend. About three or half-past the ladies retired, and the festivities continued with unabated ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... gate of the square and, after making a turn about it, they went out again. When the horses had left, the gentlemen came in on the run two by two, forming eight couples, with their liveries, and lances in hand. Brandishing the latter in their hands, it looked as if the butt ends of the lances of some of the gentlemen were joined with the points [of others]. The horses, spurred on by cries and wounded by the sharp ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... could not continue. The ladies were all down on her at once. Eh, what? A threshing? It was Bismarck they were going to escort home with blows from the butt ends of their muskets. What was this bad Frenchwoman going to ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... dandyism, copied the cut of his coat and the tie of his cravat; even the awful heads of houses looked leniently on his delinquencies. The gay, hearty, handsome young English gentleman carried a charm about him that subdued everybody. Though I was his favourite butt, both at school and college, I never quarrelled with him in my life. I always let him ridicule my dress, manners, and habits in his own reckless, boisterous way, as if it had been a part of his birthright privilege to laugh at me as much as ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... fallen back in his chair if Mr. Kelley had not caught him and placed him steadily on his feet. When he was fairly up, he was all right, and made his way out of the house and around the corner, closely followed by Mr. Kelley and Tom. Presently he stopped, and curled up behind a water-butt, the mud spattered thick on his torn clothing, his empty holster and the stump of his crippled arm thrown out recklessly by his side, lay all that was left of Black Dan. Tom saw in a minute where he had got his cognomen. His complexion was swarthy ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... beginneth to lade, you shall be ready aboard with your book to enter such goods as shall be brought aboard to be laden for the company, packed or unpacked, taking the marks and numbers of every pack, fardell, truss, or packet, coronoya, chest, vat, butt, pipe, puncheon, whole barrel, half barrel, firkin, or other cask, maunde, or basket, or any other thing which may or shall be packed by any other manner of way or device. And first, all such packs or trusses, etc., as shall be brought aboard to be laden not marked by the company's mark, you shall ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... was sprung, and there was a goose's quill stickin' in it. Now, I leave it to you if a wild goose ain't too smart to go in a trap. And if he did, he couldn't get a feather caught by the butt end, could he?" ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... that your asbestos hut, Conveyed (with you inside) to Polish regions, Promises to afford a likely butt To Russia's winged legions. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... blanket let down outside the window. The tree made a black pattern on it. Clear glass beads hung in a row from the black branch, each black twig was tipped with a glass bead. When Jenny opened the window there was a queer cold smell like the smell of the black water in the butt. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... boldly, if he would reach the desired goal. He had those to deal with who possessed every facility and advantage successfully to battle him in his hopes and plans. But then he was no longer the poor painter, who did not know where his next meal was to be obtained; he was no longer the hungry artist-the butt and jest of his old companions. No! he was under the patronage of the Grand Duke, whose personal friendship he could boast. His brush brought him daily-or as often as he was pleased to exert himself-large sums of money; and his well-lined purse was significant ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... moments with seven or eight persons, knocked down two of his most furious assailants, disengaged himself from the others, drew near the counter, and, taking a vigorous spring, rushed head-foremost, like a bull about to butt, upon the crowd that blocked up the door; then, forcing a passage, by the help of his enormous shoulders and athletic arms, he made his way into the street, and ran with all speed in the direction of the square of Notre-Dame, his garments torn, his head bare, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... found that some of the Genoese team were old friends, for in the morning I had seen them in the water and on the sand at the Lido, and wondered who so solid a band of brothers could be. Then they played a thousand pranks on each other, the prime butt being the dark young Hercules with a little gold charm on his mighty chest, which he wore then and was wearing now, who guarded the Genoese goal and whose ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... fell and the wind still blew; but we found a double-bedded room with plenty of furniture, real water-jugs with real water in them, and dinner: a real dinner, not innocent of real wine. After having been a pedlar for one night, and a butt for the elements during the whole of the next day, these comfortable circumstances fell on my heart like sunshine. There was an English fruiterer at dinner, travelling with a Belgian fruiterer; in the evening at the cafe we watched our ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... meeting, but they watched some of the people on their return. One of these, an old woman, who had been observed to leave the place, was shot on entering her cottage; and the soldier, observing that she was attempting to rise, raised the butt end of his gun and brained her on ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... one felt disposed to assume, the attitude that as this was an India Office business with which the War Office had nothing to do it was their funeral, was a mistaken one. The War Office could not, of course, butt in unceremoniously. But Lord Kitchener was a member of the Government in an exceptionally powerful position in all things connected with the war, and had one represented one's doubts to him, he would certainly have gone into the question and might have taken up a strong line. I, however, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... led her through the counter into a little dingy room behind the shop, looking out on a yard a few feet square, with a water butt, half a dozen flower pots, and a maimed plaster Cupid perched on the windowsill. There sat the schoolmaster, in conversation with a lady, whom the woman of the house, awed by her sternness and grandeur, had, out of regard to her lodger's feelings, shown into her parlour ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... pile the fruitheads are spread out like an open fan. These piles are never completed until they are higher than the woman's arm can reach — several of the last bunches being tossed in place, guided only by the tips of the fingers touching the butt of the straw. The women with their heads loaded high with ripened grain are striking figures — and one wonders at the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... sixteen months' stay she sang for her number Gounod's Ave Maria with violin accompaniment, in the original key, to the delight and great astonishment of the San Bernardino people, who rather made her the butt of their musical jokes and hardly gave her recognition previously, as they thought her musical ability was of the most amateur sort. Her singing in the sixteen months of application in the right direction and proper placement, brought out one of the most phenomenal voices which has found ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... he was more successful in his choice of a butt. A dead horse with organs exposed was the object before the class, and the lecturer was asking questions as to their identification. "Now, Mr. Jones, perhaps you will show us where his lungs are?" Jones made an unsuccessful search. "Well, can we see ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... the ground—not carelessly, nor even in any hurry; but as a sportsman makes all snug, when for a time he leaves off casting. For instance, the end fly was fixed in the lowest ring of the butt, and the slack of the line reeled up so that the collar lay close to the rod itself. Moreover, in such a rocky place, a bed to receive the spike could not have been found without some searching. For a moment I was reassured. Most likely George himself was near—perhaps ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... life, me who has got my hooks in you deep already, me who ain't no pulin' ol' dodderin' softy to turn over to a lazy, shiftless vagabond all I've piled up year after year. Buck me, would you? Tuck in an' fire my men, butt on my affairs— Why, you impudent young puppy-dog, you: I'll make you stick your tail between your legs an' howl like a kiote ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... eyes. Every one of the Dutchmen had got his musket to an order, following a sort of fugleman of their own; while Mike had invented a "motion" that would have puzzled any one but himself to account for. The butt of the piece was projected towards the captain, quite out of line, while the barrel rested on his own shoulder. Still, as his arms were extended to the utmost, the county Leitrim-man fancied he was performing much better ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... his conscience, anyway. If things should develop badly for him during the next few hours no one could say that he had lied. So he followed light-heartedly after the old man, his eyes and ears alert, and his right hand, by force of habit, reaching under his coat to the butt of his pistol. His guide said not another word until they had traveled for half an hour along a twisting path and stood at last on the bald summit of a knoll from which they could look down upon a number of lights twinkling dimly a quarter of a mile away. One of these lights ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... teeth, at work on the small trees,—then soon the falling of the trees,—then the rustling and tugging of the creatures, in getting the fallen trees out of the water,—and, finally, the surging and splashing with which they came swimming towards the ground-work of the dam, with the butt end of those trees in their mouths. The line of the dam they had begun, passed with a curve up stream in the middle, so as to give it more strength to resist the current; across the low-water bed of the river ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... corners can be bought at a hardware store, as can the lock, hinges, and handles. These parts are applied in the usual manner—butt ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... what did you see?" asked the sailor, turning the boat-hook round and holding it so that he could rap the boy's knuckles with the butt ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... Something heavy like the butt of a musket fell against the door, and we started to our feet in an instant. Out flashed ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... top of him. Chase smashed the butt of his gun across Harry's knuckles. The receiver fell to the floor. Harry let out a pained groan as Boles' gun butt struck him on the temple. Thompson replaced the receiver. Harry was on the floor. He put his hands to his head for protection as Chase savagely kicked at him. His ...
— The Observers • G. L. Vandenburg
... frankly gave her notice that, as his utmost efforts could scarcely maintain their existing family, if she ventured to present him with any more, either single, or twins, or triplets, or otherwise, he would most assuredly drown him, or her, or them in the water-butt, and take the consequences. ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... modulated voice asks us to say our prayers, adding that we are on the point of going to Glory with our boots on. I think perhaps there may be some truth in this, as the mouth of a horse-pistol almost grazes my forehead, while immediately behind the butt of that death-dealing weapon I perceive a large man with black whiskers. Other large men begin to assemble, also with horse-pistols. Dr. Hingston hastily explains, while I go back to the carriage to say my prayers, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... hate to do this, boys," he said, "but as you can see, things are pretty tight!" With that, he suddenly brought the butt of his ray gun down hard on Roger's head. The blond-haired cadet slumped to the floor. Tom leaped at the spaceman, but before he could close with him, Ross stepped back quickly and brought the gun down sharply on his head. The ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... and to secure to the tenant compensation for improvements, and in certain cases for disturbance. It succeeded only in making arbitrary evictions more costly for the landlord, it gave the tenant no fixity of tenure since the compensation for disturbance was inadequate. To remedy this Isaac Butt in 1876 introduced a Bill based on the "three F.s"—fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure—but it was rejected by 290 votes to 56, and several other amending Bills were thrown out by the House ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... soldiers' uniforms because they are soldiers, and then they shoot all natives who resist them in civil dress, because they are not soldiers and have no right to fight. I suppose they ought to go about naked. They used to kill their prisoners with the butt-end of their rifles, but that breaks the rifles, and now they generally ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... hill and settling this matter afterwards. Snyder evidently construed this to be a threat, and with an oath replied, "We will settle it now." As Snyder uttered these words, he struck Reed a blow on the head with the butt-end of his heavy whip-stock. This blow was followed in rapid succession by a second, and a third. As the third stroke descended, Mrs. Reed ran between her husband and the furious man, hoping to prevent the blow. Each time the whip-stock ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... ear with eternal expectation of hearing the chorus of many hoofs swinging toward him out of the darkness. After all, it was not a simple thing to put Bill Dozier off the trail. When a horse neighed in one of the corrals, Andy started violently and laid his fingertips on his revolver butt. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... a choir-leader on the floor below, so was there a gossip-leader in the balcony above. This was Puppy Reiss, a vulgar, greenish woman, who found out about everybody's troubles, and always had a scandal on her tongue. The usual butt of her pointed sayings was poor Schnapper-Elle, and she could mock right well the affected genteel airs and languishing manner with which the latter accepted the insincere compliments ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... his conduct, and if he does not prove as you may expect, you may turn him off whenever you please." "I believe," said my husband, "he has been ingenuous in his relation to me; and as a man who has seen great variety of life, and may have been the shuttlecock of fortune, the butt of envy, and the mark of malice, I will hire him when he comes to me here anon, as I ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... good. At length a shark, in its wholesale greediness, seized the bait, and feeling the hook in his horrid jaw, tugged most fiercely to release himself, but in vain. Twelve sailors hauled him in, when, with distended jaws, he seemed to look out for the legs of the men, whereupon they rammed the butt-end of a harpoon down his throat, which put a stop to all further proceedings on his part. He was said to be quite young, perhaps the child of doting parents. The juvenile monster had, however, already cut ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... reached the door, it was opened, and he fairly rushed into the arms of a soldier who was entering. So surprised were both that they could only stare at each other for a brief second; but Calhoun recovered himself first, and dealt the soldier a terrific blow over the head with the butt of his revolver. The soldier sank down with a moan, and Calhoun sprang out over his prostrate body, only to meet and overturn another soldier who was just ascending the steps. The force of the collision threw him headlong, but he was up again in a twinkling, ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... were serving it, and then was seen "fighting and laying out" the Germans with the butt end of his empty gun, "laughing" as he did so, until he fell mortally wounded in the body and was carried ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... tied his bed behind his saddle and swung himself on the horse. Stonor signed to him to start first, and they trotted out from among the tepees. Stonor sat stiffly with the butt of his gun on his thigh, and disdained to look around. The instant they got in motion a wailing sound swept from tepee to tepee. Stonor wondered greatly at the hold this fellow had obtained over the simple people; even the Kakisas, it ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... upon them, smiling, until the exactions of his part demanded that he face more to the front and look into the muzzles of the Mausers. The fire of his cigarette having burned too close to his lips for comfort, and his hands being tied, he spat the butt out of his mouth and allowed the last taste of smoke which he was to enjoy on earth to curl slowly off through his nostrils. Then, for it was evident that the edge of the sun would show presently above the rim of the world, he had drawn a breath or two of the fresh morning ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... Lyell Hoge, and others; of the Jamestown, Lieutenant Commanding J. Nicholas Barney, Acting Master Samuel Barron, Jr., and others; of the Virginia, Lieutenant Catesby Roger Jones, Lieutenant Hunter Davidson, Lieutenant John Taylor Wood, Lieutenant Walter Raleigh Butt, and others. Commander E. Farrand was the ranking and commanding officer present, having been sent down from Richmond to command ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle
... are generally used, and should be from the tips of the branches where the wood is not too large. Commence at the back part of the shelter, and lay down a row of the boughs with the butt of the branch towards the front. Overlap these with another nearer row and continue the operation, laying the evergreen as evenly as possible until the whole interior is smoothly covered. The projecting ends at the front, should now be secured by the weight ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... of cakes and liqueurs circulating about in ponderous bottles. This only added to the restraint of the ladies. They knew not how to eat or drink gracefully, they feared to stain their dresses and the furniture and feared also to serve as the butt of ridicule for a few gentlemen who were not at all impressed with this sham elegance, and were gazing at them ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... one of his speeches, having accused his rival of filling his speech with everything that was personal, inflammatory, and invidious, he remarked:—"I am not surprised if he should pretend to be the butt of ministerial persecution; and if, by striving to excite the public compassion, he should seek to reinstate himself in that popularity which he once enjoyed, but which he so unhappily has forfeited. For it is the best and most ordinary resource of these political apostates to court, to offer ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Witherspoon proposed to his four comrades to watch the enemy's camp, until the Tories were asleep. But his men timidly shrunk from the performance, expressing their dread of superior numbers. Witherspoon undertook the adventure himself. Creeping up to the encampment, he found that they slept at the butt of a pine tree, which had been torn up by the roots. Their guns were piled against one of its branches at a little distance from them. These he first determined to secure, and, still creeping, with the skill and caution of an experienced scout, he succeeded in his ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... Captain Lorrimer sagged, and his whisper came out in jerking syllables: "God Almighty!" Then Blondy went for his gun, and Vic waited with his hand on the butt of his own, waited with a perfect, cold foreknowledge, heard Blondy moan as his Colt hung in the holster, saw the flash of the barrel as it whipped out, and then jerked his own weapon and fired from the hip. Blondy staggered but kept ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... Taia reached the steps she began to descend them, but Craig wasn't so docile. He told himself that this was his last chance; once below, surrounded by numbers, there might be no opportunity to strike for freedom. His eyes narrowed as he groped for a plan. If he could butt his brawny captor, strike him fairly in the solar plexus, and, while he lay helpless, cut his ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the rest—leaning, I should rather say, for his body was not erect, but diagonal. In this attitude it was propped by his rifle, the butt of which was steadied against the stump of a tree, whilst the muzzle appeared to rest upon the bridge ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... his rifle and put the butt down in the trench bottom, slipped his bayonet out, and holding the rifle near the muzzle with one hand, with the other placed the point of the bayonet to the trigger of the rifle. He removed it instantly and ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... Darnis-Zarine), a town on the north coast of Africa and capital of the eastern half of the Ottoman province of Bengazi or Barca. Situated below the eastern butt of Jebel Akhdar on a small but rich deltaic plain, watered by fine perennial springs, it has a growing population and trade, the latter being mainly in fruits grown in its extensive palm gardens, and in hides and wool brought down by the nomads from ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... Carey let them in, there would be no more peace in Peacepool. So she packs them away in a great pond by themselves at the South Pole, two hundred and sixty-three miles south- southeast of Mount Erebus, the great volcano in the ice; and there they butt each other with their ugly noses, day and night from year's end ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... because Mrs. Macaulay approves the army that turned out the House of Commons, the necessary consequence of such mad notions? Is eloquence to talk or write us out of ourselves? or is Catiline to save us, butt so as by fire? Sir, I talk thus freely, because it is a satisfaction, in ill-looking moments, to vent one's apprehensions in an honest bosom. YOU Will not, I am sure, suffer my letter to go out of your ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... follow her till the last biscuit is eaten, and the scuttle-butt shall be dry, with no better fortune. It is not my business to teach your Honor; but there is not a man in the ship, who ever expects to be a farthing the better for her capture. Men are of many minds concerning the 'Skimmer of the ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... as a new rifle would have cost, but he did not know that—though he did know that he had scarcely enough money left in his pocket to jingle when the transaction was completed. He carried the rifle across the saddle in front of him and fingered the butt pridefully while his eyes went glancing here and there hopefully, looking for the bear that had crossed the trail that morning. The mere possession of the rifle bent his mood toward adventure rather than concealment. He did not think now of the lookout station as a refuge so much as ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... animal made his way with unobtrusive swiftness the length of the room and stood between the dog and a man who fingered the butt of ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... miserable place, very low and very damp; the walls disfigured by a thousand rents and blotches. The water was trickling out of a leaky butt, and a most wretched cat was lapping up the drops with the sickly eagerness of starvation. The grate was screwed up so tight as to hold no more than a thin sandwich of fire. Everything was locked up; the coal-cellar, the candle-box, the salt-box, ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... trying to butt in! Stung again! Like a small boy in love with teacher. And I thought I was so wise! Cussed out Mac—blamed Mac—no, damn all the fine words—cussed out Mac for being the village rumhound. Boozing is twice as sensible as me. See a girl, nice dress—start for Seattle! ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... against the storm and then yielded, red-faced and angry. Others tried but in vain. A Southerner, Benham, inveighing passionately against the conditions of the city, in throwing back his coat happened inadvertently to reveal the butt of a Colt revolver. The bystanders immediately caught the point. "There's a pretty Law and Order man!" they shouted. "Say, Benham, don't you know it's against the law ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... fellow, more warlike than the rest, suggested that as we had some Enfields on board, we should make "a little bit of a fight," or at least "make one butt at a gunboat." I was relieved to find that these insane proposals were not received with ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... altercation, then a scuffle ensued, in which latter the mastiff took an effective part, in maintaining the equality of the house against what otherwise would have been overwhelming odds; but he was at last disabled by a blow with the butt of a fowling-piece, whilst the lap-dog, as it stood barking on the borders of the fray, was shot dead by the cowardly and vindictive Narcisse. This was too much to be borne, and, indignant, the ladies descended to the lawn. At the same moment, three female ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... down in the animal scale. Sir J. Lubbock (17. 'Transact. Linnean Soc.' vol. xxvi. 1868, p. 296.) says: "it is very amusing to see these little creatures (Smynthurus luteus) coquetting together. The male, which is much smaller than the female, runs round her, and they butt one another, standing face to face and moving backward and forward like two playful lambs. Then the female pretends to run away and the male runs after her with a queer appearance of anger, gets in front and stands facing her again; then she turns coyly round, but he, quicker ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... that. I knew besides that he had been a schoolmaster in England; and can you imagine anything more tedious and toilsome than to be the "French master," the poor, despised, "frog-eating Mounseer Jacques" of boys' stories, the butt of all their facetious brutality? If ever anything was calculated to make a man diabolique! I trust biographers will not forget to place all this depressing drudgery to our "vagabond's" credit. Think of it! The first poet of France ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Crumpled and cheap; and barbs with iron will: The hour that passes is her quiver-boy; When she draws bow, 'tis not across the wind, Nor 'gainst the sun, her haste-snatched arrow sings, For sun and wind have plighted faith to her Ere men have heard the sinew twang, behold, In the butt's heart her ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... made a strong effort to seize the bucket, regardless of the cowhide, when Long Tom felled him at a blow with his pistol butt, then cocking the weapon, glanced sternly around at the circle of angry faces ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... The woman was sweating over a stove, frying cutlets and the man was sitting on the floor peeling potatoes into a large bucket. He was a thickset lump of a fellow, with long, hairy arms, dark heavy eyebrows set firm over sharp, inquisitive eyes, a snub nose, and a long scar stretching from the butt of the left ear up to the cheekbone. He wore a nondescript pair of loose baggy trousers, a fragment of a shirt and a pair of bedroom slippers. He peeled the potatoes with a knife, a long rapier-like instrument which ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... Count Antonio Oroboni, a native of Fratta, near Rovigo, and only twenty-nine years of age. Alas! we were soon interrupted by the ferocious cries of the sentinels. He in the gallery knocked as loud as he could with the butt-end of his musket, both at the Count's door and at mine. We would not, and we could not obey; but the noise, the oaths, and threats of the guards were such as to drown our voices, and after arranging that we ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... out of the shadows. It was just after dawn, and the grayness of the vanishing night still held in the corners of the armory. Deliberately he took his own stand before the arms racks and chose a short-barreled blaster. Only when its butt was cupped in his hand did he glance at ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... of foliage. Scarcely had he done so, when a horseman dashed up to the house, forced his steed up the three or four broad steps leading to the door, and, without dismounting or looking for a bell or other means of announcing his arrival, struck several blows upon the oaken panels with the butt of his heavy riding-whip. Whilst the party above-stairs hurried to the windows, and endeavoured to discern who it was that disturbed them in so unceremonious a manner, a servant opened the small grated wicket in the centre of the door, and enquired ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... counting-out rhymes of children. Pictures of the moral and social life of peasant Germany are followed by poems of nature and of the supernatural. Tragedies vary with humorous skits, extravagant and mocking, and the collection is enlivened with many flyting poems about tailors—a favorite butt of the peasant past. Ballads of popular origin and ballads with an added sentimental touch, such as the famous Strassburg poem with the added Alpine horn motif, are found here. Delicate, haunting rhymes alternate with crude assonances, and occasionally one meets with banalities; ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... make the citizens worse? For he gave them pay, and at first he was very popular with them, but at last they condemned him to death. Yet surely he would be a bad tamer of animals who, having received them gentle, taught them to kick and butt, and man is an animal; and Pericles who had the charge of man only made him wilder, and more savage and unjust, and therefore he could not have been a good statesman. The same tale might be repeated about Cimon, Themistocles, Miltiades. But the charioteer who keeps his seat at first is not ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... suchlike, down to that "distracted peruke-maker with two fiery torches," who, at the storm of the Bastile, "was for burning the saltpetres of the Arsenal, had not a woman run screaming; had not a patriot, with some tincture of natural philosophy, instantly struck the wind out of him, with butt of musket on pit of stomach, overturned the barrels, and stayed the devouring element." The distracted peruke-maker may have had his wrongs—perhaps such a one as that of poor Triboulet the fool, in "Le Roi s'amuse"—and his own sound reasons for blowing down ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... effect, others who came along were less disposed to listen to orders. Gradually gathering, until they were in considerable numbers, several shots were fired at the officers; and one man, advancing up the steps, began to hammer at the door with the butt end of his musket. Terence leaned over the balcony and, drawing his pistol and taking a steady aim, fired, and the man fell with a sharp cry. A number of shots were fired from below, but the men were too unsteady to take aim, and ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... Master Sam didn't never whip me, but Miss Julia whipped me every day in the mawning. During the war she beat us so terrible. She say, "Your master's out fighting and losing blood trying to save you from them Yankees, so you kin git your'n here." Miss Julia would take me by my ears and butt my head against the wall. She wanted to whip my mother, but old Master told her, naw sir. When his father done give my mammy to Master Sam, he told him not to beat her, and iffen he got to whar he jest ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... Wisconsin driving cars in the snow Butt against its impulsion and face to the blow, Tossing snow from their bonnets as a ship tosses foam, So the Friends tossed the Wantings as they ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... a wan smile at his partner, sitting on the bottom of an upturned pail, as he said this. Then he reached for his hip pocket and drew out a revolver, which he handed, butt-end forward, to the professor, who, not knowing his friend carried such an instrument, ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... glided forward reversing his rifle. There was a cracking sound as the gun butt struck the orator from Tete in the middle of the forehead. With a drowsy look the smitten man sank down as gently as if falling into a mound of feathers, and deliberately composed himself in sleep, his brown face ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... fun—and there were some very pleasant touches—was not so much the fun of a huge and preposterous joke, but rather the humour of character or incidental detail. The part of Lord Glandeville, who might have been made the most ridiculous butt of imposture, was treated quite solemnly. Indeed, our sympathies were provoked for a man whose finest instincts had been trifled with; who had been suffered to fall in love with the poet-soul of a girl only to find that she was the tool of a gang ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... inclination to plumpness has to put up with the officers' coarse witticisms. There, for instance, is Handsome Sara from Cimrishamn, whom everybody knows. Every autumn she goes home, and comes again every spring with a figure that at once makes her the butt of their wit; but Sara, who generally has a quick temper and a ready tongue, to-day drops her eyes in modest confusion: she has fourteen yards of cloth wrapped round her ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Parliament excise. A swarm of them, and all with a wolf in their stomachs and a sponge in their gullets. Monks, friars, pilgrims, palmers, soldiers, excisemen, provost-marshals and men, and mere bad debtors, how can 'The White Hart' butt against all these? Cutting no throats in self-defence as do your 'Swans' and 'Roses' and 'Boar's Heads' and 'Red Lions' and 'Eagles,' your 'Moons,' 'Stars,' and 'Moors,' how can 'The White Hart' give a pint of wine for a pint? And everything risen so. Why, lad, not ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... brethren will always number thee among those who have renounced the Mother. Hark! thy enemies are in pursuit of thee, already near. Should they capture thee, thou must be the slave of their wills, the partner of their crimes, the sport and butt of all their bitter jests throughout the remnant of thy wretched life. One only refuge remains for thee!' And as he spoke, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... He had, however, listened to the conversation with an interest almost childish, and a reverent admiration of his comrades—qualities which, combined with an intellect not particularly brilliant, made him alternately the butt and the favorite of the camp. Indeed, he was supposed to possess that proportion of stupidity and inexperience which, in mining superstition, gives "luck" to its possessor. And this had been singularly proven in the fact ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... written a poem. Well, just as I was sittin' down, I whispered, 'How is our learned Lepsius?' to Burton major. Old Butt grinned like an owl. He didn't know what I was drivin' at; but King jolly well did. That was really why he hove us out. Ain't you grateful? Now shut up. I'm goin' to write the 'Ballad ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... the lapel of his coat and showed the butt of his automatic gun nestling under his ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... at that game," and his hand neared the butt of his revolver. I jerked out my pistol and fired at his arm. His pistol dropped to ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... forward. The sail which they are now just hoisting is, in shape, like a right-angled triangle, with a parallelogram below its base; the hypothenuse or head of the sail is secured to a yard, like an enormous fishing-rod; the halyards are secured to it about a third of the way from the butt-end, and it is hoisted close up to the head of the mast. A tackle brings down the lower end of the yard to the deck, and serves to balance the lofty tapering point, while the sheet is secured to the lower after-corner of the sail. Though ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... to have an intuitive perception that danger was approaching, for it turned abruptly round just as the missile left the seaman's hand, and received the butt with full force close to the root of ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... tree trunks, squared them on one side with his ax, laid one on the other with the squared faces together and then drove in a big wedge at the butt ends which separated them three or four inches. Then we placed live coals in this opening and watched the fire run rapidly the whole length of the squared ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... Philipovna, although too often they were both rude and offensive. Those who wished to go to her house were forced to put up with Ferdishenko. Possibly the latter was not mistaken in imagining that he was received simply in order to annoy Totski, who disliked him extremely. Gania also was often made the butt of the jester's sarcasms, who used this method of keeping in Nastasia ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... damsel, 'I have brought you here where is Sir Turquine, the mightiest knight that ever was found, as men say, and was never overmatched by any. And in his dungeons are many poor knights, and my dear father, Sir Darrel. Now strike the bason with the butt of ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... then between the men, and turning on the one with the cane, he threw up his hands, as if to say "I am unarmed." As I again turned he quickly drew his revolver and shot me in the back of the head, and followed it up with another shot which was aimed at the butt of my ear. I felt the muzzle of the revolver pressed against my ear, and throwing up my head the bullet entered my neck and passed up through my mouth and tongue and lodged back of my left eye. As I rushed at him he fired again, the bullet entering the point of my shoulder while ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... this world and somewhat too innocent, too transparently a child of nature. Warrington, with all his sense and honesty, is rough; Pendennis is a bit of a puppy; Clive Newcome is not much of a hero; and as for Dobbin he is almost intended to be a butt. ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... thought hard through two cigarettes. Then he thumbed out the butt, got to his feet, and started to return to the hotel. For it had suddenly come upon him that he ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... jiffey, there cam' sic a blast, an' a reek fit to smore ye, oot o' the bit fire, an' the shop was fu' o' reek, afore ye could hae pitten the pint o' ae thoom upo' the pint o' the ither. 'Preserve's a'!' cried Rob; but or he could say anither word, butt the house, scushlin in her bauchles, comes Nancy, rinnin', an' opens the door wi' a scraich: 'Preserve's a'!' quo' she, 'Robert, the lum's in a low!' An' fegs! atween the twa reeks, to sunder them, there was nothing but Nancy hersel. The hoose was as fu' as it cud haud, frae cellar to garret, o' ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... were turned curiously on Chrisfield. Small, a red-faced man with a long nose that hung down over his upper lip, shuffled sheepishly over to his place beside Chrisfield's cot and let the butt of his rifle come down with a bang on the floor. Somebody laughed. Andrews walked up to them, a look of trouble in his blue eyes and in the lines of his lean ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... with wild sputterings and jets of red flame. Eagerly, but carefully, he lowered the fiery ball into the hole, paying out the string till it was evident that the tree was hollow almost down to the butt. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... return from the Duchess's, she desired her 'valet de chambre' to bring her billiard cue into her closet, and ordered me to open the box that contained it. I took out the cue, broken in two. It was of ivory, and formed of one single elephant's tooth; the butt was of gold and very tastefully wrought. "There," said she, "that is the way M. de Vaudreuil has treated a thing I valued highly. I had laid it upon the couch while I was talking to the Duchess in the salon; he had the assurance to make use of it, and in a fit of passion ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... enter decidedly tiresome very butt Solomon infection bluff Czar short although Caesarism distance ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... snowdrifts and been drenched in pouring rains, she had been frozen with the cold and prostrated with the heat, she had been blown about by Chicago wind until it was strange there was any of her left in one piece, she had had front doors—yes, and back doors too, slammed in her face, she had been the butt of the alleged wit of menials and hirelings, she had been patronised by vapid women as the poor girl who must make her living some way, she had been roasted by—but never mind—she had had a beat or two! And now she was to wind it all up by marrying Joseph Tank, who had made a great deal ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... sight which greeted their eyes. For the famous seven sisters were perpetrating something of a practical joke; they were leaving the castle in a boat, and on perceiving the men's faces at the windows they gave vent to a loud laugh of disdain. Hardly had the angry suitors realized that they were the butt of the ladies' ridicule when they were seized with consternation. For one of the sisters, in the attempt to shake her fist at the men she affected to despise, tried to stand up on one of the thwarts of the boat, which, being a light craft, was upset at once. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... then to be seen, but we well knew they were in the bushes close by, and that, in all probability, we should every one share the fate of our murdered comrade. What to do now was the universal inquiry. With the butt of my rifle I scattered the fire, to prevent the Indians making a sure mark of us. We then proceeded to pack up with the utmost despatch, intending to move into the open prairie, where, if they attacked us again, we could at least defend ourselves, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... minute, a shot-loaded quirt held butt forward in his hand. He did not want to use a gun unless he had to, and the loaded end of a good quirt makes a very efficient substitute for a blackjack. But there was no movement save the wind, so presently he followed the wall of the house ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... horse is universally admired. The Arab poet sings of the beauties of his camel. The bull, the cow, the dog, and even the cat have all been praised in prose or verse; but the poor donkey still remains an ass, the butt of ridicule, the symbol of stupidity, the object of abuse. Yet if there be another and a better world for animals, and if in that sphere patience ranks as a cardinal virtue, the ass will have a better pasture-ground than many of its rivals. The donkey's small size is against ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... duty." Then he directed their steps so as to pass near the man. When opposite, he turned his eyes suddenly upon Perkins' face, and detected such a scowl of hostility and hate that his hand dropped instinctively on the butt of his revolver. "Well, sir," he said, sternly, ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the street, and staying there throughout waking hours, when not in school, using it for playground, lunch-room, and loafing-place, and regarding it as pleasanter than home. Imagine going to school half fed and poorly clothed, sometimes the butt of a playmate's gibes because of a drunken father or a slatternly mother, required to study subjects that make no appeal to the child and in a language that is not native, and then back to the street, perhaps to sell papers until far into the night, or to run at the beck and call of the public ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... for purposes of dictation, stood on a hinged and swinging bracket. On the wall, under the barometer and thermometers, from a round wooden frame laughed the face of a girl. On the wall, between the rows of buttons and a switchboard, from an open holster, loosely projected the butt of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... his legs apart, bent a little at the knees, as if he intended to make a jump. His right hand was near the butt of his gun, his fingers were clasping and unclasping, as if he limbered them for action. Taterleg slipped up behind him on his toes, and jerked the gun from Jim's scabbard with quick and sure hand. He backed away with it, presenting it with determined mien as ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... respecting the Bourbons, and in which he indulged as freely after he became the Minister of Louis XVIII. as when he was the Minister of Bonaparte. It was universally known that in his conversation the Bourbons were the perpetual butt for his sarcasms, that he never mentioned them but in terms of disparagement, and that he represented them as unworthy of governing France. Everybody must have been aware that Fouche, in his heart, favoured a Republic, where ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... minutes for the operation. Meantime the Californian replaced the targets with new ones—old tin dinner plates this time—and voiced a philosophical regret over his recent defeat. The Texas man, ready at last, took his place beside Pete and raised his gun till the butt of it was level with his ear, the barrel pointing up and back. Johnson swung up his heavy gun in ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... to offer, and did present in miniature, the elements of a complete society. Among the inmates there was, as in the world at large, one poor discouraged creature—a butt on whom mocking pleasantries were rained. This patient sufferer was the old vermicelli maker, Goriot. Six years before, he had come to live at the Maison Vauquer, having, so he said, retired from business. He dressed handsomely, wore a gold watch, with thick gold chain and seals, flourished ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... the last word Gibbs reeled under a blow in the face; his revolver, going off harmlessly, was snatched from him, Maxime's derringer missed also, and Gibbs swayed, bleeding and sightless, from Hilary's blows with the butt of the revolver. Presently down he lurched insensible, Hilary going half-way with him but recovering and turning to the aid of his friend. Maxime tore loose from his opponent, beseeching the bull-drivers to attack, but beseeching in vain. Squawking and chattering like parrot and monkey, they ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... salad of canned baked beans, and coffee with condensed milk, and a spoonful or two of condensed milk for ice cream. When the banquet was over the leader of the bandits rapped on the stone floor of the cave with the butt of his revolver for attention, and taking a canteen of whisky for a loving cup, he drank to the health of their distinguished guest, and passed it around, so all might drink, and then he ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... spring across one of the little brown pools. . . . Then, to her despair, he stumbled, and one leg went down in the soft muck of the farther edge. As he fell, he tried to throw his rifle to the bank, but the heavy, metal-stayed butt jammed against ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... years My father taught me carpentry, his trade, And made me work with him. I seemed to be The butt for jokes and laughter with the men— I know not why. For now and then they'd drop A word that showed they knew my secrets, knew I had heard voices, knew I loathed the lusts Of women, drink. Oh these were sorry years, God was not with me though I sought Him ever And I was persecuted for His sake. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
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