"Coffin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about the hospital and there is no sign of the old dissipation. When Anna left us a few weeks ago, the man's grief was great, and it was this old 'body-guard' who sat up all night the one night after the coffin was sealed and remained in the house. The old mother at sixty-seven years of age has learned to read the Bible and ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... at Oeassa four days, when, not finding any insects and very few new birds, I returned to Coupang to await the next mail steamer. On the way I had a narrow escape of being swamped. The deep coffin-like boat was filled up with my baggage, and with vegetables, cocoa-nut and other fruit for Coupang market, and when we had got some way across into a rather rough sea, we found that a quantity of water was coming in which we had no means of baling out. This caused us to sink ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... young fellow was taken off, after a few days' illness, yesterday. The attack was one to which the negroes are very subject, arising from cold and exposure.... We went to his burial, which was a scene I shall not soon forget. His coffin was brought out into the open air, and the negroes from over the whole island assembled around it. One of their preachers (a slave like the rest) gave out the words of a hymn, which they all sang in unison; after which he ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... simplified that he held the moment to have arrived when he could openly turn his hand to the problem of making himself absolutely supreme, de jure as well as de facto. But there was one remaining thing to be done. To drive the last nail into the coffin of the Republic it was necessary to discredit and virtually imprison the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... joined in the relieved laugh that followed. They were remembering his young Sing Sing convict who had completed his sentence in time to step in a cab and follow his mother to the grave, where his stepfather refused to have her coffin opened. And St. George, fresh from his Alma Mater, had weighted the winged words of his story with allusions to the tears celestial of Thetis, shed for Achilles, and Creon's grief for Haemon, and the Unnatural Combat of Massinger's father and son; so that ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... actually inspected these relics, I have not ascertained; but that a real coffin, containing real bones, was brought from St. Helena to France, I ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... was too much for him after all. Late on a July evening, after helping his haymakers to get in their last loads, he was soaked with a heavy summer dew. He caught cold and died, on July 28, 1667, and the Thames bore his coffin to burial in ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Mawhood's over there,—and we 'll take him up properly. Have you a horse, sir? Ah, that's well, and bring a Prayer Book if you can find one,—I doubt if there be any in my staff. I presume the man was a Churchman, and he shall have prayers too. We have no coffin for him, either; but stay—here 's my own cloak, a proper shroud for a soldier, surely that will do nicely; and now ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... kept even pace with Jones, discovered something painted flying in the air, a very few yards before him, which fancying to be the colours of the enemy, he fell a bellowing, "Oh Lord, sir, here they are; there is the crown and coffin. Oh Lord! I never saw anything so terrible; and we are within gun-shot of ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... face, identifying ourselves with the thoughts we ascribed to our Emperor before that other genius whose glory survived the overthrow of his work, who was as great in extreme adversity as in success." The eighteenth bulletin said of this tomb: "The great man's remains are enclosed in a wooden coffin covered with copper, and are placed in a vault, with no ornaments, trophies, or other distinction recalling his great actions." The Emperor presented to the Invalides in Paris Frederick's sword, his ribbon of the Black Eagle, his general's sash, as well as the flags carried ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... been, had not Halloway, in the strong excitement of his feelings, sprung to his feet upon the coffin, uttering the exclamation of triumph recorded in the last pages of our first volume, is scarcely doubtful. However much the governor might have contemned and slighted a credulity in which he in no way participated ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... goodwife of Ladyfield in her appointed place beside her husband and her only child, Gilian taking a cord at the head of the coffin as it was lowered into the red jaws of the grave prepared for it. The earth thudded on the lid, the spades patted the mould, the people moved off, and he was standing yet, listening to the bird that shook a song of passionate ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Bagarag, and it seemed she was urging Abarak to do a deed beyond his powers, he frowning and pointing to the right wrist of the youth. So she clenched her hands an instant with that feeling which knocketh a nail in the coffin of a desire not dead, and controlled herself, and went to the youth, breaking into beams of beauty; and an enchanting sumptuousness breathed round her, so that in spite of himself he suffered her to take him by the hand and lead him from that orchard ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... yet some of the shows lingered and there were still crowds of children round the whirligigs and shooting-galleries when the mournful procession went by. The children at first drew back in astonishment; it was an unexpected sight, a coffin on the fair-ground. But astonishment soon gave way to curiosity, and they crowded round the little band of mourners, and followed ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... us alone to the watch. It was enough to break one's heart to stand by the window and hear her wandering on about her Trevor coming to his place, and not being kept from his position; while we watched the little coffin carried across the field by the labouring men, with those two walking after it. Our boy's first funeral was that of the friend who had died in ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... carriers. In Galicia I have seen women bearing immense burdens, unloading boats, acting as porters and firemen, and removing household furniture. I saw one woman with a chest of drawers easily poised upon her head, another woman bore a coffin, while another, who was old, carried a small bedstead. A beautiful woman porter in one village carried our heavy luggage, running with it on bare feet, without sign of effort. She was the mother of four children, and her husband was at the late Cuban war. She was upright as a young pine, with ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... taxes on the ermine which decorates the judge, and on the rope which hangs the criminal; on the poor man's salt and the rich man's spice; on the ribbons of the bride, on the shroud of the corpse, and the brass nails of the coffin. The school-boy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth rides his taxed horse, with a taxed saddle and bridle, on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his chintz-bed, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause; What cause withholds you then to mourn for him? Oh, judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason!—Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... in the faint moonlight against a dark background of blue; moon invisible; on the outside of web a star, in the center a spot of light, underneath a coffin filled with stones. ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... with a friend who lived at the entrance of the town, not choosing to appear untidy as she walked up the Fore Street. These arrangements made, she went to seek her husband, who was busy planing a coffin-lid in the workshop behind the cottage, and ruminating ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... land,—great, light, and airy structures, with playgrounds on the roof; and all over the city the like are going up. The briefest of our laws, every word of which is like the blow of a hammer driving the nails home in the coffin of the bad old days, says that never one shall ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... a few miles from Galena, and is so named on account of having been used as a dwelling by its former owner, who kept a coffin in which he intended to place himself before the final summons, but was overtaken by death in the forest and it was never used. He wrote sermons on the rocks in his cave and one ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... be shown a room which they might appropriate for the night, the brothers were ushered into a crib leading out of the coffee-room, and measuring about eight feet square; while on each side of it was stationed a bed of similar dimensions to a coffin, with appurtenances of relative magnitude. After depositing their valises and ordering a meal, they strolled out to the stables to see that Joey had well looked after their horses; and, upon their recal by ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... Dean's face with it, when, a noise attracting his attention, he peered round at the picture. It was bulging from the wall; it was falling! And, Good God, what was that that was falling with it—that huge black object? A coffin? No, not a coffin, but a corpse! The servant ran to the door shrieking, and, in less than a minute, passage and room were filled to overflowing with a scared crowd ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... England. At Taunton I perceived a crowd of persons gathered at the front of the train. I went forward and saw a corpse was being removed from the van to a hearse outside the station. On reading the inscription on the coffin plate I was somewhat taken aback to find my own name. So Richard Pike living and Richard Pike dead had been travelling by the same train. Perhaps rarely, if ever, have two more singular circumstances occurred in connection ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... door bell were so near the sick room that the use of both had to be avoided): that she did not give her guests enough to eat at his funeral: that she actually sought the quiet of her own room instead of staying downstairs to receive condolences when her husband's coffin had just been lowered into ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... some confusion of syntax, excusable in a person of his circumstances. Now, suppose they—or he—the man whose brains are out—goes about with his coffin under his arm, like my worthy uncle? and suppose he blandly, politely, relentlessly insists upon reading to you, out of that octavo sarcophagus, passages which in his opinion prove that he is not only not dead, but immortal? If such a man be a stranger, snub him; if ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... telling old stories and cackling shrill-voiced like children. And Tromp would maunder over and over of how Johannes Maartens and the cunies robbed the kings on Tabong Mountain, each embalmed in his golden coffin with an embalmed maid on either side; and of how these ancient proud ones crumbled to dust within the hour while the cunies cursed and sweated at junking ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... bedroom is as heavy as a coffin-lid. I sleep with my window open, and when there comes a blast of wind my eyes are filled with snow. This morning, when I woke, my pillow-case was as wet as though I ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... heart of my tiny soul there began to grow a germ-like conception and reverence for God. With this thought the soul seemed to take unto itself strength to make feeble efforts to tear a way through its coffin of flinty skin and in feeble flight bounded and pounded incessantly on its case of parchment, as a drummer on his drum, with a ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... Hadley, the great rescue missionary, was lying in his coffin, a timid knock was heard at the door of the room where the body was resting. When the one who had knocked entered the room it was found that he was a drunkard, he had fallen from a high position to the very depths of despair, and as he stood timidly in the ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman
... could hardly be said to be exceeded by any other of the party. The approach of the naturalist was far less rapid than that of those who preceded him. His feet seemed equally reluctant to advance, or to remain stationary; his position bearing a great analogy to that of Mahomet's coffin, with the exception that the quality of repulsion rather than that of attraction held him in a state of rest. The repulsive power in his rear however appeared to predominate, and by a singular exception, as he would have said himself, to all philosophical principles, it rather increased than ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... crowded that lovely summer Sabbath," said the Sunday-school superintendent, "and all, as their eyes rested upon the small coffin, seemed impressed by the poor black boy's fate. Above the stillness the pastor's voice rose, and chained the interest of every ear as he told, with many an envied compliment, how that the brave, noble, daring little ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the hag, sternly; "now give me some pieces of the mouldering coffin, and fill this box with the dust of ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... fetch him, and we buried him under the lilac-tree, on the right hand side, just by the large sun-flower. And we cried a great deal, and made a card tomb-stone over his grave; and father gave us an old hatband and we cut it into pieces and we went as mourners. His coffin was carried by Tom Wood, the carpenter's son, whose father was so kind as to make it for us, while James Stavely (the clerk's nephew), my brother, and I, followed as chief mourners, and old nurse and Peggy put on their ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... manner of pictures in the fire? Who has not seen, or fancied he has seen, a fire-coffin? A fire-coffin is a bit of red-hot coal that pops mysteriously out of the grate in the rude shape of a coffin, and is prophetic of death, not necessarily the death of the beholder, but of someone ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... when every man had an eye to business, and could hardly afford to spare it long enough to wink. It is related of a certain minister who was officiating at a funeral that, while standing by the coffin offering the final prayer, he noticed one of the mourners kneeling upon the loose earth recently thrown from the grave. This man was a prospector, like all the rest, and in an absent-minded way he had tearfully been sifting the soil through his fingers. Suddenly he arose and began ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... No useless coffin inclosed his breast, Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him; 10 But he lay like a warrior taking his rest With his martial ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... my lord. Still weeping, he said to a gravedigger, 'Well! and the coffin?' 'You were right,' answered the man; 'I found it in the second row of the other grave. It had the figure of a cross on it, formed by seven black nails. But how could you know the place and the mark?' 'Alas! ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... pyramid of Khufu, a Pharaoh of the fourth dynasty, I chanced upon a sarcophagus of red granite in a forgotten chamber. My joy was great, for I thought that I had found a royal mummy, but what was my disappointment on opening the coffin, at the cost of infinite labor, to find nothing more than this ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... him to the city. On the way they passed a place where there was much filth, and the child said to his grandfather: "I wish you might wallow in it." Afterwards they saw a poor man being carried to the grave on a ladder, without any coffin. The child here wished that his grandfather, when he died, might be like this one. Next they met the long funeral procession of a rich man, and the child wished that his grandfather might not be like this rich man. ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... yet have not been brought to a successful end. In every war there comes forward the inventor with the submarine boat, and he always finds a few brave men ready to risk their lives in the floating coffin. Somewhere in Charleston Harbor to-day lies a submarine boat, enclosing the skeletons of eight men, who went out in it to break the blockade of the port during the civil war. And although there are to-day several types of submarine boat, each ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... your own, and nobody can take better care of her. I own I should like to be cased in something that once belonged to her. There's the bulk-head that was taken down, to alter the state-rooms for your family—it would make as comfortable a coffin as ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... gone so long in shabby clothing, and had known the sorrow of broken boots and wrist-bands that must be hidden away, he rode in state to his resting-place, drawn by four horses, in a silver hearse, his coffin ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... and sent for his attorney. His soul passed away, mourned by Little Thunder until the will was read, when his lamentations ceased; he soundly berated Mynheer, the Patroon, in his coffin and refused to go to his burying. Then he became an ardent anti-renter, a leader of "bolters," a thunderer of the people's cause, the devoted enemy of land barons in general, and one patroon in particular, the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... to Paul when he followed the body of his dear old grandfather to the grave; but when he stood by his coffin, and looked for the last time upon his grandfather's face, and saw how peaceful it was and how pleasant the smile which rested upon it, as if he was beholding beautiful scenes,—when Paul remembered how good he was, he ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... patience; what is it but the Church's stocks for the wayward feet of women. Marry you! To marry is to commit two souls to the prison of one body; to put two pigs into one poke; two legs into one boot, two arms into one sleeve, two heads into one hat, two necks into one noose, two corpses into one coffin, and this into a wet grave, for marriage is a perennial spring of tears. Marry! Why should I bind myself with a vow that I must break, not being by nature continent and loving? Marry you! Yes, when I hate you. Have I a sinistrous look to meditate such mischief? Do I seem old enough to be a bridegroom? ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... to Captain Koenig, shaking his head with a melancholy smile, that this new turn of affairs was the "last nail in his coffin," and henceforth he was seen going about with a face gloomy and expectant of the worst. For gradually he came to the conclusion that to keep in good order a garrison and its corps of officers, some other methods must be employed than those to which ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... press thy hand to my breast, and tell If thou tracest the knocks in that narrow cell; A carpenter dwells there; cunning is he, And slyly he's shaping a coffin for me!' ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... staircase, richly carpeted, and on the other side of the staircase, in a corresponding recess, upon a gilded trestle carved to represent the four claws of a dragon, rested perhaps the strangest exhibit of that strange collection—a Chinese coffin of ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... Upon arriving, the coffin was borne into the chapel, and, two by two, the mourners filed in behind it. This guard of men, all attached to the dead by the bond of kinship, was an impressive and singular sight in the great city of London, with its overwhelming diversity of life, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin. For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain that Dr. Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations. But reason it out for yourself and see if we arrive at any common center. Don't work ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... square, between a dying man and his dying wife. But the thing never touched her. Six years ago we had the small-pox, and she went all through that in just the same way. I don't believe she has ever had a day's illness in her life. She will be physicking this parish when my bones are rattling in my coffin, and she will be laying down the laws of literature long after your statue has become a familiar ornament of Westminster Abbey. She's a wonderful woman, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... took place on the 23d December, at Frogmore, and the Prince of Wales was the chief mourner. The words on the coffin were as follow: 'Here lies the most illustrious and exalted Albert, Prince-Consort, Duke of Saxony, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter, the most beloved husband of the most august and potent Queen Victoria. He died on ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... the good people of England; one of which is particularly calculated to deceive religious persons, to the great scandal of the well-disposed and may introduce heterodox opinions. (Among the curiosities presented by Admiral Munden was a coffin, containing the body or relics of a Spanish saint, who had ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... for his acquiescence. My body must be received on board, and carried round in the ship to Plymouth. Place it on the main-deck, where the people can see the coffin; I would pass my last hours above ground, in ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... all the Mediterranean. I ought to be gay. And yet I am not. And it is not the knowledge of my fatal disease that saddens me. No; I think I have been saddened by a day and a night spent with that coffin. It is a fraud of a coffin, but it exists. And when I saw it just now occupying the drawing-room, it gave me a sudden shock. It somehow took hold of my imagination. I was obliged to look within, and to touch ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... the door and fell upon my neck, weeping, and as mute as a fish. As soon as he came to his speech again he told me of the great miraculum (daemonis I mean) which had befallen at the burial of old Lizzie. For that, just as the bearers were about to lower the coffin into the grave, a noise was heard therein, as though of a carpenter boring through a deal board; wherefore they thought the old hag must be come to life again, and opened the coffin. But there she lay as before, all black and blue in the face, and as cold as ice; but ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... disturbed by men who confessed that they did not know why they were there, the peasants sang revolutionary songs; the sailors, armed with guns and grenades, joined them. Then the peasants knelt down to sing a funeral hymn to the memory of Logvinov, whose coffin was even yesterday within the room. The soldiers, lowering their guns, ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... the thin roof slabs had given way under pressure of the earth above. The style of building was irregular (v. PL. I), the blocks being fitted, but not squared. The body had lain on the west side, with its head north; no trace of a coffin remained, and the bones were a mere white paste, only to be distinguished by scraping sections with a knife through mud and bone. Under the whole body was a bed of white sand. Near the entrance were six vases (XI, 12), of a shape and fabric ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell
... holiday; and there was the usual invasion of ubiquitous tourists, whose dread of the Russian winter led them to visit the city at the dismal season when brown holland covers and fast-boarded windows shroud and coffin the corpse of the dead winter. In short, the season, Ivan's first season, was over. The imperial family were at Peterhoff. Tsarskoe-Selo was brilliant with arrivals from the cream of the court society, among whom, naturally, the Dravikines occupied a foremost place. The Grand-Duchess Helena, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... VIII feared lest the orthodox faith should suffer by this new cult of a heathen corpse. Julia was buried secretly and at night by his direction, and naught remained in the Capitol but her empty marble coffin. The tale, as told by Infessura, is repeated in Matarazzo and in Nantiporto with slight variations. One says that the girl's hair was yellow, another that it was of the glossiest black. What foundation for the legend may really have existed need not here be questioned. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... accident to a stranger at another hotel continued this morning, for as I took the long way around the bay before turning back to Clementine's alley I met the open island hearse, looking like a relic of provincial France, and in it was a coffin, and behind it moved a carriage in which ...
— The Blue Man - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... flight of steps and flashed her light about the vault. It was a small room, oppressively musty and humid. All Schwabing is damp but the Isar itself might have washed the walls of this dripping sepulcher. The coffin stood on a rough trestle in the center of the chamber, and it was covered with the military cloak that, with his sword and helmet, she had ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... laid him out as usual in a linen sheet. How white it looked! So much more simple and touching than the coffin—the form just discernible as it lay where five had lain before; and then I knelt down in our little chapel; and, I thank God, I could still bless and praise Him ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... A stone coffin, with an apparently Christian inscription, and several Roman ornaments bearing crosses have been found and placed in the York Museum, but this is all. There is no evidence, documentary or other, of the manner in which Christianity ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... a few minutes. Nuwell refused an invitation to remain overnight, explaining that he was anxious to get on to Mars City. The others unloaded Dark's coffin and moved with it back toward the building. Nuwell and Maya climbed back into the copter, and shortly they were airborne again and the buildings of the Canfell Hydroponic Farm were receding behind ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... car was large. The lower base was fourteen feet long and seven feet wide, and eight feet from the ground. The upper base, upon which the coffin rested, was eleven feet long and five feet below the top of the canopy. The canopy was surmounted by a gilt eagle, covered with crape. The hearse was entirely covered with cloth, velvet, crape, and alpaca. The seat was covered with cloth, and on each side ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Kellogg, churches, Himmer, flaming goblets, Stockton, and an angelic host with well-rounded calves in pink tights, radiant in the red light that, from some hidden regions, illuminates the aforesaid scantily clad angels, as they hang, like Mahomet's coffin, 'twixt heaven ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Butler quite surpasses himself in this story. The intricacies in radio are so great, and the changes occur so quickly that no one can afford to make a will wherein a radio provision figures. Once we thought of having a radio loud speaker installed in our coffin to keep us company and make it less lonesome. After reading this story we quickly changed our mind. The possibilities ...
— Solander's Radio Tomb • Ellis Parker Butler
... Most High. When the body was carried away for interment, a person, who remained behind, threw a brick after it, as a sign that all sorrow was past. The nearest friends or relations walked seven times round the grave, after each of them had driven a nail into the coffin. Hence the saying in our own time, when one signifies his willingness to do a friend a favour or kindness, "I will drive a nail into your coffin." When the body was put into the grave, every person present threw a handful of earth in ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... outlines which a poor, thin woolen wrapper imperfectly shrouded. She enchanted by the mere contour; it was her weird burden which appalled the watcher. In one hand, suspended horizontally, lengthwise parallel to her course, she held what seemed by shape and somber hue to be an infant's coffin. ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... Basilisk, and both the crew on the deck and the galley-slaves in the outriggers at either side lay dead in rows under the overwhelming shower from above. From stem to rudder every foot of her was furred with arrows. It was but a floating coffin piled with dead and dying men, which wallowed in the waves behind them as the Basilisk lurched onward and ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... readiness the Story Girl brought her pet through the orchard where he had so often frisked and prowled. No useless coffin enclosed his breast but he reposed in ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... my coffin but for you, Mr. Rodney?" said he. "I was in good company, though," pointing over his shoulder at the crucifix with his thumb. "Lord, how the rogues prayed and cursed in this same cabin! In fine weather, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... A coffin was made, into which my poor husband's body was laid, and then the neighbours buried him, but in such a manner that he lay but a foot or two below the earth's surface. I have been afraid the beasts of prey which infest this region would ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... ones, kindled emotion in dead ones, uplifted base ones, broadened bigoted ones, and made many and many a stricken one glad and filled it brimful of gratitude, figuratively spit upon in his unoffending coffin by this crawling, slimy, sanctimonious, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Law compels it. Doggone little pleasure spendin' money f'r your own coffin. More sensible to git some good out of it.... I'm goin' away to the city f'r a week or sich a matter. When I come back we'll kind of thrash things out and see what's to be done. Meantime, don't you and ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... of Digne, and almost surrounded by graves, stands a small and ancient church which is seldom opened except for the celebration of Masses for the Dead. Coffin-rests stand always before the altar, and enough chairs for the few that mourn. There are old candlesticks for the tapers of the church's poor, and hidden in the shadows of the doors, a few broken crosses that once marked ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... with the power of imagination. We do not find in his piano-forte pieces any of that subtile soul-searching force which penetrates to the deepest roots of thought and feeling. Sundry musical cynics were wont to crush Gottschalk's individuality into the coffin of a single epigram. "A musical bonbon to tickle the palates of sentimental women." But this falls as far short of justice as the enthusiasm of many of his admirers overreaches it. The easy and genial temperament of the man, his ability to seize the ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... shall live here together all our lives, and die here," thought Barnabas, as he went up the hill. "I shall lie in my coffin in the north room, and it will all be over," but his heart leaped with joy. He stepped out proudly like a soldier in a battalion, he threw back his shoulders in ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to remove; and a quaint and delightful story was further invented of this ring, which I shall not repeat here, as it is now as well known as any tale of the Arabian Nights. But the fast and the discovery of the coffin, by whatever means effected, are facts; and they are recorded in one of the best-preserved mosaics of the north transept, executed very certainly not long after the event had taken place, closely resembling in its treatment that of the Bayeux tapestry, and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... lacking in the obsequies of the poor clerk. The major, from his private means, had doubled the sum to be spent on the funeral, A beautiful oak coffin therefore stood in the centre of the little chapel, covered with the wreaths sent by the battery comrades of the dead man, by Schrader on the part of the division, and by Falkenhein on that of the regiment. They were thick wreaths of laurel, adorned with simple ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... thought of success, for nothing had happened since his second failure to make him any surer this time of success. He had settled up his business affairs, arranging for a goodly sum to go to his beloved daughter; he had bought the coffin in which his own body would be laid away and had stored it in one of the principal rooms of his dwelling; he had even engaged the priests and musicians who should chant his funeral dirge, and, last but not least, he had arranged with the man who would ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... and he was always scheming what to do for his family when he got back: but this is the end of it!" That dead soldier was merely a private. Not one of his own particular comrades was present, but only the necessary fatigue party. No flag was flung over his coffin, no bugle sounded "the last post." No tear was shed. It was only a commonplace "casualty," one among thousands. But it was a tragedy all the same. These tragedies in humble life seldom find a trumpeter; but they are none the ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... down the path from the mortuary, and place the coffin upon the gun-carriage. Upon the lid lie a very dingy glengarry, a stained leather belt, and a bayonet. They are humble trophies, but we pay them as much reverence as we would to the baton and cocked hat of a field-marshal, for they are ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... I replied. "So narrow was it that they had my coffin all ready built for me. I have managed to weather upon Yellow Jack this time, however, thank God; and now, if I could only get to sea again, I believe I should soon pull round ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... Hitty to her child, as Keery's peaceful, shrouded face was hidden under the coffin-lid and carried away to Greenfield Hill. Pitiful whisper! happily all-unmeaning to the child, but full of desolation to the mother, floating with but one tiny plank amid the wild wrecks of a midnight ocean, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... from marrying to keep out of trouble. The old saying is, that every sigh drives a nail in one's coffin. They are not going to worry themselves to death bearing children and nursing them! It is too great a risk, too much suffering. How often have we been told this! Yet how false the reasoning is! Very carefully prepared statistics show that between the ages of twenty and forty-five years, more ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... manhood come in vain, And genius given, and knowledge won in vain; And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild, And all which patient toil had reared, and all, Commune with thee had opened out—but flowers Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier, In the same coffin, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... betwixt a mental heaven and earth, after the similitude of Mahomet's coffin, George walked slowly down the street, until he was brought like a shot eagle to the ground by a touch on the shoulder. Now, as there is nothing more annoying than such a bailiff's salute, George wheeled round with some vigorous language on the tip of his tongue, ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... but he would not say a word to save their lives. In spite of himself he heard a howl of glee when some genius among them declaimed loudly: "Johnny volluped into Job's Coffin, and Venus ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... to die, his disciples expressed a wish to give him a splendid funeral. But Chuang Tzu said: "With heaven and earth for my coffin and my shell; with the sun, moon and stars as my burial regalia; and with all creation to escort me to my grave,—are not my funeral paraphernalia ready to hand?" "We fear," argued the disciples, "lest the carrion kite should eat the body of our Master;" to which Chuang Tzu replied: ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... been obliged to fulfil all the duties of his office—that is, to get money coined in his name and bearing his arms, to take the fisherman's ring from the finger of the dead pope, to dress, shave and paint him, to have the corpse embalmed, to lower the coffin after nine days' obsequies into the provisional niche where the last deceased pope has to remain until his successor comes to take his place and consign him to his final tomb; lastly, as he had been obliged to wall up the door of the Conclave and the window of the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a fancy to stay in one room all the time and would not let anybody in but Hanner, and now he is dead she keeps that room shet up and locked, some say. I was at the funeral, and Grey, who was a boy, took on awful, and hung over the coffin ever so long. He was sick with fever after it, and everybody thought he'd die. He was crazy as a loon. I watched with him one night and he talked every thing you could think of, about a grave hid away somewhere—under his bed, he seemed to think—and made me go down on all fours to look for it. ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... up her lamp, and by the light of it Tua saw that they were in a great cave painted with figures of the gods which had on either side of it recesses. In each of these was set a coffin with a gilded face, and behind it an alabaster statue of her who lay therein, and in front of it a table of offerings. At the head of the crypt stood a small altar of black stone, for the rest the ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... temples, but filled in with blue and green, orange and terra-cotta, laid on thickly, and as fresh as the day they were done. Ever descending we pass on until we reach the last chamber, where the great sarcophagus or coffin of the king was placed right up against the face of the rock. The sarcophagus might be a mighty block of granite, enclosing a wooden case, and that again another case, probably carved and gilt, and finally, as a kernel, there was the body of the king, preserved ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... first time, that outward apparatus of death to which he had taken such pains to familiarise himself; "nature still recurred upon him;"—for an instant, the home of peace, to which he was hastening, was forgotten;—"the multitude, the block, the coffin, the executioner, the instrument of death," appalled one, whose character was amiable, rather than exalted. He turned to his attendant, and exclaimed, "Home, this is terrible!" Yet his countenance, even as he uttered these words, was unchanged, and in a few moments, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... offer but a cup of cold water in charity, how much more will He regard the kind heart that has refreshed a weary spirit fainting by the way. Death quickens recollections painfully. The grave can not hide the white faces of those who sleep. The coffin and the green mound are cruel magnets. They draw us farther than we would go. They force us to remember. A man never sees so far into human life as when he looks over a wife's or mother's grave. His eyes get wondrous clear ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... coffee, we all became very sociable and chatty. After an hour or two so spent, we took our way to the chapel. It is very small; not capable, I should say, of accommodating above twenty or thirty persons. There, embalmed, are the remains of the late Vladika. The vicar removed the lid of the coffin, and he there appeared attired in full canonicals. His face, however, was hidden, and the covering was not removed. The limbs appeared to be much shrunk. The holy man took the hand of the deceased, and, kissing it with the most solemn devotion, burst into a wild laugh, and closed the lid. A ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... there are worse things than that. I wonder what she meant by that wild cry of 'Tear it open! See if her heart is there?' Tear what open? the coffin?" ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... time of departure could be arranged so that he should reach London Bridge at dusk, and proceed through the City after the day had closed in; that people would be ready at his journey's end to place the coffin in a vault without a minute's delay; that officious inquirers in the streets would be easily repelled by the tale that he was carrying for interment the corpse of one who had died of the plague; and in short showed him every reason why he should succeed, and none why ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... evident symptoms of terror and remorse, exhibited by young Standfield, seem to have had considerable weight with the jury, and are thus stated in the indictment: "That his (the deceased's) nearest relations being required to lift the corpse into the coffin, after it had been inspected, upon the said Philip Standfield touching of it (according to God's usual mode of discovering murder), it bled afresh upon the said Philip; and that thereupon he let the body fall, and fled ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... the simple King to hell, Without or coffin, shroud, or passing bell: To me what are divine and human laws? I court no sanction but my own applause! Rapes, robberies, treasons, yield my soul delight, And human carnage gratifies my sight: I drag the parent by the hoary hair, And toss the sprawling ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... westwards. Cleopatra's Needle shot up beside them, a pointing finger. Down on the silent river below, coffin-like row-boats lay moored to the wall. Through a break in the trees the clock over the Houses of Parliament shone for an instant as if suspended in the sky, then vanished as the trees closed in. A distant barge in the ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... six in the morning, two deserters from the American army entered the British camp, and informed Stuart of the approach of the enemy; but little credit was given to their report. At that time Major Coffin, with 140 infantry and 50 of the South Carolina Regiment, was out foraging for roots and vegetables—the army having neither corn nor bread—in the direction in which the Americans were advancing. About four miles from the camp at ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... home. Oh, mother! if you had been with me up those broken stairs, and seen the helpless beings in that dismal, dirty room you would have wished, like me, for the means to help them. The dead body lay there unburied, for the man said, they had no money to pay for a coffin. He was dying himself, and they might as ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... which Lucille died, were found two unanswered letters, proposals of marriage, one from Leo and one from Captain Hall. The broken hearted mother took charge of these letters, and before the metallic coffin was sealed, the unanswered letters were placed in Lucille's white hand, over the heart that could ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... speak awfully of Monti as a great poet, because the commonplace mind regards everything established as great. He is a classic of those classics common to all languages—dead corpses which retain their forms perfectly in the coffin, but crumble to dust as soon as exposed ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keepe the winde away. Oh, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a Wall, t' expell the winters flaw. But soft, but soft, aside; heere comes the King. Enter King, Queene, Laertes, and a Coffin, with ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... moment came when Alex and Jamieson tossed the spades on the grass, and I confess I hid my face. There was a period of stress, I think, while the heavy coffin was being raised. I felt that my composure was going, and, for fear I would shriek, I tried to think of something else—what time Gertrude would reach Halsey—anything but the grisly reality that lay just beyond ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... prayer-book that she held. Subject to apoplexy, Sommers judged; but his thoughts passed over her as well as Miss M'Gann, who stood with downcast eyes ostentatiously close to Mrs. Preston, and the grave old dentist standing at the foot of the coffin, and the clergyman whose young voice had not lost its thrill of awe in the presence of death. He had no eyes for aught but the woman, who was bound to him by firmer ties than those whose dissolution the clergyman was recording. She stood serene, with head raised ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... midnight, though nothing could have induced him to admit this to Georgina. As far back as he could remember he had had an unreasoning dread of coffins. Even now, big as he was, big enough to wear "'leven-year-old suits," nothing could tempt him into a furniture shop for fear of seeing a coffin. ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hope, their songs of joy, their transports of gratulations, out of respect to the grief which dwelt there, and could scarcely, by all the arguments of family pride, or the excitement of this universal triumph, be brought to rejoice. The bier was set down within the chancel, the coffin opened, and opened also was the little window through which the nuns received the sacrament on ordinary occasions. To this little opening the pale group of nuns, ten of them, with Clara at their head, came marching silently, with tears and suppressed cries. Clara herself, ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... and on the drug that restores him to health; on the ermine which decorates the judge and the rope which hangs the criminal; on the poor man's salt and the rich man's spice; on the brass nails of the coffin and the ribbons ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... and told, in a whisper, that its touch was death. Presently a great green serpent, vivid as the grass in spring, wound rapidly across the path; and once again I paused and looked back at my companion, with a horror in my eyes. 'The coffin snake,' said I, 'the snake that dogs its ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... well where he was going to. He was going to St. Mary's Rock, and of all the places on land or sea, it was the place I was most afraid of, being so big and frowning, an ugly black mass, standing twenty to thirty feet out of the water, draped like a coffin in a pall, with long fronds of sea-weed, and covered, save at high water, by a multitude ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Tomorrow is Ra on the day when he annihilates the enemies of the Lord who is above all and when he consecrates his son Horus. In other words, in the day when his father Ra meets the coffin of Osiris. He conquers the gods at command of Osiris, the ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... search. "Aw well, well, did they think because a man was poor he had no feelings?" Afterwards he pretended to become a Methodist, and then he removed the cloth from his wife's grave because he had doubts about how she could rise in the resurrection with such a weight on her coffin. Poor old Hommy, he came to a bad end. He spent his last days in jail in Castle Rushen. A one-eyed mate of his told me he saw him there. Hommy was unhappy. He said "Castle Rushen wasn't no place for a poor man when he was ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the reputed president of the Underground Railroad, may serve to illustrate the origin and growth of the system. He was seven years old when he first saw near his home in North Carolina a coffle of slaves ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... occasions, I learned that they always request the attendance of a passing stranger, and feel hurt if they are refused. I joined the party, and proceeded with them to a neighboring church. When we entered we ranged ourselves on each side of a platform which stood near the choir, on which was laid an open coffin, covered with pink silk and gold borders. The funeral service was chanted by a choir of priests, one of whom was a negro, a large comely man, whose jet-black visage formed a strong and striking contrast to his white vestments. He seemed to perform his part with ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... expressions of amazement and cries of "Shame!" from the galleries, Brown told of the abuses laid bare by the prison commission. He told of prisoners fed with rotten meal and bread infested with maggots; of children beaten with cat and rawhide for childish faults; of a coffin-shaped box in which men and even women were made to stand or rather crouch, their limbs cramped, and their lungs scantily supplied with air from a few holes. Brown's speech virtually closed the case, although Macdonald strove to prove that the accounts of outrages ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... celestial brightness, which, like the silver luster of the moon, declared its approach to the fountain of its glory. Her eye fell on the bier, and, with a momentary strength, she sprung from the couch on which she had leaned in dying feebleness, and threw herself upon the coffin. ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... powder, were working with wonderful dexterity, ceaselessly putting fuses in firecrackers. No one seemed to notice or care if a visitor might carelessly let a light fall from a cigar or drop a match. Many of us decided that perhaps the proverb: "If you want to make a Chinese happy, just buy him a coffin," is not so far off, because death to many of them looks much more attractive than life. We were told that if a Chinese falls off his sampan, his neighbor does not try to save him. That would be a "Bad Joss" as they say ...
— The Log of the Empire State • Geneve L.A. Shaffer |
