"Decapitation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... C. In this manuscript it is stated of the magician: "He knoweth how to bind on a head which hath been cut off; he knoweth how to make a lion follow him, as if led by a rope; and he knoweth the number of the stars of the house (constellation) of Thoth." The decapitation trick is thus no new thing, while the experiment performed with the lion, possibly a hypnotic feat, ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... investigated is the heart. This is because of its resistance to any arrest of the circulation and also because its survival is easily shown by its contractility. In man the heart has been seen to beat spontaneously and completely 25 minutes after a legal decapitation (Renard and Loye, 1887), and by massage of the organ its beating may be restored after it has been arrested for 40 minutes (Rehn, 1909). By irrigation of the heart and especially of its coronary vessels the period of revival ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... we see the same double-mindedness. Thus, while in a proclamation to the Swedish people he represented the massacre as a measure necessary to avoid a papal interdict, in his apology to the pope for the decapitation of the innocent bishops he described it as an unauthorized act of vengeance on the part of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... noiselessness came Ahab alone from his cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to gaze over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he took Stubb's long spade—still remaining there after the whale's Decapitation—and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended mass, placed its other end crutch-wise under one arm, and so stood leaning over with eyes attentively fixed on ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... and the future with strange and awful shapes. Popular Chinese belief as to the future is gruesomely illustrated in the Temple of Horrors in Canton with its formidable collection of wooden figures illustrating the various modes of punishment—sawing, decapitation, boiling in oil, covering with a hot bell, etc. At funerals, bits of perforated paper are freely scattered about in the hope that the inquisitive spirits will stop to examine them and thus give the body a chance to pass. In any ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... insistence their pasts clung to them with all the reality of a fate not by any means to be lived down. If George rode the huge rocking-horse, he was Paul Revere, or some equally historic figure, and sometimes, to Edith's terror, he was compelled to assume the role of Bluebeard, when Honora submitted to decapitation with a fortitude amounting to stoicism. Hide and seek was altogether too tame for her, a stake of life and death, or imprisonment or treasure, being a necessity. And many times was Edith extracted from the recesses of the cellar in a condition ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in his arms, watched the carriage drive slowly away. Then, after an interval in the kitchen devoted to hiding his purchases, he sought the library, striving to simulate a decent depression over the assumed decapitation ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... sects, as also those who conceal heretical meetings, or cause any other public scandal, shall be punished with the gallows, and their estates, where the law of the province permit it, confiscated; but if they abjure their errors, their punishment shall be commuted into decapitation with the sword, and their effects shall be preserved to their families." A cruel snare for parental affection! Less grievous heretics, it was further enacted, shall, if penitent, be pardoned; and if impenitent ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Autobiography (1861, i. 227), notes that the frolic prince, the "Adonis of fifty," who was in a good humour, and "had given to Princess Charlotte the centre sapphire of Charles's crown," acted "the manner of decapitation on my shoulders." He had "forgotten" Cromwell, who, as Lord Auchinleck reminded Dr. Johnson, had "gart kings ken that they had a lith in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... sycophants who received his favors. Coke is no exception to the rule. It is true enough that to him we are mainly indebted for the movement which, beginning on the 30th of January, 1621, ended that very day eight-and-twenty years with the decapitation of the king; but it is likewise undeniable that the nation's difficulties would have waited some time longer for solution had not the defender of the people's rights been inoculated with a love of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... him that, under advantageous circumstances, would enable him to spring again to his former height of power and riches. But he struck me as happy, although some of his social customs recalled the feudal age, and he lived under the always-present contingency of decapitation. May it be long before speculation rears the horrid front of a joint-stock hotel in Tangier, or the prospectors go divining for copper, coal, iron, silver and gold. I could wish the Moorish women, however, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Ranch who seems undisturbed by Peter's departure is Whinstane Sandy. He reminds me of a decrepit but robustious old rooster repossessing himself of a chicken-run after the decapitation of an arrogant and envied rival. He has with a dour sort of blitheness connected up the windmill pump, in his spare time, and run a pipe in through the kitchen wall and rigged up a sink, out of a galvanized pig-trough. ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... August, 1191, five weeks after the surrender of St. Jean d'Acre, he found that Saladin was not fulfilling with sufficient promptitude the conditions of capitulation, and, to bring him up to time, he ordered the decapitation, before the walls of the place, of, according to some, twenty-five hundred, and, according to others, five thousand, Mussulman ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... kindly kneel down on your knees, As I did when I came to Camelot; So! Are you all ready? Will you bide the blow?" And Gawayne said "I will," in such soft notes As happy bridegrooms utter, when their throats Are paralyzed with blest anticipation;— (What Gawayne looked for was decapitation!) And then the Green Knight swung his axe in air With a loud whirr; and Gawayne, kneeling there, Shrank back an inch; and the green giant stayed His threatening hand, and with a cold sneer said: "You shrink, sir, from ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... formidable; he could rise and slay and eat, vampire-like, as in the tale of Asmund and Aswit. He must in such case be mastered and prevented doing further harm by decapitation and thigh-forking, or by staking and burning. So criminals' bodies were often burnt to ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... arrangements—a lucrative appointment. During that interval it is understood that the new Regent, brother of the Emperor Kwang-hsu, consulted all the most trusted magnates of the empire regarding the manner in which the secret decapitation Decree should be treated. All advised him to be warned in time, and not to venture on a course of action which would be condemned both by the nation and by the Powers. Another Edict was therefore prepared simply dismissing Yuan Shih-kai from ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... for fine weather there was by no means to be wasted, being of rare occurrence and liable at the shortest notice to be succeeded by a howling gale. Our latest acquisition, however, was of such gigantic proportions that the decapitation alone bade fair to take us all night. A nasty cross swell began to get up, too—a combination of north-westerly and south-westerly which, meeting at an angle where the Straits began, raised a curious "jobble," making the vessel behave in a drunken, uncertain manner. Sailors do ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... place so quickly that Jack had barely jerked his Mauser pistol from his holster when all was ready for the decapitation of their guide. But as the gleaming blade flashed above the head of the little man in blue, Jack laid the muzzle true for his ribs and pulled the trigger. The heavy bullet tore its way through the headsman's body, and with a wild cry he pitched ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... Tenure-of-office bill two years before, voted now with entire consistency for its repeal, and with them also, in solid ranks, voted the men who, in the preceding Congress, had clamored most loudly for Johnson's decapitation. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... forth, and poor Pedro's fate was sealed. His attenuated body will be laid out upon the captain's table next Sunday, and long before night will be buried with all the usual ceremonies beneath that worthy individual's vest. Who would believe that there could be any one so cruel as to long for the decapitation of the luckless Pedro; yet the sailors pray every minute, selfish fellows, that the miserable fowl may be brought to his end. They say the captain will never point the ship for the land so long as he has in anticipation ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... temple forming the high altar; or than the St. James on horseback, with his horse's hoof planted on the throat of a Moor; or than the Blessed Virgins in jeweled crowns and stomachers and brocaded skirts; or than that unsparing decapitation of John the Baptist bloodily falling forward with his severed gullet thrusting at the spectator. Nothing has ever been too terrible in life for Spanish art to represent; it is as ruthlessly veracious as Russian literature; and of ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... men appeared to be chiefs; "sheiks" as the sailor heard them called by their followers, a party of whom—also with arms in their hands—stood behind each "sheik"—all seemingly alike eager to perform the act of decapitation. ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... is named after the Chinese philosopher-warrior, Sun Tzu. The "Sun Tzu" example is based on selective, instant decapitation of military or societal targets to achieve Shock and Awe. This discrete or precise nature of applying force differentiates this from Hiroshima and Massive Destruction examples. Sun Tzu was brought before Ho Lu, the King of Wu, who had read all of Sun Tzu's thirteen chapters on war ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... forcibly stated. The Australian, for instance, not content with slaying his enemy, cuts off the right thumb of the corpse, so that the departed soul may be incapacitated from throwing a spear. Even the half-civilized Chinese prefer crucifixion to decapitation, that their souls may not wander headless about the spirit-world. [171] Thus we see how far removed from the Christian doctrine of souls is the primeval theory of the soul or other self that figures in dreamland. So grossly materialistic is the primitive conception ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... growing out of a conviction of his superior knowledge, was transformed first into respect and later into friendship, and even twenty years after, whenever we drove from our Oderbruch village to the neighboring city of Kuestrin, he never had much to say about Crown Prince Fritz, or Katte's decapitation, but regularly remarked: "Oh yes, Necker, who may be called the father of the French Revolution, traced his ancestry back to this city of Kuestrin. I owe the information to Ferber, Captain Ferber, whom we called Teinturier. It is a pity he could not give up his aqua vitae. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... manumission which had been granted on the 15th of June. Special sessions of the courts were organized in the rebellious districts, and the leaders of the revolt were searched out and executed by hanging or decapitation. ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... that death on the wheel would throw into despair all that family, and everybody connected with it in the Low Countries, and in Germany, because in those parts there was a great and important difference between the punishments of persons of quality who had committed crimes; that decapitation in no way influenced the family of the decapitated, but that death on the wheel threw such infamy upon it, that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters, and the three next generations, were excluded from entering into any noble chapter, which, in addition ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... the stock of romance, and Nature takes as much care of the verisimilitude of their actions, as if she had made them herself. His hippogriff returns, like a common horse, to the stable to which he has been accustomed. His enchanter, who is gifted with the power of surviving decapitation and pursuing the decapitator so long as a fated hair remains on his head, turns deadly pale in the face when it is scalped, and falls lifeless from his horse. His truth, indeed, is so genuine, and at the same time ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... could be found to put such a horrible law into execution as was devised to meet the requirements of the case. First an arm was chopped off, then the other; the two legs in the same way. Two slits were made transversely on the breast, and the heart was torn out; decapitation finished the proceedings. Now, a slight gash only is made across each collar-bone, and three gashes across the breast in the shape of the character meaning one thousand, and indicative of the number of strokes the criminal ought properly to have received. Decapitation ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... in his own language, 'on the last day of June, when the people were celebrating in Rome the festivity of the most happy decapitation of Saint Paul the Apostle, whose head was cut off by the most cruel Nero—on that very day, about an hour and a half after sunrise, the aforesaid Holiness of our Sovereign Lord caused the Protonotary Colonna to be ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... verity, an impossible amplification of the "story of meeting and Prescott marriage." And of course, the frivolous Jaffery, now that one really wants him, is sitting astride of a cannon, and smoking a pipe and, notebook and pencil in hand, is writing a picturesque description of the bungling decapitation by shrapnel of the general who has just been unfolding to him the whole plan of the campaign, and consequently is provokingly un-getatable by serious persons ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... squeaking of scrannel pipes; a feminine 'break-down' of the most effrenee description, and a general libation to the Bacchus of Blackland. A debauched and drunken Ashanti, who executed for our benefit a decapitation-dance, evidently wishing that we had been its objects, thanked us ironically for a sixpence. We met some difficulty in seeing the swords, which were not to be sold. They were the usual rusty and decayed fish-slicers; Cameron, however, was kind enough to ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... side for doing that for which we would bitterly condemn our opponents? The same people who condemn the Empress Dowager for beheading the six young reformers stand ready to forgive Kuang Hsu for ordering the decapitation of Jung Lu, and ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... which was a second altar, garnished - as Mr. Verdant Green soon perceived, to his horror and amazement - with a human head (or the representation of one) projecting from a black cloth that concealed the neck, and, doubtless, the marks of decapitation. Its ghastly features were clearly displayed by the aid of a wax light placed in a tall ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Venetians, was sentenced, not to death, but to send every year on 'Giovedi Grasso' sixty-two large loaves, twelve fat pigs, and a bull, to the Doge; the bull being understood to represent the patriarch and the twelve pigs his clergy; and the ceremonies of the day consisting in the decapitation of these representatives, and a distribution of their joints among the senators; together with a symbolic record of the attack on Aquileia, by the erection of a wooden castle in the rooms of the Ducal Palace, which the Doge and the Senate attacked and demolished with ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... and upon the wide transom-stone over the door, is sculptured the genealogical tree of Christ, arising from the root of Jesse. The carving over the north entrance is yet more peculiar, and evidently far older. It represents the decapitation of the Baptist, with "Salome dancing in an attitude, which perchance was often assumed by the tombesteres of the elder day; affording, by her position, a graphical comment upon the Anglo-Saxon version ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... Knox, with peculiar mal-appropriateness, "in a foolish, incoherent sort of speech," says Jefferson, "introduced the pasquinade, lately printed, called The Funeral of George Washington"—a parody on the decapitation of the French king, in which the president was represented as placed on a guillotine. "The president," says Mr. Jefferson, "was much inflamed; got into one of those passions [which only for a moment and very rarely occurred] where he can not control ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... manifest, he was told that it would be to no purpose to speak in his own defence, and was sentenced to the death of a traitor. In consideration of his royal blood, Edward remitted the chief horrors of the execution, and made it merely decapitation; but as the Earl was led to a hill outside the town, on a gray pony without a bridle, the mob pelted him and jeered him by his assumed name of King Arthur. "King of Heaven," he cried, "grant me mercy! for the king of earth hath forsaken me." He knelt by the black with his ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... charm—'cool it with a baboon's blood, then the charm is firm and good.' The two frescoes in the colossal handbills which have lately decorated the streets of London (the baboon with the mirror, and the Maskelyne and Cooke decapitation) are the final English forms of Raphael's arabesque under this influence; and it is well worth while to get the number for the week ending April 3, 1880, of Young Folks—'A magazine of instructive and entertaining ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... The arraignment charged him with high treason, in respect that he had stormed and taken towns and castles, and shed much blood. "Traitor," said Wallace, "was I never." The rest of the charges he confessed and proceeded to justify them. He was condemned, and executed by decapitation, 1305. His head was placed on a pinnacle on London bridge, and his quarters were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... had secreted themselves in a cave in the great Saltee Island, were discovered, and conducted to the same prison. Notwithstanding the capitulation agreed to by Lord Kingsborough, the execution and decapitation of all these gentlemen speedily followed, and their ghastly faces looked down for many a day from the iron spikes above the entrance of Wexford Court House. Mr. Esmond Kyan, the popular hero of the district, as merciful as brave, was discovered some time subsequently ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... the decapitation of Charles the First were a justifiable act, and the debate was opened in the affirmative by a young man with a singularly sunny face and a voice of music. His statement was clear and calm. Though nothing could be more uncompromising than his opinions, it seemed that nothing ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... acknowledge the authority of the court, and pleaded that he was a subject of France, honoured with a commission in the service of his most christian majesty. The identity of his person being proved, a rule was made for his execution; and on the eighth day of December he suffered decapitation, with the most perfect composure and serenity. Lord Lovat, now turned of four-score, was impeached by the commons, and tried in Westminster-hall before the lord high-steward. John Murray, secretary ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... punishments are as accurately proportioned as the cases will permit. One species of capital punishment has been ordained instead of that multitude of cruel and barbarous deaths which were marshalled in terrible array along the columns of the former code. This punishment is decapitation. The only exception to this is in the case of parricide, in which, previous to decapitation, the right hand is cut off; and in the punishment for high-treason, in which the prisoner is made to walk barefoot, and with a crape ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... the State of New York of a statute requiring the death penalty to be inflicted by means of electricity. The object was to deter evildoers by surrounding the penalty with scientific horror, [Footnote: Hence also the new lingual atrocity, the word "electrocute," derived from "execute" by decapitation and the addition of "electro"] and the idea had its origin in the accidents which formerly occurred much more frequently than now. The "death current" is now almost everywhere, though the care of the men ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... The original Simon Stukely was a quaker, who went to Turkey with an intention of converting the Grand Turk: he narrowly escaped decapitation, by the interposition of the English ambassador. He was afterwards confined in an asylum: in answer to inquiries how he came there, he replied—"I said the world was mad, and the world said I was mad; and ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... natural perception, the irritation of the vital blood, which animates them to alternate contraction and relaxation. This is corroborated by those tumultuous irregular motions which continue in animals after decapitation; so also the intestines when still warm in a recently opened animal, move and twist about; the muscles in dead animals also, excited by the perception of cold, contract with a strong tonic movement, and render the body rigid. The hearts of some animals too, when ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... crime in Canton, one would look in vain for justice, but there is plenty of cruelty. We visited the execution yard, a circumscribed space in the very heart of the city. Here, our guide told us, twenty condemned prisoners were executed weekly, by decapitation, each Friday being devoted to clearing the docket. The executioner takes off a head with one stroke of the sword, and the guide said he had witnessed the decapitation of eleven heads in seven minutes. Through a grating in the wall of the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... of several whites—my friend Mr. Ben Hird being one—the grave was opened, deepened until water came, and the body re-interred face down. The still recent staking of suicides in England and the decapitation of vampires in the east of Europe ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... throne, assumed it himself and transmitted it to his children,—all this some half dozen centuries ago. At every coronation the duke formally protests; an athletic and sinister-looking court headsman comes down to his palace in the Carrera San Geronimo, and by threats of immediate decapitation induces the duke to sign a paper abdicating his rights to the throne of all the Spains. The duke eats the Bourbon leek with inward profanity, and feels that he has done a most clever and proper thing. This performance is ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... jurisdiction of Omura, who had been specially charged with the duty of sending away the bateren (padres). He seems to have concluded that a striking example must be furnished, and he therefore ordered the seizure and decapitation of two fathers, De l'Assumpcion and Machado. The result completely falsified his calculations, for so far from proving a deterrent, the fate of the two fathers appealed widely to the people's sense of heroism. Multitudes flocked to the grave in which the two coffins ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... managed to keep on good terms with both, but his sympathies were Russian. To Russia he turned for help to organize an army. Till then each tribe had fought according to its own ideas. Montenegro had no artillery and no equipment save flintlocks and the hand jar, the heavy knife used for decapitation. In Petersburg he was warmly received by Tsar Alexander II, who gave him funds both for schools and the army. A small-arms factory was started at Rijeka and a gun foundry near Cetinje. Weapons were bought from France and preparations made ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... always one or two beef cattle to kill. Sheep had also to be slaughtered, with the turkeys, geese and ducks, which had been getting ready for decapitation. After home wants were provided for, the rest ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... Valida issue her commands; and to the eldest she intrusted Solyman's signet-ring and the pass-key which Aischa had sent her. The slaves bowed three times to the empress mother—laid their hands on their heads to imply that they would deserve decapitation if they neglected the orders they had received—and then withdrew. There was something terribly sinister in their appearance, as they retired noiselessly but rapidly through the long, silent and darkened corridors ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... the death of our hero. The manner of it was decapitation, the instrument a mowing machine. A young son of the deceased, dumb with horror, seized the paternal head and ran with ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... Elizabeth inquired the reason. They were amused, answered Oxford, to see that when jacks went up heads went down. The point of the sarcasm is presumed to have been the connexion of Ralegh's influence with the decapitation of Essex. That the reference was to Ralegh might have seemed rather dubious had not Bacon taken it for granted. The fact of the favour of ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... the lid and propped it up with a short billiard-cue which fitted into a notch. All danger of sudden decapitation having been removed, I put ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... with as little remorse as Laud and his Star Chamber clipped the ears of Bastwick and Burton. We dug up and mutilated the remains of the Mahdi the other day exactly as we dug up and mutilated the remains of Cromwell two centuries ago. We have demanded the decapitation of the Chinese Boxer princes as any Tartar would have done; and our military and naval expeditions to kill, burn, and destroy tribes and villages for knocking an Englishman on the head are so common a part of our Imperial routine that the last dozen of them has not called forth as ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... that their armies in the field were ill-fed and in rags. There is, however, a limit beyond which a government calling itself civilized may not go, and as the public opinion of the world, crystallized into what we call international law, will not permit the wholesale decapitation of prisoners, as might be done by a king of Ashantee or Dahomey, so it forbids the herding of captive men in a mere corral, leaving them utterly without shelter of any sort through the sleet and rain of winter, near the North Carolina mountains. It forbids starving them to death or leaving them ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... still under the governorship of Esquivel, whose head Ojeda had threatened to cut off when he met him. Magnanimously forgetting the purpose of the broken adventurer, Esquivel despatched a ship to bring him to Jamaica. We may be perfectly sure that Ojeda said nothing about the decapitation when the generous hearted Esquivel received him with open arms. Ojeda with Talavera and his comrades were sent back to Santo Domingo. There Talavera and the principal men of his crew were ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... elegant designs. But you must study long ere you have won all the secret of their beauty. To comprehend them, one should spend a whole day, lying on his back, under each one. Mateo spread his cloak for me in the fountain in the Hall of the Abencerrages, over the blood-stains made by the decapitation of those gallant chiefs, and I lay half an hour looking upward: and this is what I made out of the dome. From its central pinnacle hung the chalice of a flower with feathery petals, like the "crape ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... been unanimous in finding him guilty of the acts recorded in their narrative, but three of them had held out for some time in favour of a sentence of perpetual imprisonment rather than decapitation. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of small value, as it is only formed by the tide of flood, and is inaccessible at low water. We named the three small flat islets St Johns Isles, because we discovered them on the day of St John the Baptists decapitation. Before coming to this haven, there is an island about 5 leagues to the eastward, between which and the land there is no passage except for small boats. The best station for ships in this harbour is to the south of a little island ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... numerous barons, presided over by the king himself. Lancaster, not allowed to say a word in his defence, was at once sentenced to death as a rebel and a traitor. In consideration of his exalted rank, the grosser penalties of treason were commuted, as in the case of Gaveston, to simple decapitation. On the morning of March 22 Thomas was led out of his castle, clad in the garb of a penitent and mounted on a sorry steed. He was conducted to a little hill outside the walls. The crowd mocked at his sufferings and in scorn called him "King Arthur". In two or three blows of the axe, his head ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... the Divine Will (at this point, the audience burst into a roar of laughter). Besides, he liked our family, we suited him in every respect; and especially because we so much reminded him of John the Baptist (we inwardly hoped that the resemblance would not extend to decapitation). If Miss Greeley would not marry him, he kindly added, he would take her cousin Marguerite instead, but he must positively marry one of the family. He was now perfectly wild, and when he remarked, with a reproachful glance ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... gentleman approached me with a letter: I received him with a strange nervousness; was there any crime in my record, I asked fitfully, for which I had been traced to this obscure suburb for condign arrest and decapitation? Ha! ha! it was my heart, not my lips, that laughed. I could have cried out like Enoch Arden ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the head this year. Next Christmas they would buy a body for it. Molly Brandeis's quick sympathy went out to the little girl who was to lavish her mother-love on a doll's head for a whole year. She saw the head, in ghastly decapitation, staring stiffly out from the cushions of the chill and funereal parlor sofa, and the small Minnie peering in to feast her eyes upon its blond ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... with Nu, the face with Aten (i.e., the solar disk), the eyes with Hathor, and the deceased exclaims triumphantly, "There is no member of my body which is not the member of a god." Chapter XLIII. A spell to prevent the decapitation of the deceased, who assumes in it the character of Osiris the Lord of Eternity. Chapter XLIV. An ancient and mighty spell, the recital of which prevented the deceased from dying a second time. Chapters XLV and XLVI preserved the mummy of the deceased from decay, ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... old friend Du Chaylu. Old Murat is perhaps your high-water mark; 'tis excellently human, cheerful and real. Do it again. Madame de Maintenon struck me as quite good. Have you any document for the decapitation? It sounds steepish. The devil of all that first part is that you see old Dumas; yet your Louis XIV. is distinctly good. I am much interested with this book, which fulfils a good deal, and promises more. Question: How far a Historical Novel should be wholly episodic? ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the unhappy poet, has produced a wonderful piece of literature in his treatment of {497} the brutal facts connected with Salome's dance and Jokanaan's decapitation. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Sutherland, has the doubtful honour of having condemned her to the stake. But fifty years later than this—1773—the Associated Presbytery passed a resolution deploring the fact that witchcraft was falling into disrepute. In Germany the last witch was executed in 1749, by decapitation. The last trial for witchcraft in Massachusetts was as late as 1793. These dates refer, of course, to legal proceedings. Examples of the existence of this belief are continually being recorded in newspapers, although they now only rank as solitary reminiscences of ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... replied that if there were enough to go around and the men didn't become too meddlesome, their presence wouldn't spoil the 'adventure.'... He assured me that the men were 'fine fellows,' the ladies the loveliest on earth, but the 'adventure' was one that might mean decapitation for me if I failed in the undertaking.... I told him that just suited me.... 'I expect to meet Colonel Z—— S—— von T—— at the track. If he takes a liking to you he'll invite you to Koenigergratzerstrasse for a quiet little ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... into the defenceless young throat, he nevertheless controlled his sentiments and looked up for instructions. Since the splendid decapitation which Coronado had performed, Texas respected him as he had never heretofore ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... has been written about these Acts of Trade and Navigation, as if they were acts of royal despotism and designed to oppress the colonies for the benefit of England; whereas they originated with the Commonwealth, and were designed to benefit the colonies as well as the mother country. "After the decapitation of Charles I.," says Minot, "the confused situation of England prevented any particular attention to the colony until Cromwell's Government. The very qualities which existed in the character of the inhabitants to render them displeasing to the late King, operated as much with the Protector in ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... is "celebrated for the leap of Sappho, and the death of Artemisia." From this variety in the expression, a reader would hardly conceive that both the ladies perished in the same manner: in fact, the sentence is as proper as it would be to talk of the decapitation of Russell, and the death of Sidney. The view from this promontory includes the island of Corfu; and the name suggests to Mr. Gell the following note, which, though rather irrelevant, is of a curious nature, and we therefore conclude our ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... in the face; wipe, douse; coup de grace; torture, rack; picket, picketing; dragonnade^. capital punishment; execution; lethal injection; the gas chamber; hanging &c v.; electrocution, rail-riding, scarpines^; decapitation, decollation^; garrotte, garrotto [It]; crucifixion, impalement; firing squad; martyrdom; auto-da-fe [Fr.]; noyade^; happy dispatch. [suicide as punishment] hara-kiri, seppuku [Jap.]; drinking the hemlock. V. punish; chastise, chasten; castigate, correct, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of our fellow-sufferers, knowing the horrible fate in store for them, managed to snatch knives from the belts of our captors and commit suicide before our eyes, preferring death by their own hands to decapitation by the executioners of Prempeh, that bloodthirsty monarch who has now happily been deposed by the British Government, but who at that time was sacrificing thousands of human lives annually, defiant and heedless of the remonstrances of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... entire:—in spite of the Calvinists,[38] the French revolution, and time. Among the lower and smaller basso-relievos upon these porches, is the subject of the daughter of Herodias dancing before Herod. She is manoeuvering on her hands, her feet being upwards. To the right, the decapitation of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... not to register their households, or attend to any magistrates and their rules; only those who cultivate the royal land have to pay (a portion of) the grain from it. If they want to go, they go; if they want to stay on, they stay. The king governs without decapitation or (other) corporal punishments. Criminals are simply fined, lightly or heavily, according to the circumstances (of each case). Even in cases of repeated attempts at wicked rebellion, they only have their right hands cut off. The king's body-guards and attendants all have salaries. Throughout ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... honour where his majesty personally condescends to become the executioner in these feats of decapitation, an office in which the king, at the time of the visit of Lander to Abomey, considered himself as a most expert proficient. The Europeans were present on one occasion, when a poor fellow, whose fear of death outweighing the sense of the honour conferred on him, on being desired by the king ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... decapitated and slowly decays, and the second and third and fourth shoots from the rhizome successively arrive at the bearing stage and are permitted to mature each its bunch and then fated to suffer immediate decapitation. And so the process goes on for five or seven years, by which time the vigour of the soil has been exhausted, and moreover the rhizomes, originally planted about a foot deep, have grown up to the surface, and are no longer capable of supporting a plant upright. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... view from Montmartre, the church itself, which was desecrated in the revolution, having been restored by Napoleon. St. Denis is celebrated, in the Catholic annals, by the fact of the martyr, from whom the name is derived, having walked after decapitation, with his head under his arm, all the way from Paris ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is a good system. There can never be any real progress until the sons take over the accumulated wisdom and experience of the fathers; if this is not done, then each one must begin for himself all over again. The hereditary principle is sound enough, so long as there is freedom of decapitation in ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... successful when, on January 30, 1879, he consented to accept the Presidency. When he entered the Elysee, the executive authority went out of it. The Third French Republic, such as it now exists, was constituted on that day—the anniversary, by the way, oddly enough, of the decapitation of Charles I. of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... "ladies." One of my good policemen was there as usual, and saluted me profoundly. He had carried the last baby over the crossing, and guided all the venturesome small boys through the maze of trucks and horse-cars,—a difficult and thankless task, as they absolutely courted decapitation,—it being an unwritten law of conduct that each boy should weave his way through the horses' legs if practicable, and if not, should see how near he could come to grazing the wheels. Exactly at twelve o'clock, ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... space fail us to tell how eager spirits not only groped after God, but sought the living Christ—though often this meant to them imprisonment, suicide enforced by the law, or decapitation. Yet over all Japan, long before the broad pennant of Perry was mirrored on the waters of Yedo Bay, there were here and there masses of leavened opinion, spots of kindled light, and fields upon which the tender green sprouts of new ideas could be detected. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... the bait held out by Western Powers, that extraterritoriality would be abolished when China had reformed her judicial system, a new Provisional Criminal Code was published. It substituted death by hanging or strangulation for decapitation, and imprisonment for various lengths of time for bambooing. It was adopted in large measure by the Republican regime, and is the chief legal instrument in use at the present time. But close examination reveals the fact that it is almost an exact copy of the Japanese penal code, which in turn ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... two hundred and fifty years, these have been—beating with the light bamboo, beating with the heavy bamboo, transportation for a certain period, banishment to a certain distance, and death, the last being subdivided into strangling and decapitation, according to the ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... the wall with an illegible inscription[373]. He said that it had been in a convent adjoining, but was removed after the French came, and placed in its present situation; that he had seen the tomb opened at its removal; there were still some bones remaining, but no positive vestige of the decapitation. The equestrian statue[374] of which I have made mention in the third act as before that church is not, however, of a Faliero, but of some other now obsolete warrior, although of a later date. There were two other Doges of this family prior to Marino; Ordelafo, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... made careful enquiry, and found that the number of lives sacrificed annually at the instance of this custom could not have averaged fewer than 150 within a radius of twenty miles, while the same number must have died from ordeals and decapitation on charges of causing sickness. To these had to be added the number killed in ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... the peerage diminish with pleasure. Under Anne, to quote but one example, the peerages become extinct since the twelfth century amounted to five hundred and sixty-five. The War of the Roses had begun the extermination of dukes, which the axe of Mary Tudor completed. This was, indeed, the decapitation of the nobility. To prune away the dukes was to cut off its head. Good policy, perhaps; but it is better to corrupt than to decapitate. James I. was of this opinion. He restored dukedoms. He made a duke of his favourite ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... treasure was under the room where he slept. Upon the chance of a successful haul, he had made fervid promises, after the fashion of his race, to the shoemaker Mahommed Nafar. At first the shoemaker would have nothing to do with it: helping prisoners to escape meant torture and decapitation; but then he hated the Khalifa, whose Baggaras had seized his property, and killed his wife and children; and in the end Macnamara prevailed. Mahommed Nafar found some friendly natives from the hills of Gilif, who hated the Khalifa and his tyrannous governments, and at last they ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... surprise, and the veteran approached the works, crying, Courage, my brave lads! give them no quarter unless they surrender; and struck a furious blow upward with his sabre, that would have divided the steward into moieties by subjecting him to the process of decapitation, but for the fortunate interference of the muzzle of the swivel. As it was, the gun was dismounted at the critical moment that Benjamin was applying his pipe to the priming, and in consequence some five or six dozen of rifle bullets were projected into ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... at the gate of the seraglio to compel thee," thundered the Hakim Bashi; "thou shalt die with tortures. The mercy of decapitation shall be denied thee, for thou knowest well Mohammedans will not pollute their swords with the blood of a Jew. Be advised by me, Sabbatai," he continued, lowering his tone. "Become one of us. After all, the Moslem are but the posterity of Hagar. Mohammed is but the successor of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... excision of the brain may apparently cause death in less time than excision of the liver or adrenals, but this statement must be modified by our definition of death. If all the brain of an animal be removed by decapitation, its body may live on for at least eleven hours if its circulation be maintained by transfusion. An animal may live for weeks or months after excision of the cerebral hemispheres and the cerebellum, while an overtransfused animal ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... head repeatedly with her fore foot; with her claws, however, sheathed, and not in anger, but in the way of philosophical inquiry and examination. To prevent her falling a victim to so laudable an exercise of her talents, I interposed in a moment with the hoe, and performed an act of decapitation, which though not immediately mortal proved so in the end. Had he slid into the passages, where it is dark, or had he, when in the yard, met with no interruption from the cat, and secreted himself in any of the outhouses, it is hardly possible but that some of the family ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... that the Astrologer Royal was not only absent, but incapable of such a liberty; it really was the boar's head that had spoken, as animals in Maerchenland would on rare occasions—even after suffering decapitation. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... the Duke de Liancourt forced his way into the King's bed-chamber, and obliged him to hear a full and animated detail of the disasters of the day in Paris. He went to bed fearfully impressed. The decapitation of De Launay worked powerfully, through the night, on the whole Aristocratical party; insomuch, that in the morning, those of the greatest influence on the Count d'Artois, represented to him the absolute necessity, that the King should give up every thing to the Assembly. This according with the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... his body thrown into a brook; but ever since that day the stones in this brook are said to be spotted with gore—a phenomenon which had never occurred previously. And, according to another strange Cornish belief told of St. Denis's blood, it is related that at the very time when his decapitation took place in Paris, blood fell on the churchyard of St. Denis. It is further said that these blood stains are specially visible when a calamity of any kind is near at hand; and before the breaking out of the plague, it is said the stains of the blood of St. Denis were seen; and, "during our ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... (Aug. 10). The impudence of the people in the galleries was intolerable. There was "a loud and universal peal of laughter from all the galleries" on the reading of a letter, in which a deputy wrote that he was threatened with decapitation.—" Fifty members were shouting at the same time; the most boisterous night I ever was witness to in the House of Commons was calmness ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... one morning just after breakfast I was told there was something to show me in a basket. The cover was removed, and there I saw sixteen human heads. Their late proprietors were a famous brigand and his merry men, only looking quite the reverse of merry in the grim ghastliness of decapitation. I scarcely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... said Constance gravely,—"makes a futile attempt semi-weekly to beat his brains out with a club; and every successive failure encourages him to try again; the only effect being a temporary decapitation of his family; and I believe this is the night on which he periodically turns a ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... cracked pipkin, and it oozes out entirely as soon as it liquifies in youth. The pipkin, therefore, goes through life empty and cracked, ever sounding flat and false. While in others the Me is enclosed in a sealed straw-covered flask and can only be awakened by either evaporation or decapitation, in other words, by a spiritual revolution. And in the very few among mortals, it emerges out of the iron calyx of a flower of red-hot steel, or flows from the transparent, odoriferous bosom of a rose of light. In the first we have a Caesar, an Alexander, a Napoleon; in the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... should end. In them, cowering, writhing, beneath the driver's brutal lash, he saw himself, ever lashed and stung by the torturing consciousness of what might have been, by the recollection of what had been. Or did they fall exhausted, fainting, to die, or to undergo decapitation to insure that such exhaustion should not open even a feeble possibility of escape, there too, he saw himself sinking, borne down by the sheer blank hopelessness of fate, taking refuge in the Dark Unknown, his end the grave of the suicide. It ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... Robots ran into that next block—ran impervious to the many shots which now were fired at them. From what was described as slots in the sides of their iron bodies they drew swords—long, dark, burnished blades. They ran, and at each fallen human body they made a single stroke of decapitation, or, more generally, cut the ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... amazed at the place taken in popular life by the scenes of the Greve. It was the theatre of the day. The gibbet and the wheel did their work almost periodically, and people looked on while poor wretches writhed in slow agony all day long. Sometimes the programme was varied by decapitation and even by the stake. Torture had its legends and its heroes—the everyday talk of the generation which, having begun by seeing Damiens torn by red-hot pincers, was to end by rending Foulon limb from limb." (Carne, Monarchie francaise au 18ieme ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... particular; and to begin with the notice of a curious performance of John, or the ELDER HOLBEIN. It is divided, like many of the pictures of the old German masters, into three compartments. The Nativity occupies one; the Assumption another: and the decapitation of St. Dorothy the third. In the Assumption, the Trinity, composed of three male figures, is introduced as sanctifying the Virgin—who is in front. Below this group is the church of "Maria Maior," having ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... solicitude. They now endeavored to obtain a minor grace. They represented that in the Netherlands, and in Germany, there was an important difference in the public mind as to the mode of inflicting the punishment of death upon persons of quality. That decapitation had no influence on the fortunes of the family of the executed, but that the punishment of the wheel was such an infamy, that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters of the criminal, and his whole family, for three succeeding generations, were excluded ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... evident from the general context that this is the author's intention in the passage in question, Alaeddin's head being metaphorically in the hands of (or pledged to) the headsman, inasmuch as he had engaged to return and suffer decapitation in case he should not succeed in recovering ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... little knowledge of the objects which the inventory writer describes. It is entitled "An Inventory of the Goods, Jewels, Plate, &c. belonging to King Charles the First, sold by order of the Council of State, from the year 1619 to 1652." So that from the decapitation of the king, a year was allowed to draw up the inventory; and the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... eruptions are among the worst vices of volcanoes. Every visitor to Naples remembers how plainly the landscape north of Vesuvius tells of a prehistoric decapitation, which left only a low, broad platform, on the south rim of which the little Vesuvius that many of us have climbed was formed by later eruptions, while a part of the north rim is well defined in "Monte Somma." Similarly, here at home, Mt. Adams and Mt. Baker ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... his original belief, and even paraded through the streets with his hands tied behind his back, as if for execution; but upon his proclaiming aloud his firm belief in Christianity, he was sentenced to decapitation. The British ambassador, Sir Stratford Canning, impelled by motives of humanity, made an earnest effort to procure his release, and the Grand Vizier promised that the young man should not be beheaded. ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... who was the martyred victim of a father's impiety; of a Stanislaus pursued by brothers who thirsted for his blood; of a Damian who nearly starved under his stepfather's cruelty; of martyrs led to the criminal stone for decapitation by ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... offence, adultery was, according to the ancient laws of Japan, punished by crucifixion. In more modern times it has been punished by decapitation and the disgraceful exposure of the head after death; but if the murder of the injured husband accompany the crime of adultery, then the guilty parties are crucified to this day. At the present time the husband ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... by revenants, sir; several were tracked to their graves, there detected by the usual tests, and extinguished in the usual way, by decapitation, by the stake, and by burning; but not until many of ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... we towed it to the shore. It was a fine monster, about sixteen feet long; and although it had appeared dead, it bit furiously at a thick male bamboo which I ran into its mouth to prevent it from snapping during the process of decapitation. The natives regarded my men with disgust as they cut huge lumps of the choicest morsels and stowed them in the canoes; this did not occupy more than a quarter of an hour, and hurrying on board, we continued our voyage, well provided with meat —for all ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... his companions were hanged and then beheaded, but the horrid spectacle of their execution roused the public to demand the abolition of the punishment of decapitation, and they were the last persons who thus suffered ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... religious in the following manner. In front of the cells of the father prior and of his associate father Fray Luis de San Joseph, were placed two bamboos and at the end of them two cocoanuts. That is a barbarous ceremony of those countries by which to threaten one with decapitation. Simulay thought that that would be sufficient to frighten the fathers and make them abandon the village, and especially since they now had no soldiers, as the soldiers mentioned above had proceeded on their way. But he was mistaken in his reckoning, for although ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... shewn me. The king then resided in a very pleasant country palace, situated on the banks of a river. In one of the rooms, there was a painting of Ogurlu- Mohammed, the kings eldest son, leading the sultan Busech, or Abu Said, tied with a rope; and in another picture the decapitation of Busech was represented. We were again invited to an entertainment, at which many different kinds of confections were served up. We remained at Ispahan till the 25th of November, during which period we were frequently invited to court. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... Turks as a faithful subject of the Porte. His offers were at once accepted; and he now displayed singular activity in the extirpation of all the other popular chiefs, who still held out in the woods and fastnesses, and sent their heads to the Pasha; but the decapitation of Glavash, who was, like himself, supporting the government, showed that when he had accomplished the ends of Soliman Pasha, his own turn would come; he therefore employed the ruse described in page 55, made his escape, and, convinced that it was impossible ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... gentleman who visited nightly Van Amburg's exhibition of the head-in-the-lion's-mouth feat, in the moral certainty that a single absence would fall inevitably upon the one night when Leo would vary the programme by decapitation,—so we lost the one afternoon when that dull discourse diversified the pious eloquence of Jotham Baxter, D.D., disciple of Dr. Hopkins and believer in Cotton Mather. Many a refreshing slumber has sealed our eyes under subsequent outpourings ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... reasonable but utterly impossible things, until the bitter school of experience taught them better. The progressive women have not yet set up la Belle Guillotine—in Washington or elsewhere—for the decapitation of male incorrigibles; which significant fact confirms our old faith that the ladies rather like a man who would not deliberately overdo the part ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... prefect, pronounced sentence, saying, 'Let those who have refused to sacrifice to the gods and to yield to the command of the Emperor be scourged and led away to suffer decapitation according to the law.' ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Daniel, Darerca, mother of Ciaran, Darerca, St., dates of Ciaran's life, dates of documents, deafness cured, decapitation, Decies, Deece, Delbna, Derercha. See Darerca. Dermag (Durrow, King's Co.), Dermicius. See Diarmait (deacon). Desi, Dessi, Diarmait, deacon, See also Iustus. Diarmait, St., Diarmait mac Cerrbeil, king, Dompnanus. See Donnan. doors ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... claimant of the Messianic office may have been to the Jews—a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to the people whom he came to bring to a new birth. His civil and ecclesiastical reforms, with the seeming decapitation of the Church by the abrogation of the patriarchate, were to the mass of the people an enigma only one shade less disreputable than the demeanor of himself and his courtiers. The repudiation of his legitimate wife, Eudoxia, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... long dead the Empress decreed upon him posthumous decapitation, so that he walks for ever ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... has been given. Another common term is found in the word Head-rent, of which Gladstonians know no more than of Rack-rent. When Head-rent comes to be discussed in England we shall have Home Rulers explaining that the term refers to decapitation of tenants for non-payment of Rack-rent. This explanation will not present any appreciable departure from their usual vein. An English Home Ruler who supports Mr. Gladstone "because his father did," and who first landed in Ireland yesterday, said, "I do not approve of ascendency. Hang ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... test and prove its efficacy." He further stated that it was "better to begin at the top round of the ladder and work down, rather than take up some offending sister from a lower round as an example." Of course all things were now ready for a decapitation, but judge of the surprise of the brother, when the good sister showed herself not to be very "high-headed," though big-bonneted, by offering the offensive article to her accuser, to manipulate into orthodox form, if ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... religion." This is the language of La Place, the author of "La Mecanique Celeste," one of the greatest books of the world. He spoke from real experience. He had seen religion "abolished by law." He had seen the "worship of Reason" established with the decapitation of seven thousand innocent citizens of France. He had heard one of the apostles of Reason arise in the Constituent Assembly and demand two hundred and ninety thousand corpses instead of seven thousand. Then this man who had grasped the machinery of the heavens, who had shown the absolute accuracy ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern |
