"Hangman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little the Doctor cared. He examined the throat of the convalescent carefully, idling over the hideous scar with the lingering, half-caressing fondness of a parent. It was not a particularly pleasing sight. An angry line circled the throat—for all the world as though the man had just escaped the hangman's noose—and, disappearing below the ear on either side, had the appearance of completing the fiery periphery at the nape ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... us for some path leading down to the river, but could find none; so perforce we had to continue on along the trail. Thus we entered the camp of Hangman's Gulch for if it had been otherwise, I am sure we would have located promptly where we ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... answered me; 'that or the hangman's noose. A man who could devise so monstrous a jest as was your challenge to the Tyrant of Pesaro should be a merry fellow if he would. I need such a one. There are two Fools at my Court, but they are mere tumblers, deformed vermin that excite as much disgust ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... being mistaken for virtue, what benefit would arise from that? I must part with all my interior consolation, and all my external connections. And for what? What is it you propose? The death of Mr. Falkland by the hands of the hangman." ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... monument? I was riding on an English stage-coach when we passed a handsome marble column (as I remember it) of considerable size and pretensions.—What is that?—I said.—That,— answered the coachman,—is THE HANGMAN'S PILLAR. Then he told me how a man went out one night, many years ago, to steal sheep. He caught one, tied its legs together, passed the rope over his head, and started for home. In climbing a fence, the rope slipped, caught him by the neck, and strangled him. Next morning he was found hanging ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... organ Pokrok in Prostejov, Mr. Joseph Kotek, was sentenced to death on Christmas Eve of 1914. The sentence was passed at noon, confirmed at half-past four and carried out at half-past six. As no one could be found to act as hangman, Kotek was shot. The reason given for the verdict was that the accused editor of the Pokrok, which was suppressed as being dangerous to the State, delivered a speech at a meeting of a co-operative society in which he ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... to the same purposes. There are some, however, who, though not void of these talents, have made so wretched a use of them, that, had the consecration of their labours been committed to the hands of the hangman, no good man would have regretted their loss; nor am I afraid to mention Rabelais, and Aristophanes himself, in this number. For, if I may speak my opinion freely of these two last writers, and of their works, their design appears to me very plainly to have been to ridicule all sobriety, modesty, ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... The following day, the hangman with a hot iron burned out Lazarus' eyes. Then he was sent home. The deified Augustus dared not ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... punishing an animal so severely, unless he had been actually forced to do it. Public executioners may be necessary for the prevention of crime; but that is no reason why one need volunteer as an amateur hangman." ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... stowed the creature that had died miserably, without a chance for its life, away in one of his big pockets, a self-satisfied grin on his face as he glanced down the hedge and saw another bird swinging. So he followed his hangman's hedge, treating each bird to his pointed stick, carefully resetting the snares after him and clearing away the fallen leaves from the fatal pathways. When he came to the rabbit he harled him dexterously, ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... he in the meane tyme, takin no head or cair of the cruell tormentis which war then prepared for him. Then, last of all, the hangman, that was his tormentour, sat doune upoun his kneis, and said, "Schir, I pray yow, forgive me, for I am nott guiltie of your death." To whome he answered, "Come hither to me." When he was come to him, he kissed his cheik, and said, "Lo! hear is a tokin that ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... absence might save my mind, But that it might take death more patiently; Like him, the which by judge condemned to die, To suffer with more ease, his eyes doth blind. Your lips in scarlet clad, my judges be, Pronouncing sentence of eternal "No!" Despair, the hangman that tormenteth me; The death I suffer is the life I have. For only life doth make me die in woe, And only death I for my ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... a man once, when he was upon the Ladder with the Rope about his Neck, confess (when ready to be turned off by the Hangman) that that which had brought him to that end, was his accustoming of himself, when young, to pilfer and steal small things. To my best remembrance he told us, that he began the trade of a Thief by stealing Pins and Points, and ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... attractive in style, and so clear and popular that a child might understand them, gained immediate attention; but the Jesuits, whose policy and doctrines they attacked, finally induced the parliament of Provence to condemn them to be burned by the common hangman; and the Port Royalists, refusing to renounce their opinions, were driven from their retreat, and the establishment broken up. Pascal's masterpiece is the "Pensees de la Religion;" it consists of fragments of thought, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... is safe! He will not again return; the dead sleeps without a witness.—I may lay this working brain upon the bosom that loves me, and not start at night and think that the soft hand around my neck is the hangman's gripe. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... construction of great men, and, though he secured quite an army, and the aid of the Earl of Lincoln and many veteran troops, the first battle closed the comedy, and the bogus sovereign, too contemptible even to occupy the valuable time of the hangman, became a scullion in the royal kitchen, while Simon ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... Carew, with a shrug. "He'll be hard put to dodge the hangman yet; but he's a right good fellow in his way, and he has served me—he ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... must write, it shall be the truth; which is, that if I may be once more admitted to pay my duty to the most deserving and most injured of her sex, I will be content to do it with a halter about my neck; and, attended by a parson on my right hand, and the hangman on my left, be doomed, at her will, either to the church or ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... before I fled from Nantes on that dreadful night; and both of the only two professions of which I can claim to know anything—the law and the stage—are closed to me, since I cannot find employment in either without revealing myself as a fellow who is urgently wanted by the hangman. As things are it is very possible that I may die of hunger, especially considering the present price of victuals in this ravenous city. Again I have recourse to Epictetus for comfort. 'It is better,' he says, 'to die of hunger having lived without ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice upon itself; for every guilty person is his own hangman. —SENECA. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... slowly, 'the very rope which the hangman used for all the victims of the Judge's judicial rancour!' Here he was interrupted by another scream from Mrs. Witham, and steps had to be taken for her recovery. Malcolmson having looked at his watch, and found that it was close to his dinner ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... man who spells "Druid" with a "w," all things must be possible, from a hangman's noose to a Presidential nomination, and the danger to be apprehended in this case is, that some of "Tragedian's" posterity may slip into one or the other of them. A parental raid upon all the pens, ink and paper that could possibly come within the reach ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... favorite jewels, for old remembrance' sake. These I took from their repository when the attraction of my watch showed signs of failing. The child pounced on them with her chubby hands, and screamed with pleasure. And the hangman was waiting for her mother—and, more horrid still, the ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... Parliament published a book called The Case of Ireland Being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England Stated. This was formally condemned by the English Parliament and ordered to be burned by the common hangman. [Footnote: Walpole, Kingdom of Ireland, 252.] When still later the Irish House of Lords protested against the reversal of one of its judgments, on appeal, by the English House of Lords, the English Parliament, in 1720, passed an act depriving the Irish House of Lords ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... I have seen souffred att Coutu, after that they have passed the sallett, att their entering in to the village, and the rencounters that they meet ordinarily in the wayes, as above said. They tie the prisoners to a poast by their hands, their backs tourned towards the hangman, who hath a bourning fire of dry wood and rind of trees, which doth not quench easily. They putt into this fire hattchets, swords, and such like instruments of Iron. They take these and quench them on human flesh. They pluck out their nailes for ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... little less than pining idiotcy, or madden him to what the statutes call crime, and what judges, sleek as their ermine, preach upon as rebellion to the government—the government that, in fact, having stung starvation into treason, takes to itself the loftiest praise for refusing the hangman—a task—for appeasing Justice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... music. Something of this I attempt, my dear sir, in my humble way: 'tis a panegyric I mean to write, and not a satire. Were I to sing as you would have me, the town would tear the poet in pieces, and burn his book by the hands of the common hangman. Do you not use tobacco? Of all the weeds grown on earth, sure the nicotian is the most soothing and salutary. We must paint our great Duke," Mr. Addison went on, "not as a man, which no doubt he is, with weaknesses like the rest of us, but as a hero. 'Tis in a triumph, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... master into believing that the rabble who flocked to hear him, and the idle loungers who yelled themselves hoarse at what he said, were crowds of honest citizens who believed as he did, and were ready to follow his leadership. Gashford had added to his followers even Dennis, the hangman of London, and the foolish nobleman not knowing the ruffian's true calling, thought him ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... concealed themselves behind the curtains of a tier of berths, directly in the rear of the chair where Baker was to sit at the table. In his hand Ethan held the heave-line, at one end of which Lawry had made a hangman's noose. Mrs. Light and the girls had been instructed to rattle the chairs, make as much noise as they could, and otherwise engage the attention of the robber, as soon as he sat down to ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... boys! Clear the track! The witches are here! They've all come back! They hanged them high,—No use! No use! What cares a witch for a hangman's noose? They buried them deep, but they wouldn't lie still, For cats and witches are hard to kill; They swore they shouldn't and wouldn't die,— Books said they did, but they lie! ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... eyes of the spectators. On its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... endeavors, he sought to prop the weakening fabric of invention and mendacity by new shuffling or pretense. Should a disgraced fool be his undoing? From that living entombment should his foeman in cap and bells yet indirectly summon the force to bend him to the dust, or send him to the hangman's knot? ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... shun the surly butcher's greasy tray: Butchers, whose hands are died with blood's foul stain, And always foremost in the hangman's train." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... assassination of himself and of his wife, and the mortification, disgrace, and degradation that he has personally suffered. It is a topic of consolation which our ordinary of Newgate would be too humane to use to a criminal at the foot of the gallows. I should have thought that the hangman of Paris, now that he is liberalized by the vote of the National Assembly, and is allowed his rank and arms in the Herald's College of the rights of men, would be too generous, too gallant a man, too full of the sense of his new dignity, to employ ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to get and plenty to spend, with a seasoning of danger to give it piquancy—a gentleman's life from cock-crow to cock-crow, and not worthy of a passing thought is he who cannot make a good end of it. I'd sooner have the hangman for a bosom friend than a man who is likely to whimper on the day of reckoning. Did I tell you that a reverend bishop offered me fifty guineas for my mare the ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... the Exchange about business, and there, by Mr. Rawlinson's favour, got into a balcone over against the Exchange; and there saw the hangman burn, by vote of Parliament, two old acts, the one for constituting us a Commonwealth, and the other I have forgot. [It was an Act for ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... no circumstances would he suffer any change in France detrimental to the Catholic religion. At the same time, with energy which reflects credit upon his name, he declared the bull fulminated against him by Gregory XIV. as abusive, seditious, and damnable, and ordered it to be burned by the public hangman. ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Philadelphia, all the same. He had a very pretty scruple about subscribing his name to the hangman's list." ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... in silence. A cold fear was at his heart. That terrible Grodman! As the hangman's cord was tightening round Mortlake, he felt the convict's chains tightening round himself. And yet there was one gleam of hope, feeble as the yellow flicker of the gas-lamp across the way. Grodman had obtained an interview with the condemned late that afternoon, and the parting had ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... witnesses;[1574] or providing for close confinement of six to nine months in the penitentiary, in lieu of three to six months in jail prior to execution, and substituting the warden for the sheriff as hangman, have ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... He wrote one of his laughing letters to Jack to say that he'd be switched if he was going to play hangman at his own execution. You never knew such a queer fellow as he is. The real reason was that he could not afford to come East from Kansas and give us a wedding present too. Jack and I would have far rather had him drop the present, but could not see how to tell him. He sent ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... came to the church door, where he trampled on the host, the hangman cut off his right hand, and fixed it on a pole. Then two tormentors, with flaming torches, scorched and burnt his flesh all the rest of the way. At the place of execution he kissed the chains that were to bind him to the stake. A monk presenting the figure of a saint to him, he struck it aside, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... said Quill, overhearing him, "but we are both useful in our way, as the hangman said to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... abash him, said, in mocking wise, "What have we here—a player!" While Fetty was thus standing in the bishop's chamber, he espied, hanging about the bishop's bed, a pair of great black beads, whereupon he said, "My Lord, I think the hangman is not far off; for the halter (pointing to the beads) is here already!" At which words the bishop was in a marvellous rage. Then he immediately after espied also, standing in the bishop's chamber, in the window, a little crucifix. Then he asked the bishop what it was, and he answered, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... in connection with his name. There are a few very good and very dull people who try to stop all adverse criticism. All raillery strikes them as cruel. They would like to see every parody murdered by the common hangman. Even the best of comedy is constitutionally repellent to them. They want only highly colored characters from which every mellow shade of fault has been obliterated. One cannot say that they have a real love of human nature, because they do ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... weak eyes from his mother, he had overtasked their powers, especially in writing the Defensiones, and had become entirely blind. Although his person was included in the general amnesty, his polemical works were burned by the hangman; and the pen that had so powerfully battled for a party, now returned to the service of its first love, poetry. His loss of power and place was the world's gain. In his forced seclusion, he produced the greatest of English ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... to the hangman's noose The morning clocks will ring A neck God made for other use Than strangling in ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... his life had often been secretly attempted by the seamen whom he had brought to the gangway. Of dark nights they had dropped shot down the hatchways, destined "to damage his pepper-box," as they phrased it; they had made ropes with a hangman's noose at the end and tried to lasso him in dark corners. And now he was adrift among them, under notorious circumstances of superlative villainy, at last dragged to light; and yet he blandly smiled, politely offered his cigar-holder to a perfect stranger, and ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... they were clear of her, they were safe away; and the water widened between them and her damning evidences. On the other hand, they were drawing nearer to the ship of war, which might very well prove to be their prison and a hangman's cart to bear them to the gallows of which they had not yet learned either whence she came or whither she was bound; and the doubt weighed upon their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fast of forty days in the wilderness. Since this performance has been taken out of the list of miracles, it is not so likely to be repeated by fanatics. I confess to a strong suspicion that this is one of the ambulatory or movable stories, like the "hangman's stone" legend, which I have found in so many different parts of England. Skulls and crossbones, sometimes skeletons or skeleton-like figures, are not uncommon among the sepulchral embellishments of an earlier period. Where one of these ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... king, wi' his nobles, are at Peebles, on their way to Liddesdale, to tak vengeance on the chiefs o' the Borders, wha hae been foremost in the foray and the rieving raid. They whisper yonder that there's a hangman in the train, wi' ropes, to hang the ring-leaders on their castle buttresses; and Henderland is to be their first victim. O my Leddie! dispatch, quick as thae flashes o' levin, a messenger to the master, and tell ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... upon the public hangman and ask him to give me a quick despatch," he said promptly; "Though I shouldn't be worth ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... is the end of it all?" demanded Mistress Nutter, sternly. "Erelong, they will be unable to furnish victims to their insatiate master, who will then abandon them. Their bodies will go to the hangman, and their souls ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... about. I don't take no stock in such truck as judges an' lawyers an' orders of court. They ain't intended to be took serious. They're all right for children an' Easterners an' non compos mentis people, I s'pose, but I've always been my own judge, jury, an' hangman, an' I aim to continue workin' my legislatif, executif, an' judicial duties to the end of the string. You look out! My pardner is young an' seems to like the idee of lettin' somebody else run his business, so I'm goin' to give him rein and let him amuse ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Stortford to Hoddesdon. Charles II. had a violent hatred to Armstrong, who had been his Gentleman of the Horse, and was supposed to have incited his illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, to rebellion. Sir Thomas was hanged at Tyburn. After the body had hung half an hour, the hangman cut it down, stripped it, lopped off the head, threw the heart into a fire, and divided the body into four parts. The fore-quarter (after being boiled in pitch at Newgate) was set on Temple Bar, the head was placed on Westminster Hall, and the rest of the body was sent ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... loud sigh) It does grieve me to see the poor old gentleman at this gaoler's job for his poor son's sake. (in lower tone) However, if he only manages to get the lad back here somehow, let him turn hangman, ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... filth and carrion that thou art, so to speak of a betrothed bride to her promised husband! If it were true, wretched villain! I would save the hangman his task, and break your traitor's throat with this hand—but thou liest! thou liest!" he shouted, pushing him to the other end of the narrow sleeping chamber. "In poor revenge thou liest! But if you wish to live, beware how ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... volume and an arrow-like rapidity that communicate the feeling of exuberance and life. In passing, let it not be forgotten that it was somewhere or other in this 'chiaro fondo di Sorga,' as Carlyle describes, that Jourdain, the hangman-hero of the Glaciere, stuck fast upon his pony when flying from his foes, and had his accursed life, by some diabolical providence, spared for future butcheries. On we go across the austere plain, between fields of madder, the red roots of the 'garance' lying ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... them, to rectify the brave jury's sense, And so prevent the ignoramus?—nay, Thou wast cock-sure he wou'd he damned for aye, Without thy presence;—thou wast then employed To brand him 'gainst he came to be destroyed: Forehand preparing for the hangman's axe, Had not the witnesses been found ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... the sufferings of his brethren. Barillon demanded that some opprobrious mark should be put on his book. James complied, and in full council declared it to be his pleasure that Claude's libel should be burned by the hangman before the Royal Exchange. Even Jeffreys was startled, and ventured to represent that such a proceeding was without example, that the book was written in a foreign tongue, that it had been printed at a foreign press, that it related entirely to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... my Lord Edmund are making brief work of them," quoth the jailer. "Ha!" with an oath, "what's that? Nought will daunt those lads till the hangman is at ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... February the 25th broke bitterly cold. Like Charles I. before him, Peace feared lest the extreme cold should make him appear to tremble on the scaffold. He had slept calmly till six o'clock in the morning. A great part of the two hours before the coming of the hangman Peace spent in letter-writing. He wrote two letters to his wife, in one of which he copied out some verses he had written in Woking Prison on the death of their little boy John. In the second he expressed his satisfaction ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... over, gentlemen. There is no need for me to tell you that Mr. Fauntleroy was found guilty, and that he died by the hangman's hand. It was in my power to soothe his last moments in this world by taking on myself the arrangement of some of his private affairs, which, while they remained unsettled, weighed heavily on his mind. They had no connection with ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... 'Then that line's the hangman's rope, savin' your presence. You'll learn to-morrow how we rethreated to dhraw thim on before we made thim trouble, an' that's what a woman does. By the same tokin, we'll be attacked before the dawnin' an' ut would be betther ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... streets and in private houses are the traditional occupations of the caste, but they have others. In Bombay they serve as night watchmen, town-criers, drummers, trumpeters and hangmen. Formerly the office of hangman was confined to sweepers, but now many low-caste prisoners are willing to undertake it for the sake of the privilege of smoking tobacco in jail which it confers. In Mirzapur when a Dom hangman is tying a rope round the neck of a criminal he shouts out, 'Dohai Maharani, Dohai ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... great majority, that the forty-fifth number of the North Briton was a scandalous and seditious libel, and tending to excite traitorous insurrections. It was further voted that the paper should be burned by the common hangman. Wilkes then complained to the House of a breach of privilege, which complaint, being regular, was considered. But the Commons decided that the privilege of parliament does not extend to a libel, which resolution ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Commons for his arrest and for the burning of his books, possibly, as Masson thinks, obtained by his friends to make it seem unnecessary to except him in the Indemnity Bill. The books were duly burnt, or such copies of them as came to the hands of the hangman; and ultimately, at some uncertain date, Milton himself was got into the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms. He was soon released, and the story would not be worth relating but for a curious proof it gives of the {74} obstinate courage of the poet. The House ordered his ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... the market-place they found a dense crowd of sympathizers watching pityingly the hangman's cart, in which lay William of Cloudeslee, bound hand and foot, with a rope round his neck. The sheriff and the justice stood near the gallows, and Cloudeslee would have been hanged already, but that the sheriff was hiring a man to measure the outlaw for his grave. ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... fear. It was also reported that the people interposed and prevented the executioner from quartering him while he was alive, but this favour was granted by the command of the king; that the crowd nearly destroyed the hangman, whereas no violence of any sort was used; and that the people were perfectly silent when the head was held up on the scaffold, whereas that act was attended with loud acclamations. On the contrary, the people were with difficulty restrained ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... I heard a man once, when he was upon the ladder with the rope about his neck, confess, when ready to be turned off by the hangman, that that which had brought him to that end was his accustoming of himself, when young, to pilfer and steal small things. To my best remembrance he told us, that he began the trade of a thief by stealing of pins and points;[15] and therefore ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... The hangman then came up, and, tying a halter round the neck of the effigy, dragged it off to a place where a gibbet had been ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... and how thankful and Pleasant you should be that Charles Nutter is not a Corpes in the Buchar's wood, and jiggin Home to you like Sturk did. But well in health, what I'm certain shure he is, taken the law of Mary Matchwell—bless the Mark—to get her emprisind and Publickly wiped by the commin hangman.' All which rhapsody conjured up a confused and dyspeptic dream, full of absurd and terrific images, which she could not well comprehend, except in so far as it seemed clear that some signal disaster ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... on their heels, and beheld, standing at the door, a short, dirty man in a faded suit of black, and a cold-shining satin vest. He wore an old hat set well back on a bald head, and his cravat was tied on one side in hangman's fashion. One leg of his trowsers was tucked into the top of his boot; the other hung down in its proper position. The man's face and hands wanted washing. This was Mr. Persimmon, postmaster. The secrets of his popularity ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... knew exactly where. He had there, it was said, a sort of field, a hole, a lair. There were no neighbors, not even passers-by. Since he had dwelt in that valley, the path which led thither had disappeared under a growth of grass. The locality was spoken of as though it had been the dwelling of a hangman. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... had first spoken was on the point of making an angry reply, but his companion exclaimed with a laugh, "Let the boor alone to do his business; by the look of his face 'twill bring him pretty close to the hangman's rope!" and, taking no further notice ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... his fingers curled like snakes around the handle of his revolver. Nothing kept him from shooting that man, yes, and that woman also, but the certainty that the deed would make him a fugitive for life, subject everywhere to the summons of the hangman. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... said, entering the cell and offering me his hand. "They've not put the hangman's rope round your ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... gallant accomplice, having successfully stolen a march upon the hangman, was breathing the free air of the French seaport, Miss Blandy, in her cell in Oxford Castle, was preparing for her trial. She had at first entrusted her defence to one Mr. Newell, an attorney of Henley, who had succeeded ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... number of persons engaged in working that political mechanism, which is never productive, but merely regulative, the better it would seem to be for the people. We do not desire ever to see a woman occupy the office of a hangman, nor of a prosecuting attorney, nor yet of an electioneering politician; because, these being transient accompaniments of an imperfect society, the desideratum is to have concentrated on them the interest and energy of the smallest number competent to secure ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... know about his new allegiance? But so it was; and as the jail was overstocked with others awaiting trial, it was deemed expedient to hasten the execution, and the culprits were sentenced to be hung on the following Friday—hangman's day. ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... hangman no, twelve times within this hour, when I was at the last gasp; and that is a time, I think, when a ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... literary auto da fe's we may well add the burning of Bishop Burnet's famous Pastoral Letter, which was censured by the House of Commons, January, 1692, and was burned by the common hangman. The offence contained in it was the ascribing the title of William III. to the crown of England to a right of conquest. A recollection of this gives additional point to the irony of Atterbury in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... battle with the Talmudists, and being accredited the victors, exulted in seeing the sacred books of the Rabbis confiscated. When a thousand copies of the Talmud were thrown into a great pit at Kammieniec, and burned by the hangman, the Baal Shem shed tears, and joined in the fast-day for the burning of the Torah. For despite his detestation of the devil's knots, he held that the Talmud represented the oral law which expressed the continuous inspiration of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... domestic architecture of the past. The dwelling to which the average Anglo-Saxon will most promptly direct his steps, and the only one I have space to mention, is the so-called Maison de Tristan l'Hermite—a gentleman whom the readers of "Quentin Durward" will not have forgotten—the hangman-in-ordinary to that great and prompt chastener Louis XI. Unfortunately the house of Tristan is not the house of Tristan at all; this illusion has been cruelly dispelled. There are no illusions left at all, in the good city of Tours, with regard to Louis ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... day before the execution, I made ready everything that I could possibly need. So far our plans, or rather mine, had worked to a marvel. Certain of File's old accomplices succeeded in bribing the hangman to shorten the time of suspension. Arrangements were made also to secure me two hours alone with the prisoner, so that nothing seemed to be wanting. I had assured File that I would not see him again previous to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Huguenot. "But I order you to come, for Louis XIV. has proclaimed you to be a converted Catholic, and if you refuse you will be at once subject to all the penalties of heresy." It was certainly very difficult to argue with a priest who had the hangman at his back, or with the King who had his hundred thousand dragoons. And so, perhaps, the threatened Huguenot went to Mass, and pretended to believe all that the priest had said about his ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... slain, both good and evil, are in their graves, out of the reach of hangman and assassin. Only the correspondent never dies. He is the true Pantheist—going out of nature for a week, but bursting forth afresh in a day, and so insinuating himself into the history of our era that it is beginning to be hard to find out where the event ends and ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... session in the Forties the House was made indignant one morning by the introduction of a petition by Mr. Tolman, of Worcester, asking that the clergy who approved of capital punishment should be appointed hangman. A motion was made to reject the petition without reference. I interposed and called attention to the similarity between the position the House was thus taking and the position occupied by the National ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... beautifully said that he did kind deeds stealthily, as if he were afraid of being found out. He became a shield above the fallen; he stood between the soldier, condemned for the sleep of exhaustion, and the hangman's noose. He refused to attend a cabinet meeting because he was trying to find a reason for reprieving a soldier. "It is butchery day," he said one Friday morning, and he denied himself to a committee because he did not think that hanging would help the boy who was condemned to die. "They said ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... writer on the subject, that it shortly became the great support of one party in the controversy, that King James deemed it worth while to write an answer, and that on his accession to the throne he almost certainly ordered the book to be burned by the common hangman,[27] these are better evidence than absolutely contemporary notices to show that the Discoverie ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... little to regret in that, sir," said Saltwell. "It will save the hangman some work, if he sends them all to the ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... behind him and the road began to climb. There, on the right, stood "The Jolly Hangman." Now he knows his way and 'tis no longer far from home. From out of the ditch comes something creeping, a black shape that runs across the plain, chattering like a magpie: Mad Wanne, with her thin legs and her cloak wide open. She ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... tumultuous La Mettrie meant nothing but open-mouthed Wisdom by it, gave scandal in abundance; so that even the Leyden Magistrates were scandalized; and had to burn the afflicting little Duodecimo by the common hangman, and order La Mettrie to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... to the head of the bronze horse whereon the stately figure of Marcus Aurelius sat in triumph before the door of the Pope's house, as it sits today on the Capitol before the Palace of the Senator. And Otto caused the body of murdered Roffredo to be dragged from its grave and quartered by the hangman and scattered abroad, a warning to the Regions and their leaders. They left Pope John in peace after that, and he lived five years and held a council in the Lateran, and died in his bed. Possibly after his rough experience, his rule was more gentle, and when he was dead he ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... relate, did not perish. At a distant point of the sea-coast the monster spewed him forth unharmed. He was found by compassionate passers-by, and grew up ignorant of his descent. The government appointed him to the office of hangman. As luck would have it, he had to execute his own father. By the law of the land the wife of the dead man fell to the share of his executioner, and Joshua was on the point of adding to parricide another crime equally heinous. He was saved by a miraculous sign. When he approached his mother, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... the orders of a soldier!" shouted the prisoner, enraged beyond all control. "They are orders for a jailer, a hangman, a scullion—no soldier who wears the sword of a civilized nation can take such orders. The war is over; the South is conquered; I have no country save America. For the honour of the flag, for which I once poured out my blood on the ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... Anarchy, robbery, and murder preyed upon the city. No morning dawned without revealing corpses in the streets; and if by chance the murderer was caught, there was pardon for him if he could afford to buy it, or Tor di Nona and the hangman's noose if ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... Licksy—hangman won't get him. I heard a man say Jack 'd get off wi' twenty year ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... proclamashin 's kinder skeert em more'n did us Berkshire folks." Abner explained to a crowd at the tavern. "They all wanter be on the hangman's side wen it comes tew the hangin. They hain't got the pluck of a weasel, them fellers daown east hain't. This ere war'll hev tew be fit aout in this ere caounty, I guess, ef wuss ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... surrounded by troops, and after defending it, with the help of his friends, for two hours, he was wounded and captured. Next day the Duke despatched the following note to the Governor of Reggio-Emilia: 'A terrible conspiracy against me has broken out. The conspirators are in my hands. Send me the hangman.—Francis.' ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... light. Send Sir John to me to tell me of his resolves and I'll tell him something of mine. Tell him from me, Master Godolphin, that if he will trouble to come as far as Penarrow I'll do by him what the hangman should have done long since. I'll crop his pimpish ears for him, ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Wiseman was much commoved with passion, and shaking his cane with a very threatful countenance, broke forth upon this wise: "Learning, quotha!" said he; "I would have all such rogues scourged by the Hangman!" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not stop here; he ordered me to be shut up in a box, and commanded the executioner to carry me into the country to cut off my head, and leave me to be devoured by the birds of prey. The hangman and another carried me, thus shut up on horseback, into the country, in order to execute the usurper's barbarous sentence; but by my prayers and tears I moved the executioner's compassion. Go, says he, get you speedily ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... door. I noticed that one of them seemed to be somewhat under the influence of drink. They passed on into the confines of the jail. I then asked the gatekeeper who those men were. He said, "That one is the hangman." He was the one whom I had noticed. My wish, or my intention rather, to step inside those gates vanished. I thanked the gatekeeper and told him that I would not trouble him to let me through. The ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... turned dark with rage. "You hangman!" she muttered savagely. "You've got a hangman's face all right! Anybody would know what ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... beloved image on his heart which he might recall and hold before him when he could never again look upon it. She knew that in that farewell gaze and in the later, more loving one which he turned upon her own face, he was storing up the vision he wanted to keep with him even when the hangman's cap had shut out every other earthly picture—when he stood during the seconds that must for him be ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck |
