"Rapier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when the sword is at the hip ready for innumerable adventures too terrible to be pictured. The Stanley Weyman hero has scarcely time to eat his supper except in the act of leaping from a window or whilst his other hand is employed in lunging with a rapier. In Scott's heroes, on the other hand, there is no characteristic so typical or so worthy of humour as their disposition to linger over their meals. The conviviality of the Clerk of Copmanhurst or of Mr. Pleydell, and the thoroughly solid things they are described as eating, is one ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... get up! I have lost my money as well as thou hast done; let us therefore go fight lustily together, grapple and scuffle it to some purpose. Thou mayest look and see that my tuck is no longer than thy rapier. The Gascon, altogether astonished at his unexpected provocation, without altering his former dialect spoke thus: Cap de Saint Arnault, quau seys to you, qui me rebeillez? Que mau de taberne te gire. Ho Saint Siobe, cap de Gascoigne, ta pla ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... on his right side, Lusine on his left, and the egg-stealer behind him. He removed the Jail-breaker's rapier from his sheath. The official was ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... sayd: That if their Graces and Greatnesses would giue me leave to play at mine owne Countrey Weapon called the Quarter Staffe, I was then ready there an Oposite, against any Commer.' When a 'hansome and well Spirited Spaniard steps foorth, with his Rapier and Poniard,' Peeke explained that he 'made little account of that One to play with, and should shew ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... have been replaced to-day by others; but nothing has quite replaced the Simple Discours, the Petition pour les Villageois, the Pamphlet des Pamphlets, in which the ease of the best sixteenth and seventeenth century prose is united with a deft rapier-play like that of Voltaire, and with the lucidity of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... times he had watched them or their duplicates striding and mincing and bounding by, each moving like an animated note of interrogation! They were long, and medium, and short. There were women of a thinness beyond comparison, sheathed in skirts as featly as a rapier in a scabbard. There were women of a monumental, a mighty fatness, who billowed and rolled in multitudinous, stormy garments. There were slow eyes that drooped on one heavily as a hand, and quick ones that stabbed and withdrew, and glanced ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... under control, and yet to the core of him a gentleman; and the apoplectic Major Bagstock, the Joey B. who claimed to be "rough and tough and devilish sly;" and Susan Nipper, as swift of tongue as a rapier, and as sharp? Reader, don't you know all these people? For myself, I have jostled against them constantly any time the last twenty years. They are as much part of my life as the people I meet ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... and the sun, or even twiddled your thumbs at him in an indecorous or careless manner—look to it that you be prepared to draw and mayhap to be spitted upon his sword's point, with honor. Sdeath! A gentlemen of courage carries his life lightly at the needle end of his rapier, as that wonderful Japanese, Samsori, used to make the flimsiest feather preside in miraculous equilibration upon the tip of ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... gratified my curiosity by showing every one of them to me in detail, and informing me that they had all belonged to, or were in some way relics of, Charles Edward Stuart. "And this," said the old gentleman, "was his sword." It was a light dress rapier, with a very highly cut and ornamented steel hilt. I half drew the blade, thinking how it had flashed from its scabbard, startling England and dazzling Scotland at its first unsheathing, and in what inglorious gloom of prostrate fortunes it had rusted away at last, the scorn of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Revolution" he received an ovation such as few men have ever been accorded. The great Socialist theorist plunged into a keen and forceful attack upon the theories of the Bolsheviki. He was frequently interrupted by angry cries and by impatient questionings, which he answered with rapier-like sentences. He was asked what a "democratic" government should be, ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... exhibit itself the other side of the Channel. It is a proverb, that the London policemen are never at hand. The stout fellows with their clubs look as if they might do service; but what a contrast they are to the Paris sergents de ville! The latter, with his dress-coat, cocked hat, long rapier, white gloves, neat, polite, attentive, alert,—always with the manner of a jesuit turned soldier,—you learn to trust very much, if not respect; and you feel perfectly secure that he will protect ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with the wagging of his lock, and complements like Euphues or the knights of the Sun; yet his phrase is the worst apparalled thing about him, for it is plain fustian.[ED] His thigh is always well apointed with a rapier, yet peaceable enough, and makes[EE] a wound in nothing but the scabard, yet[EF] rather than point the field, hee'l pull it out in the street. He is weaponed rather in the street, than the highway, for he fears not a thief, but a serjeant. His clothes and himself grow stale together, and ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... The wages of sin is death! And his head is before thee. Heaven hath avenged the innocent blood he hath shed. Last night, in the lusty vigour of a drunken debauch, passing over London Bridge, he encounters another brawl, wherein, having run at the watchmen with his rapier, one blow of the bill which they carried severed thy brother's head from his trunk. The latter was cast over the parapet into the river. The head only remained, which an eye witness, if not a friend, hath sent to thee!" His ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... distrustful of his father's stability in the matter. The old man's character was not yet fully known to him. He ran up to his room, dressed himself, took a valise, came downstairs softly and laid it on a counter in the shop, together with his rapier and cloak. ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... from an old married couple of servants who had passed their lives with the family. It appears that Paul, with Pauline in his arms, had barely reached the hall of the great house, and was giving orders to close the doors, when Jacques rushed in with a naked rapier in one hand and a pistol in the other. Paul adjured him, by all he held sacred, not to attack him, as his blood was up, and, unarmed as he was, he would do him a mischief. Pauline, too, implored him by a sister's love to desist; but ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... exist to-day will not arise again. Upon this continent it is the time of times for the bold—the wisely bold. This that beckons is no mirage in the West; it is palpable fact. Say that I follow Burr—follow! overtake and pass him! He has a tarnished name and fifty years,—a supple rapier but a shrunken arm. He's daring; but I can be that and more. He plans; I can achieve. I am no dreamer and no braggart when I say that in the West I can play the Corsican. What can I do here? Become, perhaps, Governor of Virginia; wait until Mr. Jefferson is dead, and Mr. Madison is dead, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... first absolutely terror-stricken, and then suddenly inflamed with ungovernable fury. He dropped his cane on the ground, drew his rapier, and, without wasting a thought on his ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... sector during all the time we were in the line. Sometimes we met individual German sentries and quick, quiet and accurate work was necessary to avoid detection and probable capture. I found that a French bayonet, the rapier shape, was a very satisfactory weapon at such times. Trench knives have been invented since and may be an improvement. After leaving me that night Captain Congreve came upon a party of eighty-two Germans, commanded by an officer, who had been cut off in one of the craters for several days, without ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... left side; falling open on the right, it was caught by another buckle just outside the right knee. The arrangement loosed the right arm, but was a serious hamper to walking, and made it inconvenient to get out the rapier, the handle of which was protrusively suggested through the cloak. A tunic of bright orange color, short in sleeve and skirt, covered his body. Where undraped, tight-fitting hose terminating in red shoes, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... dashing at them he brought it down on the side of one of their heads with such a swashing blow, that had it not been for his stiff hat the man would never have uttered oath again. As it was, he dropped like a log upon the stones of the yard, while his companion whipped out his rapier and made a vicious thrust; but my father, who was as active as he was strong, sprung aside, and bringing his cudgel down upon the outstretched arm of the officer, cracked it like the stem of a tobacco-pipe. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a sere figure, yet he was extraordinarily full of a polished virility, rapier-like. Howat could see the dark, satirical face shadowed by the elaborate wig, the rigid figure in precise, foppish dress. He heard Winscombe's slightly harsh, dominant voice. His position in England was, he knew, secure, high. Ludowika had been very sensible in marrying ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... as a rapier, his face slightly flushed and his glance angry, yet he had the presence of mind to ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... to fame, and toss a flower at your feet when all the world and his wife are crowding to hear the new prima donna." He had dropped back into the vein of light, ironical mockery which Diana was learning to recognise as characteristic of the man. It was like the rapier play of a skilled duellist, his weapon flashing hither and thither, parrying every thrust of his opponent, and with consummate ease keeping him ever ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... trim-built, muscular. His doublet and trunks were of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged; the plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of the camp. The speech of this fantastic figure was received with an explosion of jeers and laughter. Some cried, "'Tis ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... either. His coat was of sky-blue, slashed across with silver braidings, and with broad silver shoulder-straps on either side. A vest of white calamanca peeped out from beneath it, and knee-breeches of the same disappeared into high polished boots with gilt spurs upon the heels. A silver-hilted rapier and a plumed cap lying upon a settle beside him completed a costume which was a badge of honour to the wearer, for any Frenchman would have recognised it as being that of an officer in the famous Blue Guard of Louis the Fourteenth. A trim, dashing soldier ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the sins that ever were, and do as he damned well pleased. An ancient phrase that—damned well. It went clear back to the Elizabethan Age, and Moonson had tried picturing himself as an Elizabethan man with a ruffle at his throat and a rapier in his clasp, brawling lustily in ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... 'On one side,' said she. Then we came into the house of Lieutenant Ingersoll; and I went into the great room, and Abigail came in and said, 'There he stands.' I said, 'Where? where?' and presently drew my rapier." Then Abigail said, he has gone, but "'there is a gray cat.' Then I said, 'Whereabouts?' 'There!' said she, 'there!' Then I struck with my rapier, and she fell into a fit; and, when it was over, she said, 'You killed her.'" Poor Hutchinson could not see the cat he had killed any more than ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the staff he carried and which served as a sheath, a rapier, upon which in another instant he had thrown himself. There he lay on the ground, bleeding profusely, the point of the blade appearing through his back, when his many friends came running to give him aid. Don Quixote lifted up his head, and they found that he was still breathing. ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the genial laugh of Gay At Pope's defiant ire! How Parnell's sallies brought in play The rapier wit of Prior! And how o'er all the banter's shift— The laughter's fall and swell— Upleaped the great guffaw of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... those ragged individuals to meet in Cato Street are not far off, they are not on the other side of the river, in the Borough, for example, in some garret or obscure cellar. The very first to confront the Guards and runners are Thistlewood and Ings; Thistlewood whips his long thin rapier through Smithers' lungs, and Ings makes a dash at Fitzclarence with his butcher's knife. Oh, there was something in those fellows! honesty and courage—but can as much be said for the inciters of the troubles of '32. No; they egged ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... nephew who would do me no small credit. I sent him to perfect his studies at Leyden, but shall I confess it to you? it was to find that no master nor discipline could keep him out of the riotings and quarrels of the worse sort of students. Nay, I found him laid by with a rapier thrust in the side from a duel, for no better cause than biting his thumb at a Scots law student in chapel, his apology being that to sit through a Dutch sermon drove him crazy. 'Tis not that he is not trustworthy. Find employment for the restless ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brief, as it is beautiful. One after one, the snow-peaks passed from the pallor of death to the glow of life. Then, sudden as an inspiration, the full splendour of morning broke, sublime as the eternity from which it came. Rapier-like shafts of light pierced the purple lengths of shadows that engulfed the valley. Threading their way through fir and deodar and pine, they flung all their radiant length across a rock-studded carpet of fir-needles and moss, and rested, like a caress, upon Quita's ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... honour; and Mr. George Esmond Warrington (that is, Egomet Ipse who write this page down), as he walked the old place, pacing the long corridors, the smooth dew-spangled terraces and cool darkling avenues, felt a while as if he was one of Mr. Walpole's cavaliers with ruff, rapier, buff-coat, and gorget, and as if an Old Pretender, or a Jesuit emissary in disguise, might appear from behind any tall tree-trunk round about the mansion, or antique carved cupboard within it. I had the strangest, saddest, pleasantest, old-world fancies as I walked the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his person with envy, and on his light rapier with mistrust. In sooth, he was a proper man for stealing a lady's heart, either in hall or bower. Many had been his victims;—many were then in the last extremities of love. But of him it was currently spoken that he had never yet been ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... occasionally taking my Lilias an airing in a neat curricle; but he is no Better on the Turf, no comrade of jockeys and stablemen, no patron of bruisers and those that handle the backsword and are quick at finish with the provant rapier, and agile in the use of the imbrocatto. I would disinherit him were I to suspect him of such practices, or of an over-fondness for the bottle, or of a passion for loose company. He hunts sometimes, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... nimble-witted when he did speak. And he was not easily bullied. If he encountered an insolent person, he gave full effect to his five feet eight inches, the look from his grey eyes was unwavering as though he tacitly accepted the challenge, there was an invisible rapier hanging from his left hip, a poise of the body which ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... When his companions, at Grancey's suggestion, left him alone, he locked the doors and a storm of apprehensions took hold upon him. The situation presented itself in two deadly alternatives, either his annihilation in eternal darkness, or else that his rapier must let out the red life-stream of a man who, hateful though he might be, was but a speaker of the truth. In that case, all would come out and justice have to be settled with, both human and divine. Yes, that ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... growing on it. The stone said this was the grave of a young man who was the son of an Honorable gentleman, and who died a hundred years ago and more.— Oh, yes, DIED,—with a small triangular mark in one breast, and another smaller opposite, in his back, where another young man's rapier had slid through his body; and so he lay down out there on the Common, and was found cold the next morning, with the night- dews and the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... splutter, Power's cheated claimants mutter, And foiled fire-eaters utter Most sanguinary threats. "He Freedom's fated suckler? The traitor, trickster, truckler!" So fumes the fierce swash-buckler, And his toy-rapier whets. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... lapidary polishing pebbles,—a pretty art, but not vested with the glories of sculpture, nor the mathematical magnitude of architecture. He does not walk a demigod, but a stiff Anglicised imitator of French paces. He is a symmetrical, but a small invisible personage at rapier practice." Now, clever as this is, it only proves that Addison is not a Shakspeare or Milton. He does not pretend to be either. He is no demigod, but he is a man, a lady-man if you will, but the lovelier on that account. Besides, he was cut off in his ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... last, and my young brother and sister, catching the infection, began to whimper and to rub their eyes with their fists. Knowing so much more of my wild purpose than they did, and realizing that I might never return alive, I was the more tried in my resolution not to disgrace with tears the virgin rapier and dagger at my side. But finally I got somehow upon my horse, whose head Blaise Tripault was holding, and threw my last kisses to the family on the steps. I then managed voice enough to say "Good-bye, Blaise," ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... camp? Oho, le champ de bataille; I shall tell you, mademoiselle, I did fight at the bataille de Vittoria, com un diable, like littel devil. I did kill beaucoup d'Anglais. Mai my maitre, le capitain, he did give me a dam tump on my head wis his rapier, and did knock me down from on top of my horse, and make a me ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... the old lord his uncle, who a short time before would not speak to him, as Tom passed under my lord's coach window, his lordship going in state to his place at Court, while his nephew slunk by with his battered hat and feather, and the point of his rapier sticking out of the scabbard—to his twopenny ordinary ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... throat was dry, and he could feel no more the fresh stirring of the air of the dawning. He would not stop to breathe, he had reached the point in his insensate fury when he could have flung himself upon the rapier's point and felt it cleave his breastbone and start through his back with the joy of hell, if he could have struck the other man deep but once. The thought made him start afresh; he fought like a thousand devils, his point leaping and flashing, and coming down with a crash; he stamped ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not intend to recall them, but assert the truth with the point of my rapier. If you are not as great a coward, as you are a ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... to pull open a drawer, when something about the whip he was holding caught his attention. For a second he stared at it, muttering. Then, with a glance at the doorway, he thrust the thing beneath the skirt of his coat and wiped it as it had been a rapier.... ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... Edward and the lusty George? And where's that valiant crook-back prodigy, Dicky your boy, that with his grumbling voice Was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies? Or, with the rest, where is your darling Rutland? Look, York; I stain'd this napkin with the blood That valiant Clifford with his rapier's point Made issue from the bosom of the boy, And, if thine eyes can water for his death, I give thee this to dry thy cheeks withal. Alas, poor York! but that I hate thee deadly I should lament thy miserable state. I prithee, grieve to make me merry, York; Stamp, rave, and fret, that I may sing ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... as it were out of space, and gave him a quick side-glance that was like the turn of a rapier. "I must go down to the dak-bungalow," he ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... staff of him that was nearest to me, I said, "Sirrah, deliver your weapon." He thereupon raised his club, which was big enough to have knocked down an ox, intending no doubt to have knocked me down with it, as probably he would have done, had I not, in the twinkling of an eye, whipped out my rapier, and made a pass upon him. I could not have failed running of him through up to the hilt had he stood his ground, but the sudden and unexpected sight of my bright blade glittering in the dark night, did so amaze and terrify the man, that, slipping aside, he avoided my thrust, and letting ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... could not escape the look of suffering he had seen on her face. Her habit was to do all things with high spirit. He could guess how much she had endured to bring those hollow shadows under her dusky eyes. The woe of the girl touched his heart sharply, as if with the point of a rapier. ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... away, and falling on her uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and, seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he sat, playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in France. His eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to arrest them. There were such wide spaces between the furniture, the light fell so badly and cheerlessly ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... activity. His attire consisted of a cloak and doublet of scarlet cloth, very much stained and tarnished, and edged with gold lace, likewise the worse for wear; jack-boots, with huge funnel tops; spurs, with enormous rowels, and a rapier of preposterous length. He wore his own hair, which was swart and woolly, like that of a negro; and had beard and moustaches to match. His hat was fiercely cocked; his gestures swaggering and insolent; and he was perpetually racking his brain to ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... indeed a genuine Republican at all, though driven to a desperate attempt for Republicanism as his final shift, So it had happened, however. Milton and Lambert may be remembered together as the last opponents of the avalanche. Lambert had fronted it with a small rapier; Milton had wrestled with ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... for it, and yet she made herself a martyr over it. I don't mean by this parable that it will be a strain upon your intellect to keep up with mine. But I do mean that a woman's mind is DIFFERENT from a man's. A dainty rapier is a finer thing than a hatchet, but it is not adapted for cutting down ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... his anger, Brian forced the attack savagely; then a sharp thrust against his jack showed him that O'Donnell was armed with a rapier, and he fell to the point with some caution. With the first moment of play, he knew that he faced a master of fence; yet almost upon the thought his blade ripped into the ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... benefits of travel, the ideal persisted. There was always something, certainly, to be learned abroad, for men of every calibre. Those who did not profit by the study of international law learned new tricks of the rapier. And because experience of foreign countries was expensive and hard to come at, the acquirement of it gave prestige to ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... subject of his finances; and he was charitably supposed to have commenced his career by robbing a Dutch mail of a package of diamonds. Still he glittered, until involved in a duel with Mississippi Law; the latter financier, probably jealous of so eminent a rival, ran a rapier through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... thinker. He was a man of action, whose action, sharp, rapier-like, and instantaneous, was unsheathed only by instinctive feeling, by chivalry, honour, indignation, compassion, never by reflection, judgment, experience. He could not really think. What he learned had to reach him some other way. His mind ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... and the poet was dismissed, or escaped, from that court.—In the reign of James I. of England, Crichton, Lord Sanquhar, a peer of Scotland, from a vain ambition to excel a fencing-master in his own art, played at rapier and dagger with him. The fencing-master, whose fame and bread were at stake, put out one of his lordship's eyes. Exasperated at this, Lord Sanquhar hired ruffians, and had the fencing-master assassinated; for which his lordship was capitally tried, condemned, and hanged. Not being a peer of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... respecting diet; to which the young prince replied, "though it be but a cowardly fowl, it shall not make me a coward." Once taking strawberries with two spoons, when one might have sufficed, our infant Mars gaily exclaimed, "The one I use as a rapier and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... can imagine a glint of moonlight running up the blade of a rapier, you may know the chill flame of spite and despite that flickered in her eyes then as ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on a short and broad rapier, which he laid aside during the interview,—"I think, my Lord Cardinal, you encourage me to consider that our negotiation stands a fair chance of a prosperous close. Ten thousand florins, and my brother quits Viterbo, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... when Crichton, looking on his sanguinary success with indignation, offered to stake fifteen hundred pistoles, and mount the stage against him. The duke with some reluctance consented, and on the day fixed the combatants appeared: their weapon seems to have been single rapier, which was then newly introduced in Italy. The prize-fighter advanced with great violence and fierceness, and Crichton contended himself calmly to ward his passes, and suffered him to exhaust his vigour by his own fury. Crichton then became ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... funeral procession was arranged with all due pomp; odes for the dog were indited by the gross; and at night we all turned out, near a thousand of us, a lantern in one hand and our rapier in the other, and so proceeded through the town, the bells chiming and ringing, till the dog was entombed. Then came a, feed which lasted till broad daylight, when you sent your acknowledgments to the college dons for their kind sympathy, and ordered the meat to be sold at half-price. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... street, and a sallow-faced man with a slender malacca cane held in his hand as if it were a rapier, came to the door of the room and said something in French, indignant that he should be disturbed. He waved the cane menacingly after Meeker and slammed ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... accosted him suddenly, instinctively sought the hilt of his rapier. He was better skilled in the use of that weapon than was usual, and had no fear that he should be unable to escape from the constables, if not taken at a disadvantage. Still, as that would compel him to fly into the woods, and as it would separate him from Dulcibel, he had been very careful ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... invention of a new weapon in war always arouses protest, but it does not usually, in the long run, make war more inhuman. There was a great outcry in Europe when the broadsword was superseded by the rapier, and a tall man of his hands could be spitted like a cat or a rabbit by any dexterous little fellow with a trained wrist. There was a wave of indignation, which was a hundred years in passing, when musketry first ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... himself in an armchair by the fireplace and threw one leg carelessly over the arm. In his black velvet cloak and cap, and his black silk tights, he was very like a minor character, a court chamberlain for example, in some cloak and rapier drama. "I find this week-end dancing and kicking about wonderfully wholesome," he said. "That and our Sunday hockey. One starts the new week clear and bright about the mind. Friday is always my ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... refuse pit almost 40 feet square was discovered in the "industrial area" near the workshop, ironworking pit, and pottery kilns. Filled with trash from the first half of the 17th century, this pit contained such artifacts as a swepthilt rapier (made about 1600), a cutlass, the breastplate and backpiece of a light suit of armor, a number of utensils of metal, ceramics, and glass, to add to the collection of early 17th-century arts and crafts. Several smaller refuse pits were noted, and it is worth commenting ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... the sea and wind, when both contend Which is the mightier: In his lawless fit, Behind the arras hearing something stir, Whips out his rapier, cries A rat, a rat! And, in this brainish apprehension,[2] kills The unseen ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... into the midst of this tumult and disorder that our young man advanced with a beating heat, ranging his long rapier up his lanky leg, and keeping one hand on the edge of his cap, with that half-smile of the embarrassed a provincial who wishes to put on a good face. When he had passed one group he began to breathe more freely; but he could not help observing that ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... she has done so. France is full of widows and orphans from end to end. Perhaps in proportion to her population she has suffered the most of all. But in carrying out her hellish mission Germany has bled herself white also. Her heavy sword has done its work, but the keen French rapier has not lost its skill. France will stand at last, weak and tottering, with her huge enemy dead at her feet. But it is a fearsome business to see—such a business as the world never looked upon before. It is fearful for the French. It is fearful for the ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... appeal could the princely-minded Champion make. It was to tell her that he would bear her away forthwith as his own true bride. And they thus both being agreed, habited as a page in green sarcenet, her buskins of the smoothest kid-skin, and her rapier of Lydian steel, secured over her shoulder by an orange-coloured scarf, and mounted on a gentle palfrey, she quitted the land of Georgia; one of her maidens, habited also in page's guise, attending, whom Niccolo took under his especial care. Thus they ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... Along one end of this he laid the handle of his knife; and with thongs, which he had already cut out of the strap of his bullet-pouch, he spliced the knife and pole together. This gave him a formidable weapon—for the knife was a "bowie," and had a long blade, with a point like a rapier. He was not slow in ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... himself at the foot of a flight of unillumined back stairs, where his manner underwent a swift alteration, for here was an adventure to be gone about with ceremony. "Ventre St. Gris!" he muttered hoarsely, and loosened the long rapier in the shabby sheath at his side. For, with the closing of the door, he had become a Huguenot gentleman, over forty and a little grizzled perhaps, but modest and unassuming; wiry, alert, lightning-quick, with a wrist of steel and a heart of gold; and he was about to ascend the stairs of an ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... be a Journalist-at-Arms? Life for that paladin hath poignant charms. Whether in pretty quarrel he shall run Just half an inch of rapier—in pure fun— In his opponent's biceps, or shall flick His shoulders with a slender walking-stick. The "stern joy" of the man indeed must rise To raptures and heroic ecstacies. Oh, glorious climax of a vulgar squabble, To redden your foe's nose, or make him hobble For half a week or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... 1689 that they began to assume or to be characterized by a different designation—we mean that of rapparees; so called, it is said, from the fact of their using the half pike or short rapier; although, for our part, we are inclined to think that they were so termed from the word rapio, to plunder, which strikes us as the most appropriate and obvious. At all events it is enough to say that the ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... "plain, dacent claes. As for the rapier, nae doubt it sits wi' your degree; but an I had been you, I would hae waired my siller better gates than that." And he proposed I should buy winter hosen from a wife in the Cowgate-back, that was a cousin of his own, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... understanding between them, which, correctly interpreted, meant: You and I understand these things! But a young rope-maker, who had once been a trumpeter in a military band, considered this giving of a verdict without consulting him a personal slight and declared that he "would be hanged if it wasn't a rapier!" The consequence was a fight which transformed the place into a bear-garden, dense with dust and ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... in a trap, in the presence of the brigand who has quietly gagged poor Andre and conducted the carriage thither. There is nothing for me to do, as a gallant French marquis, but to say, "Parbleu!" draw my rapier, and die valorously! I am found, a week or two after, outside a deserted cabaret near the barrier, with a hole through my ruffled linen, and my pockets stripped. No; on second thoughts, I am rescued,—rescued by the angel I have been dreaming of, who is the assumed daughter ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the intensity of it was like a rapier- thrust, down through her fury to the quick of womanly consciousness; she shrank back. "Don't," she said, faintly; "don't—" For one instant she forgot that she hated ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... earnest gentleman like Colonel Winwood the tempting emendations of typescript would not do. In what Miss Winwood called his subtle Italian way, he induced his patron to discuss the speeches before the process of composition. These discussions, involving the swift rapier play of intelligences, Colonel Winwood enjoyed. They stimulated him magically. He sat down and wrote his speeches, delightfully unconscious of what in them was Paul and what was himself; and when he delivered them he was proud of the impression he ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... owing to the satisfaction he got out of his clothes. He bought them at second hand—a Spanish cavalier's complete suit, wide-brimmed hat with flowing plumes, lace collar and cuffs, faded velvet doublet and trunks, short cloak hung from the shoulder, funnel-topped buskins, long rapier, and all that—a graceful and picturesque costume, and the Paladin's great frame was the right place to hang it for effect. He wore it when off duty; and when he swaggered by with one hand resting on the hilt of his rapier, and twirling his new mustache with the other, everybody ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... a pistol from under his cloak, and fired full in his face. Had it happened in these days of detonators, Frank's chance had been small; but to get a ponderous wheel-lock under weigh was a longer business, and before the fizzing of the flint had ceased, Frank had struck up the pistol with his rapier, and it exploded harmlessly over his head. The man instantly dashed the weapon in his ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... that of his adversary; but with these homebred implements he never failed to repulse the father with something of the power with which a nervous cudgel player would deal with a skilful master of the rapier, setting at nought his passados by the direct and unanswerable arguments of a broken head ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... thousand men into bloody graves? That was unfortunate, but unavoidable. Would the struggle frighten and horrify the world? It was possible. But these things were unimportant. The rebellion must be crushed. The sledge-hammer must strike until Lee's keen rapier was shattered. Hammer and rapier were matched against each other—the combat was a l'outrance—the hammer must beat down the rapier, or fall from the grasp of him ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... He was short and slight, and could have slipped through a very narrow space, but Trombin seemed to swell himself out till he filled the bridge from side to side, and kept his hand on the hilt of his rapier. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... wild flowers, the hunchback was clad soberly in black that was well-worn, indeed, and grizzled at the seams, but neatly attended. He sat in the window, reading intently in a little volume, and, again unlike his associates, while he read he nursed between his knees a long and formidable rapier. Those at the table paid him no heed; most of them knew his ways, and he, on his side, seemed to be quite undisturbed in his studies by the noise and clamor of the drinking-party, and to be entirely absorbed in the ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... formalities of a first acquaintance, and say, dear Smith;—Dear Smith, I am delighted to have been at last introduced to a real member of the theatrical profession—a bona fide flesh and blood, silk-stocking'd and tinsel-rapier'd "pride of Astley's stage." If you unite in your own person the artist and the player; if you occasionally handle the painter's brush as well as the field-marshal's truncheon—for have I not seen you lead the British troops with heroic valour through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... air want something different. Many a good man has lost his seat from not observing that rule. In the open air pitch out a fact or two—not too many—or a couple of round sums of figures first of all, just to give them confidence in you, and then go straight for your opponent. No rapier play—it's lost then—but crack him on the top-knot with a bludgeon. They'll want to hear his skull ring before they'll believe that you have touched him. Phrases! Those are the things to get you in, not arguments. Pin a label on his coat-tails. ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... inches long, which had been a toy of the unfortunate Dauphin, son of Louis XVI. There was a map,—a hemisphere of the world,—which his father had drawn for this poor boy; very neatly done, too. The sword of Louis XVI., a magnificent rapier, with a beautifully damasked blade, and a jewelled scabbard, but without a hilt, is likewise preserved, as is the hilt of Henry IV.'s sword. But it is useless to begin a catalogue of these things. What a collection it is, including ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the walls richly adorned with carving and tapestry, sat at a dark oak writing table a gentleman in a black velvet suit, having a black cap of the same material on his head. On a high-backed chair near him hung his cloak and rapier, while at his side he had a short dagger, with a jewelled hilt, ready for use. He was still young, but his features were grave, and his brow full of thought. His figure was tall and slight, though perhaps somewhat too stiff to be graceful. He was evidently a person of note, one ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... talk in the street, between the rival leaders, there is a natural tendency to that sort of wit which consists in veiled allusion to a very open secret. Each mail feels that there are heavy forces behind a small point, as the weight of the fencer is behind the point of the rapier. And the point can be yet more pointed because the politics of the city, when I was there, included several men with a taste and talent for such polished intercourse; including especially two men whose experience and culture would have been remarkable in any community in the ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... guignon—of shadowing and resistless fate—which creates a certain sympathy; and she neglects the good old rule that your villain should always be allowed a certain run for his money—a temporary exercise of his villainy. Alvimar, though he does not feel the marquis's rapier till nearly the end of the first half, as it were, of the book, is "marked down" from the start, and never kills anything within those limits except a poor little tame wolf-cub which is going (very sensibly) to fly at him. He is altogether too much in appearance and too little in effectuality of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... I was astonished at the endurance, strength, and grace of the boys and girls in gymnastics, running, jumping, dancing, and riding. The boys I also saw wrestling, fencing, and shooting. A few passes with the rapier and the sabre with several of the youngsters showed me, to my surprise, that they were not merely my equals, but in many points were superior to me, though you know that I am one of the best fencers in Italy, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... resembled, pretty closely, that which they had led so long on board ship. The soldiers received them with good feeling and camaraderie, and they were soon completely at home with them. They practiced drill, the use of the pike and rapier; taking very great care, in all these exercises, to betray exceeding clumsiness. With the bow, alone, they were able to show how expert ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... gigantic ostrich plumes, that gracefully curve over on all sides, forming a shape like a parachute. Each leaf is full five yards in length, and of the kind called pinnate—that is divided into numerous leaflets, each of which is itself more than a foot and a half long, shaped like the blade of a rapier. Under the shadow of this graceful plumage the fruit is produced, just below the point where the leaves radiate from the stem. The fruit is a nut, about the size of a pigeon's egg, but of a regular oval form, and growing in large clusters, after the manner ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... with a short taffeta cloak over, bound at the neck by a monstrous ruff, out of which his face looked like a calf's head from a dish of trimmings. To crown all, a white plume waved in his hat, while the rapier at his waist was caught up jauntily behind him, so that the point and the hilt lay on a level at either hip. His face was both cheerful and weak; and, as he strutted up to where Ludar and I stood, his gait reminded me much of a chanticleer amidst ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... writers is unchequered by any shade of patronage on the one hand, of jealousy or adulation on the other. The elder recognised in the younger an intellect as keen, a spirit as fearless as his own, who in the Eyre controversy had "plunged his rapier to the hilt in the entrails of the Blatant Beast," i.e. Popular Opinion. He admired all Ruskin's books; the Stones of Venice, the most solid structure of the group, he named "Sermons in Stones"; he resented an attack on Sesame ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... eve of their departure Roger's father presented Harry and Roger each with a splendid new rapier, the blades of which were made of the best Toledo steel, of so fine a temper that it was possible, without injury to the weapon, to bend the point round until it met the hilt, the blade springing back, when released, ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Defence, in all its Useful Particulars, for Defending and Offending, with the Rapier or final Sword; after the ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... strike; and suddenly, while he was laughing at their rage, he got a thrust in his forehead, and another in his neck, and a third under his sleeve, where a courageous little soldier had rushed in and resolutely driven in his rapier up to the hilt! Andy, who had no idea such little weapons could hurt so, was terrified, and began to scream with pain. And now, strange to see! the fairies were no longer fairies, but a nest of bumblebees; it was the queen-bee he held ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... greatest agitations have strange springs and ridiculous causes. What ruin did our last Duke of Burgundy run into, for the quarrel of a cart-load of sheep-skins?... See why that man doth hazard both his honour and life on the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him tell you whence the cause of that confusion ariseth, he cannot without blushing; so vain and ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... as were the features of Mr. Gladstone, I looked upon him with astonishment. For he stood before me with epaulets on his shoulders and a rapier at his side, as military in his aspect as if he had been Lord Wolseley, to whom I was introduced a short time afterwards. I was fortunate enough to see and hear Mr. Gladstone on a still more memorable occasion, and can afford to leave saying what were my impressions ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... my house! the man who has abused my hospitality!" cried the haciendado, starting up in astonishment, and seizing a long Toledo rapier that hung by the side of his bed, "Who is the man that has acted so, ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... at her straight in the eyes, for they had both risen, the luncheon-bell having rung. She unflinchingly returned the glance, which on both sides was that of two adversaries mentally appraising each other prior to a rapier-bout. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... tender as a child's, almost diseased in its tenderness, and a heart loving as a woman's, his intellect is none the less powerful. Its movements are as the sword-play of an alert, poised, well-knit, strong-wristed fencer with the rapier, in which the skill impresses one more than the force, while without the force the skill would be valueless, even hurtful, to its possessor. There is a graceful humour with it occasionally, even in his most serious poems adding much to their charm. To illustrate ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... perfect gull indeed. A gull is he who fears a velvet gown, And, when a wench is brave, dares not speak to her; A gull is he which traverseth the town, And is for marriage known a common wooer; A gull is he which, while he proudly wears A silver-hilted rapier by his side, 10 Endures the lie[461] and knocks about the ears, Whilst in his sheath his sleeping sword doth bide; A gull is he which wears good handsome clothes, And stands in presence stroking up his hair, And fills up his unperfect speech ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... charms had struck a sturdy caird, As weel as poor gut-scraper; He taks the fiddler by the beard, And draws a roosty rapier— He swoor by a' was swearing worth, To speet him like a pliver, Unless he wad from that time forth ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of shipping, much of it the oddest they had ever seen. Instead of the straight, strong masts they were accustomed to, here were those that shot up so tall and slender they seemed to bend over of their own weight, like a young sapling. To these rapier-like masts were fastened sails of quaint square shape and dingy hues, or of sharp triangular form, which they learned afterwards were the lateen sails they had read of, but never seen. The prows of these small vessels were all so oddly curved and shaped, while the figureheads suggested nightmare ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... in war, 'tis our young gallants' pride, To walk, each one i' the streets, with a rapier by his side, That none to do them injury may have pretence; Wretched Age, in ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... predecessor in office, the first President of this Club, who was a man of many wanderings and many sufferings and had seen many cities and knew the hearts of men. I, gentlemen, have had my Odyssey, and I have been to Warsaw, and," with a rapier flash of a glance at the gentleman who had accused him of leading bears, "I know the miserable hearts of men." He rapped on the table with his hammer. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated—I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess: but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied to the yells of him who clamored. I re-echoed—I aided—I surpassed them in volume ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... glorious peal of trumpets on his ear Proclaiming victory. So had he dreamed. And there, within an arch at the stair-top And screened behind a painted hanging-cloth Of coiled gold serpents ready to make spring, Ignoble Death stood, his convulsive hand Grasping a rapier part-way down the blade To deal the blow with deadly-jewelled hilt— Black Death, turned white with horror of himself. Straight on came he that sang the blithe sea-song; And now his step was on the stair, and now He neared the blazoned ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... tower, a mountain, Atlas crowned with clouds! Thousand thunders! what bulk! what sinews! and of my race! Amazing effect of—what? Climate? occupation? In France, this race shrinks, diminishes; a rapier, keen if you will, but slender like a thread; here, it swells, expands, towers aloft,—a club of Hercules. And with my father, who could sit in my pocket, and my grandfather, who could sit in his! Figure ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... into an atmosphere of awe and solemnity, and his tone in speaking of 'rape' and 'torture' gave them an ineffable loathsomeness. It seemed as if so much soul had never been put into a Saxon speech. Keen satire, rasping rebuke, an avalanche of indignation, rapier-like thrusts to the vital fibre of the situation, and withal the invincible cogency of argument against the Turkish Government, gave the oration a primary place amongst the ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... mast seemed to collapse into itself as though it were wrapping itself up in its own canvas. A huge loose clue of sail—the foresail's starboard leach—flew up into the air; the boom swung after it; the gaff toppled over from above; we saw the topmast dive like a lunging rapier into the sea. We had torn the foresail in two, and the shot passing on had smashed the foremast just below the cap. All her sails lay in a confused heap just ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... thine; By that fair sun that shows me where thou stand'st I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak'st it, That thou wert cause of noble Gloster's death. If thou deny'st it twenty times thou liest, And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart Where it was forged, with my rapier's point. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... day I would tell about found us just at the edge of the little buttes. Down one of the slopes the growing half light revealed two oryx feeding, magnificent big creatures, with straight rapier horns three feet in length. These were most exciting and desirable, so off my horse I got and began to sneak up on them through the low tufts of grass. They fed quite calmly. I congratulated myself, and slipped nearer. Without even looking in my direction, they trotted away. Somewhat chagrined, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard picked up the cigar he had laid aside and began puffing on it; Leslie Coombes took a cigarette from his case. They both looked at him, waiting like two drawn weapons—a battle ax and a rapier. ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... tragedy or grief; on the heavy, paneled old doors through which, once on a time, Prince Hubert had made his joyous exits into a world that had so early cast him out; on his swords, crossed over the fireplace; his light rapier, his heavy cavalry saber; on the bright head of his little son, around whom already so many plots and counterplots ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... came in numbers to the rescue. I think that neither Mr. Gisborne nor the mutinous group of plebeians owed me much gratitude for my interference. He had planted himself against a wall, in a skilful attitude of fence, ready with his bright glancing rapier to do battle with all the heavy, fierce, unarmed men, some six or seven in number. But when his own soldiers came up, he sheathed his sword; and, giving some careless word of command, sent them away again, and continued his saunter all alone down the street, the workmen snarling ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... shrewd glance flashing over her, keen and elusive as a rapier. Daisy faced him quite fully and fearlessly. The possibility of a conflict in this quarter had occurred to her before. She would not shirk it, but she was determined that it should be as brief ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... capture he had fallen upon another child, near the stone-bridge, in the same parish. In Eparon he had assaulted the hound of a certain M. Millon, and would have killed the beast, had not the owner come out with his rapier in his hand. ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... as he saw the huge dog suddenly turn on its leash and raise itself off the ground to stick out a long rapier-like tongue and lick the girl's cheek before she could move her ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... to him, and was moved to pray by him, and the Lord was entreated and restored him to health. When I was come down the stairs into a lower room and was speaking to the servants, a serving-man of his came raving out of another room, with a naked rapier in his hand, and set it just to my side. I looked steadfastly on him and said "Alack for thee, poor creature! what wilt thou do with thy carnal weapon, it is no more to me than a straw." The standers-by were much troubled, and he went away in a rage; but when news came of it to his master, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... evidently the old "T. Gray" trade axes of the southwest. A sword, described as having a long, slender, straight blade, inlaid with a flower pattern of yellow metal along the back, was probably an old Spanish rapier. ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... Killemalivo aristocracy the favourite weapons were the duelling pistol and the "florette," or rapier. The "pelado," or lower orders, preferred the "lingua de vaca," which means literally "cow's tongue," a nasty-looking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various |
