"Scaffold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by attainder; and the same method of speedy despatch accounted for six or seven earls and viscounts and for scores of lesser degree. He began his reign by executing the ministers of his father,[18] he continued it by sending his own to the scaffold. The Tower of London was both palace and prison, and statesmen passed swiftly from one to the other; in silent obscurity alone lay salvation. Religion and politics, rank and profession made little difference; priest and layman, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... considerable," quoth the former. "Listen to that!" It seemed that a battle must be in progress behind the screen, for, mingled with the gasping screams of the athlete and the hoarse commands of the trainer, came sounds of physical contact. The barrel rocked upon its scaffold, the curtains swayed and ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... Jaffier, upon the scaffold, to prevent A shameful death, stabb'd Pierre, and next himself; ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... gone so far, therefore, it was necessary that Jacques Rollet should die; so the affair took its course; and early one morning the guillotine was erected in the court-yard of the jail, three criminals ascended the scaffold, and three heads fell into the basket, which were presently afterward, with the trunks that had been attached to them, buried in ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... of his not at least spiritually shirking. Milly had held with passion to her dream of a future, and she was separated from it, not shrieking indeed, but grimly, awfully silent, as one might imagine some noble young victim of the scaffold, in the French Revolution, separated at the prison-door from some object clutched for resistance. Densher, in a cold moment, so pictured the case for Mrs. Lowder, but no moment cold enough had yet come to make him so picture ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hearts, my friends, whether they will be courageous and strong enough to brave cheerfully whatever reverses and calamities may befall us, and whether they really will risk death, imprisonment, and the scaffold, without flinching and trembling? That is what I wished to say to you before concerting measures with you and sending an answer to Andreas Hofer. Consider it all, my friends, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Across the square, within thirty or forty paces of one side, was formed up a strong battalion of Russian infantry, the rest of the square being occupied by the town's-people, all of whom had attired themselves in mourning. In the centre of the square, behind the soldiers, a scaffold had been erected, as by the sentence of the court-martial the count ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... it served me right, one split straw for my craft or my greatness. What a murrain call had I, they said, to mell with old St. Barnabas's? Ruinous the church had been since the Black Death, and ruinous she should remain; and I could hang myself in my new scaffold-ropes! Gentle and simple, high and low—the Hayes, the Fowles, the Fanners, the Collinses—they were all in a tale against me. Only Sir John Pelham up yonder to Brightling bade me heart-up and go on. Yet how could ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... he died cheerfully as he had lived. To the last he jested in his quaint fashion. The scaffold was so badly built that it was ready to fall, so Sir Thomas, jesting, turned to the lieutenant. "I pray you, Master Lieutenant," he said, "see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself." He desired the people to pray for him, and having kissed the executioner ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the old man answered: 'The king may use clemency; but he will not tolerate lawlessness.' Then they began to quarrel because the princess grew very angry: 'Then,' said she, 'don't keep him in the prison!' And the castellan replied to this: 'Very well! To-morrow I will order a scaffold built on the market square.' Then they departed. Only the Lord ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Louis XVIII. lived, in the counsels of the crown. It was not until after the death of that king that the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne was able to get Michu appointed judge of the court of assizes in Arcis. She desired of all things to obtain this place for the son of the steward who had perished on the scaffold at Troyes, the victim of his devotion to the Simeuse family, whose full-length portrait always hung in her salon, whether in Paris or at Cinq-Cygne. Until 1823 the Comte de Gondreville had possessed sufficient power over Louis XVIII. to prevent ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... up in the frightful turmoil which made Paris the center of attention for astonished and alarmed Europe. Cherubini's connection had been with the aristocracy, and now they were fleeing in a mad panic or mounting the scaffold. His livelihood became precarious, and he suffered severely during the first five years of anarchy. His seclusion was passed in studying music, the physical sciences, drawing, and botany; and his acquaintance was wisely confined to a few musicians like himself. Once, indeed, his having ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... of the "Inner Circle" Railway was in progress, the site of the permanent scaffold on Great Tower Hill, upon which so many sanguinary executions took place, was discovered in Trinity Square, remains of its stout oak posts being found imbedded in the ground. A blank space, with a small tablet in the grass of the Square ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... retention of simple and high sentiments in obscure duties is hardening the character to that temper which will work with honor, if need be, in the tumult or on the scaffold. ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... they expected to uncover more than the $1,200 shortage already established; when they could examine all the pass-books now out of the bank, the total would undoubtedly be found much larger; they demanded Morley's arrest at once; in fact, if the law had allowed it, they would have sent him to the scaffold ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... the child's aspiration in vain? Could I tell him God did not want his help to paint the sky? True, he could mount no scaffold against the infinite of the glowing west. But might he not with his little palette and brush, when the time came, show his brothers and sisters what he had seen there, and make them see it too? Might he not thus come, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... short her prayer, and, with tongue protruding from her mouth, she presented such a picture of a strangling woman that a sudden clear conception of what it all meant came to me. "She's impersonating a woman on the scaffold," I explained. "She has shown us a murder, and now she is depicting an execution. Is it Mrs. R., ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... on the chain when moving in the other. In this machine the weight of the chains was a serious obstacle to obtaining any large amount of power. The whole apparatus was mounted on a heavy wooden scaffold, which proved an impediment to the flow of the river. Again, the resistance due to the surface of the returning blades and to their stiffness was found ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... below the extremity of the split; it is then turned directly bottom upwards, for the sun to kill it more speedily, to enable the laborers to carry it out of the field, else the leaves would break off in transporting it to the scaffold. The plants are cut only as they become ripe, for a field never ripens altogether. There is generally a second cutting likewise, for the stalk vegetates and shoots forth again, and in good land, with favorable seasons, there is a third ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... per-taters is full o' nourishment, if eat with a contented mind—ah, there's oceans o' nourishment in a cold per-tater—took reg'lar. O' course, for them as is flush o' the rhino, and wants a blow-out, there's nothin' like two o' leg o' beef with a dash o' pea, 'alf a scaffold-pole, a plate o' chats, and a swimmer—it's wholesome and werry filling, and don't cost more than a groat, but give me a cold per-tater to walk on. But you, sir," continued the Pedler, beginning to eat with great ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... surprize, and the spectacle of the world, with all its details, is thus for ever new to them; it is, perhaps, the compensation for their sad state, for certainly there is one. It is some years since a Cretin, having committed assassination, was condemned to death: as he was led to the scaffold, he took it into his head, seeing himself surrounded with a crowd of people, that he was accompanied in this manner to do him honor, and he laughed, held himself erect, and put his dress in order, with the idea of rendering ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... He lay in prison fifteen months, and was then brought to Paris, and tried for his life. He made a noble defence; but it was of no avail. He was beheaded on the 29th of October, 1793. When on the scaffold, he seemed suddenly struck with the infamy of the treatment he had met with on every side. He stamped with his foot, and exclaimed, "This, then, is the reward of all that I have done for liberty!" He was only thirty-two years of age. His unwise and miserable ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... curiosity, and indulge their wanton disposition, or natural love of riot. The front of this plate exhibits the oversetting of a board, on which some girls had stood, and represents them sprawling upon the ground; on the left, at the back of the scaffold, is a fellow saluting a fair nymph, and another enjoying the joke: near him is a blind man straggled in among the crowd, and joining in the general halloo: before him is a militia-man, so completely intoxicated as not to know what he is ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... Greece from the Persian invader, expelled the Tarquins from Rome, emancipated Switzerland and Holland, restored the Prince to his throne, and brought Charles to the scaffold. And the sword redeemed the pledge of the Congress of '76 when they plighted to each other "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." And yet, what would the redemption of that pledge have availed towards the establishment of our present government, if the spirit of American ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... agreeable, and he up and steps on the scaffold, what they was mighty proud of, it bein' about the only substantial structure the town could boast. He began to sing that thing you've all been listening to, and he had a voice like water falling light ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... individual came in from the country. Thus the people determined to mark their opinion of this awful tragedy, for all regard Seery as a martyr. At eleven o'clock the military were paraded before the gaol, and not one human being appeared before the scaffold but themselves and the police. Even the magistrates of the county stayed away—not one of them appeared, except Mr. Uniacke, who walked up and down with Captain Despard. Under the imposing head of the 'Mullingar Tragedy,' the reporter of the Dublin Freeman ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hearing of Mongenod, I went one morning from the Croix-Rouge, where I was then living, to the rue des Moineaux, where he lived. I found he was living in furnished lodgings of the lowest class; but the landlady was a very worthy woman, the widow of a magistrate who had died on the scaffold; she was utterly ruined by the Revolution, and had only a few louis with which to begin the hazardous trade of ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... to surrender, and thirteen were either killed or mortally wounded. Two of Brown's sons were among those who fell, and the leader himself was captured. He treated his trial with the utmost indifference, and went to the scaffold erect and apparently unconcerned. His body was taken to his old home in New York State, where ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Parian. He was declared a traitor, and his property confiscated for his Majesty. His houses were razed and their sites sown with salt. This sentence proceeded from the royal Audiencia, and was executed on the eleventh of the month of October. At the foot of the scaffold he said that that death was not due him for his conduct, and that he had always been a loyal vassal of his Majesty; and that God knew what was in his breast, and the thoughts of his heart. He died with the marks of a good Christian. Then on the fifteenth day ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... of a scaffold, denotes that you will undergo keen disappointment in failing to secure the object ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... glances in which fear lurked, on both sides, under an expression of amity. In the moment of danger, Rastignac, it is clear, would have been delighted to provide the vehicle that should convey Jacques Collin to the scaffold. From all this it may be understood that Carlos heard of the Baron's passion with a glow of sombre satisfaction, while he perceived in a single flash all the advantage a man of his temper might derive by means of ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... contend with—this hapless and amiable queen—but she ever proved firm, and ever retained one kind of courage that belongs to woman—the courage to smile through her tears. Her father perished on the scaffold; her mother, the doubly-dethroned empress, died of a broken heart; her step-father, the Emperor Napoleon, pined away, liked a caged lion, on a lone rock in the sea! Her whole family—all the dethroned kings and queens—went wandering about as fugitives and pariahs, ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... the great workshops of the great masters did the light shine on the people. From every scaffold where a palace ceiling was being decorated with its fresco, from every bottega where the children of the poor learned to grind and to mingle the colours, from every cell where some solitary monk studied to produce an offering to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... promptly sent him and his insolence to—a place you have heard of in church. He said it so loud and plain that the whole house heard him, and he added remarks about royal dukes which would have brought him to the scaffold along with his grandfather, if only he had lived ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... be" has been the lesson of both Church and State, throttling science, checking invention, crushing free thought, persecuting and torturing those who have dared to speak or act outside of established authority. Anathemas and the stake have upheld the Church, banishment and the scaffold the throne, and the freedom of mankind has ever been sacrificed to the idea of protection. So entirely has the human will been enslaved in all classes of society in the past, that monarchs have humbled themselves to popes, nations have knelt at the feet of monarchs, and individuals have sold ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the day on which the swinging takes place, another act of great cruelty is practised. Devotees throw themselves from, the top of a high wall, or a scaffold of twenty or thirty feet in height, upon a bed of iron spikes, or on bags of straw with knives in them. Many are often mangled and torn. Others ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... of the matter is," continued the King, "that either thou wilt repair forthwith to my son's chamber, and subsequently to church; or else unto the scaffold." ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... prepared the rice for use. First of all, it must be made perfectly dry. They would spread it upon buffalo robes and mats, and sometimes upon layers of coarse swamp grass, and dry it in the sun. If the time was short, they would make a scaffold and spread upon it a certain thickness of the green grass and afterward the rice. Under this a fire was made, taking care that the ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... himself too weak, that of martyrdom. On 22 June 1535, he was beheaded by command of Henry VIII. He died for being faithful to the old Church. Together with More he had steadfastly refused to take the oath to the Statute of Supremacy. Not two weeks after Fisher, Thomas More mounted the scaffold. The fate of those two noblest of his friends grieved Erasmus. It moved him to do what for years he had no longer done: to write a poem. But rather than in the fine Latin measure of that Carmen heroicum one would have liked to hear ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... swelling Scene. Then should the Warlike Harry, like himselfe, Assume the Port of Mars, and at his heeles (Leasht in, like Hounds) should Famine, Sword, and Fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, Gentles all: The flat vnraysed Spirits, that hath dar'd, On this vnworthy Scaffold, to bring forth So great an Obiect. Can this Cock-Pit hold The vastie fields of France? Or may we cramme Within this Woodden O, the very Caskes That did affright the Ayre at Agincourt? O pardon: since a crooked Figure may Attest ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... anything in speech I have yet attempted. My mind instantly presented her to me, torn from her beloved family, and thrown into the death-impending prison of Robespierre ; and then saved by his timely destruction from the scaffold, and then using her hardly-recovered liberty only by voluntarily sacrificing it to be immured with her husband in the dungeon of Olmtz.(180) Various as may be the opinions ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... of hell had been opened to her! If the frightful idea which, she did not doubt, had already suggested itself to Leopold, should now be encouraged, there was nothing but black madness before her! Her Poldie on the scaffold! God in heaven! Infinitely rather would she poison herself and him! Then she remembered how pleased and consoled he had been when she said something about their dying together, and that reassured her a little: no, she was certain Leopold would never yield himself to ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill. The Butter exchange band. Few years' time half of them magistrates and civil servants. War comes on: into the army helterskelter: same fellows used to. Whether on the scaffold high. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... medieval church was due to its catholicity, while the state at best was only national. It was in defence of the catholicity, as opposed to the nationalism, of the church that More and Fisher went to the scaffold in 1535, and nearly the whole bench of bishops was deprived in 1559. Henry VIII and Elizabeth were bent on destroying the medieval discord between the Catholic church and the national state. Catholicity had broken down in the state ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... what they sow, since each deed contains a harvest like unto itself. Indeed, literature and life teem with exhibitions of this principle. Haman, the rich ruler, builds a gallows for poor Mordecai, whom he hates, and later on Haman himself is hanged upon his own scaffold. David sets Uriah in the front of the battle and robs him of his wife, and when a few years have passed, in turn David is robbed of his wife, his palace also, ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... font, whilst Panciatichi absented himself, and Eleanora made a tacit avowal of his parentage. The relations between Carlo and his wife had quite naturally never been of the best, and as gradually fears of death, upon the scaffold faded, or by a retributive d'Antonio hand, and he found himself the untrammelled master of his actions, he began to resent the callousness of the arrangement with Duke Cosimo, after 1570, ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... me safe up, but for my coming down I can shift for myself," were the last words of Sir Thomas More when ascending the scaffold. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... Printed in Paris (Hartley, Adlard & Son) and published in London with the addition of D. I. Eaton's name, in 1796. While Paine was in prison, he was accused in England and America of having helped to bring Louis XVI. to the scaffold. The English pamphlet has a brief preface in which it is presented "as a burnt offering to Truth, in behalf of the most zealous friend and advocate of the Rights of Man; to protect him against the barbarous shafts of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... three weeks earlier, and had Bonaparte been arraigned before the Committee of Public Safety previous to the 9th Thermidor, there is every probability that his career would have been at an end; and we should have seen perish on the scaffold, at the age of twenty-five, the man who, during the twenty-five succeeding years, was destined to astonish the world by his vast conceptions, his gigantic projects, his great military genius, his extraordinary good fortune, his faults, reverses, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the interior of the cupola of this magnificent cathedral, represents the life of St. Paul, painted by Sir James Thornhill; but the neglect and decay of this grand specimen of pictorial decoration may not be so well known. The great expense of erecting a scaffold sufficient for its restoration, appears to have been the principal difficulty, added to the want of artists experienced in this department of art. These obstacles, however, we trust have been surmounted by Mr. E.T. Parris, of whose talents we ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various
... younger branch, possessed a part of the estates which were to revert to Sir Duggam on his death. Sir Duggam Buggam was tried at the Assizes and was hanged. On the day of his execution he was permitted by the authorities, out of respect for his rank, to wear a mask to the scaffold. The clothes in which he was executed are hanging at full length in the little cupboard to your right, and the mask is above them. It is said that on every fifteenth of November at midnight the cupboard door opens and ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... execution Luck was there waiting for him, and said secretly to Intelligence: "See how this man has got on through you, till he has to lose his head! Make way, and let me take your place!" As soon as Luck entered Vanek, the executioners sword broke against the scaffold, just as if some one had snapped it; and before they brought him another, up rode a trumpeter on horseback from the city, galloping as swift as a bird, trumpeted merrily, and waved a white flag, and after him came the royal carriage for Vanek. This is what had happened: ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... unartistic eye regarded as a composition of hardbake and sticking-plaster. Here, in a corner my indentures were duly signed and attested, and I was "bound"; Mr. Pumblechook holding me all the while as if we had looked in on our way to the scaffold, to have those ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... "ho! When Joe Wrench was hanged for shooting the lord's keeper, and he mounted the scaffold wid a nosegay in his hand, he said, in a peevish voice, says he: 'Why does not they give me a tarnation? I always loved them sort o' flowers,—I wore them when I went a courting Bess Lucas,—an' I would like to die with ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and throwing herself at the feet of the judges, said: 'There remain to me of all my family only my brothers! Mother, father, sister—you have butchered all; and now you are going to condemn my brothers. Oh! in mercy ordain that I may ascend the scaffold with them!' Her prayer was refused, and she threw herself into the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... of noble leaders who have scattered everywhere the seeds of civilization, and left others to reap the harvests; he was the forerunner of innumerable reformers and inventors, to whom it was never given to enter into the fruit of their labors; of soldiers and heroes who perished on the scaffold that others might be emancipated; of men like Huss and Cranmer, whose overthrow and defeat paved the way for others' victories. Dying, no other man has left behind influences that have wrought so powerfully or so continuously through the centuries. But when we ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Crispin was turning away to see to his own safety, the King rode up again, and again he sought to revive the courage that was dead in those Scottish hearts. If they would not stand by him, he cried at last, let them slay him there, sooner than that he should be taken captive to perish on the scaffold. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... on the 3rd of May, 1606, on a scaffold, erected for that purpose, at the west end of St. Paul's Church. Held up to infamy by one party as a rebel and a traitor, and venerated as a saint and a martyr by the other; the same party spirit, and the same conflicting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... company hurriedly gathered up their furs and as many traps as the ten men could carry, and travelled about ten miles, keeping close to the timber. When darkness came on they crept into a very dense growth of underbrush, where they passed the greater part of the night in erecting a scaffold upon which they cached their furs, traps, and other things which they ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the exercises by pausing to make long and irrelevant speeches from the scaffold, or to sing depressing Methodist hymns; and from medical examiners who forget their stethoscopes, and clamor for waits while messenger boys are sent for them; and from official witnesses who faint ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... informed Ayesha that in England "blasting" was not an amusement that could be indulged in with impunity, and that any such attempt would meet with the consideration of the law and probably end upon a scaffold. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... brought him up as his own son. The curate died in 1804, without leaving enough property to carry on the education he had begun. Ferdinand, thrown upon Paris, led a filibustering life whose chances might bring him to the scaffold, to fortune, the bar, the army, commerce, or domestic life. Obliged to live like a Figaro, he was first a commercial traveller, then a perfumer's clerk in Paris, where he turned up after traversing all France, having ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... A scaffold was erected before the porch of Notre Dame. On one side appeared the two cardinals; on the other the four noble prisoners, in chains, under the custody of the Provost of Paris. Six years of dreary imprisonment had passed over their heads; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... remarkable, is uncertain. Whatever might be the cause, she preserved the same appearance of knowledge, and contempt of what was generally esteemed pleasure, during the whole of her life, for she declared herself displeased with being appointed Queen, and while conducting to the scaffold, she wrote a sentence in Latin and another in Greek on seeing the dead Body of her Husband ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... was arrested at the Pyrenees. He with the three others were all convicted of high treason, and, a few hours after their condemnation, were beheaded at Nantes. Poncallec was the last to suffer. When ascending the scaffold, he asked the executioner his name; on his answering "La Mer," Poncallec felt ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... The quiet precincts of the Russian intelligenzia, who, in the retirement of their homes, ventured to dream of a better political and social order, were invaded by political detectives who snatched thence numerous victims for the scaffold, the galleys, and conscription. Such were the contrivances employed during the last years of pre-reformatory Russia to hold together the old order of things in the land of officialdom and serfdom, in that Russia which the poet Khomyakov, though ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... Malmesbury, which I have read in the library at Heron Court. It seems that, while the east wing of that pleasant mansion was being built, a pair of robins, having successfully brought up one family in one of the unfinished rooms, actually reared a second brood in a hole made for a scaffold-pole, though the sitting bird, being immediately beneath a plank on which the plasterers stood at work, was repeatedly splashed with mortar! The egg of the robin is subject to considerable variety of type. I think it was ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... of the fact that millions of the children who have been born by Christian women are homeless tramps, degraded drunkards, victims of disease, inmates of insane asylums or prisons, condemned to the scaffold, or bond slaves to priests or to plutocrats who revel in wealth at the expense of women whom it is claimed that the Bible has "emancipated ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... by our patent-ridden compatriots. The shirt, for instance, which was formerly such a simple-minded and straightforward garment, knowing no guile, has become, in the hands of the inventors, a mere pretence, a frail scaffold, on which an elaborate superstructure ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... together, with repeated shoots, that the hilts of their swords may clash for the entertainment of the audience; as if they were a couple of merry andrews, endeavouring to raise the laugh of the vulgar, on some scaffold of Bartholomew Fair. The despair of a great man, who falls a victim to the infernal practices of a subtle traitor who enjoyed his confidence, this English Aesopus represents, by beating his own forehead, and beating like a bull; and, indeed, in almost all his most interesting scenes, performs ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... heaven, in respect of mine own commodity, as even for a very love of Thee." The unfortunate Anne Boleyn, who during her imprisonment had repented and received the last sacraments from the hands of Father Thirlwall, begs on the scaffold that the people may pray for her. In her address to her ladies before leaving the Tower, she concludes it by begging them to forget her not after death. "In your prayers to the Lord Jesus forget not ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... be seen far and wide. Gobaze had managed to escape; and some time afterwards, Theodore, who was afraid of Wakshum Teferi, as he was beloved and admired by the soldiers, put him in chains,—forgetting that the man had served him so faithfully as even to bring to the scaffold his blood relation, —on the pretext that he had willingly allowed ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... he grasped and grappled with the baffled plotter. "You have tried to murder me— and you have tried to murder her! I might have forgiven you the first crime—I will drag you to the halter for the second, and think myself poorly revenged when I hear the rabble yelling beneath your scaffold!" ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... death. Madame Juriaen, who, in 1566, had struck with her slipper a little wooden image of the Virgin, together with her maid-servant, who had witnessed without denouncing the crime, were both drowned by the hangman in a hogshead placed on the scaffold. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sight!' exclaimed Viney to Watchorn as they sat on their horses, below a rickety green-baize-covered scaffold, labelled, 'GRAND STAND; admission, Two-and-sixpence,' raised against Scourgefield's stack-yard wall, eyeing the population pouring in from all parts. 'Dear, but it's a noble sight!' said he, shading the sun from his eyes, and endeavouring to ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... though hundreds who were certainly less guilty in the eye of the law were mercilessly put to death. The Duke was beheaded a couple of days after being sent to the Tower. As his blood flowed on the scaffold, the crowd rushed forward to dip their handkerchiefs in it, and his memory was long cherished by those who had risen in arms to support his cause, while no inconsiderable number believed that he was still alive, and would appear again to lead them to victory. ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... Philip and Elizabeth, we can read their most private dispatches. Guided by his demonstration, we are enabled to dissect out to their ultimate issues the minutest ramifications of intrigue. We join in the amusement of the popular lampoon; we visit the prison-house; we stand by the scaffold; we are present at the battle and the siege. We can scan the inmost characters of men and can view them in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... pealing. The gulf of horrible suspicion between Rudyard and Jasmine was closed. So long as it yawned, so long as there was between them the accounting for Adrian Fellowes' death, they might have come together, but there would always have been a black shadow between—the shadow that hangs over the scaffold. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Genoa. Strawberries at Genoa. Scaffold poles for the upper parts of a wall, as for the third story, rest on the window sills of the story below. Slate is used here for paving, for steps, for stairs (the rise as well as tread), and for fixed Venetian blinds. At the Palazzo Marcello Durazzo, benches with straight legs, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... possible, or even probable in this astounding universe. He was terrified out of all capacity for belief or disbelief in regard of this extraordinary affair, which began with police inspectors and Embassies and would end goodness knows where—on the scaffold for someone. He was terrified at the thought that he could not prove the use he made of his time ever since seven o'clock, for he had been skulking about Brett Street. He was terrified at this savage woman who had brought him in there, and ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... the iron spikes before him, and wondering how the head of one had been broken off, and whether they would mend it, or leave it as it was. Then, he thought of all the horrors of the gallows and the scaffold—and stopped to watch a man sprinkling the floor to cool it—and then went ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Point of Religion, and is respected as a Martyr by that Side for which he suffer'd. The innocent Mirth which had been so conspicuous in his Life, did not forsake him to the last: He maintain'd the same Chearfulness of Heart upon the Scaffold, which he used to shew at his Table; and upon laying his Head on the Block, gave Instances of that Good-Humour with which he had always entertained his Friends in the most ordinary Occurrences. His Death was of a piece with his Life. There was nothing in it ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... we may watch with increasing ease the slow, sure progress of our growing humanness beneath the weakening shell of an all-male dominance. And in this field of what begins in the nurse as "discipline," and ends on the scaffold as "punishment," we can clearly see ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... called upon to bear the same witness to their own sincerity. England became the theatre of a war between two armies of martyrs, to be waged, not upon the open field, in open action, but on the stake and on the scaffold, with the nobler weapons of passive endurance. Each party were ready to give their blood; each party were ready to shed the blood of their antagonists; and the sword was to single out its victims in the rival ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... singular and the best of all his pieces is that which, at this time, is the most useless and the least read. I mean his "Novum Scientiarum Organum." This is the scaffold with which the new philosophy was raised; and when the edifice was built, part of it, at least the scaffold ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... of the beauteous but unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, renders the slightest event of her life acceptable to every lover of English history; while her youth and intellectual acquirements, her brief reign of nine days, and finally her expiation for her innocent crime on the scaffold, combine to rouse the feelings and excite the sympathy of every ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... himself, if the visible should exist for its own sake only!—if the face of a flower means nothing—appeals to no region beyond the scope of the science that would unveil its growth. He cannot believe that its structure exists for the sake of its laws; that would be to build for the sake of its joints a scaffold where no house was to stand. Those who put their faith in Science are trying to live in the ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... no more fit to die than I am, and a condemned cell, with the thought of the scaffold before him, are not exactly the most favorable circumstances under which a man might experience sincere repentance, ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... almost equally, from the descriptions of the writer or the conceptions of the artist? Shall we ever think of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots without recalling Mr. Froude's description of her, as she stood, a blood-red figure on the black-robed scaffold? Shall we ever think of Monmouth pleading for his life with James II, without remembering the picture which hung last year upon these walls? Is there no affinity between novelist and our many painters of ordinary scenes, with their kindred endeavor to shed ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... stood and see this poor, weak, despairin' victim of rum dragged off to a felon's doom, dragged off to the scaffold, and one of his chief draggers wuz the one that caused his crime—caused it accordin' to law. And the rest of his draggers wuz the ones who had voted to have the trade of murderer makin' and child killin' and villian breedin' ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... the amorous episodes of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., with the mysteries of the Grand and Petit Trianon and of the Parc aux Cerfs, with Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Montespan, with Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, that beautiful courtesan who on the scaffold so pathetically asked the executioner: "Mr. Hangman, I beseech you, do spare me." We are all familiar through Thackeray's "History of the Georges" with the chronique scandaleuse of the Hanoverian dynasty. No doubt the Hohenzollern also have ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... hats to cover lovely heads in Picadilly or Valparaiso or Montreal: or woven into a cord which will fly a kite for some tousle-headed boy in Michigan or for a slant-eyed urchin on the banks of the Yang-Tse Kiang: or, somewhere, it may be looped into ugliest knot by a grim figure standing on a scaffold—though ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... aristocracy and the bourgeoisie were often brought into contact; marriages even were contracted, whether during imprisonment or under the pressure of poverty, that never would have been dreamt of in a normal state of things; and whilst parents of opposite conditions shook hands in the scaffold-surveying charrettes, the children either drew near to each other, in a mutual helpfulness, the principle whereof was Christian charity, or met together to partake of amusements, the aim whereof was oblivion. For several years, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... disdainfully at the whole house, as if to say, "I've come later than all of you, you crowd of upstarts and provincials, I've come later than you!" There are persons who go to the theater like the contestants in a mule-race: the last one in, wins, and we know very sensible men who would ascend the scaffold rather than enter a theater before the first act. But the lady's triumph was of short duration—she caught sight of the other box that was still empty, and began to scold her better half, thus starting such a disturbance ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... These should not only be perfect in stateliness, durability, and comfort, but beautiful to the utmost point consistent with due subordination to the objects displayed. To enter a room in the Louvre is an education in itself; but two steps on the filthy floor and under the iron forks, half scaffold, half gallows, of the big Norwood glass bazaar, debase mind and eye at once below possibility of looking at anything with profit all the day afterwards. I have just heard that a French picture dealer is to have charge of the picture gallery there, and that the whole interior is ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Bumping against a scaffold, clutching with hands and feet; a breaking plank, a ghastly yell ... and then a body with arms and legs outspread in space, a thunderbolt ... a thud as of a bag of earth ... and there he lay, stretched at full length, like a man asleep. That scream of distress, ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... and did not take proper care of his animals. Sometimes he came over and talked with my mother about his trials with his wicked sister-in-law. He said he often went to the barn in the morning, and found his poor cattle had walked up to the top of the scaffold; and how could they do that unless ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... darksome hour, 560 The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep. For what thou art shall perish utterly, But what is thine may never cease to be; Death is no foe to virtue: earth has seen Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom, 565 Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there, And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene Of linked and gradual being has confirmed? Hopes that not vainly thou, and living fires 570 Of mind as radiant and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... last breath. As he was about to die the death of a felon, he knew that the rites of sepulture, according to the forms of his denomination, would be denied to his remains. The aged sufferer, it is related, read his own funeral service while on the scaffold. Solemn, sublime, and affecting as are passages of this portion of the ritual of the Church, surely it was never performed under circumstances so well suited to impress with awe and tenderness as when ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... trial was conducted illegally in important particulars. Of the six pirates named above, as executed on June 30, Lambert was a Salem man, Peterson apparently a Swede, Roach Irish, Quelch and the other two English. Judge Sewall records that "When the Scaffold was let to sink, there was such a Screech of the Women that my wife heard it sitting in our Entry next the Orchard, and was much surprised at it; yet the wind was sou-west. Our house is a full mile from the place." In 1835 ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... chapel-doors in order to elude the jealous curiosity of rivals, eating but little and scarcely sleeping, he accomplished in sixteen months the first part of his gigantic task.[317] From time to time Julius climbed the scaffold and inspected the painter's progress. Dreading lest death should come before the work were finished, he kept crying, "When will you make an end?" "When I can," answered the painter. "You seem to want," rejoined the petulant old man, "that I should have you thrown ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... his killing me to destroy this secret—I write this confession, I will tell him it is deposited in a safe place—yes, I was the cause of the death of that hapless actor! Yes, Valgrand paid for the crime which Gurn committed.... Yes, I sent Valgrand to the scaffold by making him pass for Gurn—Gurn who killed Lord Beltham, Gurn, who I ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... down, Addison climbed on a scaffold and thrust the lantern close up to the one with the turkey's head in its mouth. The bear struck at the lantern with one paw, started back, but lost its claw-hold on the beam and fell, turkey and all, eighteen or twenty feet to the ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... who had lived a righteous, sober and godly life died while playing cards or in innocent laughter, with no opportunity for the ministrations of a priest, his chances for the next world were thought to be slim. On the other hand, a damnable scoundrel on the scaffold, with the clergyman's assurances assented to, was supposed to be jerked into heaven. This view of life and death was firmly held even by so sincere and profound a thinker as Hamlet: which explains his anguish at the fate of his father killed in his sleep, and his own refusal to ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... is done by cutting the meat in thin slices, placing it upon a scaffold, and making a fire under it, which dries it and smokes it ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... the heart of Louis XIV. nicely done up in spices, but, to the owner's horror and astonishment, Dean Buckland popped the kingly morsel into his mouth, and swallowed it. We told about the black-letter prayer-book of King Charles the Martyr, used by him upon the scaffold, taking which into our hands, it opened of itself at the Communion Service; and there, on the left-hand page, appeared a spot about as large as a sixpence, of a yellowish or brownish hue: a drop of the King's blood ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his feet). They have gone—and in the morning I have got to die! To-morrow! And on the scaffold, as a thief! To-night I have begun—to-morrow, then, sees how I end! Here, here, I must not think of that. No, no; I will not. That is not for me. Five hours more! The time is very short. Show me, dear God, how I shall spend it well and like ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... hold of her. She knew that she would indeed use that revolver now, if the miserable woman before her drove her too far. She felt afraid—afraid of herself; she was in the grasp of a savage, primeval instinct. In a flash she saw Miss Spencer dead at her feet—the police—a court of justice—the scaffold. ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... Westminster Hall, in which burned only one far-away light. Its grandeur was more impressive in the dimness than in the glare. The lofty associations of the spot, coronations of kings, the reverberations of eloquence, the illustrious victims that had gone out from its tribunal to the scaffold thronged in my thought as I momentarily paused. But time pressed and I passed on to the central Hall where I stood in a jostling crowd, absorbed in the present with little thought of the fine frescoes that lined the walls ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... country, by all who perused it. The speech of Meagher was an eloquent failure; it appeared as if he had kept the noble and unfortunate Emmet before him as a model. He addressed the judges as if he were about to expiate his error upon the scaffold, whereas he knew, as all Ireland knew, that it was not the intention of government to put the sentence of the law in force. This circumstance gave an air of display and bombast to a speech that, if the realities of the speaker's position had corresponded ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... call for it, incurs the odium of the whole circle, as one maliciously disposed to speak 'anger-exciting or factions truths'. Poor Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were obliged to talk of love and duty toward their brutal murderer, Henry VIII, and tell 'peace-making lies' on the scaffold to save their poor children from his resentment. European gentlemen in India often, by their violence surround themselves with circles of the same kind, in which the 'point of honour' demands that every member shall be prepared to tell 'peace-making lies', to save ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... declared in her favour she would have embraced the Duchess as a deliverer. Vanquished and disarmed, she abandoned her. As she had protested in terms of horror against the conspiracy that had failed, her two young, imprudent, and ill-starred accomplices, Cinq Mars and De Thou, mounted the scaffold without breathing her name. Finding also both the King and Richelieu violently exasperated against Mdme. de Chevreuse, and firmly resolved to reject the renewed entreaties of her family to obtain her recall, Anne of Austria, far from interceding for her faithful adherent, warmly sided with ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... illegitimate, then came their cousins, Mary Stuart, descended from one of Henry's sisters, and Lady Jane Grey, from another. The friends of Lady Jane tried to raise her to the throne, but only succeeded in bringing her to the scaffold. The Catholic, Mary, was declared the rightful queen and ruled England for five years, during most of which she kept ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... to consider his free opinions, which, after all, were the fashion in France before 1789, though never in Brittany. And probably Madame de la Mariniere's life was saved by her marriage, for she was and remained just as ardently Catholic and Royalist as her relations who died one by one upon the scaffold. ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... an entrance there—which I doubt—escape by that means would be impossible. No one could climb down the face of the pyramid from above; no one has ever succeeded in climbing up. For the purpose of surveying the pyramid a scaffold had to be erected. Its ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... it soon fatigues itself by unavailing exertions to beat down the barrier. Strong ropes with running nooses are now laid down, and no sooner does the animal put his foot within one of them, than the rope is drawn tight by some of the hunters who are stationed on a small scaffold which has been raised over the gateway. In the same manner his other feet are secured. When this has been effected, some of the hunters venture to approach, and tie his hind legs together. Having thus secured him, they can with comparative ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... the question that Rose asked many times of herself. It would be justice, and yet it would grind her heart to know of his dying on the scaffold. ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... own bed. But he had to be buried secretly in the dead of night, for, ten years after Eugene Aram had died on the scaffold, the hatred of the world survived for his accomplice. Rowland Lester did not live long after Madeline's death. But when Walter returned from a period of honourable service with the great Frederick of Prussia, it was with no merely cousinly welcome that ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... afterwards. Though he caused the death of a man so conspicuous in the public life of Canada, his act is not to be classed with assassinations committed from political motives, or even from love of notoriety. On the scaffold he said that he had not intended to kill Mr. Brown. However this may be, it is certain that it was not any act of Mr. Brown's that set up that process of brooding over grievances that had so tragic an ending. By misfortune and ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... claim to distinction was that he hailed originally from the Bowery in New York City; and one, the worst of them all, who was said to be the son of a pastor in a New England town. One by one, unerringly and swiftly, Uncle Tobe launched them through his scaffold floor to get whatever deserts await those who violate the laws of God and man by the violent shedding of innocent blood. When the sixth and last gunman came out of the prison proper into the prison ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... prerogative nobly; but he took care not to break in upon the capital; never abandoning for a moment any of the claims which he made under the fundamental laws, nor sparing to shed the blood of those who opposed him, often in the field, sometimes upon the scaffold. Because he knew how to make his virtues respected by the ungrateful, he has merited the praises of those, whom if they had lived in his time, he would have shut up in the Bastile, and brought to punishment along with the regicides whom he ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... much concerned. The next day, while we were at dinner, a person came all on a sudden to summon us to examination. The report of this was soon spread, and brought together a vast crowd of people into the audience-chamber. We were placed on a sort of scaffold before the judge, who was Hilarian, procurator of the province, the proconsul being lately dead. All who were interrogated before me confessed boldly Jesus Christ. When it came to my turn, my father instantly appeared with my infant. He drew me ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... inflicted heavy losses on the German Empire, the Imperial cause was worsted. It was unable to mould the widely different and too independent subdivisions of the empire into a homogeneous whole, and to crush the selfish particularism of the estates. The last Staufer died on the scaffold at Naples under the axe of Charles of Anjou, who was a vassal ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... did." I could say it of some things in "Charles I."—of the way he gave up his sword to Cromwell, of the way he came into the room in the last act and shut the door behind him. It was not a man coming on to a stage to meet some one. It was a king going to the scaffold, quietly, unobtrusively, and courageously. However often I played that scene with him, I knew that when he first came on he was not aware of my presence nor of any earthly presence: he seemed ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... were arranging their scaffold to do the ceiling Crass arrived on the landing. He made no remark at first, but walked into the room to see how many ceilings they ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... track be chosen. The scaffold ought to be raised at least four feet, with rails high enough to support the standers, and yet so low as not to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... that hill black with people. The scaffold hung with black making a sort of platform in the middle. Then soldiers, with drums, all round. You put your head over a block, so that your neck rests on the wood. Then the executioner comes at you with an axe. Then your head is ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... counterbalance the infamy which my countrymen, both those whom I desert and those whom I join, will attach to the name of the political renegade. It is not to be thought of. And yet, what choice remains between this lot and the ignominious scaffold? Nothing can save me but reconciliation with these men; and, to accomplish this, I have promised to Langley that Isabella shall marry him ere midnight, and to Mareschal, that she shall do so without compulsion. I have but one remedy betwixt me and ruin—her ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... it indicative of all the other things that had happened just before my time, or were still, at a less dramatic pace, happening. I realised that building was the enemy. I began to understand why in every direction out of Bromstead one walked past scaffold-poles into litter, why fragments of broken brick and cinder mingled in every path, and the significance of the universal notice-boards, either white and new or a year old and torn and battered, promising ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... because they can say, 'all this I steadfastly believe,' they need to remember that religious truth which does not mould and transform character and conduct is a king dethroned; and for dethroned kings there is a short step between the throne from which they have descended and the scaffold on which they die. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... it was known that he had been threatened by some secret society, supposed to have lurking-places in various parts of London, he having a year or two before been mainly instrumental in the breaking up of a Nihilist society in Russia, and in bringing to the scaffold its chief and most active member, a young Russian of noble birth. The second explosion, which had done less damage, and was happily unattended by any serious results beyond the partial wrecking of the house, was ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face! To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... The scaffold's there, and thou art firm; Thou walkest forth upon it now; The thoughts within thy breast are hid, But calm and peaceful is ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... Thrice she flung herself to the ground, and thrice they lifted her to her feet, but at length, weary of the weight of her body, suffered her to rest upon her knees, where she remained as though in prayer, gagged like some victim on the scaffold. It was a strange and brutal scene, and every detail of it burned itself into Adrian's mind. The round, rude room, with its glowing fire of turfs and its rough, oaken furniture, half in light and half in dense shadow, as the lamp-rays chanced to fall; ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... doubt of the nature of hers for him,—so touchingly displayed at a subsequent period, when she cast away the terror of violent death, so strong in all her race, and sought, by a voluntary confession of guilt never imputed to her, to save him by taking his place upon the scaffold. Surely, such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Whom best he loved, of heroes crown'd, By Tories guarded all around; Dull solemn pleasure in his face, He saw the honours of his race, He saw their lineal glories rise, And touch'd, or seem'd to touch, the skies: Not the most distant mark of fear, No sign of axe or scaffold near, Not one cursed thought to cross his will Of such a place as Tower Hill. 680 Curse on this Muse, a flippant jade, A shrew, like every other maid Who turns the corner of nineteen, Devour'd with peevishness and spleen; Her tongue (for as, when bound for life, The husband suffers for ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... honour. They will never fight on the left," he told me in bitter despair and grief. "Wae's me! The red death grips us. Old MacEuan who hass the second sight saw a vision in the night of Cumberland's ridens driving over a field lost to the North. Death on the field and on the scaffold." ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... after his sentence. There is an affecting account in Naphtali (pp. 339, 345) of this mournful interview, and of another which took place on the morning of the execution. The address of young M'Kail on the scaffold concluded with these sublime expressions—"Farewell, father and mother, friends and relations. Farewell the world, and all delights. Farewell meat and drink. Farewell sun, moon and stars. Welcome God and Father! Welcome sweet Lord Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant! Welcome ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... People, masters of all, of the fortunes and lives of the citizens, of Heaven and earth, had been a People of Materialists, of Terrorists, and of Atheists? The Revolution would have been a pillage, the Republic a scaffold, the dynasty of the People a deluge of blood. But there was no such thing. God was there. He revealed Himself in the multitude; Materialism disappeared in enthusiasm, which always exhibits the ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... by. Rage and a craving for vengeance took possession of his slighted soul. If Mme. de Bargeton had been in his power, he could have cut her throat at that moment; he was a Fouquier-Tinville gloating over the pleasure of sending Mme. d'Espard to the scaffold. If only he could have put de Marsay to the torture with refinements of savage cruelty! Canalis went by on horseback, bowing to the prettiest women, his dress elegant, as became the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Among the gaunt, haggard forms of famine and nakedness, amidst the yells of murder, the tears of affliction, and the cries of despair, the song, the dance, the mimic scene, the buffoon laughter, went on as regularly as in the gay hour of festive peace. I have it from good authority, that under the scaffold of judicial murder, and the gaping planks that poured down blood on the spectators, the space was hired out for a show of dancing dogs. I think, without concert, we have made the very same remark on reading some of their pieces, which being written for other purposes, let us ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... to the prison next day I, for the first time, bottomed the depths of human stupidity. The wretched man was pinioned and led up to the scaffold. I pray God I may never see such a sight again. The man was just one shake of horror. The prison chaplain, who had primed himself rather too freely with brandy—it was his first experience of this duty—walked in front of the prisoner reciting ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... have sometimes a scaena or high stage, raised like a scaffold, or small spelts, reeds, or dried osiers covered with mats which gives a shadow and is a shelter ... where on a loft of hurdles they lay forth their corn and fish ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... teach a froward pupil, but I tell you, Master Furness, and I know you are discreet and can be trusted, that as surely as the earl brought Montrose to the block, so surely shall Argyll's head roll on the scaffold, if Charles II. is ever King of England. But I fear for you, Master Furness. I can help you here not at all, and the lecture which, on your behalf, I administered to the earl—and in faith I wonder now at my own courage—will not increase his love for you. You will never ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... strenuous times; for it is with governments as with men, the weakest are always the most cruel. Nor had the Companies of Jehu longer an organized existence. The heroes of these ferocious bands, Debeauce, Hastier, Bary, Le Coq, Dabri, Delbourbe and Storkenfeld, had either fallen on the scaffold or elsewhere. The condemned could look for no further assistance from the daring courage of these exhausted devotees, who, no longer capable of protecting their own lives, coolly sacrificed them, as did Piard, after a merry supper. Our ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... but Susan lay awake long, pondering over the wonder, and only slept to dream strange dreams of queens and princesses, ay, and worse, for she finally awoke with a scream, thinking her husband was on the scaffold, and that Humfrey and Cis were walking up the ladder, hand in hand with their necks ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... death is not near, they heed it not." Secondly, a future evil is considered as though it were not to be, on account of its being inevitable, wherefore we look upon it as already present. Hence the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii, 5) that "those who are already on the scaffold, are not afraid," seeing that they are on the very point of a death from which there is no escape; "but in order that a man be afraid, there must be some hope of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... Somebody—an uncle, I think—left me a packet of sandwiches and a little something in a flask, in case, as he said, I should feel peckish on the scaffold. ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... hundred miles astray, Oft have they seen Fate give the fatal blow! The seer, in Skye, shrieked as the blood did flow, When headless Charles warm on the scaffold lay! As Boreas threw his young Aurora forth, In the first year of the first George's reign, And battles raged in welkin of the North, They mourned in air, fell, fell Rebellion slain! And as, of late, they joyed in Preston's fight, Saw at sad Falkirk all ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... the repairs carried out on the west front at the end of the nineteenth century we touch on a matter which gave rise to no little controversy. The insecure state of the west front had been known for years. In the early part of 1896, a scaffold was raised in order to enable Mr Pearson, the architect of the cathedral, to make a complete examination of the front, special causes for alarm having lately been detected. At first it was believed that underpinning the central piers would secure the stability ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... The frescos of Masaccio in the Church of Santa Carmine in Florence he considered better than any performance of Michelangelo: and as a Roland to this Oliver, we have a legend to the effect that Raphael once called upon Michelangelo and the master sent down word from the scaffold, where he was at work, that he was too busy to see visitors, and anyway, he had all the apprentices that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... my words, I watched them, to be more exact in them; but I fared the worse for it. I made more slips and gave her more advantages over me thereby, beside the trouble in my own mind for it. I then left myself as I was, and resolved, though this woman would bring me to the scaffold, by the false reports she was continually carrying to the prioress, that I would simply resign myself to my lot; so I re-entered into ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... Marie Antoinette's turn to ascend the scaffold, which she did October 16, 1793. Her daughter, Marie Theresa, was then left alone with her ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... dark ordeal that lay before her came. It was like waking to the morning that was to see one on the scaffold: but, with something of the light detachment that a condemned prisoner might feel—nothing being left to hope for and the only strength demanded being the passive strength to endure—she found that she was thinking more of the sky and of the birds than of the ordeal. Some hours lay ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... escape, as well when he considers the obstinacy of the gaoler, as the walls and bars with which he is surrounded; and, in all attempts for his freedom, chooses rather to work upon the stone and iron of the one, than upon the inflexible nature of the other. The same prisoner, when conducted to the scaffold, foresees his death as certainly from the constancy and fidelity of his guards, as from the operation of the axe or wheel. His mind runs along a certain train of ideas: The refusal of the soldiers to consent to his escape; the action of the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... four years' rulers. I am glad our Continental brethren cannot read our newspapers of the present day, otherwise they must infer that our choice of rulers is made from a class more fitted for the state's prison than the state thrones, and elevation to a scaffold were more suited to the characters of the individual candidates than elevation to office. But in a few days matters will calm down, and the business of the nation ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... ticking of the watch in his pocket, the hiss of the breath between the giant's clinched teeth. Twice the fellow tried to utter something, his lips shaking as with the palsy, his ashen face the picture of terror. No wretch dragged shrieking to the scaffold could have formed a more pitiful sight, but there was no mercy in the eyes of the ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... which swept over France in 1793, a certain man who was every hour expecting to be led off to the guillotine, uttered this memorable sentiment. 'Even at this incomprehensible moment'—he said—'when morality, enlightenment, love of country, all of them only make death at the prison-door or on the scaffold more certain—yes, on the fatal tumbril itself, with nothing free but my voice, I could still cry Take care, to a child that should come too near the wheel; perhaps I may save his life, perhaps he may one day save his country.' This is a generous and inspiring thought—one to ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... that an amiable Monsieur Sansterre showed him over his brewery and supplied him with statistics as to his output of beer. It was the same foul-mouthed Sansterre who struck up the drums to drown Louis' voice at the scaffold. The association shows how near the unconscious sage was to the edge of that precipice and how little his learning availed him ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Matilda. "To see you writhe thus, under the wound inflicted upon your vanity, is some small atonement for the base violation of your oath; yet what question would you ask, the solution of which can so much import one about to figure on the scaffold for a crime he has not even had the courage ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... who has won a queen must protect her with a sceptre. You must be mine—my very queen—you must extend your hand and raise me to the royalty of Poland, or see my blood flow ignominiously upon the scaffold." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... and slipped stealthily up them. It was Otter, and he held a knife in his hand. Now the dwarf vanished through the gates into the little guard-house at the top of the embankment. Another minute, and ropes began to creak. Then the tall drawbridge, standing upright like a scaffold against the sky, was seen to bend itself forward. Down it came very softly, and the slave-camp was open to them. Again the black shape appeared, ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... her sweet exhortations. Woe to you, M. de Villefort, if you do not strike first!' This is what I would say had she only killed two persons but she has seen three deaths,—has contemplated three murdered persons,—has knelt by three corpses! To the scaffold with the poisoner—to the scaffold! Do you talk of your honor? Do what I tell you, and ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere |
