"Skull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she had occasioned her own fall. Mrs. Somers, in the greatest bustle and confusion, called every servant in the house about her, sent them different ways for all the remedies she had ever heard of for a sprain; then was sure Emilie's skull was fractured—asked fifty times in five minutes whether she did not feel a certain sickness in her stomach, which was the infallible sign of "something wrong"—insisted upon her smelling at salts, vinegar, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... vapour, undulous, and coiling like a vast serpent,—nothing, indeed, of its shape and figure definite, but of its face one abrupt glare; a flash from two dread luminous eyes, and a young head, like the Medusa's, changing, more rapidly than I could have drawn breath, into a grinning skull. Then my terror made me bow my head, and when I raised it again, all that I had seen was vanished. But the terror still remained, even when I felt my mother's arm round me and heard her voice. And then, when I entered ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now only allowed herself one indulgence. She fearlessly patted Marjolin's satiny chin. The young man had just come out of the hospital. His skull had healed, and he looked as fat and merry as ever; but even the little intelligence he had possessed had left him, he was now quite an idiot. The gash in his skull must have reached his brain, for he had become a mere animal. The mind of a child of five dwelt ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... should be on my side and I likewise invite the bald(6) to give me their votes; for, if I triumph, everyone will say, both at table and at festivals, "Carry this to the bald man, give these cakes to the bald one, do not grudge the poet whose talent shines as bright as his own bare skull the ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... known far and wide in the canton as Maitre Voigt. Professionally and personally, the notary was a popular citizen. His innumerable kindnesses and his innumerable oddities had for years made him one of the recognised public characters of the pleasant Swiss town. His long brown frock-coat and his black skull-cap, were among the institutions of the place: and he carried a snuff-box which, in point of size, was popularly believed to be without ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... hour of None, Sir Gawayn betook himself into the hands of our Lord God, after that he had received his Saviour. And then the king let bury him within a chapel within the castle of Dover, and there, yet to this day, all men may see the skull of Sir Gawayn, and the same wound is seen that Sir Lancelot gave him ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... hay and straw about, but no other signs of the stable in which the horse was burned. Two cindered towels, a cake of soap in a dish, and a bit of carpet were taken to indicate the location of a hotel. I saw a child's skull in a bed of ashes, but no sign ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... top of another, and peopled by a few miserable-looking natives, who appeared, in their woollen rags, to be cold, even in the middle of this summer's day. The few travellers we met during our march were flat nosed, heavy-looking creatures, with Chinese skull-caps and pig-tails, and were employed in conveying salt to Cashmere, packed in bags of woven hair, and laden on cows and asses as weird and strange-looking as their owners. About five kos off, we called a halt for breakfast, and reached Tusgam ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... by the neck—"Silence," said he, "or, as heaven's above mo, I'll drive your brainless skull in with the butt of ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... left and remains standing in the room. BRUNO is short rather than tall, but with a powerful bull's neck and athletic shoulders. His forehead is low and receding, his close-clipped hair like a brush, his skull round and small. His face is brutal and his left nostril has been ripped open sometime and imperfectly healed. The fellow is about nineteen years old. He bends forward, and his great, lumpish hands are joined to muscular arms. The pupils of his eyes are small, black and piercing. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... in sight of this fall of water, than they heard a rolling sound behind them, and looking back, they beheld the skull of a woman rolling along the beach. It seemed to be pursuing them, and it came on with great speed; when, behold, from out of the woods hard by, appeared a headless body, which made for the beach ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... swelling at the back of the skull," he said. "But there appears to have been another blow on the forehead. There is a puffiness, and a slight ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Hapsburg's ancient turrets full in sight, That was the cradle of his princely race. When Duke John plunged a dagger in his throat, Palm ran him thro' the body with his lance, And Eschenbach, to end him, clove his skull; So down he sank, all weltering in his blood, On his own soil, by his own kinsmen slain. Those on the opposite bank beheld the deed, But, parted by the stream, could only raise An unavailing cry of loud lament. A poor old woman, sitting by the way, Raised him, and on her breast ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... certainly shallow and incomplete to me . . . . As I speak now, at this very moment, I feel that the Christ on the Cross is doing something for me, that His death is my life, His atonement my pardon, His crucifixion the satisfaction for my sin, that from Calvary, that place of a skull, my flowers of peace and joy blossom forth, and that in the Cross ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... department; then the long single line of black porters, bringing up the rear. Above the loads on the porters' heads two flags flashed their colors in the sunlight—the stars and stripes, and the house flag of the company, with the white buffalo skull against the red background, and underneath the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the flint arrow-heads, two instruments were used, the "natkenn," a small hammer made preferably from the base of the horn of a deer where it enters into the bony portion of the skull, and the "kigleen," a kind of sharpener made from a piece of deer horn, with a small round piece of ivory overlapping and bound to its upper surface. A piece of flint being chosen, the man making the arrow-head would place a deerskin mitten on his left hand, then, placing the flint on the palm ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... pointed to a small brown man with a white skull-cap on his head. "There's one. See him? ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... are joined together.—The two general classes of joints are the movable and immovable. Except the lower jaw, the bones of the skull are so tightly joined together that there is no motion between them. The bones of the wrist and back have but little movement. The freest motion is at the shoulder joint, where the round head of one bone fits into the shallow cup of another. This is called a ball and socket ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... young men, in passing,—I would ask you to bear that thought with you, always, not to sadden your sunny smile, but to give it a more subtle grace. Wear in your summer garland this little leaf of rue. It will not be the skull at the feast, it will rather be the tender thoughtfulness in the face ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... murder. What evidence they did bring forward was, of course, plain and straightforward enough. Crone had been found lying in a deep pool in the River Till; but the medical testimony showed that he had met his fate by a blow from some sharp instrument, the point of which had penetrated the skull and the frontal part of the brain in such a fashion as to cause instantaneous death. The man in the dock had been apprehended with Crone's purse in his possession—therefore, said the police, he had murdered and robbed Crone. As I say, Mr. Murray and all of them—as you could see—were quite ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... structures. Correction of the deformity of the arches often renders nasal surgery unnecessary. Such conditions not only predispose to colds, but increase their severity and the danger of complicating infection of the bony cavities in the skull that communicate with the nose. They also increase the liability to involvement of the middle ear and of the mastoid cells which are located in the skull just behind the ear. The importance, therefore, of having the nose and throat carefully ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... were duly informed of the existence of the new society and their initiation thereinto. They offered no objections, and indeed would have been prepared at Raymonde's request to join a Black Brotherhood, or a Pirates' League with a skull and cross-bones for its emblem. A special committee meeting was held to discuss the ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... implacable enemy of his name and family. But the courage of the Gepidae could secure them no more than an honorable death. The bravest of the nation fell in the field of battle; the king of the Lombards contemplated with delight the head of Cunimund; and his skull was fashioned into a cup to satiate the hatred of the conqueror, or, perhaps, to comply with the savage custom of his country. [10] After this victory, no further obstacle could impede the progress of the confederates, and they ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... well-known and often a serious subject and hits off its salient points in an uproarious manner. One might burlesque "Hamlet" by causing a red-nosed Prince of Denmark to do a juggling act with "poor Yorick's" skull. ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... with rage as the import of Mascola's answer filtered into his thick skull. He clenched his huge hands and raised them above his head, mumbling all the while in his own tongue. Then his arms fell to his sides and his pig-like eyes gleamed with belated comprehension. Licking his dry lips, he said: "Give me ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... And Slavery all our vantage-ground of Light. Let Treason boast its savagery, and shake From its flag-folds its symbol rattlesnake, Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in tan, And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones of man, And make the tale of Fijian banquets dull By drinking whiskey from a loyal skull,— But let us guard, till this sad war shall cease, (God grant it soon!) the graceful arts of peace: No foes are conquered who the victors teach Their vandal manners ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... would it be much lost if some kindly disposed gentleman would kill off a few score of our Union savers, who, like quack doctors, go about with their pockets full of plasters, and are for ever hunting for the crack in the nation's skull. And I would advise all politicians to spin less patriotic yarns, to be more modest, to learn wisdom, to drink less whiskey; in truth, to think more of God and their country, and to get them honest godfathers, who will teach them what a sad ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... kissed my hands," said Jim savagely, "and, next moment, he starts foaming and whispering in my face, 'If I had the time I would like to crack your skull for you.' I pushed him away. Suddenly he caught hold of me round the neck. Damn him! I hit him. I hit out without looking. 'Won't you save your own life—you infernal coward?' he sobs. Coward! He called me an infernal coward! ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... on a weapon. I sat down in the darkness and unstrapped my wooden leg. With three long hops I was on him. He put his carbine to his shoulder, but I struck him full, and knocked the whole front of his skull in. You can see the split in the wood now where I hit him. We both went down together, for I could not keep my balance, but when I got up I found him still lying quiet enough. I made for the boat, and in an hour we were well out at sea. Tonga had brought all his ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... old man was sitting on the veranda in the full sun. On his huge head was a fur cap pulled well down over his ears and intensifying the mortuary, skull-like appearance of his face. Over his ulster was an old-fashioned Scotch shawl such as men used to wear in the days before overcoats came into fashion. About his wasted legs was wrapped a carriage robe, and she knew that there was a hot-water ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... at Avignon; but his remains, after some time, were removed to the abbey of Chaise Dieu, in Auvergne, where his tomb was violated by the Huguenots in 1562. Scandal says that they made a football of his head, and that the Marquis de Courton afterwards converted his skull into a drinking-cup. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... from the mature form, the character of the species would be greatly changed and degraded. Again, not a few animals, after arriving at maturity, go on changing in character during nearly their whole lives. With mammals, for instance, the form of the skull is often much altered with age, of which Dr. Murie has given some striking instances with seals. Every one knows how the horns of stags become more and more branched, and the plumes of some birds become more finely developed, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... swung again, clanking its bones as it swung, and groaned in the wind ominously. The breeze whistled audibly through its hollow skull and vacant eye-sockets. Tu-Kila-Kila turned uneasily in his sleep below. Felix saw there was not one instant of time to be lost now. He passed on boldly; and as he passed, a dozen thin cords of paper mulberry, stretched every way ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... included—was exhibited the usual advertisement of the gold buyer—namely, a heap of gold in the centre, on one side a pile of sovereigns, on the other bank-notes. The most significant advertisement was one I saw in a window in Collins Street. In the middle was a skull perforated by a bullet, which lay at a little distance as if coolly examining or speculating on the mischief it had done. On one side of the skull was a revolver, and on the other a quantity of nuggets. Above all, was the emphatic inscription, ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... are 10, viz. 5 external and 5 internal, the external are the hair, skin, muscle, fascia and the skull; the internal are the dura mater, the pia mater, [which enclose] the brain. The pia mater and the dura mater come again underneath and enclose the brain; then the rete mirabile, and the occipital bone, which supports the brain from which the ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... that some brief record may be preserved from shipwreck. These skulls may be divided into three distinct sorts. The first presents two ridges, one rising from each frontal bone, which, joining on the top of the head, form an elevated crest, which runs backward to the cerebral portion of the skull. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... aroma emitted by segars or cups of Mocha or Java, and the ear being then used for some more useful purpose than having its tympanum tortured by Wagnerian discordant sounds. Our ancestors might not have been a very handsome set, nor, judging from the Neanderthal skull, could they have had a very winning physiognomy, but they were a very hardy and self-reliant set of men. Nature—always careful that nothing should interfere with the procreative functions—had provided him with a sheath or prepuce, wherein he carried his procreative organ ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... requires some exactness, but the professor assured us, "that if it were dexterously performed, the cure would be infallible." For he argued thus: "that the two half brains being left to debate the matter between themselves within the space of one skull, would soon come to a good understanding, and produce that moderation, as well as regularity of thinking, so much to be wished for in the heads of those, who imagine they come into the world only to watch and govern its motion: and as to the difference of ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... others; indeed, the variation is so enormous that probably the smallest dog would be about the size of the head of the largest; there are very great variations in the structural forms not only of the skeleton but also in the shape of the skull, and in the proportions of the face and ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley
... drink a cup of sack, and forget her," said the landlord. "But five-and-twenty and fifty look on those matters with different eyes, especially when one cast of peepers is set in the skull of a young gallant, and the other in that of an old publican. I pity you, Master Tressilian, but I see not how I can aid you ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... his chamber a human skull was placed, and upon this skull—in ghastly mockery of royalty, in truth, yet doubtless in the conviction that such an exhibition showed the superiority of anointed kings even over death—he ordered his servants to place a golden crown. And thus, during the whole of his long ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I say?" roared Antaeus again. "What's your name? Why do you come hither? Speak, you vagabond, or I'll try the thickness of your skull with my walking-stick!" ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a craven, who now on seeing him would fain run away. So the Jinn, without an instant's delay, raised his quarter staff of steel, and, swinging it twice in air, before Prince Ahmad could reach the throne or on any wise interfere, struck the Sultan so fiercely upon the poll that his skull was smashed and his brains were scattered over the floor. And when Shabbar had made an end of this offender, he savagely turned upon the Grand Wazir who stood on the Sultan's right and incontinently would have slain him also, but the Prince craved pardon for his life and said, "Kill him not: ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... beings behind him may have exaggerated his proportions, but he seemed to Trixie the biggest man she had ever seen, and nearly the ugliest. Close-curling coarse black hair capped his high-domed skull, and his stern, powerful, swarthy face, big-nosed and long-chinned, with a humorous quirk at the corners of the heavy-lipped mouth, that redeemed its sensuousness, was lighted by eyes of the intensest black, burning under heavy beetle-brows. His khaki uniform, though of fine ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... sale mec de malheur!" muttered a voice at his elbow, and a blow from a slung-shot crushed the base of his skull. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... great many wounded by the artillery fire. None were, however, found breathing among the great pile of dead at the upper part of the breach, for the axes and double handed swords of the knights had, in most of the cases, cleft through turban and skull. ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... and swallowed it, but as I was taking a second from the blue flames I suddenly felt a faintness. At first I put it down to the heat of the room, but a moment later I felt a sharp spasm through my heart, and my brain swelled too large for my skull. My jaws were set. I tried to speak, but was unable to ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... as if he expected I war'nt goin to finish him. I tell ye, boys, it required some spunk about then, for the critter got his claws upon me with a death grip, and the dogs ripped him like an old corn stalk, and would'nt keep off. And then there was no fracturin his skull; and seeing how he was overpowering me, I just seizes him by the throat and pops his head off quicker ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... into my head. I didn't want to rouse hopes in her which might turn out quite baseless. Besides, even if I were really on the right track, and Marks was the man who had betrayed the gang in St. Petersburg, it was quite another thing to prove that they were responsible for splitting his skull. I had nothing to support the idea beyond Joyce's bare word that she had seen McMurtrie in the flat on the afternoon of the murder. Sonia's testimony might have been useful, but after today I could ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... succeed as a jester, you'll need To consider each person's auricular: What is all right for B would quite scandalise C (For C is so very particular); And D may be dull, and E's very thick skull Is as empty of brains as a ladle; While F is F sharp, and will cry with a carp, That he's known your best joke from his cradle! When your humour they flout, You can't let yourself go; And it DOES put you out When ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... warned against the notorious Africaner, a chief whose name was the terror of the whole country. Some prophesied that he would be eaten by this monster; others were sure that he would be killed, and his skull turned into a drinking-cup, and his skin into the head of a drum. Nevertheless, the heroic young missionary went straight for the kraal of the cruel marauder and murderer. He was accompanied by Ebner, the missionary, who was ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... Prony, as like an honest water-dog as ever; Biot (et moi aussi je suis pere de famille), a fat, double volume of himself—I could not see a trace of the young pere de famille we knew—round-faced, with a bald head and black ringlets, a fine-boned skull, on which the tortoise might fall without cracking it. When he began to converse, his superior ability was immediately apparent. Then Cuvier presented Prince Czartorinski, a Pole, and many compliments passed; and then we went to a table to look at Prince Maximilian de Neufchatel's Journey ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... which startled him excessively. He found that his steed had, without any sensation of shame or alarm, stepped upon the perfect skeletons of two human beings, cracking their brittle bones under his feet, and by one trip of his foot, separating a skull from the trunk, which rolled on like a ball before him. This event imparted a sensation to him, which it took him a long time to remove. His horse was for many days afterwards not looked upon with the same ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... is used to bandage the crotch between the thighs, or around the forehead and over the top of the skull. (See Fig. IV, p. 134.) In the former case, the ends 1-1 are put about the body as a belt, and the end 2 is brought from behind, in the narrow part of the back, down forward between the thighs, over the crotch, and up to the belt in the lower part of the ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... crowd set light to the ready-built fires, and make the greatest uproar possible, and fire upon the staggering, terrified elephants as they attempt to break out. The hunters in the trees fire down on them as they rush past, the fatal point at the back of the skull being ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Munro came up to us all over blood and fell. We took him on our backs to the boat, and got every medical assistance for him from the Valentine Indiaman, which lay at anchor near the Island; but in vain. He lived twenty-four hours in the utmost torture; his head and skull were all torn and broken to pieces, and he was also wounded, by the animal's claws, all over his neck and shoulders; but it was better to take him away, though irrecoverable, than leave him to be mangled and devoured. We have just read the funeral service over his body, ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... battle. It seemed to me that heaven was raining thunderbolts, so loud was the noise of their charging; and looking out of my dreams I saw the two rams backing away from each other, making ready for another onset. My ram's skull was the softer, he being a youngling, it had been already shaken in several charges, and it was broken in this last one, a terrible one it was, I can still hear them, they are still at it in my mind—the ewes of both flocks gathered on different ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... anything but studious hours. Yet can I fancy, wandering 'mid thy towers, Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap; My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, And I walk gowned; feel unusual powers. Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech, Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain; And my skull teems with notions infinite. Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach Truths, which transcend the searching Schoolmen's vein, And half had ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... charm of mole's blood. A plate was laid on the lad's head; the living mole was held over it by the tail, the head cut off, and the blood allowed to drop into the plate. Three moles were sacrificed one after the other, but without effect. Next they tried the effect of a bit of the skull of a suicide, and sent for this treasure a distance of from sixty to one hundred miles. This bit of the skull was scraped to dust into a cup of water, which the lad had to swallow, not knowing the ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... alpaca; they like foreign shirts and collars, but their headgear is the same as that used by the refugees from Persia over three hundred years ago. One cap is of lacquered papier-mache in the form of a cow's hoof inverted. Another is a round cap of gray cloth, finely made, worn over a skull cap of velvet or embroidered cloth, which is worn indoors. The women wear the sari or robe, which consists of one piece of silk or brocade, with an embroidered band. This garment is draped around the body and brought up over the head, covering the right ear. They all ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... of the square, was a clear space of ground, on which fell the shadow of a tall column of red stone, all carved with serpents and faces of gods. Beside it stood a figure horrible to see: a man clothed in serpent skins, whose face was the grinning face of a skull; but the skull was shining black and red in patches, and a long white beard flowed from beneath it. This man, mounted on a kind of altar of red stone, waved his hand and yelled, and seemed to point to the shadow of the column which fell ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... suffered; there the triumph is ended, and there the enmity is stayed. He advances step by step to look closely at the ruins of mortality; to slight the great names of kings and follow heroes to the dust. As he sees the skull tossed out of the grave, the king is already dead to him. "How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jawbone, that did the first murder. This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'erreaches; one that would ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... accepted the challenge, for none had a weapon Able his hard skull to pierce, and therefore they called ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... simple, really, and well executed. The beast's skull bashed in easily, being merely thin bones for a thin atmosphere and light gravitation. A push sent it over the ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel
... fine people. But at no time was the genial little poet "blate," as he would himself have said. There was no shyness in him. He "braw'd it," as he says, with no doubt the finest of periwigs, long before he had ceased to be a skull-thatcher, and swaggered through the wynds and about the Cross with the best. The Edinburgh shopkeeper has never been "blate." He has always maintained a freedom of independence which has nothing of the obsequiousness of more common traders, and which gave the greater value to the sly compliment ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... from their false display. But he who is really making progress in virtue imitates Hippocrates, who confessed publicly and put into black and white that he had made a mistake about the sutures of the skull,[282] for he will think it monstrous, if that great man declared his mistake, that others might not fall into the same error, and yet he himself for his own deliverance from vice cannot bear to be shown he is in the wrong, and to confess his stupidity and ignorance. ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... it was to piece him out and make a whole creature of him. After he had tried over all the sounds, he began to finger out passages from things Miss Nellie had been practicing, passages that were already his, that lay under the bones of his pinched, conical little skull, definite as animal desires. The door opened; Miss Nellie and her music-master stood behind it, but blind Samson, who was so sensitive to presences, did not know they were there. He was feeling out the pattern that lay all ready-made on the big and little ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... after being tossed over the cliff, his head was fortunately downward, and his skull, being the thickest and hardest bone in his body, had withstood the terrible shock to which it had been subjected without damage, though the brain within was, for a time, incapacitated from doing duty. When John rose again to the surface, after a descent ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... broke their vows, might they become "as yellow as gold, and perish by their own arms." But this was for Sviatoslaf the last invasion of any land. The avenging Pechenegs were waiting in ambush for his return. They cut off his head and presented his skull to their Prince as ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... cry is but a single one among the many voices of the mountain. Yet still I listen, and it rises, clear and shrill, above the moaning of the pines, above the mighty sobbing of the waters. It beats like blows upon my skull, and I know that she will ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... colossal size, suggested apparently by the fossil bones of great pachyderms which are so abundant there. And the compressed sabre-like horns of Rhinoceros tichorinus are constantly called, even by Russian merchants, birds' claws. Some of the native tribes fancy the vaulted skull of the same rhinoceros to be the bird's head, and the leg-bones of other pachyderms to be its quills; and they relate that their forefathers used to fight wonderful battles with this bird. Erman ingeniously suggests ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... matter with him? As no medical man diagnosed his case, it is impossible to say, though that he was for some time in a high state of fever we may safely assume. He had gone through a good deal, and had had a cut through the scalp of his head right down to the skull. At last he woke one day after a long sleep and recognised his nurse, whom he took to be a demon—a very nice, amiable one, with gleaming white teeth, who grinned from ear to ear with pleasure to see ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... belongs to the world. The ptarmigan in Chilkoot Pass discards his winter white feathers for brown; the Patagonian Beau Brummell oils his chignon and clubs him another sweetheart to drag to his skull-strewn flat. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... the foe The corpses of the fallen; the ruined mass Furnishing weapons to his hands; with beams, And ponderous stones, nay, with his body threats His enemies; with poles and stakes he thrusts The breasts advancing; when they grasp the wall He lops the arm: rocks crush the foeman's skull And rive the scalp asunder: fiery bolts Dashed at another set his hair aflame, Till rolls the greedy blaze about his eyes With hideous crackle. As the pile of slain Rose to the summit of the wall he sprang, Swift as across the nets a hunted ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... enormous baggy breeches of black, and heavily pleated. How heavily pleated they are can be gathered when twenty to twenty-five yards of a kind of black alpaca are used for one pair of knee-breeches. White stockings and a red skull-cap—not the high Turkish fez—with a huge blue silk tassel reaching to the waist, complete the attire. Their women-folk look picturesque in a large scarlet cloak, with a hood ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... was shot laterally, just above the right temple, with what looks to me like a .357 magnum pistol slug. It's in there—" He gestured back toward the room he had just left. "—you can have it, if you want. It passed completely through the brain, lodging on the other side of the head, just inside the skull. What kept him alive, I'll never know, but I can guarantee that he might as well be dead; it was a rather nasty way to lobotomize a man, but it was effective, I ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... They took the teeth out and they made them into the rocks. They took the hair of Ymir and they made it into the forests of trees. They took his eyebrows and formed them into the place where Men now dwell, Midgard. And out of Ymir's hollow skull they ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... heir. [17] Thus, the walnut was regarded as clearly good for mental cases from its bearing the signature of the whole head; the outward green cortex answering to the pericranium, the harder shell within representing the skull, and the kernel in its figure resembling the cover of the brain. On this account the outside shell was considered good for wounds of the head, whilst the bark of the tree was regarded as a sovereign remedy for the ringworm. [18] Its leaves, too, when bruised and moistened ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... ears. "I am Joseph McDonald, and you die on this spot unless you tell me what you have done with my brother James." They struggled desperately, one to free himself from the strangle hold, while Joe wished to force a confession from the fellow beneath him whose staring eyes were bulging out of his skull, and whose face had commenced to turn ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... indeed. And yet he had been twice married; the question may suggest itself, had he ever loved? I dare say he had analysed his amative propensity thoroughly, and knew to what extent it existed within him, but when a man can reconcile himself to the belief that on the "middle line of the skull, at the back part of his head, there is a long projection, below which, and between two similar protuberances, is his Organ of amativeness," or that by which he learns "the lesson of life, the sad, sad lesson of loving," methinks he is not outraged by a public opinion which ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... ancestors and some idol or other, seen by Du Chaillu, in African towns, in the small huts constructed at the entrance of all the villages in Yucatan. These huts or shrines contain invariably a crucifix; at times the image of some saint, often a skull. The last probably to cause the wayfarer to remember he has to die; and that, as he cannot carry with him his worldly treasures on the other side of the grave, he had better deposit some in the alms box firmly fastened at the foot of the cross. Cogolludo ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... Tomboy; "so long and soft!—She might almost walk upon it. 'Twould be a pity to cut it off, to put ice upon her skull!" As she spoke, she gathered up Adrienne's magnificent hair, and twisted it as well as she could behind her head. Alas! it was no longer the fair, light hand of Georgette, Florine, or Hebe that arranged the beauteous locks of their mistress with so ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... av day to Hogin walkin' through Denmark like a hamstrung mule wid a pall on his back. "Hamlut," sez I, "there's a hole in your heel. Pull up your shtockin's, Hamlut," sez I. "Hamlut, Hamlut, for the love av decincy dhrop that skull an' pull up your shtockin's." The whole house begun to tell him that. He stopped his soliloquishms mid-between. "My shtockin's may be comin' down or they may not," sez he, screwin' his eye into the gallery, for well he knew who I was. "But afther this performince is over me an' the Ghost'll ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... mentioned, was no less than the boatswain of the butcher—gang, answering to the driver in an agricultural one. He was clothed in an entire bullock's hide horns, tail, and the other particulars, the whole of the skull being retained, and the effect of the voice growling through the jaws of the beast was most startling. His legs were enveloped in the skin of the hind—legs, while the arms were cased in that of the fore, the hands protruding a little above the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... flag at the gaff-end wore a makeshift, slovenly air. It was a square section of the bark's foreroyal, painted black around the skull-and-cross-bones design, which had been left the original hue of the canvas. The port-holes were equally slovenly in appearance, being cut through between stanchions with axes instead of saws; and the bulwarks were further disfigured by extra holes smashed through at the stanchions ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... would she need? And England was only a part. What would the ravaged world need as it lay—quiet at last—in ruins physical, moral and mental? He had no answer. Wiser men than he had no answer. Only time would tell. But the commonest brain cells in the thickest skull could argue to the end which proved that only men and women could do the work to be done. The task would be one for gods, or demigods, or supermen—but there remained so far only men and women to face it—to rebuild, to reinspire with life, to heal unearthly gaping wounds ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... inexplicable, this monster of a moon-struck skull! We shall never get to comprehend it. I shall not return to my former residence. What does it matter to me? I am afraid of encountering that man again, and I shall not run ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... offices, and public buildings, tidal docks and wharves, we reach in a few minutes the Chinese town, pure, unadulterated Asia. It swarms with yellow men in blue coats and black vests with small brass buttons, white stockings, black shoes with thick, flat soles, a small black skull-cap with a red button on the head, and a long pigtail behind. There dealers sit in their open shops, smoking long, small pipes while waiting for customers. The tea-houses are full. A noise and tumult beyond description, a constant ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... there without dashing your spirits," he said. "But I might be too much like the skull at ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the fingers of both hands and swung back, into the room, my right leg, which was already across the sill. With all my strength I kicked out. My heel came in contact, in sickening contact, with a human head; beyond doubt I had split the skull of the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... cry of hatred against the unfortunate young fellow who had now been picked up, covered with blood, in the depths of that abyss. Beneath the gust of horror which chilled him, Morange could only find these words: "Well, madame, poor Blaise came just behind you and broke his skull." ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... fellow," answered Archibald, reeling rather than stepping forward. "A crack on the skull, that's all. Hope you're none the worse?" His own face was bleeding from a nasty graze on the ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Sam had retreated a step; the assembled statues who were there saw him bring out his right hand, and the hatchet with it; it was raised, and ere the victim could utter one cry, three blows, one upon the other, had cleft his skull. At the moment, when he fell back, a fourth blow laid his face open; then, as if his frenzy, once let loose, could not stop, Sam struck a fifth blow; it was useless—he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... fought his way forward and aimed a fearful blow at Decatur, who was not aware of his danger. Reuben Jones, an American sailor, so desperately wounded that he could not use his arms, flung himself between them and received the blow on his skull, which was fractured. It is a pleasure to record, however, that the brave fellow finally recovered and lived many years on ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of it there appears to be no uniformity. Castor and Pollux were born from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull. Galatea was once a block of stone. Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water. It is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a stroke ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... some slight resemblance to humanity, and habited, so far as it could be determined, in the skins of deer, strangely disposed about its gaunt and tawny-coloured limbs. On its head was seen a sort of helmet, formed of the skull of a stag, from which branched a large pair of antlers; from its left arm hung a heavy and rusty-looking chain, in the links of which burnt the phosphoric fire before mentioned; while on its right wrist was perched a large horned owl, with feathers ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... iron stove, a discoloured old nickel teapot, a soup-plate full of treacle blackened with dust. In a corner was a tub for washing dishes, and from nails in the wall hung moist dish-clouts and the cook's livery and skull-cap. The only piece of furniture was a rickety dressing-table with water stains, oil stains, milk stains, black, brown, and white stains, and all kinds of mixed stains. The mirror, detached from it, rested against ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... of the two bravi. We have reason to believe, from some contemporary documents which Cantu has brought to light, that Bibboni exaggerated his own part in the affair. Luca Martelli, writing to Varchi, says that it was Bebo who clove Lorenzo's skull with a cutlass. He adds this curious detail, that the weapons of both men were poisoned, and that the wound inflicted by Bibboni on Soderini's hand was a slight one. Yet, the poignard being poisoned, Soderini died of it. In other ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... European enveloped in a flannel shirt with short sleeves—a piece of the breast of which I have taken—the flesh, I may say, completely cleared from the bones, and very little hair but what must have been decomposed; what little there was, I have taken. Description of body: Skull marked with slight sabre cuts, apparently two in number—one immediately over the left eye, the other on the right temple, inclining over right ear, more deep than the left; decayed teeth existed in both sides of lower jaw and right ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... man, neither fat nor lean, with a tolerably handsome face, keen expression, piercing eyes sparkling with cleverness; a little cloak, a satin skull-cap over his grey hairs, a smooth collar, almost like an Abbe's, and his pocket-handkerchief always between his coat and his vest. He used to say that it was nearer his nose there. He had taken me into his friendship. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... a car wreck and I had high blood pressure and a stroke all at once. And that wreck, the doctor said it cracked my skull. Till now, I ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... dissected by inches, all of which he fully believed. They declared that they would bore holes into his brain, when he instantly felt the action suited to the word, as though a dozen augers were being turned at once into his very skull; this done, they would fill his brain with bugs and worms to eat it out, when their gnawing would instantly commence. These spirits would pinch and pound him, twitch him up and throw him down, yell and blaspheme, and use the most obscene ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... exclamation of surprise at seeing the prodigious change which the good news had produced in the old man. He now saw a man of about sixty, extremely well preserved, a lean Italian, as straight as an I, with hair still black, though thin and showing a white skull, with bright eyes, a full set of white teeth, a face like Caesar, and on his diplomatic lips a sardonic smile, the almost false smile under which a man of good ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... dancing there that night have undergone trial and affliction since. Father is dead, and Harry. Mr. Trezevant lies at Corinth with his skull fractured by a bullet; every young man there has been in at least one battle since, and every woman has cried over her son, brother, or sweetheart, going away to the wars, or lying sick and wounded. And yet we danced that night, and never thought of bloodshed! The week before Louisiana ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... that in ancient times this belief was more widespread than it is now. It affords an explanation of the motive for trephining the skull among ancient peoples, to afford a more ready passage for the "vital essence" ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... proof of my skill in both lines, should occasion require it. I have had a good many desperate engagements in my time, and have generally come off victorious. I bear the marks of some of them about me still," he continued, taking off his wig, and laying bare a bald skull, covered with cicatrices and plates of silver. "This gash," he added, pointing to one of the larger scars, "was a wipe from the hanger of Tom Thurland, whom I apprehended for the murder of Mrs. Knap. This wedge of silver," pointing to another, "which would mend a coffee-pot, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... is that he lacks blood at the brain. He is trying to make a living organism out of a skeleton—to build the world over on a skull and cross-bones—and it can't be done. I admire John as much as I ever did. He is as logical as a problem in geometry. But Vetch is nearer to the truth of things. Vetch has the one attribute that John needs ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... shot her four times, and then, as she lay on the ground and said to him, "You didn't do it on purpose, did you, dear?" replied, "No, I {161} didn't do it on purpose," as he raised a rock and smashed her skull. Such an occurrence, with the mild sentence and self-satisfaction of the prisoner, is a field for a crop of regrets, which one need not take up in detail. We feel that, although a perfect mechanical fit to the rest of the universe, it is a bad moral fit, and that something else would ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... tell you why: Elizabeth Fitzgerald may get another husband, but Elizabeth Fitzgerald may never get another castle; so I'll keep what I have; and if you can't get off faster than your legs can readily carry you, my warders will try which is the hardest—your skull or a stone bullet." It were too long a story to relate how this Irish Penelope, unsustained by the hope of the return of her Ulysses, inasmuch as she had seen him hanged before her eyes, defended her castle and her liberty against all the neighboring squires, who had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... red cloth skull-cap, worn by the people of Fez and Morocco, and in general use amongst ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... "The skull and brain belonged to a boy who was born on the 4th of October, 1869, the last of four children. Paul was scrofulous from his youth. He did not get his teeth until the end of his second year, and they were quite brown in color and were soon lost. According to the statement ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... present. The limbs and ribs of the under side are found lying in nearly their proper places; while of the limbs and ribs of the upper side usually not a trace can be detected,—even the upper side of the skull is often awanting. It-would almost seem as if some pre-Adamite butcher had divided the carcasses longitudinally, and carried away with him all the upper halves. The reading of the enigma seems to be, that when the creatures lay down and ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... than he did on beholding the figure of Mr. Earnshaw above. It expressed, plainer than words could do, the intensest anguish at having made himself the instrument of thwarting his own revenge. Had it been dark, I daresay he would have tried to remedy the mistake by smashing Hareton's skull on the steps; but, we witnessed his salvation; and I was presently below with my precious charge pressed to my heart. Hindley descended ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... once, To name them all, another DUNCE: Profound in all the Nominal 155 And Real ways, beyond them all: For he a rope of sand cou'd twist As tough as learned SORBONIST; And weave fine cobwebs, fit for skull That's empty when the moon is full; 160 Such as take lodgings in a head That's to be let unfurnished. He could raise scruples dark and nice, And after solve 'em in a trice; As if Divinity had catch'd 165 The itch, on purpose to be scratch'd; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Will,[92] Holy Will, There was wit i' your skull, When ye pilfer'd the alms o' the poor; The timmer is scant, When ye're ta'en for a saunt, Wha should swing in a ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and brother, when he saw his rival in the outer room of the store, and with one deadly imprecation, and a face which Eustace could not think of without horror, challenged him to fight, and in a second or two had struck him down, with a fractured skull. But the deed was done in undoubted brain fever. That was quite established, and for ten days after he was desperately ill and in the wildest delirium, probably from some injury to the head in the fall, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I got my blow in first," he mused. "If he had landed that fairly on my skull I don't think anything else in this world would ever have interested ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... much so that I bethought me of tales of the ghosts whereby it was supposed to be haunted. Also, oddly enough, of Anscombe's presentiment which he had fulfilled by killing a Basuto. Look! There lay his grinning skull with some patches of hair still on it, dragged away from the rest of the bones by a hyena. I cantered on down the slope beyond the wood and through the scattered thorns to the stream on the banks of which the wagon should be. It had gone, and by the ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... same generosity the remaining furniture of his chapel; [52] a large and authentic portion of the true cross; the baby-linen of the Son of God, the lance, the sponge, and the chain, of his Passion; the rod of Moses, and part of the skull of St. John the Baptist. For the reception of these spiritual treasures, twenty thousand marks were expended by St. Louis on a stately foundation, the holy chapel of Paris, on which the muse of Boileau has bestowed a comic immortality. The truth ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... pack my build of brains into the skull of a pauper. This poor, unfinished abortion of a head-piece of mine only dreams dreams that it cannot even set on paper for others ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... slipped. There was no regaining his grip. With a howl of fright he felt himself plunging head downward more than thirty feet to the hard floor of the gym. He was in a fair way of landing on his head, cracking his skull and breaking his neck. Worse, in his sudden dread, he seemed to have lost control ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... are almost the only parts in which nerves cannot be discovered. The common source of all the nerves is the brain; thence they descend, some of them through different holes of the skull, but the greatest part through the back bone, and extend themselves by innumerable ramifications throughout the whole body. They spread themselves over the muscles, penetrate the glands, wind round the vascular system, and even pierce into the interior of the bones. ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... gracefully over a pair of pantaloons, the legs of which seemed to come from beneath the petticoat. On the lowest of several book-shelves, very dusty and neglected, by the side of three old boots (wherefore three boots?) and a number of empty bottles, stood a skull, a scientific and friendly souvenir, left to Philemon by one of his comrades, a medical student. With a species of pleasantry, very much to the taste of the student-world, a clay pipe with a very black bowl ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... their network across the gray sky, and in the distance we see the carriages that have brought the disputants to the field. The duel is over. One of the men, dressed in the costume of Pierrot, the loose white trousers and slippers, the baggy white shirt, and white skull-cap, falls, mortally wounded, into the arms of his second: the pallor of coming death masked by the white-painted face. The other combatant, a Mohawk Indian (once a staple character at every masked-ball in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... disperse the crowd. Angry words were exchanged, and a few sabre blows fell among the crowd. One of the troopers, who seemed determined to check the advancing column, rode up to one who appeared to be a leader, and, raising his sword, exclaimed, "Back, or I'll cleave your skull!" But the youthful and athletic champion folded his arms, and, without the slightest discomposure, replied, "Coward! strike an unarmed man;—prove your courage!" The dragoon, without a reply, wheeled his horse, and rode to another part of the square. Just at that ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... which occasion they found water. On the 8th our boat returned from the middle island, they and the boat of the Duchess having landed at several places on the S.E. side of the island, where was plenty of good water. They saw no signs of any people having been there lately, but found a human skull on the ground. This was supposed to have belonged to one of two Indian chiefs, who were left there by Captain Swan, about twenty-three years before, as Dampier told us: for victuals being scarce with these buccaneers, they would not carry the poor Indians any farther, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... rich stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses." The favourites of James I. wore earrings of emeralds set in gold filigrane. Edward II. gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold armour studded with jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with turquoise-stones, and a skull-cap parseme with pearls. Henry II. wore jewelled gloves reaching to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with twelve rubies and fifty-two great orients. The ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last Duke ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... cup. Queen, thou shalt pledge with me A health to all this kingdom and its weal Even from the bowl that here to hold in hand Assures me lord of Lombardy and thine By right and might of battle and of God - The skull that was thy father's: so shalt thou Drink ...
— Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... darkness that foiled him—this and the eel-like struggles of his adversary. At last, in desperation, he let go with his right hand, and drove his fist at the other's head. He missed his face, but hit him somewhere, for he heard his skull rap on the floor, while the knife flew out of his hand, and tinkled ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... I from the building's top Hear the rattling thunder drop, While the devil upon the roof (If the devil be thunder-proof) Should with poker fiery red Crack the stones and melt the lead; Drive them down on every skull, While the den of thieves is full; Quite destroy that harpies' nest, How might then our isle ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... eggs. If all the legal spawn should hatch out lawyers, the earth and the fullness thereof would be mortgaged for fees, and mankind would starve to death in the effort to pay off the "aforesaid and the same." If the entire crop of medical eggs should hatch out full fledged doctors, old "Skull and Cross Bones" would hold high carnival among the children of men, and the ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... would tolerate in their homes such horrid objects I cannot say, but certain it is that the heads are first subjected to fire and smoke until the flesh has dropped away, and what is then hung up is merely a skull; unpleasant enough, but not so bad as is ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... arrested, its full heart beat no more. Three thousand copies of the first seven sheets in quarto, with sundry unfinished plates, anatomical, architectural, and graphic, depicting various developments of the human skull (that temple of Human Error), from the Hottentot to the Greek; sketches of ancient buildings, Cyclopean and Pelasgic; Pyramids and Pur-tors, all signs of races whose handwriting was on their walls; landscapes to display the influence of Nature upon the customs, creeds, and philosophy ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stunned. Something tugged at his sword. He opened his eyes, and saw the huge carcass bend, reel, roll slowly over to one side dead, tearing out of his hand the sword, which was firmly fixed into the skull. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... is so enormous that he can crush the skull of an ox with a single blow of his powerful paw, and then grasp it in his jaws ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... stone coffin, massive and roughly hewn, was found in a field that belonged of old to the Priory of Pomfret, but at least a quarter of a mile distant from the hill where the chapel stood. Within was the skeleton of a full-grown man, partially preserved; the skull lay between the thighs. There is no record of the decapitation of any person at Pomfret of sufficient dignity to have been interred in a manner showing so much care for the preservation of the body, except the Earl of Lancaster. ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.19 • Various
... could find a footing, to catch and perpetuate that smile, which when enlarged and reproduced in newspapers would depict the grinning dental display so much associated with Woodrow Wilson and the Prince of Wales,—though more suggestive of a skull than anything else. Skulls invariably show their teeth, we know—but it has been left to the modern press-camera man to insist on the death-grin in faces that yet live. The crowd outside the church was far denser than the crowd within, and the fighting and scrambling ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... without the pulse quickening to an indignant speed, of the half-dozen such persons whom each of us has known. It would soothe and comfort us if we could be assured that the blockhead knew that he was a blockhead: if we could be assured that now and then there penetrated into the dense skull and reached the stolid brain, even the suspicion of what his intellectual calibre really is. I greatly fear that such a suspicion never is known. If you witness the perfect confidence with which the man is ready to express his opinion upon any subject, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... dozing; and he sprang to his observatory in time to hear an important noise of locks being opened and bars removed, and to see Mr. Vandeleur, carrying a lantern and clothed in a flowing robe of black velvet with a skull-cap to match, issue from under the verandah and proceed leisurely towards the garden gate. The sound of bolts and bars was then repeated; and a moment after, Francis perceived the Dictator escorting into the house, in the mobile light of the lantern, an individual ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into possession of his intelligent soul once more; or he was awake again; or the pressure of the skull upon the cerebrum had yet another time been relieved; at all events there was now a brilliant youth in the flesh-and-blood envelope which, an hour before, had contained only a half-witted boy. When the first crash ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... dazed to give a coherent account of themselves; although the more robust quickly recovered. The first thing to do with this human flotsam was to wash and disinfect and feed it, clip its hair to the skull, and then, having burned the rags of arrival, dress it in clean substantial clothes. While I was in Paris Mr. Jaccaci and Mrs. Hill were meeting these trains; and, when the smaller children arrived frightened and tearful they took them ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... gin me an awful shock to find myself like a skull and cross-bones on a tombstone, sittin' on my ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... Henry, he had on his head a thick cloth cap, with its crown cotton-padded. But for this, which served as a helmet, the beak of the bird would have been into his skull, for at the first dab it ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... and what of that? Every face, however full, Padded round with flesh and fat, Is but modell'd on a skull. ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... chicken coop of Henry Leigh, a new farmer in these parts. Leigh trailed Tag to the woods and found him cooking the chickens. Leigh tried to grab Tag, but Tag caught up a big stone and just slammed it against Leigh's head. Leigh is now in bed at home, with a fractured skull, and likely to die. He described Tag to us, and we're after him. The county has put a reward of two hundred and fifty dollars on Tag's head. After we've come up with him I guess it will be many a year before ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... people. In a country town was a "quack" doctor, who professed to be a "head examiner," giving people charts according to their "bumps," a fad which has many followers. "This, ladies and gentlemen," said the lecturer, holding out a small skull, "is the skull of Alexander the Great at the age of six. Note the prominent brow. This [holding up a larger skull] is the same at the age of ten. This [holding out another] at the age of twenty-one; [then stepping out to the front of the stage] this is the complete skull of Alexander ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... infant's brain requires the head to be large, and bestows upon it a contour which differs from that of the mother's pelvic cavity. Since the bones of the pelvis are rigid, while those of the fetal skull are malleable, the head is molded as it descends into the pelvic cavity, so that its passage may be made the easier. As the result of this process of accommodation the skull becomes relatively longer from crown to chin than in adults. Within a few weeks, however, ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... Mamie Brander's little girl a few weeks ago. Feels like your pulse is going to rip your skull off, right here. Can't eat because chewing drives you crazy. Back of your head, neck and shoulders swell up for about a week. ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... heard, the molar had broken while being extracted. It seemed that his head was being shattered, that his skull was being smashed; he lost his senses, howled as loudly as he could, furiously defending himself from the man who rushed at him anew as if he wished to implant his whole arm in the depths of his bowels, brusquely recoiled ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... nothing in't;" and every man who can decipher a penny journal is in one sense a reader. And your "general reader," like the grave-digger in Hamlet, is hail-fellow with all the mighty dead; he pats the skull of the jester; batters the cheek of lord, lady, or courtier; and uses "imperious Caesar" to teach boys ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... him the heart to tear off his clothes. A flask of sweet oil from Spiridion's shelf helped him here. Next he probed the rents. He found a deepish wound in the groin, a sword-cut in the fleshy part of his left arm; then there was his head! He assured himself that the skull was whole. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... growing marvelously light, and I began to have a feeling that I must hold on to all my movable possessions, to keep them from getting away. After this unaccountable state of things had existed for a while, there came, one day, a terrible shock, which threatened to crack the moon's skull and rattle its fragments down upon my head. This was followed at intervals by similar or lighter shocks, and it was all so exceedingly unusual that I became very curious to know what was happening. Then all was quiet for many days, but ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... the great main gate Houten told us about. He said it faced sou'west by west and had a green skull on ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... uneven nature of the ground, which required him to devote earnest attention to the badger-holes, he could not manage this. Without knowing very well what to do, he continued the chase, meditating as to whether it were better to try to ride over the bear, or to attempt the breaking of its skull with the butt end of his gun. As, however, it was all he could do to keep pace with the brute, ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... the tomb of St Pol, where "his skull, an arm-bone, and a finger are encased in a little coffer, for the veneration of the devout." St Pol built the cathedral at Leon, and was its first bishop. Strategy had to be resorted to to secure the see for him. The Count gave ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... to the ground, with a fearful sword cut, which entered the bone of the skull behind and almost cleft it in two. As he fell he seemed to hear distinctly a voice saying, "Fear not, they are praying for you." Rising from this blow, he was again struck down by a club. As he was falling almost unconscious to the ground he saw a horse coming ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... color-boxes, bottles of oil and turpentine, easels and stools upset or standing at right angles, left but a narrow pathway to the circle of light thrown from the window in the roof, which fell full on the pale face of Porbus and on the ivory skull of his ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... blows would have killed an ordinary man, but he has a skull like an ox. He'll be at work again in a fortnight if he'll behave sensibly, ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... and of the long bones of the body are to be found in the mound, and that these are commonly associated with earthen pots, sometimes whole, but more frequently broken fragments only. In some instances portions of the skull were placed in a pot, and the long bones were deposited in its immediate vicinity. Again, the pots would contain only sand, and fragments of bones would be found near them. The most successful 'find' I made was a ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... this day, then in spite of all storms we shall probably have to rest there. But I go still farther. Even supposing, say I, that there is an imperceptible transition from the Pithecanthropos to man, affecting his thigh, his skull, his brain, his entire body, have we then found a transition from the animal to man? Certainly not; for man is man, not because he has no tail, but because he speaks, and speech implies not only communication,—an ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller |
