"Bonfire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... another little sensation brought them all to their feet. They hurried to the window. From about a mile out seaward, a blue ball, followed by another, had shot up into the sky. Sir Denis watched for a moment steadily. Then he pointed to a bonfire which had been lighted ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dim point, far in among the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up. "That is an ignis fatuus," was my first thought; and I expected it would soon vanish. It burnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding nor advancing. "Is it, then, a bonfire just kindled?" I questioned. I watched to see whether it would spread: but no; as it did not diminish, so it did not enlarge. "It may be a candle in a house," I then conjectured; "but if so, I can never reach it. It is much too far away: and were it within a yard of me, what would ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the same direction a multitude of candle-nut torches gleamed through the foliage, and revealed dusky forms hurrying hither and thither. We pushed on through the wood at the top of our speed, until suddenly the outlines of the marae, illuminated by the glare of a large bonfire, loomed up before us. A score of half-naked men, were dancing around the fire in front of the inclosure, with the wildest and most extravagant contortions of body. Seen by the fitful and wavering light, their painted countenances ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... hill to where the Winburgers lay at the eastern extremity. All danger ceased definitely on this side when two guns of the 42nd battery, turning towards the ridges of Nodashwana, in a few moments cleared it of the enemy, and converted it also into a huge bonfire of blazing grass. At 1.30 p.m. the Boer fire had dwindled all along the main ridge, and an hour later it ceased altogether. Only from the far right came the sound of musketry from the cavalry still fencing with scattered detachments of the Heilbron, Vrede and Bethlehem ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... to invite volunteers amongst our respected readers to send in little statements of the lies which they know have been told about themselves; what a heap of correspondence, what an exaggeration of malignities, what a crackling bonfire of incendiary falsehoods, might we not gather together! And a lie once set going, having the breath of life breathed into it by the father of lying, and ordered to run its diabolical little course, lives with a prodigious vitality. You say, "Magna est veritas et praevalebit." Psha! Great lies ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Machiavelli, writing years afterwards, when Savonarola had fallen and Florence was again enslaved, could propose anything wiser than his Consiglio Grande. Yet the fierce revivalism advocated by the friar—the bonfire of Lorenzo di Credi's and Fra Bartolommeo's pictures, of MSS, of Boccaccio and classic poets, and of all those fineries which a Venetian Jew is said to have valued in one heap at 22,000 florins—the recitation of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... any rate,' quoth Philip, 'we'll have the best bonfire that ever was seen in the country! Lucy, you'll coax my father to give ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the bonfire, held the rag to the coals until it began to smoulder, and swung around to point it at the fence. There was no sound. Evidently the bottle did not make as good a pistol as he thought it would. "The light's gone out," he muttered, bringing the bottle cautiously around to look at it. Then ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... I don't think indeed I know, for they were good boys that they ever wanted anybody to lose property, but they did enjoy seeing a blaze, and one of their greatest delights, when there hadn't been a fire for some time, was to build a bonfire in ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... in!" he said. "Strap yourself in. Know how the straps go? Right! I'm going to make a bonfire. It'll bring someone to help those poor chaps. I don't want them to have to lie here all night unless ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... crowd had lit a huge bonfire, and then added to it a second one which, crackling, hissing, and emitting coils of bluish-tinted smoke, had fallen to vying with its fellow in lacing the foam of the rivulet with muslin-like patterns in red. As the mass of dark figures surged between the two flares an hilarious voice shouted ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... no lack of these and as the boys carried them in the waterproof boxes they had used on their previous expeditions they were dry. Some were soon struck and a bonfire built of the brush and wood they found ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... setting in the Mediterranean and make up their minds to follow it too. "For the sundown," writes Shakib, "was more appealing to us than the sunrise, ay, more beautiful. The one was so near, the other so far away. Yes, we beheld the Hesperian light that day, and praised Allah. It was the New World's bonfire of hospitality: the sun called to ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... in the village they are celebrating the National Festival. (The 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille.—Translator's Note.) While the little boys and girls are hopping round a bonfire whose gleams are reflected upon the church-steeple, while the drum is pounded to mark the ascent of each rocket, I am sitting alone in a dark corner, in the comparative coolness that prevails at nine o'clock, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... Progress," which, by the way, was probably, like Ronsard's poems, the work of an amateur. But these were other times, when an author did not expect to make money, and thought himself lucky if, after a slashing personal review by the Inquisition, his fragments were not burned at the stake in a bonfire of his volumes. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Holi festival marks approximately the time of the vernal equinox, ten days before the full moon of the Hindoo month Phalgun. The day of the bonfire does not always fall on the 16th of March. It is not considered lucky to begin harvest till the Holi has been burnt. Mr. Crooke holds that 'on the whole, there seems to be some reason to believe that the intention to promote the fertility of men, animals, and crops, supplies ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... not for the man of business, if you mean me! But my countess shall not be disappointed; I answer for her happiness!" And as if he felt the impulse to celebrate his happy certitude by a bonfire, he got up to throw a couple of logs upon the already blazing hearth. Valentin watched for a few moments the quickened flame, and then, with his head leaning on his hand, gave a melancholy sigh. "Got ...
— The American • Henry James
... approve of anything introduced by Fanchon, she had scornfully refused, from the first, to dance the new "step," and, because of its bonfire popularity, found herself neglected in a society where she had reigned as beauty and belle. Faithless Penrod, dazed by the sweeping Fanchon, had utterly forgotten the amber curls; he had not once asked Marjorie to dance. All afternoon the light of ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... a great glare of light breaks upon the scene from a bonfire of tar-barrels, ignited at the higher end of the cross-road by young SMALLEY; and, to the mingled bewilderment and exasperation of Mr. BUMSTEAD, the radiance reveals, as in noonday, Mr. SCHENCK ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... readjustment, suggests Dean Johnson, of New York University's school of commerce, if we all set fire to our Liberty Bonds. We can't go along with the Dean so far, but we have a hundred shares of copper stock that we will contribute to a community bonfire. ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... in the earth, chopped vine-twigs are burnt below it, the crimson glow of which soon roasts the lamb, and imparts a particular fragrance to the flesh. After supper we went out in the mild dark evening to a mount, where a bonfire blazed and glared on the high square tower of the convent, and cushions were laid for chibouques and coffee. The not unpleasing drone of bagpipes resounded through the woods, and a number of Bulgarians executed their national dance in a circle, taking hold of each other's ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... enforcing the stamp act called forth popular tumults in various places. In Boston the stamp distributor was hanged in effigy; his windows were broken; a house intended for a stamp office was pulled down, and the effigy burnt in a bonfire made of the fragments. The lieutenant-governor, chief justice, and sheriff, attempting to allay the tumult, were pelted. The stamp officer thought himself happy to be hanged merely in effigy, and next day publicly renounced the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... after a time. Beautiful green and purple lights had been dancing about her, but she had had no thoughts. It occurred to her now that she must have been struck upon the head. The church-clocks were striking eight. A bonfire which had been built at, a distance, to light the citizens in the work of rescue, cast a little gleam in through the debris across her two hands, which lay clasped together at her side. One of her fingers, she saw, was gone; it was the finger which held Dick's little engagement ring. ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... severe fighting was in progress a mile to our left. Merville and Calonne were almost blotted out in smoke, and the air was thronged with aeroplanes. The heap of shells behind us still burned. By now the clouds which rose from this bonfire had become such a pall in the sky that the German balloons—the enemy was expert in moving forward this machinery of observation—could see nothing of the surrounding country. The Robecq district was remarkable for its well-stocked farms, and with the general flight of the civilians large ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... Alec had been gone only ten minutes or so, when the assembled pickets observed a bright light burst forth from the surrounding gloom and rapidly increase until it assumed the proportions of a large bonfire. ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... would have appeared, enough brands could have been collected to make a bonfire of ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... the 29th Hamilton and his party made their appearance in Rutherglen. They first extinguished the bonfire that was blazing in the King's honour; and, having then lit one on their own account, proceeded solemnly to burn all the Acts of Parliament and Royal Proclamations that had been issued in Scotland since Charles's return. A paper was next read, containing ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... Milton's Paradise Lost. Eve and her serpent seem to me a pretty little case of symbolical adultery; you must suppress the Psalms of David, inspired by the highly adulterous love affairs of that Louis XIV. of Judah; you must make a bonfire of Mithridate, le Tartuffe, l'Ecole des Femmes, Phedre, Andromaque, le Mariage de Figaro, Dante's Inferno, Petrarch's Sonnets, all the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the romances of the Middle Ages, the History of France, and of Rome, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... out this false philosophy] I cannot tell; but all mine is at the Lord's service at any time; and if all which is in New England should be brought out and laid in one pile, I think it would make a great bonfire." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... NERO. He would never have fiddled while Rome burned. He would have been more likely to imagine that Rome was burning when there was really nothing more going on than a bonfire. He is one more example of the pernicious influence of sensational ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... a woman was a terrible humiliation to the valiant Sons of the Vikings. They were silent and moody during the evening, and sat staring into the big bonfire on the saeter green with stern and melancholy features. They had suffered defeat in battle, and it behooved them to avenge it. About nine o'clock they retired into their bunks in the log cabin, but no sooner was Brumle-Knute's rhythmic snoring perceived ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... which abutted on the passage where the sixth form rooms were. It was a noisy place, with its great open fireplace and huge oak table. If the noise was excessive, the sixth form intervened; and I remember being very gently caned, in the company of the present Dean of St. Paul's, for making a small bonfire of old blotting-paper, which filled the place ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the sheriff's coach and pelted the constables. Encouraged by gentlemen at the windows of neighbouring houses, they tore a large part of the paper from the executioner with shouts of "Wilkes and liberty," carried it in triumph outside Temple Bar, the boundary of the city, and there made a bonfire into which they threw a jack-boot and a petticoat, the popular emblems of Bute and the Princess of Wales. Yet Wilkes was in an unpleasant position. A Scot went to his house intending to murder him; was arrested and found insane. A summons was sent to him to appear at the bar of the house ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... yourself at a loss if you are not moved by that performance. Pine Mountain watches whitely overhead, shepherd fires glow strongly on the glooming hills. The plaza, the bare glistening pole, the dark folk, the bright dresses, are lit ruddily by a bonfire. It leaps up to the eagle flag, dies down, the music begins softly and aside. They play airs of old longing and exile; slowly out of the dark the flag drops down, bellying and falling with the midnight draught. Sometimes a ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... the young officers were a positive assurance to all present that their efforts were unnecessary, that what was merely an accidental bonfire had been taken for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... large, and much less to the citizens of London. "I can assure your mightiness," wrote the State's Ambassador, Caron, "that no promulgation was ever received in London with more coolness—yes, with more sadness.... The people were admonished to make bonfires, but you may be very sure not a bonfire was to be seen."—Motley, "United Netherlands," iv, 223, 224. For payments made by the city chamberlain to heralds on the occasion of proclamation of the peace, see Repertory 26, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... started, and soon we had a bonfire. Some had not the strength to hold out the buffalo meat to the fire. Even the grumblers and mutineers were silent, owing to the ordeal they had gone through. But presently, when they began to be warmed and fed, they talked of other trials to be borne. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of the cottage were of mud, the partitions and roof of wood and thatch, so the whole place soon burned like a bonfire. Miss Greeby shot out of the door and strode at a quick pace across the glade. But as she passed beyond the monoliths, Lambert, in company with a policeman, made a sudden appearance and blocked her way of escape. With a grim ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... went to find the guard who had come in with the prisoners, and I dissolved court and went out shooting. After dinner, as we sat round a great bonfire before the mess, for the nights were cold, Saw Ka and his brother came to me, and they sat down beside the fire and ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... branches which still strew the steep sides are charred and half burnt. It is a beautiful wood, with a strong aromatic odour, and blazed and crackled splendidly in the clear, cool evening air, as we piled up a huge bonfire, and put the kettle on to boil. It was quite dusk by this time, so the gentlemen worked hard at collecting a great supply of wood, as the night promised to be a very cold one, whilst I remained to watch the kettle, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... to grasp real scientific truth from his experiences with the elements which have for him such a mysterious attraction; by the very contact with water something in the child responds to its stimulus. Mud and sand have their charms, quite intangible, but universal, from prince to coster; a bonfire is something that arouses a kind of primeval joy. Again, race experience reproducing itself may account for all this, and it must be satisfied. The demand for contact with the rest of nature is a strong and fierce part of human nature, and it means the growth of something in life that we cannot ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... all the temples erected to Buddha, destroy the images, and make a bonfire of all the sacred relics," finished Cleek himself. "I rarely forget history, Miss Lorne, especially when it is such recent history as that memorable Buddhist rising at Trincomalee. It began upon an utterly unfounded, ridiculous rumour; it terminated, if my memory serves me correctly, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... he was then at liberty to send her away. This however must always have offended, and Macleod resenting the injury, whatever were its circumstances, declared, that the wedding had been solemnized without a bonfire, but that the separation should be better illuminated; and raising a little army, set fire to the territories of Macdonald, who returned the ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... the others to watch the fires, and see that the grass did not tempt the flames to the edge of the wood, Hiram cast bait into the river and, in an hour, drew out enough mullet and "bull-heads" to satisfy them all, when they were broiled over the hot coals of the first bonfire to ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... leaped up at once and the bonfire began to smoke and roar and crackle just as the great army of wooden Gargoyles arrived. The creatures drew back at once, being filled with fear and horror; for such as dreadful thing as a fire they had never before known in all the history of ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... detested Thomas Hutchinson. He was lieutenant-governor and chief justice and had been active in enforcing the navigation acts. The rioters attacked his house. They broke his furniture, destroyed his clothing, and made a bonfire of his books ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... suspended—the first receiving his dismissal with his foolish grin and declaring his intention of becoming an officer in some court, while Tadeo, with his eternal holiday realized at last, paid for an illumination and made a bonfire of his books. Nor did the others get off much better, and at length they too had to abandon their studies, to the great satisfaction of their mothers, who always fancy their sons hanged if they ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... guess," she said to herself, "I'll have the burnfire." She thought of baking pound-cake, but all the day before they had made cake for the picnic. She might wash the blankets, or begin quilting, or clean the cistern. These dramas were hardly exciting enough. The bonfire was better. She tied on her father's hat and kilted her skirts. Then she brought out the iron rake from the barn and settled the brush-heap anew. It was on the square of land where she had had her perennial bed for three years, and now she had decided to sow it down to grass. The ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... their ends with his axe and laid them on the beach, at a distance of about three feet apart, with their sharpened ends pointing seaward. He next procured three pieces of plank long enough to just cross the first three planks at right angles; and as soon as his bonfire had burned itself out he cleared the nails from among the ashes, and with them fastened his structure together. Two short pieces of plank nailed vertically in midships, with another piece secured on top of that, ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... "sticks" that axe of his will give him out of the tree he has just prostrated. It is really pleasant to think of it. There will be the great fire-place, with a huge block for a back-log; then a pile will be built against it large enough for a bonfire—and then such a crackling and streaming! why the dark night just around there will be all in a blush with it. And the little window will glow like a red star to the people of the village; and then within, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... singularly beautiful. Groups of dark objects became suddenly illuminated, and here a portion of the throng might be seen beneath a brightness like that produced by a bonfire, while all the back-ground of persons and faces were gliding about in a darkness that almost swallowed up a human figure. Suddenly all this would be changed; the brightness would pass away, and a ball alighting in a spot that had seemed abandoned to gloom, it would be found peopled with merry countenances, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... James II. the two Parts of the Character of a Popish Successor, were, with the Exclusion Bill, on the 23d of April, 1685, burnt by the sub-wardens, and fellows of Merton College, Oxon, in a public bonfire, made in the middle of their great quadrangle. During these contentions, Mr. Settle also published a piece called The Medal Revers'd, published 1681; this was an answer to a poem of Dryden's called The Medal, occasioned by the bill against ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... shadows of night fell, the temple made a bonfire that illuminated the scenes of pillage going on all around. The big idols of loathly aspect had been thrown down, broken to pieces, and despoiled of their jewels and the heavy plates of gold that encumbered them. ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... kindled to warn the country of an invading enemy. But how account, on this hypothesis, for ramparts continuous, as in the case of Knock Farril, all round the hill? A powerful fire long kept up might well fuse a heap of loose stones into a solid mass; the bonfire lighted on the summit of Arthur Seat in 1842, to welcome the Queen on her first visit to Scotland, particularly fused numerous detached fragments of basalt, and imparted, in some spots to the depth of about half an inch, a vesicular structure to the solid rock beneath. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Terryfication was, at least, an advertisement. To advertise himself, in the modern way, Stevenson was not competent. He never was interviewed as a Celebrity at Home, as far as I am aware. Indeed, he loved not society papers, and lit a bonfire and danced a dance around it in his garden, when some editor of a journal of that sort was committed to prison. His name is not mentioned, but Stevenson and I had against him a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... A great bonfire had been built in the road in front of Gray Gables, as had been the custom for years. The old doctor had been ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... earlier Garrick wrote to a friend:—'I did not hear till last night that your friends have generously contributed to your and their own happiness. No one can more rejoice at this circumstance than I do; and as I hope we shall have a bonfire upon the occasion, I beg that you will light it with the inclosed.' The inclosed was a bond for 280. Garrick Corres. ii. 297. Murphy says:—'Dr. Johnson often said that, when he saw a worthy family in distress, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... Princess Beatrice drove to Invergeldie, followed by the Balmoral party of torchbearers. The two parties then united and returned in procession to the front of Balmoral Castle, where all were grouped round a large bonfire, which blazed and crackled merrily, the Queen's pipers playing the while. Refreshments were then served to all, and dancing was engaged in to the strains of the bagpipes. When the fun was at its height, there suddenly appeared from the rear of ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... accessory to the trial and somewhat puerile (but which is really essential in the justification which history owes to these young men), the experts and Pigoult, who were despatched by the president to examine the park, reported that they could find no traces of a bonfire. ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... arranged a system of signals by bonfires through all the country around the town. He had watchers on top of the court-house, soldiers always ready, and motor-cars waiting below to take them to any place of disturbance if a bonfire blazed. So Gray said it was not good-by for them for long, for when his father was well enough he was coming back to the hills. Again the old colonel wished Jason well and patted him on the arm affectionately when they shook hands, and then Jason started for the twin house on the hill across ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... twenty-three cartridges in their cartouches, the worm, the priming-wire, and twelve flints in their pockets. These were the bold minute-men of New Jersey, and Frederick Frelinghuysen was their gallant Dutch captain, who stood ready to march, in case an alarm bonfire burned on Sourland Mountain, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... I said, when it was coming. We had a stock of empty flour barrels on Town-hill stuffed with leaves, and a big pole set in the ground, and a battered tar barrel, with its bung chopped out, to put on top of the pole. It was all to beat the last year's bonfire—and it did. The country wagoners had made their little stoppages at the back door. We knew what was to come of that. And if the old cook—a monstrous fine woman, who weighed two hundred if she weighed a pound—was brusque and wouldn't have us "round," we knew what was to ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... with Eugenia, and set to work to cut his own underneath. Eugenia seated herself on a rock near by, to watch him. Keith and Rob, and the other boys who had been invited to the picnic, busied themselves by dragging up sticks and logs for a big bonfire. The girls began a game of "I spy" behind the great rock where the columbines clambered in the spring, and spread their blossoms like butterflies poised on ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... answered, looking up with his widest and almost sudden smile; 'humming musical recollections—of his last night's quartette party, I suppose—through the walls between us, and driving me half mad. I wish he'd make a bonfire of his violoncello, and burn his music-books ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... rain on Thursday. Indeed the evening was an ideal one for a long gallop, with an open-air supper to follow. This was to be cooked and eaten around a big bonfire that would take the chill off the spring air and keep the mosquitoes at a respectful distance. Most of the Moonshiners belonged to the Golf Club, and they had gotten permission to have their fire in a secluded little grove behind the course. Babbie, who had organized the Moonshiners and was ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... conducted as a gentleman's should be, and I will no longer suffer my wife to make herself the object of ridicule to all her servants. So I'll give up the folly of wishing to be thought a tender husband, for the real honour of being found a respectable one. I'll make a glorious bonfire of all your musty collection of family receipt-books! and when I deliver up your keys to an honest housekeeper, I'll keep one back of a snug apartment in which to deposit a ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... hist! Ah, the young mistress? That's well. Hist! I say again." The boy entered the room. "I'm in time to save you. In half an hour your house will be broken into, perhaps burned. The boys are clapping their hands now at the thoughts of the bonfire. Father and all the neighbours are getting ready. Hark! hark! No, it is only the wind! The tymbesteres are to give note. When you hear their bells tinkle, the mob will meet. Run for your lives, you and the old man, and don't ever say it was poor Tim who told you this, for Father ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the day's experience had been, the climax came after camp was made, supper served and cleared away, when a big bonfire was lighted and all sat about it talking over the happenings of the day, singing and putting on stunts. In the tourists' minds the guide and the grizzly were classed together; both were wild, strange and somewhat of a curiosity. Nothing delighted ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... was not so. She tried to peer out of one of the windows. There was a bonfire at one side, and she thought she saw a tent. There were other wagons like the one in which they seemed ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... good!" thought Hans, as he took a little more breath. "They first counseled me to get a light—then went house and all in a bonfire; next, I must get a journeyman—then went the money; and now they would have me bring more plagues upon me than Moses brought upon Egypt. Nay, nay!" thought Hans; "you'll not catch ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... he built a bonfire out of the contents of the canoes, his blacks smashing, breaking, and looting everything they laid hands on. The canoes themselves, splintered and broken, filled with sand and coral- boulders, were towed out to ten ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... the world, but Daniel Boone, that young rebel, didn't even hear of it until the following August. Whereupon the fearless hunter with the abandon of a happy lad danced a jig around the bonfire inside the stockade. It could have been an Elizabethan jig, ironically enough, for the Boones were English. Daniel tossed his coonskin cap into the air again and again and let out a war whoop that brought the terrified Rebecca hurrying ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... England, and many curious customs are connected with it. In Herefordshire the farmers and servants used to meet together in the evening and walk to a field of wheat. There they lighted twelve small fires and one large one[2], and forming a circle round the huge bonfire, they raised a shout, which was answered from all the neighbouring fields and villages. At home the busy housewife was preparing a hearty supper for the men. After supper they adjourned to the ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... "But in th' las' few weeks it's had so manny things to think iv. Th' enthusyasm iv this counthry, Hinnissy, always makes me think iv a bonfire on an ice-floe. It burns bright so long as ye feed it, an' it looks good, but it don't take ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... pot may be set and potatoes may be boiled over another similar hole. You will find that it is far better to have a number of very tiny little fires entirely separated from each other, than one big bonfire which is almost sure to grow unmanageable. It will be seen that it is far easier to take a big piece of bacon (to be sliced after reaching the picnic grounds) a loaf or two of bread and raw potatoes than to spend hours in making sandwiches and ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... "You pluck it up by the roots, strip off the leaves and bark, shave off the knots, and smooth it at top and bottom; put it where you will, it will do no harm, it will never sprout. You may make a handle of it, or you may throw it on the bonfire of scoured rubbish. I don't see why our rubbish is to be held sacred any more than the rubbish of Brahmanism ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... were nevertheless successful. He made many converts and exercised an extraordinary influence,—among other things causing magicians voluntarily to burn their own costly books, as Savonarola afterward made a bonfire of vanities at Florence. His sojourn was cut short at length by the riot which was made by the various persons who were directly or indirectly supported by the revenues of the Temple,—a mongrel mob, brought to terms by the tact of the town clerk, who reminded the howling ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... four of the inmates lying drunk on the floor, the fires expiring, and Guyon Vidocq in a delirium of intoxication pulling everything to pieces— table, benches, etcetera—to pile them in the corner, and, then, as he said, light a real Christmas bonfire. John Bar immediately saw the danger that the poor creatures on the floor were in, and whilst he tried to get fires going in the stove and chimney-place as quickly as possible, he also exerted his influence to soothe Guyon Vidocq and make him cease his crazy work. But ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Charles I. had been thrown down, and had deliberately painted out with a brush the Republican inscription on the pedestal, "Exit tyrannus, Regum ultimus," a large crowd gathering round them and shouting "God bless Charles the Second" round an extemporized bonfire. That had been a signal; but for still another fortnight, though all knew what all were thinking, there had been a hesitation to speak out. It was in the end of March or the first days of April 1660, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... burnt I was settin' on the side stoop without anything over my head, just smellin' in the air, when I see a little pinky look on the sky beyond the track. It wasn't moon-time, an' they wa'n't nothin' to bonfire that time o' year, an' I set still, pretendin' it was rose-bushes makin' a ladder an' buildin' a way of escape by night. It was such a nice evenin' you couldn't imagine anything rilly happenin' bad. But all at once I heard the fire-engine bell poundin' away like all possessed—an' ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... working in watches of four hours each, in order to keep them fresh and vigorous,—and the lot where the new cellar was being constructed, where the masons continued their labors at night by the light of lanterns and a blazing bonfire fed with resinous pine. ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... the palace was blazing like a bonfire and the uproar outside was terrible. What was I to do? As I hesitated the arras at the further end of the hall was swept aside, a disordered mob of slaves bearing bundles and dragging Heru with them rushing down to the door near us. As Heru was carried swiftly by she stretched her milk-white arms ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... I pruned the shrubbery, and raked up the rubbish which the children carried by armfuls to our prospective bonfire. They soon wished to see the blaze, but I told them that the wind was too high, and that I did not propose to apply the match until we had a heap half as big as the house; that it might be several days before we should ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... swept and thrashed to and fro in the thundering wind like a thistle, and flamed in the full sunshine like a bonfire. The green, fantastic human figure, vivid against its autumn red and gold, was already among its highest and craziest branches, which by bare luck did not break with the weight of his big body. He was up there among the last tossing leaves ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... and soldiers, horse and foot, rumbled up from Dock towards the Citadel with treasure from some captured frigate. I could tell, too, of the great November Fair in the Market Place, and the rejoicings on the King's Jubilee, when I paid a halfpenny to go inside the huge hollow bonfire built on the Hoe: but all this would keep me from my story— for which I must hark back ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... disappeared. A man's foes were those of his own household. On the plea of religious zeal the most barbarous acts were committed. Spire Niquet, a poor bookbinder, whose scanty earnings barely sufficed to support the wants of his seven children, was half-roasted in a bonfire made of his own books, and then dragged to the river and drowned.[1018] The weaker sex was not spared in the universal carnage, and, as in a town taken by assault, suffered outrages that were worse ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... should lead to the regeneration of the world. At first he carried all before him, and at the Carnival of 1496 there were no more of the gorgeous exhibitions and reckless gayety which had pleased the people under Lorenzo the Magnificent. The next year the people were induced to make a great bonfire, in the spacious square before the City Hall, of all the "vanities" which stood in the way of a godly life—frivolous and immoral books, pictures, ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... Wallah-Wallah lived the hospitable tribe of the same name who had succored Mr. Crooks and John Day in the time of their extremity. No sooner did they hear of the arrival of the party, than they hastened to greet them. They built a great bonfire on the bank of the river, before the camp, and men and women danced round it to the cadence of their songs, in which they sang the praises of the white men, and welcomed them ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... had already visited them by their bonfire, had received their compliments, watched the sword dance and the dance of the clubs, touched with their lips, or pretended to touch, the stem of a keef, listened to a marriage song warbled by Ali to the accompaniment of a flute ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... they lie down in line on the pavement the whole of the night before the tickets are sold: generally taking up their position at about 10. It being severely cold at Brooklyn, they made an immense bonfire in the street—a narrow street of wooden houses—which the police turned out to extinguish. A general fight then took place; from which the people farthest off in the line rushed bleeding when they saw any chance of ousting others nearer the door, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... hand, and nothing would be able to quench it but her water, which therefore she kept so long, that her life was in danger, and she must needs have died of the retention, had they not found an expedient to make her evacuate, by kindling a bonfire under her chamber window and persuading her that the house was in flames: upon which, with great deliberation, she bade them bring all the tubs and vessels they could find to be filled for the preservation of the house, into one of which she immediately ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... if we can get a couple of hundred yards into this thick wood the fire would not be seen through it," Vincent said; "of course I do not mean to make a great bonfire which would ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... as well as themselves, and now they begin to talk loud of the King. To-night I am told, that yesterday, about five o'clock in the afternoon, one came with a ladder to the Great Exchange, and wiped with a brush the inscription that was on King Charles, and that there was a great bonfire made in the Exchange, and people called out "God bless King Charles ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... one and all, by destroying them by fire and sword, only the sword happened to be a penknife. They made a most excellent bonfire." ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... all souls that morning subconsciously divided the order of the festival into three periods; in the morning the Cathedral and its service, in the afternoon the social, friendly, man-to-man celebration, and in the evening, torch-light, bonfire, skies ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... were to proclaim our deathless sentiments in the ears of the retreating foe: the dogs were to wear ribbons, and later—but this depended on our powers of evasiveness and dissimulation—there might be a small bonfire, with a cracker or two, if the public funds could ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... individuals for their own advantage, part of which profit they use as capital for the production of more profit, with ever the same waste attached to it; and part as private riches or means for luxurious living, which again is sheer waste—is in fact to be looked on as a kind of bonfire on which rich men burn up the product of the labour they have fleeced from the workers beyond what they themselves can use. So I say that, in spite of our inventions, no worker works under the present system ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... to seaward met the General's eyes. The Saint-Ferdinand was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men told off to sink the Spanish brig had found a cargo of rum on board; and as the Othello was already amply supplied, had lighted a floating bowl of punch on the high seas, by way of a ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... cloth, Irish lace and orange blossoms, and wore no jewels. None but invited eyes were allowed to look at the grand ceremony which made the fair bride and the lord of Blarney castle one. Some tenants of the bridegroom got up a bonfire, had some barrels of beer given them to rejoice withal, and were dancing to the music produced by six fiddlers, when they were surrounded by a small army of disguised people, fired into, beaten and dispersed. The first accounts put the number of wounded at twenty, to-day they are reduced ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... of all this, the rumsellers of Tapville gave up; and, strange to say, joined with the people that night in their rejoicing, and made a bonfire of their ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... knife and his match-box, the Hunter went on to the Cave of Skulls. Luckily for the denizens of that ominous place, none of them were there to bar his entrance, for he was in a grim mood, so making a bonfire of some of the mats, he looked about. One calabash contained water, and this he carried back, together with something equally precious—a bunch of bananas that were black with smoke, yet fit to eat by any one who was very hungry ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... beyond the reach of hindrance, alone for the first time,—only then is his spirit released in floods of eloquence; then does his triumphant purpose break into speech, and his words soar up like the flames of a great bonfire of precious incense streaming upward in exultation and ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... The great bonfire that we made roared and crackled, sending out a most cheerful heat and light. Under that genial breath the color came slowly back to madam's cheek and lip, and her heart beat more strongly. Presently she turned under my hand, and with a sigh pillowed her head upon her ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... some stray Indians might happen along and make a bonfire of our house and mill we might plan for a month's visit ourselves," said ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... in for't, an we might's well go ahead." "Ye're right, Paul." "We'll git aout the hoss-fiddles an give em some mewsic." "We'll raise devil nuff fer em ter night." "Come on fellers." "Les give em a bonfire." ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... the Federal soldiers again came to our neighborhood and camped near the same place where I had first seen them; but, at this time, the scene excited in me entirely different emotions. Snow was on the ground; the weather was very cold; and the soldiers took rails and made a large bonfire to keep themselves warm. The sky was lit up with the flames, and to me, in my nervous condition, the ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... march in a body upon the little "Temple," and, armed with stones, proceed with shouts of merriment to smash out every spear of the crimson and orange and blue glass in the windows. They then demolished the rustic furniture and made of that a noble bonfire. Mrs. Carroll had indeed wondered, between fits of laughter, in her sweet drawl, if they ought to destroy the furniture, as it could not be said, strictly speaking, to belong to them to destroy, but she was promptly vetoed by all the ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... away, and the pile of the intended bonfire, despite the arrows and the frequent sallies of the Norsemen, continued slowly ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... of humming his musical recollections of these evenings was a source of great annoyance to Mr. James Carker, who devoutly wished 'that he would make a bonfire of his violoncello, and burn his books with it.' There was only a thin partition between the rooms which these two gentlemen occupied, and on another occasion Mr. Morfin performed an extraordinary feat in order to warn the manager of ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... nature is still the same you should instantly go out and make a bonfire of the works of Spencer, Darwin, and Wallace, and then return to enjoy the purely jocular side of the present volume. If you admit that it has changed, let me ask you how it has changed, unless by the continual infinitesimal efforts, upon themselves, of individual ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... being well, there will be no necessity to visit either Port Treherne or St. Mena's Island. Ach! When we have taken what we require we will set fire to the ship, and the English will have a splendid view of a maritime bonfire." ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... category, Master Pothier?" Philibert spoke doubtingly, for a more self-complacent face than his companion's he never saw—every wrinkle trembled with mirth; eyes, cheeks, chin, and brows surrounded that jolly red nose of his like a group of gay boys round a bonfire. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sport for their sailors to see me struggle for my very life." The man stopped and his face grew very grave and stern. "Then they said they were coming into Cape Cod Harbor, and that I should be their pilot. They said they would make a good bonfire of the shanties of the settlement. And then, child, I misled them. I laughed and said, ''Tis a settlement of good Royalists if ever there was one.' They would scarce believe me. But they came into harbor, and when the men proved civil ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... gray mist. So swift was their flight, however, that in an instant they emerged from the cloud into the moonlight again. Once a high-soaring eagle flew right against the invisible Perseus. The bravest sights were the meteors that gleamed suddenly out as if a bonfire had been kindled in the sky and made the moonshine pale for as much as a ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... a bonfire no doubt appears to you, boys, to be only fine fun, and you think Lloyd a very lucky fellow to have the chance. But a bonfire in the street, on a summer night, or down in a vacant lot, is a very different matter from Lloyd's work, alone, on a December night, with the salt water plashing ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... battleships have been bombarding Chunuk—chucking shells into it from the Aegean side of the Peninsula—and a huge column of smoke is rising up into the evening sky. A proper bonfire on the very altar ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... September I took charge again, that the children might have the full experience. In my memory lingers a most vivid picture of a cold November afternoon when we gathered what remained of the crops, cleaned off the beds, heaped the refuse in the center of the garden, and had a most glorious bonfire, though it was not election day. We watched the last spark die out, closed the gate, and with regretful steps wended our way back to the schoolroom, to await ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... primitive crematories, I stopped to interview the man in charge. Boards, water-soaked mattresses, rags of blankets and curtains, part of a piano, baby-carriages, and the framework of sewing-machines, piled on top, gave it the appearance of a festive bonfire, and only the familiar ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... series of experiments conducted by the War Office Chemical Committee on Explosives in 1891, it was conclusively shown that considerable quantities of cordite may be burnt away without explosion. A number of wooden cases, containing 500 to 600 lbs. each of cordite, were placed upon a large bonfire of wood, and burned for over a quarter of an hour without explosion. At Woolwich in 1892 a brown paper packet containing ten cordite cartridges was fired into with a rifle (.303) loaded with cordite, without the explosion of a single one of them, which shows its insensibility ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... sentence; warrant, edict; — de fe, public punishment by the Inquisition, often a public burning; (hence) a great fire, a bonfire, ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... province. He was a marvellous preacher, and easily attracted many followers, though some of the forms taken by the new religion were indescribable. The believers of both sexes were in the habit of assembling in an open field, in the midst of which a bonfire was lighted. They would form a chain and dance round the fire, praying for their sins to be forgiven, as they had repented of them. Gradually the fire would die out, and the leader then launched his command—"Now, my children, give yourselves up ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... devoted satellites went off in the direction where the bonfire was to be made; and Merry, walking ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... was frightened, no doubt. We don't have fracases at Font Abbey. On this one spot of earth comfort reigns, and balmy peace, and shall reign unruffled while I live. The passions are not admitted here, sir. Gracious Heaven forbid! I'd as soon see a bonfire in the middle of my dining-room as ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade |
