"Coffin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... defenceless. When the church was reached They laid their chief before the altar-lights: Anon to heaven rang out the priestly dirge, And incense-smoke upcurled. Forth from its cloud Sudden upleaped the dead man, club in hand, Spurning his coffin's gilded walls, and smote The hoary pontiff down, and brake his neck; And all those maskers doffed their weeds of woe And showed the mail beneath, and raised their swords, And drowned that pavement in a sea of blood, While raging rushed ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... raise between her and him an impenetrable wall. From words, even though they be as sharp as sword-edges, some sound may be got, some slight hope of salvation; but silence, concealing hidden knowledge of a deed, is a coffin in which, from the first hour of each day to the end of it, that woman's pride will be placed with all that in her may still be human. Contempt as silent as the grave! She will eat of his millions, seasoned with his contempt. ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... for Monsieur Thomas Scott. You will find occupation for your sweet little fingers in putting fresh roses upon the mound that covers him. For a feu-de-joie and the peal of glad marriage bells, I will give you, ma petite chere, the sullen toll that calls him to his open coffin, and the rattle of musketry that stills the tongue which uttered to you the ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... stone, with spacious galleries on each side, having a small beautiful turret at each corner, arched over head, and covered with fine marble. Between corner and corner are four other turrets at equal distances. Here, within a golden coffin, reposes the body of the late monarch, who sometimes thought the world too small for him. It is nothing near finished, after ten years labour, although there are continually employed on the mausoleum and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... circuit of my father's acquaintance, cap in hand, and begging to sweep offices! No, by Napoleon! I would die at my chosen trade; and the two who had that day flouted me should live to envy my success, or to weep tears of unavailing penitence behind my pauper coffin. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the school had shaped the coffin and carved the figure for the stone. A girlish teacher read the Church Services for the dead; and the children's voices rose a thin tremulous treble in the funeral hymn around the grave. Wild flowers covered the casket, pearl everlasting and the wind flower and the white Canada violet and ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... die," said the child gravely, "will they put you in a coffin and carry you away and put you in the ground and cover you ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... and manhood come in vain, And genius given, and knowledge won in vain; And all which I had culled in woodwalks wild, And all which patient toil had reared, and all Commune with thee had opened out—but flowers Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier, In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!"[1] ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... not only bring in heavy returns as timber, but so enrich the ground on which they grow, by the decayed spicula or spines which fall from them, as to increase its value in the course of some years eight or tenfold. The Duke was buried in a coffin made of larch-wood! This sounds as if the merits of the larch-tree had been indeed a hobby with him, but when one comes to enumerate them one does not wonder that a man should feel his life very usefully devoted to establishing ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... "Beata." It was just eight months tonight since she had taken her first vows, and she had been honestly aware that there was no very clear line of demarcation in her fervent young mind between her love of Sister Dominica and her love of God. Tonight, almost prostrate before the coffin of the dead nun, she knew that so far at least all the real passion of her youth had flowed in an undeflected tide about the feet of that remote and exquisite being whose personal charm alone had made ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... fell ill and died suddenly there in the deep woods. We were far from any village, and sorrow slowed our steps. We pushed on, coming soon to a sawmill and a small settlement. They told us there was neither minister nor undertaker within forty miles. My father and D'ri made the coffin of planed lumber, and lined it with deerskin, and dug the grave on top of a high hill. When all was ready, my father, who had always been much given to profanity, albeit I know he was a kindly and honest man with no irreverence in his heart, called ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... instance of the all-pervading espionage of the slave power I may mention. The newly appointed postmaster of Philadelphia employed, among his numerous clerks and letter-carriers, Joshua Coffin, who, some three years ago, aided in restoring to liberty a free colored citizen of New York, who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. The appointment of the postmaster not being confirmed, he wrote to his friends in Congress to inquire the reason, and was told ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... thieves; if they didn't line their pockets they simply suffered the corporation to play 'em for a pack of damphools. As neither a thief nor a fool is fit to hold a public office, I move that we build a large zinc-lined political coffin and ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... was bishop of Lindisfarne for two years, having exchanged sees with bishop Eata, who went to Hexham. The stone coffin in which St. Cuthbert's body was pieced, after his death on Farne Island, was buried on the right side of the altar in the Abbey of Lindisfarne, which by this time had arisen on the little island. A later bishop, ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... would gladly be their Tyrant's ape; How must he smile, and turn to yon lone grave, The proudest Sea-mark that o'ertops the wave! 100 What though his gaoler, duteous to the last, Scarce deemed the coffin's lead could keep him fast, Refusing one poor line[271] along the lid, To date the birth and death of all it hid; That name shall hallow the ignoble shore, A talisman to all save him who bore: The fleets that sweep before the eastern blast Shall hear their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... nice, lying in his silver-white coffin, covered with flowers, and a bunch of lilies and wild pear-blossoms on his bosom. We trust that he was one of the blessed meek who shall inherit the earth. We were all with him when he breathed his last, the Bishop, and the Principal ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray
... cart had been prepared for the purpose; that the time of departure could be arranged so that he should reach London Bridge at dusk, and proceed through the City after the day had closed in; that people would be ready at his journey's end to place the coffin in a vault without a minute's delay; that officious inquirers in the streets would be easily repelled by the tale that he was carrying for interment the corpse of one who had died of the plague; and in short showed him every reason why he should succeed, and none why he should fail. After ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... alone in the quiet presence of death, the end of all hurly-burly and confusion. It is quite possible that under the high, still light in the round church, with its four niche-like chapels, you may see, draped in black, that thing which no one ever mistakes for anything else; and round about the coffin a dozen tall wax candles may be burning with a steady yellow flame. Possibly, at the sound of the leathern curtain slapping the stone door-posts, as it falls behind you, a sad-looking sacristan may shuffle out of a dark corner to see who has ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... appellation, the learned Camden [18] confesses himself ignorant; so that the style carries no certain marks of its age. I shall only observe farther, on this head, that the characters are nearly of the same form with those on king Arthur's coffin; but whether, from their similitude, we may venture to pronounce them of the same date, I must refer to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... but a presidential election was approaching and there was political capital to be made by defending "Old Hickory." From boyhood Douglas had idolized Andrew Jackson. With much the same boyish indignation which led him to tear down the coffin handbills in old Brandon, he now sprang to the defense of his hero. The case had been well threshed already. Jackson had been defended eloquently, and sometimes truthfully. A man of less audacity would have hesitated to swell this tide of eloquence, and at first, it seemed as ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... they swung the dogs into a cluster of spruce trees on the edge of the waterway and made a camp. The coffin, at the side of the fire, served for seat and table. The wolf-dogs, clustered on the far side of the fire, snarled and bickered among themselves, but evinced no inclination to stray off into ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... of croup, an agonised watching, and the tiny thing lay dead. Antoinette and I had to drag it stone cold from Carlotta's bosom. I alone carried it to burial. The little white coffin rested on the opposite seat of the hired brougham, and on it was a bunch of white flowers given by Antoinette. In the cemetery chapel another fragment of humanity awaited sepulture, and the funeral service ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... famous Norwegian who died in Paris—the chaplain of the Swedish legation made an oration in which he praised the departed statesman and scientist, referring to him constantly as "our countryman." When he had finished, Jonas Lie, without anybody's invitation, stepped quietly up to the coffin and in the name of Norway bade his countryman a last farewell. "The spirit came over Lie," says his biographer, "and he ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... bad man. All these were enticing, but we hoped to do better, and I began to blush for the somewhat thin plot of Tristram Shandy and to be thankful that my copy was not in Italian. Finally he took La Mano del Defunto: at the back of a sepulchral chamber in a violated coffin, from which the lid had been removed, lay the body of a woman, shockingly disarranged, over the edge hung her right arm, the hand had been cut off and was being carried away by a city gent in tall hat, unbuttoned frock coat, jaunty ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... thence he seems to have gone to Karna, to visit the tomb of the prophet Esdras; then he entered Persia and sojourned at Chuzestan, a large town, partly in ruins, which the river Tigris divides into two parts, one rich the other poor, joined by a bridge, over which hangs the coffin of Daniel the prophet. He went to Amaria, which is the boundary of Media, where he says the impostor David-el-roi appeared, the worker of false miracles, who is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ, but called among the Jews of that part by the former name. Then he went to Hamadan, where ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... breaking heart. Only two months! It seems as if I had known her for years. Was that look always in her eyes? Will it always remain there? Oh, God! if I could change it, if I could be the means——Yes; I'd ask for nothing more, nothing better, but just to see her happy. They might carry my coffin down the stairs as soon as ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... of Upper Austria, were kneeling there in their peasant garb with the emperor in their midst, and surrounded by the glittering uniforms of the archdukes, the princes, the generals, cabinet ministers and ambassadors assembled around the coffin. There was no undue exaltation or timidity on the part of the peasants, no undue condescension or contempt on the part either of emperor or dignitaries for the lowly rank of their fellow mourners. All seemed thoroughly to realize that they were equal ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... You can make a splendid record if God spares your life. I would gladly give all I possess to stand where you do to-day, and live my life over again. I can't do it. The past is irrevocable. But one can always repent. George, believe me, your mother would rather see you in your coffin than see you come home again as you did last ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... butt in an' tell folk they wasn't nailin' up your coffin right," he cried angrily. "Will you kep that instrument o' foolishness o' yours quiet ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... two brick houses on the east side of Washington Street, south of Prince. In one of these he died in 1804, aged seventy-six years. Dr. Dick attended John Harper in his last illness and was paid sixty-five dollars by the executors for this service. Wine for the funeral was eleven dollars, the coffin and case cost twenty-six dollars, and the bellman received one dollar for crying property to be sold. Captain John Harper lies buried in the cemetery of the old Presbyterian meetinghouse near two of his daughters, Mrs. John C. ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... cremation, they bury the body, but exhume it for burning when their financial condition permits. On the day of the cremation, which is usually fixed by an astrologer, the remains are transferred from the jar to a wooden coffin and carried with much pomp to the meru, or place of cremation. When the deceased is of royal or noble blood the meru is frequently a magnificent structure, sometimes costing many thousands of dollars, built for the purpose and torn down when that purpose has been served. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... feeble, in beggars' rags, with beggars' bowls, sunning themselves side by side on the cliffs, telling old stories and cackling shrill-voiced like children. And Tromp would maunder over and over of how Johannes Maartens and the cunies robbed the kings on Tabong Mountain, each embalmed in his golden coffin with an embalmed maid on either side; and of how these ancient proud ones crumbled to dust within the hour while the cunies cursed and sweated at ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... following are the chief points in the funeral rite as prescribed in the Roman Ritual. The corpse is borne in procession with lights to the church. The parish priest assists in surplice and black stole; the clerks carry the holy water and cross; the coffin is first sprinkled with holy water and the psalm De Profundis recited; then the corpse is carried to the church while the Miserere is said.... Candles are lighted round the coffin, and the office and Mass of the dead, followed by absolution, accompanied by aspersion ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... into the house cold, lifeless, dead. She had fallen down unconscious in the garden. The doctor certified that life was extinct. I watched by her side for a day and two nights. I laid her with my own hands in the coffin, which I accompanied to the cemetery, where she was deposited in the family vault. It is situated in the very heart ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... her nose in his mouth[FN236] so that she might know whether he who was in his coffin breathed, and she examined the wound[FN237] of the heir of the god, and she found that there was poison in it. She threw her arms round him, and then quickly she leaped about with him like fish when they are laid upon ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... pyramid is of much smaller dimensions than the two others, but beautifully constructed. It was the work, as is proved by the discovery of his name, of Mycerinus or Mencheres, whose wooden coffin in the British Museum, very simple, and unornamented, as well as the desiccated body, supposed to be that of the monarch himself, has probably attracted the notice of our readers. This pyramid is double, i. e., eased over with a distinct ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... was tormented by this fear, of the Kiddy's not holding out, of her just missing it; of every week being one more nail hammered, as she had once said, into the Kiddy's little coffin; and it was with a poignant premonition that she received a message from Addy Ranger in the morning. Miss Ranger was down-stairs; she had something to say to Miss Lempriere; she must see her. She couldn't come up; she hadn't ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... and was gathered to Osiris. With these hands I closed his coffin and set him in his splendid tomb, where he shall rest unharmed for ever till the day of the awakening. And Meriamun and Meneptah reigned in Khem. But to Pharaoh she was very cold, though he did her will in everything, ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... a niche above the sarcophagus, or stone coffin, in which his body was laid. On the top of the sarcophagus are two reclining figures called Dawn and Twilight. The tomb itself is in a chapel, or sacristy, called the New Sacristy (to distinguish it from one still older), in the Church of S. Lorenzo, Florence. ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... his eyes, and dropped the other as a signal for his executioners, who fired a volley so decisive, that five balls passed through his body, and he dropped down dead in an instant. The time in which this tragedy was acted, from his walking out of the cabin to his being deposited in the coffin, did not exceed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the door. It seemed as if some people were bringing a bulky piece of furniture upstairs and knocking against the walls as they did so. Suddenly I understood, as I heard Marguerite begin to sob; it was the coffin. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... one of general mourning, the city edifices draped, bells tolled, and minute guns fired. In the procession was General Grant, then President of the United States, with the members of his Cabinet, many military and naval officers, ten thousand soldiers, and a large number of societies. By these the coffin of the admiral was escorted to the railroad station, whence it was transported to Woodlawn Cemetery, in Westchester County, where ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... any living thing in the miserable hovel, except the old fellow. On two low trestles, in the middle of the floor, lay a coffin with the lid on, on the top of which was stretched the dead body of an old emaciated woman in her graveclothes, the quality of which was much finer than one could have expected to have seen in the midst of the surrounding squalidness. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... others, realizing all the while that his father had lived long enough. He had had a successful life, and had fallen like a ripe apple from the tree. Lester looked at him where he lay in the great parlor, in his black coffin, and a feeling of the old-time affection swept over him. He smiled at the clean-cut, determined, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... common-sense, who never fails to pay his bills, if he is a merchant, a man who has been able to escape death, or what perhaps is more trying, sickness, by the observation of a certain easy but daily regimen, is completely and duly nailed up between the four planks of his coffin, after having said every evening: "Dear me! to-morrow I will not forget my pills!" How are we to explain this magic spell which rules all the affairs of life? Do men submit to it from a want of energy? Men who have the strongest wills are subject ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... is commonly called the knee of a horse is its wrist. The 'cannon bone' answers to the middle bone of the five metacarpal bones which support the palm of the hand in ourselves. The pastern, coronary, and coffin bones of veterinarians answer to the joints of our middle fingers, while the hoof is simply a greatly enlarged and thickened nail. But if what lies below the horse's 'knee' thus corresponds to the middle finger in ourselves, what has become of ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... tumbled one upon another. Long and often have I lingered there with empty pockets. One figure, we shall say, was visible in the first plate of characters, bearded, pistol in hand, or drawing to his ear the clothyard arrow; I would spell the name: was it Macaire, or Long Tom Coffin, or Grindoff, 2d dress? O, how I would long to see the rest! how—if the name by chance were hidden—I would wonder in what play he figured, and what immortal legend justified his attitude and strange apparel! And then to go within, to announce yourself as an intending purchaser, and, closely ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me seem to be virtuous, or earnest, or under sorrow for sin." Depend upon it, Sappho loved her verses more sincerely than she did Phaon, and Petrarch his sonnets better than Laura, who was indeed but his poetical stalking-horse. After you shall have once heard that muffled rattle of clods on the coffin-lid of an irreparable loss, you will grow acquainted with a pathos that will make all elegies hateful. When I was of your age, I also for a time mistook my desire to write verses for an authentic call of my nature in that direction. But one day as I was going forth for a walk, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... sent letters also to his sons-in-law, the Infantes of Aragon and Navarre, and to King Don Alfonso. And they moved on from Salvacaete and came to Osma, and then Alvar Faez asked of Doa Ximena if they should not put the body of the Cid into a coffin covered with purple and with nails of gold; but she would not, for she said that while his countenance remained so fresh and comely, and his eyes so fair, his body should never be placed in a coffin, and that her children should see the face of their father; ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... come back when they buried him the second time. They were letting the coffin down in the grave when they buried him the first time, and he knocked at it on the inside, knock, knock. (Here the old lady rapped on the doorsill with her knuckles—ed.) They drew that coffin up and opened it. How do I know? I was there. I heard it and seen it. They took ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... the male choirs, for the reason that the absence of the bass voice leaves their harmony without sufficient foundation. Generally, music for these choirs is written for three parts, two sopranos and contralto, with the result that it hovers, suspended like Mahomet's coffin, between heaven and earth. When a fourth part is added it is a second contralto, which is generally carried down to the tones that are hollow ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... age could hope to be. At last Innocent VIII feared lest the orthodox faith should suffer by this new cult of a heathen corpse. Julia was buried secretly and at night by his direction, and naught remained in the Capitol but her empty marble coffin. The tale, as told by Infessura, is repeated in Matarazzo and in Nantiporto with slight variations. One says that the girl's hair was yellow, another that it was of the glossiest black. What foundation for the legend may really have existed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... dry-eyed, as they carried it away. It seemed like a coffin. Only Mammy Easter guessed at the pain in Virginia's breast, and that was because there was a pain in her own. They took the rosewood what-not, but Virginia snatched the songs before the men could touch them, and held them in her arms. They seized the mahogany velvet-bottomed chairs, her uncle's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... rest in a coffin simply inscribed "Mark Lemon—Editor of Punch;" for in Punch he had lived his life. "He believed," said Mr. Hatton, "in one God, one woman, one publication," as his surviving colleagues well knew. "If this journal," they wrote by the hand of Shirley Brooks, "has had the good ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... managed everywhere but at Charing Cross, no matter what hardship to royalty it involves. Neither has any other station a modern copy of a Queen Eleanor's Cross, but this is doubtless because no other station was the last of these points where her coffin was set down on its way from Lincoln to its final restingplace in Westminster. You cannot altogether regret their lack after you have seen such an original cross as that of Northampton, for though the Victorian piety which replaced the monument at Charing Cross was faithful ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... great enjoyment, while the tradesmen hurriedly shut up their shops; for a crowd in those times stopped at nothing, and was a monster much dreaded. They had already got the length of opening the hearse to take the coffin out, when some brighter genius proposed instead, its being escorted to its destination amidst general rejoicing. Practical suggestions being much needed, this suggestion, too, was received with acclamation, and the coach was immediately filled with eight inside ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Wouldst thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home That weep'st to see me triumph. Ah! my dear, Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear, And mothers ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... of the last forty years we run across such entries as these:—"Wyllie at the forge," "Wyllie making nails," "Wyllie straightening the fowling-pieces," "Wyllie making sled-runners," "This day Wyllie made a coffin for an Indian." We step into the old man's smithy, and he turns to greet us with an outstretched hand and a "Good mornin'," in richest Doric. The date 1863 cut into the wooden foundation of his forge marks the year when Wyllie came to Chipewyan. He was born in the Orkneys, and had ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... silver coffin plate once at an auction over to the Ridge for almost nothin' and your pa was as mad as a wet hen. There was a name on it, but it could have been scraped off, and the rest of it was perfectly good. When ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, "God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence." So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old. And they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... churchyard, they found the old sexton beside the grave, leaning on his spade, ready to fill it again at the shortest notice. The vicar put on his bands, and read the funeral service. "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, but the spirit to God who gave it." The coffin was lowered into its narrow house and the earth thrown upon it, while the minister of Christ exhorted ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... other, belonging to the Swiss regiment of Karrer, was, according to the law of his nation, followed by the officers of the Swiss troops in the service of France, sawed in two parts. He was placed alive in a kind of coffin, to the middle of which two sergeants applied a whip saw. It was not thought prudent to make any allowance for the provocation ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... rejoiced him that he found strength to sit up and call his mother. To her he then for the first time related the story of his bridal, and he showed her the ink-stone which had been given him. He asked that it should be placed in his coffin,—and ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... looked uncomfortable. "He's got a pull, by Jove! He made that journey to France—and cracked me up to the Marquise—and wheedled her round—when all the while he must have known that he was hammering nails into his own coffin. He did it, too, after I'd insulted him and we'd had ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... to the grave by many of her relatives and friends, the royal carriages forming part of the funeral procession. The coffin was adorned with garlands of laurel and cypress and palm branches, sent by the Crown-Princess from Herrnhausen; and the service was conducted in that same garrison-church in which, nearly a century before, she had been christened, and afterwards confirmed. And, as proving her love and fidelity to ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... stop lasted only a few minutes. Nuwell refused an invitation to remain overnight, explaining that he was anxious to get on to Mars City. The others unloaded Dark's coffin and moved with it back toward the building. Nuwell and Maya climbed back into the copter, and shortly they were airborne again and the buildings of the Canfell Hydroponic Farm were receding behind ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... struggle. The faces of all were bleeding and bruised, and blood was splashed over the white sort of overall that the natives wear. To the left of Sambo Claud saw an open tomb. Inside he could just see a kind of coffin arrangement, and on the ground, near at hand, the most varied collection of brass and other beautiful Eastern wares. This was the cause ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... was Hannah's mahogany bed, which had been stripped. On the bed lay a massive oaken coffin, and, accurately fitted into the coffin, lay the withered remains of Meshach's slave. The prim and spotless bedroom, with its chest of drawers, its small glass, its three-cornered wardrobe, its narrow washstand, its odd bonnet-boxes, its trunk, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... there's that man they were speaking of; he lived down my way. He sued a poor, shiftless fellow that had come from Pennsylvania to his daughter's funeral, and had him arrested and taken off, crying, just before the funeral begun—after they 'd even set the flowers on the coffin; and nobody'd speak to him after that—they just let him alone; and after a while his wife took sick of it—she was a nice, kindly woman—and she had sort of hysterics, and finally he moved off West. And 't was n't long before the woman ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... afraid of her own sorcery, because, so many times, that which she had seen had come true. Once, when a child was ill, she had gazed into the crystal and seen the little white coffin that, a week later, was carried out of the front door. Again, she had seen the vision of a wedding which was unexpectedly fulfilled later, when a passing cousin begged the hospitality of her house for ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... friend's advice as to what relics they should endeavour to secure. Hildwall told him that interred in the cathedral were the bones of St Apothemius, a bishop, of whom nothing was known save that he was a saint. His bones lay in a stone coffin which had a heavy lid. Hildwall added that several monks had attempted to steal the relics, but in vain. Convoyon and his monks bided their time for three days, and then on a dark night, armed with crowbars, they set out ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... glass. "Truth in a golden flask! But, to throw a sop to your curiosity, it was a matter of native genius engineered by Providence. I don't mind admitting that when I stood on the doorstep of this house fifteen nights ago and knocked the mystic knock, I felt like a man embarking on a coffin-ship." He stopped to ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... narrative had reference to a very large and very valuable oval gem enclosed in the substance of a golden chalice, which chalice, in the monastery of St. Edmundsbury, had once lain centuries long within the Loculus, or inmost coffin, wherein reposed the body of St. Edmund. By pressing a hidden pivot, the cup (which was composed of two equal parts, connected by minute hinges) sprang open, and in a hollow space at the bottom was disclosed the gem. Sir Jocelin Saul, I may say, was lineally connected with—though, of ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... dead, and then bring their alabaster boxes of affection and break them. They keep silent about their love when words would mean so much, would give such cheer, encouragement, and hope, and then, when the friend lies in the coffin, their lips are unsealed, and speak out their glowing tribute on ears that heed not the ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... of the chapel the body lay in state throughout this and the succeeding day. The coffin was covered with evergreens and flowers, and the face of the dead was uncovered that all might look for the last time on the pale features of the illustrious soldier. The body was dressed in a simple suit of black, and the appearance of the face was perfectly natural. Great crowds visited the ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... retreating Danes, cut off from their ships, made their last fruitless stand against the Saxon sheriff and the valiant men of Devon. Within that charmed rock, so Torridge boatmen tell, sleeps now the old Norse Viking in his leaden coffin, with all his fairy treasure and his crown of gold; and as the boy looks at the spot, he fancies, and almost hopes, that the day may come when he shall have to do his duty against the invader as boldly as the men of Devon did then. And past him, far below, upon the soft ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... lady to judge for herself, and not, after inquiry on inquiry, regardless of all warnings, go out on the first appearance of a strip of blue sky, and come home wet through, with what she calls "only a chill," but which really means a nail driven into her coffin—a probable shortening, though it may be a very small one, of her mortal life; because the food of the next twenty-four hours, which should have gone to keep the vital heat at its normal standard, will have to be ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... imagined myself buried alive. Methought I had fallen into seeming death, and my friends had consigned me to the tomb, from which a resurrection was impossible. That, in such a case, my limbs would have been confined to a coffin, and my coffin to a grave, and that I should instantly have been suffocated, did not occur to destroy my supposition. Neither did this supposition overwhelm me with terror or prompt my efforts at deliverance. My state was full of tumult and confusion, and my attention was incessantly ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... not approved of Hawkins's plans of attack, and the venture was being bungled. Sick of the equatorial fever, or of chagrin from failure, Drake died off Porto Bello in the fifty-first year of his age. His body {167} was placed in a leaden coffin, and solemnly committed to that sea where he had won his ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... the loss of his reason. The Neighbours were very kind, and took upon themselves the burden of everything connected with the funeral. As for Fink himself, he seemed to take everything for granted, and interfered with nothing. When the time arrived for fastening down the coffin lids, I could not bear to permit that ceremony to be performed without affording him an opportunity of kissing the dead lips of his darling for the last time. I gently led him up to the side of the bed upon which the two coffins were placed. At ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... respecting the place he wished to be selected for his burial; directed how to arrange his hands and feet, and how to wrap him in his robes, for he could have no coffin. While one was to read the burial service the other was gently to toll the small chapel bell which he bore with him on his mission. The canoe was gliding along near the shore, as the father gave these instructions, reclining upon ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... good she was to you. There will never be another Helen. There is one who has a heartache about her and no one knows it except himself and me. She refused him a few days before she was taken ill. He stood a long time and looked at her in her coffin, as if he forgot that any one was looking at him. I told him it was of no use to ask her, but he persisted. She had told me several times that he was disagreeable to her. Her mother wonders who will take her place to us all, and ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... in 's bed, Sat'day morning," Master Gammon added, and, warmed upon the subject, went on: "He's that stiff, folks say, that stiff he is, he'll have to get into a rounded coffin: he's just like half a hoop. He was all of a heap, like. Had a fight with 's bolster, and got th' wust of it. But, be 't the seizure, or be 't gout in 's belly, he's gone clean dead. And he wunt buy th' Farm, nether. Shutters is all shut ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bit to the doctor for both times," he murmured; "and there's the coffin, and something at the Heart of Oak for the bearers, and a couple of bottles red wine there, too, for the missus, when she were so bad. And both the boys had new shoes to follow in,—she would have it they should follow"— ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... quietly died, worn out in body, and "passed to where beyond these voices there is peace." His students in the University of Basle, where, in spite of the opposition from Geneva, he had been Professor of Greek for ten years, bore his coffin in honour on their shoulders to his grave, and his little band of disciples devoted themselves to spreading, in Holland and wherever {103} they could find soil for it, the precious seed of his truth, which had in later years a very ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... expense of the parish. Fortunately his prospects weren't so bad, he had said. They could both die peacefully whenever the time came—there was the cabin, the boat, the tools and other gear, and finally the land itself—these would surely fetch enough to meet the cost of coffin and funeral service, as well as a cup of coffee for anyone who would put himself out so far as to accept their hospitality on that occasion. But now, contrary to custom, his father had not proved an oracle—he was dead and everything else had gone ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... panelling and shields of arms, and surmounted by the figures of Sir Thomas and Lady (Eleanor) Markenfield; and adjoining this tomb (which formerly stood within the aisle) is the lid of a thirteenth century stone coffin on the floor. In the aisle stands another altar-tomb, which has the sides panelled and adorned with shields of arms and bears the figure of an earlier Sir Thomas Markenfield, clad in armour of the period between Poitiers and Agincourt, and wearing a very curious collar of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... the next day. Behind Ramel's coffin, not a person followed. Himself, Garnier, and one or two old women from the house on Rue Boursault, who did not go all the way to the cemetery of Saint-Ouen because it was too far, were all that were present. At the grave Sulpice Vaudrey stood alone with the grave-digger ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... up to the white taper spire to catch the next sound. One stroke. It was a death, then,—and of a man. We listened for the age tolled from the belfry. Fifty-five. Who had departed? The sexton crossed the green on his way to the shop to make the coffin, and informed us. Our bats and balls had lost their interest for us; we did not even ask our tally-man, who cut notches for us on a stick, how the game stood. For Squire Walter Kinloch was the most considerable man in our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... was very frightened at her words, and lay absolutely still while the undertaker came and measured him for his coffin; and his wife gave orders to the gravedigger about his grave. That evening the coffin was sent home, and in the morning at nine o'clock the woman put him on a long flannel garment, and called to the undertaker's men to fasten down the lid and carry him to the grave, where all their ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... of mine can convey all the sensations I experienced as I sat there, forced to listen to the moaning and groaning of the woman whose fate had been entrusted to my keeping. Every second she grew worse, and each sound rang in my ears like the hammering of nails in her coffin. How long I endured such torment I cannot say, I dare not think, for, though the clock was within a few feet of me, I never once thought of looking at it. At last the child rose, and, moving slowly from the bed, advanced with bowed head towards the window. The spell was broken. With ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... consider you. At the first offence you got a note with the one word "Beware!" written upon it; at the second, another note with the word "Blood" written underneath a skull and crossbones; and at the third you received a note with the word "Deth," and underneath was the drawing of a coffin. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... in it." Investigator Group. Pearson's Island, after Flinders' brother-in-law. Ward's Island, after his mother's maiden name. Flinders' Island, after Lieutenant S.W. Flinders. Cape (now Point) Drummond, after Captain Adam Drummond, R.N. Point Sir Isaac, Coffin's Bay, after Vice-Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin. Mount Greenly, Greenly Isles, after the lady to whom Sir Isaac Coffin was engaged. Point Whidbey, Whidbey's Islands, after "My worthy friend the Master-attendant at Sheerness." Avoid Bay and Point, "from its being exposed to the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... marry Charlotte, we shall live here together all our lives, and die here," thought Barnabas, as he went up the hill. "I shall lie in my coffin in the north room, and it will all be over," but his heart leaped with joy. He stepped out proudly like a soldier in a battalion, he threw back his shoulders ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the bad man grew purple. "That'll be about enough from both of you. But I'll say this: when I get ready to settle with Mr. Beaudry you can order his coffin." ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... said before, at the very instant the corpse of this ill-fated young lady was being borne to the grave. He was stopped by the crowd occasioned by this solemn procession. He contemplates it for some time. He observes a long train of persons in mourning, and remarks the coffin to be covered with a white pall, and that there are chaplets of flowers laid upon the coffin. He inquires whose funeral it is. The answer he receives is, that it is the funeral of a young lady. Unfortunately for ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... The coffin was lowered, the ropes gave out a creaking sound, and there came a little thud—the last. Beauchene, supported by a relative, looked on with dim, vacant eyes. Constance, who had had the bitter courage to come, and had now wept all the tears in her body, almost fainted. ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... wou'd Heaven allow,' said she, 'that I shou'd at once feel the loss of the only two in the world I hold most dear; I'd rather hang up the dead body of the one, than be the wicked instrument of the other's death.' Upon which she order'd her husband's body to be taken out of the coffin, and fixt to the cross, in the room of that which was wanting: Our souldier pursued the directions of the discreet lady, and the next day the people wonder'd for what reason that body was hung on ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... metamorphoses all nature into it. In that "Hydriotaphia" or Treatise on some Urns dug up in Norfolk—how earthy, how redolent of graves and sepulchres is every line! You have now dark mould, now a thigh-bone, now a scull, then a bit of mouldered coffin! a fragment of an old tombstone with moss in its "hic jacet";—a ghost or a winding sheet—or the echo of a funeral psalm wafted on a November wind! and the gayest thing you shall meet with shall ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... hundreds of the sisterhood, and the Major described the scene as terrible. The women were seized with hysterics, and burst into shrieks and sobs. They even tried to open the coffin in order to kiss the dead girl ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... I said, "that any wife can hoodwink any husband if she wants to do so. No woman's such a fool but she's equal to that. In your case, however, you've got a partner that would sooner die and drop into her coffin than do anything to bring a frown to her husband's face, or a pang to his heart; while as for Solomon Chuff, he's far ways off the sort of man you think him, a more decent and God-fearing ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... on the day of the funeral. He was quiet and controlled as ever. He kissed his mother, who was still dark-faced, inscrutable, he shook hands with his brother without looking at him, he saw the great coffin with its black handles. He even read the name-plate, "Tom Brangwen, of the Marsh Farm. Born ——. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... curdle, make the blood run cold; make one shudder. haunt the memory; weigh on the heart, prey on the heart, weigh on the mind, prey on the mind, weigh on the spirits, prey on the spirits; bring one's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave; add a nail to one's coffin. Adj. causing pain, hurting &c. v.; hurtful &c. (bad) 649; painful; dolorific[obs3], dolorous; unpleasant; unpleasing, displeasing; disagreeable, unpalatable, bitter, distasteful; uninviting; unwelcome; undesirable, undesired; obnoxious; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus |
