"Gunpowder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hear everywhere around them, some nearer, some farther off, the sounds of their companions burrowing away in all directions in the inside of the great mountain—some boring holes in the rock in order to blow it up with gunpowder, others shovelling the broken ore into baskets to be carried to the mouth of the mine, others hitting away with their pickaxes. Sometimes, if the miner was in a very lonely part, he would hear only a tap-tapping, no louder than that ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... the dog, from midnight to dawn, successfully fought off twelve men equipped with the thunder of gunpowder and the wide-spreading, deep-penetrating, mushroom bullets of soft lead. And the blind man defended himself only with a bow and a hundred arrows. He discharged many hundreds of arrows which Jerry retrieved for him and which he discharged over and over. But ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... they been doing to you? I can see but little of your face for those bandages, but your eyes look mere slits, your flesh is all red and swollen, your eyebrows have gone, your arms and legs are all swathed up in bandages—Have you been blown up with gunpowder?—for surely no wound could ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... to smell gunpowder?" ejaculated Rob, firing a pistol immediately under his nose, whilst the ball perforated the earth a few ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... gunpowder cigarettes through fingers smeared with printer's ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. Un demi setier! A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... by organising an Upper-class Co-operative Society, and bring up their own cattle to London. Being, however, unable to kill them professionally without the aid of a butcher, they blow them up with gunpowder, and divide them with a steam-scythe, for which proceedings they are somewhat maliciously prosecuted by the Society for the Prevention of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... our beautiful fire-works—our squibs, crackers, Roman candles, serpents, Catherine-wheels, and sky-rockets. Would it had produced nothing more harmful than these! But it has also supplied one of the ingredients of that villainous gunpowder, which has been the means of thrusting so many of our fellow-creatures prematurely out of the world. Etna, however, can hardly be held responsible for this sad misuse of the valuable substance which it affords; while even ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... Steam and gunpowder have often proved the most eloquent apostles of civilization, but the impressiveness of their arguments was, perhaps, never more strikingly illustrated than at the little railway station of Gallegos, in Northern ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... his reins and slightly turned his horse. It had been wiser to break into violent speech, or even to deal the other a blow. As it was, the very restraint of his action was spark to gunpowder. Rand's hand fell to a holster, drew and raised a pistol. Cary saw and flung out his arm, swerving his horse, but too late. There was a flash and a report. The reins dropped from Cary's grasp; he sank forward upon his horse's neck, then, while the terrified animal ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... merely heated, is an almost explosive velocity of ascent. The physical peculiarity from which this results is the intensity of its heat—commonly stated at 2,000 degrees, as to our common illuminating gas—acting instantaneously throughout its mass, just as in gunpowder. The gas goes up the flue in its own flash, like the ignited charge in the barrel of a gun: the burning coals can only send, and by a leisurely messenger, namely, the moderately heated gases, and contiguous ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... from sermons denouncing it. It was now that the raising of money by Government lotteries began, for the purpose of repairing the harbours, and a great shed was set up at the west door of St. Paul's for the drawing (1569). In 1605, four of the Gunpowder conspirators were hanged in front of the west door, and in the following May, Garnet, the Jesuit priest, shared the same ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... perhaps his life were in the hands of a wretched girl like this. All the peace and happiness of his life were gone, and he felt like some unhappy prisoner who through the bars of his dungeon sees his jailer's children sporting with lighted matches and a barrel of gunpowder. He was at her mercy, for well he knew that it would resolve into this—that the smallest wish of this girl would become an imperative command that he dared not disobey. However absurd might be her whims and caprices, she had but to express them, and he dared not resist. What means ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... "Legend of Sleepy Hollow." He pointed out the route of poor Ichabod Crane on his memorable night ride up the valley, and so on to the Kakout, where his horse should have gone to reach "Sleepy Hollow." Instead of that, obstinate Gunpowder plunged down over that bridge where poor Ichabod encountered his fatal and final catastrophe. The good old man's face was full of fun as he told me the story. Irving was so exceedingly shy that he never could face any public ovation, and yet he had a great deal of quiet enjoyment ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... be seen in the evening twilight with match, gunpowder, &c., and green boughs for self-defence, busy in storming the paper-built castles of wasps, the larvae of which furnish anglers with store of excellent baits. Spring-flowers have given place to a very different class. Climbing plants mantle and festoon every ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... confirmation from the characters and subsequent conduct of some of these persons,—the most noted fanatics certainly of their party,—and amongst whom we read the names of Talbot, Catesby, and Tresham, afterwards principal conspirators in the detestable gunpowder plot[98]. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... "Bless my gunpowder! What do you mean?" and he looked down at the earthen floor of the tent as though expecting it ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... "It was a wonder how so many fiddlers could play at one time, without putting one another out." While the fellow was lighting the upper candles, he cried out to Mrs. Miller, "Look, look, madam, the very picture of the man in the end of the common-prayer book before the gunpowder-treason service." Nor could he help observing, with a sigh, when all the candles were lighted, "That here were candles enough burnt in one night, to keep an honest poor family ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... they had themselves been frightened until they saw the Blackrobe holding the calumet. A long-haired tribe, somewhat resembling the Iroquois, but calling themselves Tuscaroras; they were rovers, and had axes, hoes, knives, beads, and double glass bottles holding gunpowder, for which they had traded with white ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... much the same tone as that used by the Celestials in the Flowery Land. These same Chinese anticipated us in several most important discoveries, by as many centuries as we may have preceded others. In the knowledge of the properties of the magnet, the composition of gunpowder, the invention of printing, the manufacture of porcelain, of silk, and in the progress of literature, they were before us. But then the power of making further discoveries was arrested, and a stagnation of the intellect prevented their advancing in the path of improvement ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... agreements at all hours of the day and night, improvising as his office the back room of a liquor saloon or the cigar counter of a barber shop; and, in default of any other writing material, he was quite prepared to tattoo a brief though binding agreement with gunpowder on the skin of the ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... Katrina and what would come with her in the shape of fat farm-lands and well-stocked barns, aroused Ichabod's affections to the boiling point. He had a rival, however, "Brom Bones," a young black-headed sprig, who watched Ichabod's advances uneasily. After the party Ichabod mounted his old horse, Gunpowder, as bony as he, but no sooner was he well under way than he heard hoof beats on the road behind him and saw, glimmering in the dark, a white headless figure on horseback, carrying in its arms a round object like a head.... ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... navigation, in the multiplication of books, in triumphs over the forces of Nature, in those discoveries and inventions which abridge the labors of mankind and bring races into closer intercourse,—especially by such wonders as are wrought by steam, gas, electricity, gunpowder, the mariner's compass, and the art of printing,—the modern world feels its immense superiority to all the ages that have gone before. And yet, considering the infancy of science and the youth of nations, more was accomplished by ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... the tea-root, and succeeded in producing a bottle of ardent spirits. This induced one Quintal to 'alter his kettle into a still,' and the natural consequence ensued. Like the philosopher who destroyed himself with his own gunpowder, M'Coy, intoxicated to frenzy, threw himself from a cliff and was killed; and Quintal having lost his wife by accident, demanded the lady of one of his two remaining companions. This modest request being refused, he attempted to murder his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... superbly histrionic. In the mid-afternoon McLean and his brother clerk, McTavish, strolled past, innocently uninterested, on their way to the river. When they strolled back again an hour later, Fox and Snettishane had attained to a ceremonious discussion of the condition and quality of the gunpowder and bacon which the Company was offering in trade. Meanwhile Lit-lit, divining the Factor's errand, had crept in under the rear wall of the lodge, and through the front flap was peeping out at the two logomachists by the mosquito smudge. She was flushed and happy-eyed, proud that no ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... the child in it, and if she found anything therein to throw it in the fire. A very large toad was found, which on being put in the fire "made a great and horrible noise, and after a space there was a flashing in the fire like gunpowder ... and thereupon the toad was no more seen or heard." More wonderful still, "the next day there came a young woman and told this deponnent that her aunt (meaning the said Amy) was in a most lamentable condition, having ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... vestige of construction remained— walls and roof had been alike levelled with the ground. But what was a greater source of chagrin to the now homeless plant-hunters, was that their little store of ammunition—the gunpowder, which during all the period of their imprisonment they had been carefully hoarding—was spilled among the rubbish, and of course irrecoverable. It had been deposited in a large gourd-shell prepared ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... we counted innumerable large guns scattered about, apparently with no other object than to be seen, as if the mere look of a cannon were expected to do the work of a fight! The same number of mock barrels of gunpowder, similarly disposed, would have answered the purpose equally well, or perhaps better; for there appeared no way in which the guns could be fired, without doing much more injury to the besieged than to ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... morning he prepared what he called an electric fuse—he filled a soda-water bottle with gunpowder, attaching some cork to make it buoyant, put in the fuse and bung, made it water-tight, connected and insulated his main wires—enveloped the bottle in pork—tied a line to it, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... few leagues to windward, and certainly intended to attack Cape-coast, his whole garrison did not exceed thirty white men, exclusive of a few mulatto soldiers: his stock of ammunition was reduced to half a barrel of gunpowder; and his fortifications were so crazy and inconsiderable, that, in the opinion of the best engineers, they could not have sustained for twenty minutes the fire of one great ship, had it been properly directed and maintained. In these ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... be,' said Colonel Halkett. 'That's a young man who's an Englishman without French gunpowder notions in his head. He works for us down at the mine in Wales a good part of the year, and has tided us over a threatening strike there: gratuitously: I can't get him to accept anything. I can't think why he ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with the natives, but it ended as usual by their commencing to steal, and having to be chastised for it. In revenge they set fire to the grass, and the navigator very nearly lost his whole stock of gunpowder. He was astonished by the extreme inflammability of the grass and the consequent difficulty in putting it out, and vowed if ever he had to camp in such a situation again, he would first clear the grass around. Leaving the Endeavour River, Cook, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... gunpowder produce an effect more instantaneous than did these two words. Jeanne de Belfiel started up in all the beauty of twenty, which her awful nudity served to augment; she seemed a soul escaped from hell appearing ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... we evidently must look forward to the peopling of every land by the most backward and least intelligent part of the nation.... Malthus was shocked by the system of encouraging very early marriage and large families for the mere sake of getting men as food for gunpowder: but if people marry (say young men at 27 or 28, not at 17 or 18) he denounces as unnatural and unimaginable that society or law should frown upon a family as being too numerous. In every moral aspect of the case, John Mill is opposed to Malthus, and his followers have no right ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Adam, sitting at the table and beginning to set his papers in order, "because there's nought like liquor for putting the devil into a man, and of all liquor commend me to rum with a dash o' tobacco or gunpowder, d'ye see. We shall be heaving dead men overboard ere dawn, I judge, and all along of this same rum, Martin. Black mutiny, murder and sudden death, shipmate, and more's the pity say I. But if Providence seeth fit why so ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... trail." "Crisp and bold thoughts." "An eye-opener." "The new spirit and new conscience shine on each page." "Place not filled by any other." "Speaks not as the Scribes and Pharisees." "Charged with the gunpowder of progress." ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... the day for the glory of cavalry has passed. Once the mailed knight, mounted on his mailed charger, could overthrow by scores the poor, pusillanimous pikemen and crossbow men who composed the infantry; he was invulnerable in his iron armor, and could ride them down like reeds. But gunpowder and the bayonet have changed this; and now the most confident and domineering cavalryman will put spurs to his horse and fly at a gallop, if he sees the muzzle of an infantryman's rifle, with its glittering bayonet, pointed at ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... kills animals that breathe it, on which account it had obtained the name of the choke damp. The other is lighter than common air, taking its place near the roofs of subterraneous places, and because it is liable to take fire, and explode, like gunpowder, it had been called the fire damp. The word damp signifies vapour or exhalation in the German ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... and trousers. In this coffer, his riches hid themselves with such a tenacious modesty, that the smallest instalments could only be tempted out by artifice; so that Peggotty had to prepare a long and elaborate scheme, a very Gunpowder Plot, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... should like to see Ireland!" exclaimed the blue-stocking; "but why would the gunpowder ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... of a prohibition of gunpowder, at this moment some Europeans are popping away incessantly at Embabeh just opposite. Evidently the Pasha wants to establish a right of search on the Nile. That absurd speech about slaves he made in Paris shows that. With 3,000 in his hareem, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... have known the properties of gunpowder as early as 1250, but no practical use was made of the discovery until the battle of Cre'cy, 1346, when a few very small cannon are said to have been employed by the English against the enemy's cavalry. ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... death struggle. For the massive mahogany table was bare, while the cloth that should have covered it lay upon the carpeted deck in a confused heap in the midst of a medley of smashed decanters, glasses, and viands of various descriptions, while the reek of spilled wine, mingled with the odour of gunpowder and tobacco smoke, filled the air; one or two of the handsome mirrors that adorned the cabin were smashed, the cracks radiating from the point of fracture right out to the frame; two or three discharged pistols and a broken sword ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... of this good cheer, and my lady's little pearl necklace, there was the family basket-hilt sword, the great Turkish cimiter, the old blunder-buss, a good bag of bullets, and a great horn of gunpowder. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the same means,—in other words, of thinking and acting in the same practical tract,—indicates a similarity, if not identity, of intellectual nature. In the Chinese centre of civilization, for instance, printing, gunpowder, the mariner's compass, with the various chemical and mechanical arts of elegant life, were originated without concert with the European centre of civilization, simply because in China, as in Europe, the same human faculties, prompted ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... might have escaped; for on the ground there were fresh bones and feathers of geese, showing that the men were still alive when the wild fowl came north, which would be about the end of May. There was a quantity of gunpowder and ammunition lying around, and the Eskimos thought that they had heard shots in the neighbourhood, though they had seen no living men, but only the corpses on the ice. A great number of relics—telescopes, guns, compasses, ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... afire. But one idea possessed him—to lay hands upon this intruding being who had in cold blood done that fiendish deed in the barn, and now had shot his best friend on earth. The rage of primitive man who knew not steel or gunpowder was his; the ferocity of the great monkey, the aborigine's predecessor, whose means of offence were teeth and nails. Straight ahead the man rushed, seeming not to run, but fairly to bound, turned suddenly the angle at the corner ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... Sir Kenelm Digby, was born at Gayhurst, near Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, in 1603. He was the son of Sir Everard Digby, who was executed in 1606 for the part he took in the Gunpowder Plot. Sir Kenelm, who was the author of several remarkable works, is described by Lord Clarendon as a man of 'very extraordinary person and presence, with a wonderful graceful behaviour and a flowing courtesy and civility.' He was knighted in 1623. Digby ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... of uniformity. Let me illustrate my case by analogy. The working of a clock is a model of uniform action; good time-keeping means uniformity of action. But the striking of the clock is essentially a catastrophe; the hammer might be made to blow up a barrel of gunpowder, or turn on a deluge of water; and, by proper arrangement, the clock, instead of marking the hours, might strike at all sorts of irregular periods, never twice alike, in the intervals, force, or number of its blows. Nevertheless, all these irregular, and apparently lawless, catastrophes would ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... balls whistled deadly, And in streams flashing redly Blazed the fires; As the roar On the shore, Swept the strong battle-breakers o'er the green-sodded acres Of the plain; And louder, louder, louder cracked the black gunpowder, Cracking amain! ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... was a man of great weight among the peaceable members of the club, by reason of his military character, and of the gunpowder scenes which, by his ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... 673. In the thirteenth century, the Moguls battered the cities of China with large engines, constructed by the Mahometans or Christians in their service, which threw stones from 150 to 300 pounds weight. In the defence of their country, the Chinese used gunpowder, and even bombs, above a hundred years before they were known in Europe; yet even those celestial, or infernal, arms were insufficient to protect a pusillanimous nation. See Gaubil. Hist. des Mongous, p. 70, 71, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... Fear, and on the anniversary of the birth of the Prince of Peace, 1864, the fleet bombarded that stronghold with very little effect, throwing eighteen thousand shells upon it. A floating mine containing 430,000 pounds of gunpowder had been exploded near the fort, but without effect. Troops landed, but accomplished nothing, and the capture of Fort Fisher was deferred until the middle of January, 1865, when all the defenses at the mouth of the Cape Fear were captured by the same fleet, and a ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to obey, my eye fell on a small keg standing by the side of the main-mast, on which the word gunpowder was written in pencil. It immediately flashed across me that, as we were beating up against the wind, anything floating in the sea would be driven on the reef encircling the Coral Island. I also recollected—for ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... they feel sensations like mine, I wonder? Was Sir Isaac Newton within an ace of skipping into the air when he first found out the law of gravitation? Did Friar Bacon long to dance when he lit the match and heard the first charge of gunpowder in the world ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... was thrown into general alarm; we heard some reports, from day to day, which made us anxious for ourselves. Nothing, however, gave me any serious thoughts until I saw uncommon movements in some parts of the nunnery, and ascertained, to my own satisfaction, that there was a large quantity of gunpowder stored in some secret place within the walls, and that some of it was removed, or prepared for use, under the direction of ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... and on all these old, exploded contrivances of mercantile fraud, now exalted into policy of state. The revenue will not be trifled with. The prattling about the rights of men will not be accepted in payment of a biscuit or a pound of gunpowder. Here, then, the metaphysicians descend from their airy speculations, and faithfully follow examples. What examples? The examples of bankrupts. But defeated, baffled, disgraced, when their breath, their strength, their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... streaks, the color of which could be determined only by the dullness or vividness of its shine through the dusk. As soon as he was able, the soldier sat up, shook out his blanket and rolled himself in it. The first large stars were trembling out. He lay and smelled gunpowder mingling with the saltiness of the bay and the evening incense ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of the three kingdoms. The villain Paine came over for the Crown and Anchor;(813) but, finding that his pamphlet had not set a straw on fire, and that the 14th of July was as little in fashion as the ancient gunpowder-plot, he dined at another tavern with a few quaking conspirators; and probably is returning to Paris, where he is engaged in a controversy with the Abb'e Sieyes, about the plus or minus of rebellion. The rioters in Worcestershire, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... having absolute licence to indulge in the pleasures of life, they could get no good of it. They might dabble in the pond all day, hunt the chickens, climb trees in the most uncompromising Sunday clothes; they were free to issue forth and buy gunpowder in the full eye of the sun—free to fire cannons and explode mines on the lawn: yet they never did any one of these things. No irresistible Energy haled them to church o' Sundays; yet they went there regularly of their ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... sirrah you, no; You Don with th'oaker face, I wish to ha thee But on a Breach, stifling with smoke and fire, And for thy 'No' but whiffing Gunpowder Out of an Iron pipe, I woo'd but ask thee If thou wood'st on, and if thou didst cry No Thou shudst read Canon-Law; I'de make thee roare And weare cut-beaten-sattyn: I woo'd pay thee Though thou payst not thy ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... retorted he of the wistful countenance, "that Guy Fawkes, that poor, fluttering, annual scarecrow of straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give something to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion; but if I say any more, there is that fellow Godwin will make something of it. And as to Judas Iscariot, my reason is different. I would fain see the face ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... afraid that somebody or other may really have one. He might, under the circumstances, have been expected to use some other metaphor. "Cook our goose," for instance, would have expressed his meaning quite well, and there would have been no suggestion of gunpowder about the words. ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... immediately put ourselves in the best posture of defence in our power; that to this end we will prevent all unnecessary use of gunpowder or other ammunition ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... heat of physical fire. The outcome of this purely materialistic interpretation of the three alchemical concepts was not the acquisition of wisdom, or, as Schwartz certainly had hoped, of gold, but of ... gunpowder! ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... steps and found beneath two invalids, who had got under the altar in the night, with no other design, as they declared, than a childish and obscene curiosity. The report instantly spread that the altar of the country was undermined, in order to blow up the people; that a barrel of gunpowder had been discovered beside the conspirators; that the invalids, surprised in the preliminaries to their criminal design, were well known satellites of the aristocracy; that they had confessed their deadly design, and the amount of reward promised on the success of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... primitive way the Resurrection of our Lord. There was an old Miracle Play which was performed at Easter; for we find in the churchwardens' books at Kingston-upon-Thames, in the reign of Henry VIII., certain expenses for "a skin of parchment and gunpowder for the play on Easter Day," for a player's coat, stage, and "other ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... voices on the other side of the hedge. Madeleine and Frances were speaking to a poor girl whose clothes were burned, her hands blackened, and her face tied up with bloodstained bandages. I saw that she was one of the girls employed at the gunpowder mills, which are built further up on the common. An explosion had taken place a few days before; the girl's mother and elder sister were killed; she herself escaped by a miracle, and was now left without any means of support. She told all ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... Old Put seated near what appeared to be a keg of powder, serenely smoking his pipe. As the officer reached the rendezvous, Putnam lighted a slow-match from his pipe and thrust it into a hole bored in the head of the keg, upon which were scattered a few grains of gunpowder. Viewing these sinister preparations for the "duel," the Englishman concluded that the best thing he could do was to run away, which he did very promptly. "O ho!" shouted Putnam after him, taking his pipe from his mouth. "You are just about as brave a man as I thought, to run away from a ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... rejoicing at it, in the face of the sun, "You are the most godlike Two we could lay hold of for that object,"—what have English souls to expect? My consolation is, and, alas, it is a poor one, the money would have been mostly wasted any way. Buy men and gunpowder with your money, to be shot away in foreign parts, without renown or use: is that so much worse than buying ridiculous upholsteries, idle luxuries, frivolities, and in the end unbeautiful pot-bellies corporeal and spiritual with it, here at home? I am struck silent, looking ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... time of striking with a switch, the party knows an additional fact, by reason of which he foresees that death will be the consequence of a slight blow, as, for instance, that the other has heart disease, the offence is equally murder. /3/ To explode a barrel of gunpowder in a crowded street, and kill people, is murder, although the actor hopes that no such harm will be done. /4/ But to kill a man by careless riding in the same street would commonly be manslaughter. /5/ Perhaps, however, a case could be put where the ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... in the army on very slender pay, and to the utter ruin of their fortunes, all those who are not noble have their lands heavily taxed. Does he not know that wine, brandy, soap, candles, leather, saltpetre, gunpowder, are taxed in France? Has he not heard that government in France has made a monopoly of that great article of salt? that they compel the people to take a certain quantity of it, and at a certain rate, both rate and quantity fixed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... French in 1362; the frequent coming of the Black Death; the victories of Crecy and Poitiers; it learned the universal use of the mariner's compass; it witnessed two kings— of France and of Scotland— prisoners in London; great changes in the condition of labourers; the invention of gunpowder in 1340; the rise of English commerce under Edward III.; and everywhere in England the rising up of new powers and ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... grinning with new fires. Farmer Graystock said something to the touchy rustic that he did not relish, and he writes his distaste in flames. What a power to intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly awake, to perceive that something is wrong in the social system!-what a hellish faculty above gunpowder! ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... organized anarchy, suited to rude and barbarous times, but so well was it adapted to existing conditions that it became the prevailing form of government, and continued as such until a better order of society could be evolved. With the invention of gunpowder, the rise of cities and industries, the evolution of modern States by the consolidation of numbers of these feudal governments, and the establishment of order and civilization, feudalism passed out with the passing of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... endeavoured to overtake Mr. Fife, but was too much fatigued, and returned to his comrades. They halted during a part of the night, made a sort of hut of stones and turf to shelter them from the weather, and kindled a little fire with gunpowder and moss to warm their feet; they had never been in actual want of food, having lived upon raw grouse, of which they were enabled to obtain a quantity sufficient for their subsistence. In the morning they once ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... fixed upon for Hospitals, every Ward ought to be made perfectly sweet and clean; first, by scraping and washing with Soap and Water, and afterwards with warm Vinegar; and then they ought to be fumigated with the Smoke of wetted Gunpowder and of Aromatics, and afterwards well dried and aired by lighting Fires, and opening the Windows, before ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... swearing our lives away? If you do you are much mistaken; but that I may be some judge of your talent that way, I must hear you curse a little, on a very particular occasion. Upon which, filling a large glass of brandy, and putting a little gunpowder into it, he clapped it into the fellow's hands, and then presenting his pistol to his breast, obliged him to wish most horrid mischiefs upon himself, if ever he attempted to follow him or his companions any more. No ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... printer named Caxton, whose books she sent her brother, and other presses were set up in London. Another great change had come in. Long ago, in the time of Henry III., a monk name Roger Bacon had made gunpowder; but nobody used it much until, in the reign of Edward III., it was found out how cannon might be fired with it; and some say it was first used in the battle of Crecy. But it was not till the reign of Edward IV. that smaller guns, such as each soldier could carry one of for himself, were ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... though it were wrung out of her by force, with a rhythmical swaying of her body to right and left. She did not smile, and indeed knitted her brows, her delicate, high, rounded eyebrows, between which a dark blue mark, probably burnt in with gunpowder, stood out sharply, looking like some letter of an oriental alphabet. She almost closed her eyes but their pupils glimmered dimly under the drooping lids, fastened as before on Kuzma Vassilyevitch. And he, too, could not look away from those marvellous, menacing eyes, from that dark-skinned ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of interest that day, but after that Chris spent all the time he could, both day and night, watching the young sailor. He was determined to discover if he could what Zachary intended to do with the gunpowder. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... of fifteen, he was so well equipped that he was engaged to teach school in Maryland, at Gunpowder Falls, some of his pupils being so much larger and older than he that, at one time, he had to take a brand from the fire, and strike one of them, in order to gain ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... canons coming into the main stream, and at one place, where the rock hung a little over the river and had a smooth wall, I climbed up above the high water mark which we could clearly see, and with a mixture of gunpowder and grease for paint, and a bit of cloth tied to a stick for a brush, I painted in fair sized letters on the rock, CAPT. W.L. MANLEY, U.S.A. We did not know whether we were within the bounds of the United States or not, and we put on all the majesty we could under the circumstances. I ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... rarity from China, was, eight years later, a regular article of import, and was soon consumed in such quantities that financiers began to consider it as a fit subject for taxation. The progress which was making in the art of war had created an unprecedented demand for the ingredients of which gunpowder is compounded. It was calculated that all Europe would hardly produce in a year saltpetre enough for the siege of one town fortified on the principles of Vauban. [157] But for the supplies from India, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... before-never will meet one again. Gave up everything he had for a rattle-brain young scamp—BEGgared himself to pay his debts—not a drop of the fellow's blood in his veins either—incredible—inCREDible! Got to handle him like gunpowder or he'll blow everything into matchsticks. Find out the price and I'll bring the money to-morrow. Do you pay it to him; I can't. I'd feel too damn mean after lying to him the way I have. ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... into,' said the doctor, 'and a couple of men catch one moment's glimpse of a boy, in the midst of gunpowder smoke, and in all the distraction of alarm and darkness. Here's a boy comes to that very same house, next morning, and because he happens to have his arm tied up, these men lay violent hands upon him—by doing which, they place his life in great ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... competent person to build and to work the Government factories at Augusta, giving him carte blanche to act as he thought best; and the result has proved the wisdom of the President's choice. Colonel Rains told me that at the beginning of the troubles, scarcely a grain of gunpowder was manufactured in the whole of the Southern States. The Augusta powder-mills and arsenal were then commenced, and no less than 7000 lb. of powder are now made every day in the powder manufactory. The ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... or Latin books containing new doctrines that, except the psalter and the New Testament, this last, too, in the Greek text, he had never taken any book, 'either small or big,' to use Plato's words, concerning Christian religion"?[34] Had he not recommended the bow as, even in those gunpowder times, the best weapon in war? "If I were of authority, I would counsel all the gentlemen and yeomen of England not to change it with any other thing, how good soever it seems to be; but that still, according to the old wont of England, youths should use it for the most honest pastime in peace, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... steal?" he asked with dull apathy. "The gold vessels from the Catholic Cathedral of Quebec, after—after trying to blow up Government House with gunpowder." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... kindred in spirit, and whose interests radiated from a common centre, he must have belonged to a class Smooth would not deign to designate. Citizen George would that England and America shook hands, remained friends, and left the gunpowder and big-word business entirely to newspapers and small politicians of the ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... little about the bamboos; but before gunpowder became familiar, no sharp explosive sounds of this kind were known to ordinary experience, and exaggeration was natural. I have been close to a bamboo jungle on fire. There was a great deal of noise comparable to musketry; but the bamboos were ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of St. Helena was regularly visited by East India ships on the return voyage, which touched there to take in water, and to leave gunpowder for the use of the garrison. On such occasions there were always persons anxious to pay a visit to the renowned captive. The regulation of those visits was calculated to protect Napoleon from being annoyed by the idle curiosity of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... One of the most interesting of its few historic monuments is the Koppelpoort, an old gateway situated at the end of a fine avenue of trees bordering the canal. Close by is a lofty Gothic tower (1500), which belonged to the ancient church of St Mary, which was wrecked by an explosion of gunpowder in 1787. The large plain church of St George dates from the first half of the 13th century. There is also a Jansenist church, to which a seminary is attached. Besides these there are a town hall, a court of primary jurisdiction, industrial and other ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... appearance of a consuming fire; and who will dare penetrate to Brynhild? It is true that if any man will walk boldly into that fire, he will discover it at once to be a lie, an illusion, a mirage through which he might carry a sack of gunpowder without being a penny the worse. Therefore let the fire seem so terrible that only the hero, when in the fulness of time he appears upon earth, will venture through it; and the problem is solved. Wotan, ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... continued, speaking more loudly than before, "if our swords fail us we shall have recourse to gunpowder, which will make short work ...
— Adventures in Toyland - What the Marionette Told Molly • Edith King Hall
... "These five, none of the others." Then still lower down he pointed out other barrels, eight of them, filled with the best gunpowder, and showed them too where the slow matches ran to the little cabin, the cook's galley, the tiller and the prow, by means of any one of which it could be fired. After this and such inspection of the ropes and sails as the light would allow, they sat in the cabin waiting ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... having people think violence at their boss. I thought a little harder. Maybe if I made 'em mad enough one of them would belt me on the noggin and put me out, and then I'd be cold when that cigarette fell into the gunpowder and ruined my hand. ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... stands Monte Baldo, frowning with its dark precipices on the cold summits of the German highland, smiling with its sunny slopes on the blue waters of Lake Garda and the fertile valley of the Po. In the change of strategy incident to the introduction of gunpowder the spot of greatest resistance was no longer in the gorge, but at its mouth, where Rivoli on one side, and Ceraino on the other, command respectively the gentle slopes which fall eastward and westward toward the plains. The Alps were indeed looking down on the "Little Corporal," who, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... became deadly sick, so that we were obliged to stop twice in the road and lay him amongst the green corn. He said that if he fell into the hands of the factious he was a lost priest, for that they would first make him say mass and then blow him up with gunpowder. He had been a professor of philosophy, as he told me, in one of the convents (I think it was San Tomas) of Madrid, before their suppression, but appeared to be grossly ignorant of the Scripture, which he confounded ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... first time, be said to be fire, and jacinth, and brimstone. The musket had recently supplied the place of the bow. Fire emanated from their breasts. Brimstone, the flame of which is jacinth, was an ingredient both of the liquid fire and of gunpowder.... A new mode of warfare was at that time introduced, which has changed the nature of war itself, in regard to the form of its instrument of destruction; and sounds and sights unheard of and unknown before, were the death-knell and ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... leaders had put a weapon into the hands of the Government. 'Fancy what a temptation to the present Government to publish the despatches,' notes Sir Charles, in comment on Sir William Harcourt's remark 'that the Tripartite Treaty discussion would be a mine of gunpowder to the Liberal ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... this Prince of Mirow, whom Friedrich has accidentally unearthed for us. Indeed there is no farther history of him, for or against. He evidently was not thought to have invented gunpowder, by the public. And yet who knows but, in his very simplicity, there lay something far beyond the Ill Margraf to whom he was so quizzable? Poor down-pressed brother mortal; somnambulating so pacifically in Sleepy Hollow ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... must go very close," warned Doctor Clay, "for dynamite is powerful stuff—eight times more powerful than gunpowder." ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... the man, an experienced old sailor, who had just come from thence, must know more than a young fellow, as he was, could do. Mrs Podgers, with a sneer, also remarked that perhaps he would rather not have any fighting, lest he might get a cut across his face, and spoil his beauty, or the smell of gunpowder would make ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... nowhere has it been recorded with more picturesque and energetic brevity than in the glowing pages of Gibbon. Operations were carried on with unprecedented vigour and effect, rendered more terrible by the lavish use of gunpowder and artillery, then almost new elements in the art of war. Constantine did all that a Christian prince and a brave general could do. By his example he animated the courage of his soldiers, and revived the hearts of the citizens, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... come as a pilgrim," said their amins, "and we have fed you with kouskoussu. If you were to come as a chief, wishing to lay his authority on us, instead of white kouskoussu we should treat you to black kouskoussu" (gunpowder). ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... nine with about forty smaller bombards (bombardelles) placed three, four, or even six on each waggon; twelve with ordinary pieces of artillery; as many more for the service of twelve big guns; thirty-seven carts of iron balls; three with gunpowder; and finally five laden with nitre, darts, and bullets. Splendid artillery of most excellent workmanship and great power escorted by two thousand men under arms, without mentioning the companies who marched ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... the fellows had entered an out-of-the-way inn, or rather wine-shop, and boldly ordered the owner to procure for them a certain amount of gunpowder, which they required should be ready for them the next day, and failing to carry out their orders, they threatened to shoot him. He was obliged to promise, for there were five of them, and except women he was ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... dreadful din, Harry Archer struggled on with his company. His voice was hoarse with shouting, though he himself could scarce hear the words he uttered. His lips were parched with excitement and the acrid smell of gunpowder. Man after man had fallen beside him, but he was yet untouched. There was no thought of fear or danger now. His whole soul seemed absorbed in the one thought of getting into the battery. Small as were the ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... soldier strike him (as, I judge, By his blunt bearing, he will keep his word,) Some sudden mischief may arise of it; For I do know Fluellen valiant, And, touch'd with choler, hot as gunpowder, And quickly will return ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... of antiquity is the expression of those virtues which were useful at the time of Theseus, as Stendhal rightly tells us. Individual force, which was everything of old, amounts to almost nothing in our modern civilization. The monk who invented gunpowder modified sculpture; strength is only necessary now among subalterns. No one thinks of asking whether Frederick the Great and Napoleon were good swordsmen. The strength we admire, is the strength of Napoleon advancing ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... gunpowder, uncle," cried Tom, "it couldn't be. I know what gunpowder's made of—nitre, brimstone, and charcoal; and besides, we ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... national politics, but also in the art of war. Edward I discovered in his Welsh wars that the long-bow was more efficient than the weapons of the knight; and his grandson won English victories at Crecy and Poitiers with a weapon which was within the reach of the simple yeoman. The discovery of gunpowder and development of artillery soon proved as fatal to the feudal castle as the long-bow had to the mailed knight; and when the feudal classes had lost their predominance in the art of war, and with it their monopoly of the power of protection, both the reasons ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... Burnet, being appointed to preach the sermon on the Gunpowder Plot, (1684,) at the Rolls Chapel:—I chose for my text these words: "Save me from the lion's mouth, thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns." I made no reflection in my thoughts on the lion and unicorn, as being ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift |
