"Halter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ancient people merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves in hope that one will come and cut the halter. ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... my fright, and seeing that it had something of a horse look, my Virginian love for anything of the equestrian species predominated, and I determined to back it. I accordingly applied at a grocer's shop, procured a cord that had been round a loaf of sugar, and made a kind of halter; then summoning some of my schoolfellows, we drove master Jack about the common until we hemmed him in an angle of a 'worm fence.' After some difficulty, we fixed the halter round his muzzle, and I mounted. Up flew his heels, away I went over his head, and off he scampered. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Marsilius, king of Spain. They die, however, victorious; and the two royal and noble scoundrels, by a piece of prosaical justice better than poetical, are despatched like common malefactors, with a halter. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... embassies in Washington, May 1, 1861. And as to La' Davis, there seems to be documentary evidence that she meant to be "At Home" in the capital, bringing the first strawberries with her from Montgomery for her May-day soiree. Bah! one does not like to sneer at people who have their necks in the halter; but one happy result of this disturbance is that the disturbers have sent themselves to Coventry. The Lincoln party may be wanting in finish. Finish comes with use. A little roughness of manner, the genuine simplicity of a true soul like Lincoln, is attractive. But ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Chesterton these attributes penetrate to the core and are as much a part of the man as any limbs or any feature of his face. A genuine Chesterton is as unlike his stupid caricature in our own theaters in the person of "Lord Dundreary," as the John Bull of the French stage, leading a woman by a halter around her neck, and exclaiming, "G—— d——! I will sell my wife at Smithfield," is unlike the Englishman of real life. Lord Chesterton does not wear a small glass in his right eye, nor commence every other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... proper discipline of the negroes in that latitude as the overseer himself. He then proceeded to detail several instances of fugitive negroes being dragged in capture to the foot of the gallows, where, with halter-encircled necks, they were made not only to acknowledge the error committed and expose accessories, but "pumped dry," as he facetiously termed it, as to the intended flight of other negroes on the estate. Sometimes, he said, it was necessary to suspend the culprit for a moment ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... and have good reason, For there my grandsire cut his weasand: He cut his weasand at the altar; I keep my gullet for the halter. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... bareback with a rope halter. Bud was bareheaded and in his sock feet. His eyes were terribly blue and bright, and his face was flushed as a drunken man's. He glanced over to the bank where the women and children were watching. It seemed to him that one woman fluttered her ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... rather deserv'd to be brain'd, than the bull that tossed her; but he that cannot come at the arse, thrashes at the pack-saddle: yet how could Glyco expect Hermogine's daughter should make a good end? She'd have pared the claws of a flying kite; a snake does not bring forth a halter: Glyco might do what he would with his own; but it will be a brand on him as long as he lives; nor can any thing but Hell blot it out; however, every man's faults are his own. I perceive now what entertainment Mammea is like ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... received in paradise by the goddess of the hanged, Ixtab. Ix is the feminine prefix; tab, taab, tabil mean, according to Perez' Lexicon of the Maya Language, "cuerda destinada para algun uso exclusivo". The name of this strange goddess is, therefore, the "Goddess of the Halter" or, as Landa says, "The Goddess of the Gallows". Now compare Dr. 53. On the upper half of the page is the death-god represented with hand raised threateningly, on the lower half is seen the form of a woman suspended by a rope placed around her neck. The closed eye, the open mouth and the ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... had been secured and Rocinante raised from the ground, Sancho took the two beasts by the halter and led them out to the road, and from there they proceeded on their way. Soon Sancho saw the outlines of an inn, which Don Quixote insisted must be a castle, and before they had finished their dispute, they found themselves at the gate ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... do all this to-night because this was a special occasion, and they knew exactly how to make Him come out of the tent and send a certain call ringing across so that their friend the stallion Sooltan would come racing, with native pad and halter, riderless ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... gave a ready permission, and Tad hounded away, running every foot of the mile and a half to the Langdon farm, where old Jinny was turned over to him, together with a brand new halter and an old harness which the grocer had directed his man to furnish with ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... at all. I heard the floating verdicts that were being pronounced upon us, and thenceforth I also infused a certain purpose into our hitherto aimless relationship. I quietly resolved to meet that respectable body so widely known as the "people" in open combat. I needed no formidable weapon, an old halter would answer my purpose fully, for of course my readers know that this loud-voiced authority, this much feared power, this braying denouncer of men's private, social, or moral attitudes is only our friend the ass in a pretty well-fitting lion-skin, not nearly so dangerous ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... door about the barn but he would open, if he could get at the latch, and if the key was left in the granary door he would unlock that. If left standing he was sure to get his head-stall off, and we had to get a halter made specially for him. He finally became such a perpetual torment that we sold him, and we all had a good cry when the old horse went away. He was upwards of twenty-five years old at this time. How much longer he lived I cannot say. ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... on dangerous ground, Who knows how the fashions may alter? The doctrine, to-day, that is loyalty sound, To-morrow may bring us a halter. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... an' huddled together, skeered green from the yellin's they'd heard. Buck, he give 'em a long chin-chin about layin' the ghost, an' how Judge Ming wouldn't never come back no more; an' then he dragged 'em all back (they pullin' at the halter shanks with years laid back an' eyes rollin'), ter him bury his United States button on Ming's rock pile. He dropped it in solemn, an' said what the Chinks took ter be a prayer; but it was really the oath he said. Buck havin' onct been a recruitin' sergeant, knew it by heart all the way ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... to do was to find a bed. She groped her way past the stalls of the three Pleasants, whose dwelling she had invaded, to the upright ladder which led to the loft. The horses were all lying down after their hard day's work, and only one of them turned his great head with a rattle of his halter, to see who this small intruder could be. Lilac clambered up the ladder and was soon in the dark fragrant-smelling loft above, where the trusses of hay and straw were mysteriously grouped under the low thick beams. There was no ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... maty," cried Jack, dashing a tear out of his eye with the back of his hand, "thank'e, sir, from the bottom of my heart. The time may come, but not now. My papers is signed for this v'y'ge. Stephen Spike has a halter round his neck, as you say yourself, and it's necessary for me to be there to look to't. We all have our callin's and duties, and this is mine. I stick by the Molly and her captain until both are out of this ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... any occasion to exercise our forbearance. The Raja's people, as soon as we left them, went about their sport after their own fashion, and brought us a fine buck antelope after breakfast. They have a bullock trained to go about the fields with them, led at a quick pace by a halter, with which the sportsman guides him, as he walks along with him by the side opposite to that facing the deer he is in pursuit of. He goes round the deer as he grazes in the field, shortening the distance at every circle till he comes within shot. At the signal given the bullock stands still, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... recognizing him, I've fixed it so that he is obliged to kill me," he muttered. "It's my life, or his neck for a halter, and he knows it. The blood-thirsty devil! If I could only get to Brissac's bunk-shanty and lay my hands on a ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... tried to catch Twinkleheels in the pasture, Johnnie Green found his new pet entirely too playful to suit him. In response to Johnnie's whistling Twinkleheels came galloping towards the bars. But when he caught sight of the halter that Johnnie held he stopped short. And he snorted, as if to say, "I don't believe I'll go with you. I'm ...
— The Tale of Pony Twinkleheels • Arthur Scott Bailey
... of the brightest polish, and a little too thick in the soles, buckskin gloves, a hat somewhat resembling in shape those usually worn by the gendarmes, and a black cravat striped with white, which, if the proprietor had not worn it of his own free will, might have passed for a halter, so much did it resemble one. Such was the picturesque costume of the person who rang at the gate, and demanded if it was not at No. 30 in the Avenue des Champs-Elysees that the Count of Monte Cristo lived, and who, being answered ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... turn round which she had vanished. I now tooted that she was riding without saddle or bridle, with only a halter round the horse's neck—then she had seen us, had stopped and come back as soon as she could. She dropped from the horse, looked swiftly at me, at him, at me again, with ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... The halter was of silk and gold, That he reach'd forth unto me; No otherwise than if he would By dainty things ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... later the pack train emerged through the little alley at the side of the hotel and halted in front. Bill Bronson led his own bay, Mulvaney, and the pack horses were tailed,—the halter rope of each tied to the tail of the horse in front, like elephants on parade. The idea was simply to keep them in formation till they were launched forth upon the trail. Vosper, the cook, led three horses with riding saddles at the end of ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... you call them, are deluding you. Do you think Benedict Arnold's convictions, if he had any, would have saved his neck from the halter?" ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... driven from Scotland not long before. The list of lesser offenders among the alien writers was long. As President Adams asked: "How many presses, how many newspapers have been directed by vagabonds, fugitives from a bailiff, a pillory, or a halter in Europe?" ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... of wrath at various individual acts of wrong, especially if they come in an ecclesiastical shape, and recall to him the days when his mother's great-grandmother was strangled on Witch Hill, with a text from the Old Testament for her halter. With all this, he has a boundless belief in the future of this experimental hemisphere, and especially in the destiny of the free thought of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... knavish attorneys by discovering long-hidden deeds. Sometimes they have enticed highwaymen into dark corners of woods, and there the wretched criminal finds in their bags (for ghosts of this breed have good substantial luggage) nothing but a halter and a bit of silver (value exactly 13-1/2d.) to pay the hangman. When he turns to the owner, he has vanished. Occasionally, they are the legends told by some passing traveller from distant lands—probably ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... who was about to hang himself, Finding a purse, then threw away his rope; The owner, coming to reclaim his pelf, The halter found; and used it. So is Hope Changed for Despair—one laid upon the shelf, 5 We take the other. Under Heaven's high cope Fortune is God—all you endure and do Depends on ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... where taking occasion from what AElian says of Poliager,[141] he diligently examines the signification of the verb [Greek: apagchesthai], which saint Matthew[142] employs in relating the death of Judas; and insists that that word does not only mean strangling with a halter, but also sometimes excessive grief, by which a person is brought to the brink of death, and frequently even destroys himself. This criticism was taken amiss by Gronovius, who had already published a book de morte Judae, wherein he had said that the wretch had voluntarily put an end to his ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... feature is the love of 'smart' dealing: which gilds over many a swindle and gross breach of trust; many a defalcation, public and private; and enables many a knave to hold his head up with the best, who well deserves a halter: though it has not been without its retributive operation, for this smartness has done more in a few years to impair the public credit, and to cripple the public resources, than dull honesty, however rash, could have effected in a century. The merits of a broken speculation, ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... with that system of exclusiveness by which ladies have so often contrived (as by a process of elimination) to prevent marriages that they did not want and even sometimes procure those they did. There is no need of the broad arrow and the fleur-de lis, the turnkey's chains or the hangman's halter. You need not strangle a man if you can silence him. The branded shoulder is less effective and final than the cold shoulder; and you need not trouble to lock a man in when you can lock ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... a change in my jailer's behaviour at this time. He offered to make better provision for my comfort, and as I had no doubt he was instigated by Mr. Falkland, I answered that he might tell his employer I would accept no favours from a man that held a halter about my neck. Then the idea of an escape occurred to me, and as I had some proficiency in carpentry, I decided to obtain tools by proposing to make some chairs for the jailer. My offer was accepted, and I gradually accumulated tools of various ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... terminate the conversational opportunity, and when it was requisite to pause to rest he improved the respite by beckoning to one of the stablemen passing near, bound toward a pasture in the rear of the hotel with a halter in his hand, and ordering him to investigate the building to discover any signs ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... saddle off," suggested Allen, who, with Frank, had come out with a rope halter that had been provided in case the "ghost hunt" was a success. "We'll look ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... Bridau, advanced in years, he began to perceive the nonentity of his son; he then treated him harshly, trying to break him into a routine that might serve in place of intelligence. He thus, though unconsciously, prepared him to submit to the yoke of the first tyranny that threw its halter ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... be, protection from the weather, and the impossibility of the rider's entanglement: but the sole has no grip whatever, and rising to give full effect to a sabre-cut would be out of the question. Besides a halter, a single rein, attached to rather a clumsy bit, is the usual trooper's equipment: to this is attached the inevitable ring-martingale, without which few Federal cavaliers, civil or military, would ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... "Sure. He' done a good job, too. He was game, all right, never whimpered nor hung back on the halter. Jest stuck the gun in his mouth an' pulled the trigger. I was goin' to bury him but I heard them mares whinner down to the water-hole so I left him fer the buzzards ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... convenient to use a long-necked, heavy glass bottle. The horse should be backed into a narrow stall and the head elevated by placing a loop in the end of a small rope over the upper jaw, passing the rope back of the nose piece on the halter and throwing it over a beam, and raising the head until the mouth is slightly higher than the throat. If the horse refuses to swallow, a tablespoonful of clean water may be dropped into the nostril. This forces it to swallow. ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... "Gentlemen, do not hang me high, for the sake of decency;" and then being desired to step up a little higher, she did two stops, and then turning herself about, she trembled, and said, "I am afraid I shall fall." After this, the halter was put about her neck, and she pulled down her handkerchief over her face, without shedding one tear all the time. In this manner she prayed a little while upon the ladder, then gave the signal, by holding out a little book which she had in her hands. There was ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... never pardon him." Accordingly when Niccolo arrived, he said to me in desperation: "Alas! my dear Benvenuto, what have you come to do here? Did you not know what you have done to displease the Duke? I have heard him swear that you were thrusting your head into a halter." Then I replied: "Niccolo, remind his Excellency that Pope Clement wanted to do as much to me before, and quite as unjustly; tell him to keep his eye on me, and give me time to recover; then I will show his Excellency that I have been the most faithful servant he will ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... It is ver' glad I am to see you so prompt to the halter," grinned Carlos. "Quien sabe?—mebbe I didn't reckon on corrallin' the whole bunch ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... and in all his apparent caprice, he steadily kept in view some general scope or bearing. The robberies committed by the soldiers in a friendly country, had led to the severest orders against marauders; and all who should be caught thieving, were threatened with the halter. Wallenstein himself having met a straggler in the open country upon the field, commanded him to be seized without trial, as a transgressor of the law, and in his usual voice of thunder, exclaimed, "Hang ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... 1 our battery was bivouacked in the edge of a dense piece of woods, the guns being parked in open ground just outside, while the men were lying in the leaves, with the horses tied among them. About midnight one of the horses became tangled in his halter and fell to the ground, struggling and kicking frantically to free himself. A man close by, being startled from sleep, began halloaing, "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" The alarm was taken up by one after another as each roused from ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... from the mob—God knows why—but a Dublin mob always cheer—I returned, accompanied by a ragged fellow, leading my new purchase after me with a bay halter. 'What is the meaning of those letters,' said I, pointing to a very conspicuous G.R. with sundry other enigmatical signs, burned upon ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Mowgli groaned to himself, "for less than this even last Rains I had pricked Mysa out of his wallow, and ridden him through the swamp on a rush halter." He stretched a hand to break one of the feathery reeds, but drew it back with a sigh. Mysa went on steadily chewing the cud, and the long grass ripped where the cow grazed. "I will not die HERE," he said angrily. ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... although the clocks were not American, and those two made a tremendous noise, but only singed a few French beards off. Except, indeed, that a fine old horse, with a white Roman nose and a bright chestnut mane, who was living in a flat-bottomed boat, broke his halter, and rushed up to the bows, and gave vent to his amazement, as if he had been gifted ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... but made no reply. He undid the mare's halter, and took her into the stable. There he fed her, standing by her all the time she ate, and not once taking his eyes off her. His father, the late marquis, had bought her at the sale of the stud of a neighbouring laird, whose whole being had been devoted to horses, till the pale one ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... were too much taken up with their bargains and losses to talk much of other matters; and before long we came out again, and the son of the house started homewards, leading the new filly by a little halter of rope. ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... out. Those stories do not do for the dark. But to return;—were it only for the sake of my child, you might depend upon me now; better too an arrangement of this sort, than if I had a larger sum in hand which I might be tempted to fling away, and in looking for more, run my neck into a halter, and leave poor Jane upon charity. But come, it is almost dark again, and no doubt you wish to be stirring: stay, I will lead you back, and put you on the right track, lest ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... more than was natural at this admission. A duel in these days is a very serious matter to every one concerned, and why should this man seem so truly rejoiced at the progress of an affair that might put his own neck in danger of a halter? ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... "you've found me at fault, And the highflying highwayman's come to a halt; You have turned up a trump—for I weigh well my weight,— And the forty is yours, though the halter's my fate. Well, come on't what will, you shall own when all's past, That Dick Turpin, the Dauntless, was game to the last. But, before we go further, I'll hold you a bet, That one foot in my stirrup you ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... tackle, rigging; standing rigging, running rigging; traces, harness; yoke; band ribband, bandage; brace, roller, fillet; inkle[obs3]; with, withe, withy; thong, braid; girder, tiebeam; girth, girdle, cestus[obs3], garter, halter, noose, lasso, surcingle, knot, running knot; cabestro [obs3][U. S.], cinch [U. S.], lariat, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... laughed at his "fine airs" behind his back, cringed and submitted when they met him face to face—for in a convict ship the greatest villain is the greatest hero, and the only nobility acknowledged by that hideous commonwealth is that Order of the Halter which is conferred by the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... probability, their whole line of management has hitherto been blunder and baseness. Every campaign has added to their loss, and every year to their disgrace; till unable to go on, and ashamed to go back, their politics have come to a halt, and all their fine prospects to a halter. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... to sell their votes for extended privileges. At last, against the raids of the petty nobles, whom the Emperor could not control, the cities leagued together, took the matter in hand, attacked the fortresses, levelled them and gave to the inmates short shrift, a halter and a tree. In Italy the towns proceeded in a less summary manner. Surrounded as they were on all sides by a serried rank of castles, where the nobles held undisputed sway over their serfs and controlled the arteries of trade, the cities were compelled to proceed against them; ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... we have seen him out of imagination. There he is a poor, tired, clumsy creature, footsore and dusty, with a halter round his neck, and a swarthy foreigner to make his life miserable. At the word he rises to his hind legs, hunches his shoulders, and lunges awkwardly round in a circle, while the foreigner sings Horry, horry, dum-dum, and his ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... bursting into a coarse laugh, which quickened the steps of his retreating foe. "The devil had some mischief in store when he made those chaps so much alike. I would not wish my own brother to resemble me so closely as all that, lest mayhap he should murder or steal, and the halter should fall on my ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... replied the Prince, "back with you, old hag!" And he was just going to draw his sword, when all at once he stood fixed like a sheep that has seen the wolf and can neither stir nor utter a sound, so that the ogress led him like an ass by the halter to her house. And when they came there she said to him, "Mind, now, and work like a dog, unless you wish to die like a dog. For your first task to-day you must have this acre of land dug and sown level as this room; and recollect that if I return in the evening and do not find the work finished, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... talking, laughing and weeping. This is not all. We have been obliged often to endure speeches of this sort, most commonly uttered in the Scotch accent.—"My life on't that fellow is a renegado Englishman, or Irishman—an halter will be, I hope, his portion. D—n all such rebel-looking rascals." Whatever our feelings and resentments may be on account of impressment, inhuman treatment, and plundering our fobs and pockets, and of our ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... colts have blind teeth and to save the eyes these must be removed. I staggered to the colt, held the halter rein and when the tooth was removed my uncle, looking at me, said: "What's the matter with you? You are ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... Prefer in bed, beauty before goodness Preferring the universal and common tie to all national ties Premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty Prepare ourselves against the preparations of death Present Him such words as the memory suggests to the tongue Present himself with a halter about his neck to the people Presumptive knowledge by silence Pretending to find out the cause of every accident Priest shall on the wedding-day open the way to the bride Proceed so long as there ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... Every murderer goes to heaven; there is only one step from the gallows to God; only one jerk between the halter and heaven. That is taught by this same church. I believe there ought to be a law to prevent the slightest religious consolation being given to any man who has been guilty of murder. Let a Catholic understand that if he imbrues his hands in his brother's blood, he can ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... but how our father fell, Hated of all and lost to fair renown, Through self-detected crimes—with his own hand, Self-wreaking, how he dashed out both his eyes: Then how the mother-wife, sad two-fold name! With twisted halter bruised her life away, Last, how in one dire moment our two brothers With internecine conflict at a blow Wrought out by fratricide their mutual doom. Now, left alone, O think how beyond all Most piteously we twain shall be destroyed, If in defiance of ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... the thicket pass'd, The branches held his antlers fast; A clown, who saw the captive hung, Across the horns his halter flung. Now safely hampered in the cord, He bore the present to his lord. His lord was pleased; as was the clown, When he was tipp'd with half-a-crown. The stag was brought before his wife; The tender lady begged his life. 10 'How sleek's the skin! how speck'd like ermine! ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Bracciano began to caress her hands and to fondle her in his arms, and when he noted that she had given herself entirely to his will and pleasure, as an amorous, faithful wife once more, he swiftly reached down for a corda di collo—a horse's halter—which he had placed behind the chair. Implanting an impassioned kiss upon those lovely lips, which had so long yearned for a husband's embrace, he adroitly threw the rope round his wife's neck, and pulling it taut in a wild access ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... to the tither warl' A mixtie—maxtie motley squad, And mony a guilt-bespotted lad— Black gowns of each denomination, And thieves of every rank and station, From him that wears the star and garter, To him that wintles in a halter: Ashamed himself to see the wretches, He mutters, glowrin at ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... lovely Reverend Mrs. Crinoline, who occupied the opposite middle-seat, a few passages of rumour relative to 'Oartheth, my love, and Mithter John Eth-COTT.' A bandy vagabond, with a head like a Dutch cheese, in a fustian stable-suit, attending on a horse-box and going about the platforms with a halter hanging round his neck like a Calais burgher of the ancient period much degenerated, was courted by the best society, by reason of what he had to hint, when not engaged in eating straw, concerning 't'harses and Joon Scott.' The engine-driver himself, ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... hills they beheld a winding, black river with a flush of green along its borders. They covered the miles to this at a trot and made their camp beside the rushing waters. The eager horses almost rended harness and halter in their desire to taste the budding grass ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... are brought up, Christianized and moralized under your care and direction, and under that of your tonsured crew. The "gentlemen" murderers are your herd, O most eminent shepherd! You ought to have and you could have stopped the rioters. And now your stola is a halter and your pallium gored with blood, otherwise innocent as is the blood of the lamb incensed on the altar of Saint Agnes ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... are spent. For such a person to lose his money is to suffer the most shocking reverse, and fall from heaven to hell, from all to nothing, in a breath. And all the more if he has put his head in the halter for it; if he may be hanged to-morrow for that same purse, so dearly earned, so foolishly departed! Villon stood and cursed; he threw the two whites into the street; he shook his fist at heaven; he stamped, and was not horrified to find himself trampling the poor corpse. Then he ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the final assault. In a circle of three hundred miles, the word was written, on land and sea, in seven tongues and among a score of races—"AT MIDNIGHT." We were then to draw tight the halter upon the throat of Germany. Der Tag had become The Hour—Ours. The mailed fist was to have its gauntlet stripped from it and a naked hand should pay ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... soldiers from the peasants had at one period reached such a pitch, that severe penalties were denounced against all marauders; and every soldier who should be convicted of theft was threatened with a halter. Shortly afterwards, it chanced that Wallenstein himself met a soldier straying in the field, whom he caused to be seized, as having violated the law, and condemned to the gallows without a trial, by his usual word of doom: "Let the rascal be hung!" ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... had been left at the camp, they saw laying stretched out on the ground, its halter still tied to a sapling. Hippy was now standing over it, peering down at the animal. Stooping over, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... lofty halls; But donn'd his armour, glitt'ring o'er with brass, And through the city pass'd with bounding steps. As some proud steed, at well-fill'd manger fed, His halter broken, neighing, scours the plain, And revels in the widely-flowing stream To bathe his sides; then tossing high his head, While o'er his shoulders streams his ample mane. Light borne on active limbs, in conscious ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... of Mr. Laugier's thorough-bass and a wicked invention called a chiroplast, for which, I think, he took out a patent, and for which I suppose all luckless girls compelled to practice with it thought he ought to have taken out a halter. It was a brass rod made to screw across the keys, on which were strung, like beads, two brass frames for the hands, with separate little cells for the fingers, these being secured to the brass ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... property the average Tommy holds vague moral views. That cart had to be brought into camp by night, and there was only one way in which it could be done. I rode about for ten minutes, and found an old framework so thin and so dejected that I blushed when I put the halter on it; it had been abandoned on account of lameness, from which it had recovered, and had since been starving. They harnessed it up and it brought in the cart; and that night, being given a good feed of oats, it died from shock. Another ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... the field, and in two minutes was on Poll, the bay, bare-backed, and with only a halter by way of rein. He diminished ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... tartar—nothing but fight fight, scratch scratch, all day long, till I wished her at old Scratch. I was tired of her, and Sue had taken a fancy to another chap; so says she one day, "As we both be of the same mind, why don't you sell me, and then we may part in a respectable manner." I agrees; and I puts a halter round her neck, and leads her to the market-place, the chap following to buy her. "Who bids for ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... about you and yours, I am at a loss to know what to mention first. Shall I tell first[n] how your father Tromes was a slave in the house of Elpias, who kept an elementary school near the temple of Theseus, and how he wore shackles and a wooden halter? Or how your mother, by celebrating her daylight nuptials in her hut near the shrine of the Hero of the Lancet,[n] was enabled to rear you, her beautiful statue, the prince of third-rate actors? But these things are known to all without my telling them. ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... look, however, convinced the soldier that the wretched being had sufficient cause for his clamour, being, in truth, in a situation almost as dreadful as any Roland had imagined. His arms were pinioned behind his back, and his neck secured in a halter (taken, as it appeared, from his steed), by which he was fastened to a large bough immediately above his head, with nothing betwixt him and death, save the horse on which he sat,—a young and terrified beast, at whose slightest start or motion, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... weakens the saliva in a horse's mouth!" Whyte Melville owed his success in horse management to the adoption of kind and humane methods. All those who have broken and ridden young horses know how thoroughly sound is his advice:—"From the day you slip a halter over his ears he should be encouraged to look to you, like a child, for all his little wants and simple pleasures. He should come cantering up from the farthest corner in the paddock when he hears your voice, should ask to have his nose rubbed, his head stroked, his neck patted, with those ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... externally to man or beast, proved better than all known healing medicine, and, when water in which it had been dipped was given to man or beast to drink, it produced an effectual cure. Nails driven into an oak tree prevented toothache. A halter that had been used in suspending a criminal, when tied round the head, prevented headache. A dead man's hand dissipated tumours of the glands, by stroking the affected part nine times with it; but the hand ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... was completely concealed amid the trees. Two horses, with their feet fettered, were fastened by a halter to the lower ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... are quietly in their slumbers, and, thus far, little wrong hath been done us. I'll cast the halter from the stalled animal ere I sleep, and Straight-Horns shall content us for the husking. We may have mutton less savory, for this evil chance, but the number of thy flock ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... but talking to Robin when she has got a notion in her head is like trying to fix a halter on a two-year-old colt. This tumble-down, six-roomed cottage was to be the saving of the family. An ecstatic look transfigured Robina's face even as she spoke of it. You might have fancied it a shrine. Robina would do ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... do this thing, she must not only have untied her halter, but have unfastened and opened a door, and raised the lid of the chest; all of which were supposed to have been left ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1875 • Various
... of M.A. in 1643. In 1642 he took up arms for the king under Sir John Biron. On the arrival of the parliamentary forces soon afterwards in Oxford he secreted the Christ Church valuables, and the soldiers found nothing in the treasury "except a single groat and a halter in the bottom of a large iron chest.'' He escaped severe punishment only by the hasty retirement of the army from the town. He was present at the battle of Edgehill in October 1642, after which, while hastening to Oxford to prepare for the king's ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... already very well that I have written to Bishop Gardiner! This is to hold a halter continuously above my head!' Then, at least, they did not mean to do away with her instantly. She dropped her eyes upon the ground and stood submissively whilst Privy Seal's voice came ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... treats not with his enemy. Thou dost risk the respect of thy realm for thee. Strengthen thy fortifications and exhaust the cunning of thy besieger. And if he invade thy lines again with insolence and threats, treat him to the sword or the halter. If thou art a warrior, prove thy deserts to the name. And if Egypt backs thee not in thy stand against the Hebrew, then it is not the same Egypt that followed Rameses ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... considerable number being Englishmen, and all of us were dressed in those hideous San-benitos, which make the most shameful garb that a man can wear. Being drawn up in single file, our guards fastened a halter round the neck of each prisoner, and afterwards gave to each of us a green wax candle, which we carried, unlighted, in the right hand. Two Spaniards, well armed, guarded each of us, and so the procession being arranged, the great doors were thrown open and we were led forth into ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... Mariamne's voice burst out so shrill that it overmastered the church bells. "Here I am," she cried, "out in the wilderness. And Algy has come with me to take care of me. And how are you, dear boys; and how is poor Phil?" "Phil is all ready to be turned off, with the halter round his neck," said Dick Bolsover; and Harry Compton said, "Hurry up, hurry up, Jew, the bride is behind you, waiting to get out." "She must wait, then," said Lady Mariamne, and there came leisurely out of the carriage, first, her ladyship's companion, by name, Algy, a tall person with an ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... which an antiquated system of constraint and fraud has deformed, held fast in his hereditary harness of thralldom and superstition, blinded by his religion and held in check by prestige, exploited by his government and tamed by dint of blows, always with a halter on, always put to work in the wrong way and against nature, whatever stall he may occupy, high or low, however full or empty his crib may be, now in menial service like the blinded hack-horse turning the mill-wheel, and now on parade like a trained dog which, decked ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... children hanging from their shoulders—women who had been tramping for days, perhaps, and might have days yet to tramp before they reached the heap of charred bricks that had once been a home. Nearly all had a cow, sometimes pulling back on its halter and filling the air with lamentation, sometimes harnessed with the horse to the family wagon. They had their pet dogs and birds, the little girls their kittens; from the front of one wagon poked the foolish head of a colt. Babies scarcely big enough to sit up crammed their little fingers into ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... people to accept their special interpretation of the Scripture, and the tortures of the inquisition, the rack, the thumb-screw, the stake, the persecutions of witchcraft, the whipping of naked women through the streets of Boston, banishment, trials for heresy, the halter about Garrison's neck, Lovejoy's death, the branding of Captain Walker, shouts of infidel and atheist, have all ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... was tried by a kind of Lynch law, in a very summary manner. Her hands and feet being bound together, she was thrown into deep water; if she sank, and was drowned, she was declared innocent; if she swam, it was a proof of guilt, and a little form of law condemned her to the stake or halter. In Scotland, they were treated with greater barbarity; they were awfully tortured—thumb-screws, the boots to crush their knees, pricking them with needles or awls night and day, to prevent a moment's rest, were persevered in—until a confession was extorted, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... got something worth skinning. Of course, there's no danger of your not being able to get a job with the house—in fact, there is no real way in which you can escape getting one; but I don't like to see you shy off every time the old man gets close to you with the halter. ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... a theory, Mr. Addison," he replied, "and it is this: I believe he thought that the indiscretion of a certain mysterious lady would bring about his ruin. If I am not mistaken, she has already gone far to put his neck in a halter; and he was determined to nip this latest adventure in the bud by removing ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... busy plaiting a horse-hair halter, and let time go by faster than they knew. Madame Chaouache, so to call her, prepared breakfast. The children played with the dog and cat. Thus it happened that still nobody looked out into the swirling rain. Why ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... off a half on the price of his teammate to Jed if he gives me his fergiveness and hern," old Hiram rose and turned with his hand on the forelock of the mule hero to say to the assembled court room. "Go around and halter him quick, Jed, 'fore he breaks away again, the durned fool," he ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... desired. She had the junctions of the timbers marked with figures, the boards numbered, and the different sets of screws tied up in independent papers for identification. She did not hear the remarks of the workmen when she had gone, to the effect that the young man would as soon think of buying a halter for himself as come back and spy at the moon from Rings-Hill Speer, after seeing the glories of other nations and the gold and jewels that were found there, or she might have been more unhappy ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... and Tisquantum added a fresh string of the precious shell to the small heap that lay before him; and the same scene was repeated, until the owner of the horse was satisfied, when he placed the halter in the hands of the purchaser, gathered up his treasure, and, with a look of mournful affection at the faithful creature whom he was resigning to the power of another master, hurried ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... the United States, sustaining General Jackson, and stoutly maintaining that the leaders of that spirited little band in our sister State, whose talent shed a glory over their opposition, deserved a halter. They sustained John C. Forsythe in voting against the Compromise bill—that peace offering of the illustrious ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... by the "good" boys of the village school, who never played "hooky" on long summer afternoons, and, in consequence, never had a chance of witnessing The Boy from Zeeny loping up to the "swimmin'-hole," a mile from town, barebacked, with nothing but a halter, and his face turned toward the horse's tail. In fact The Boy from Zeeny displayed such a versatility of accomplishments, and those, too, of a character but faintly represented in the average boy of the country town, that, for all the admiration their ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... well enough! She placed twelve bottles on the board, They were with some enchantment stored; "Hey, presto!" and they disappear— A pair of bloody swords were there. She showed a purse unto a thief, His fingers closed on it in brief; "Hey, presto!" and—the treasure fled— He grasped a halter, noosed, instead. Ambition held a courtier's wand, It turned a hatchet in his hand. A box for charities, she drew; "Blow here!" and a churchwarden blew— "Hey, presto, open!" Opened, in her, For gold was a parochial dinner! Vice shook the dice, she smote the ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... like other people, only we aren't tied to each other by a halter. He can go when he likes," Alves retorted. "I want him to go," she added fiercely, "just as soon as he finds he doesn't love ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the murderous tomahawks of the savages. Shortly afterwards, led into the town, fenced about by bayonets of the guard, the commander of the enemy, one Colonel McCloud, flourished his cane over the captive's head, with brutal insults promising him a rebel's halter at Tyburn. During his passage to England in the same ship wherein went passenger Colonel Guy Johnson, the implacable tory, he was kept heavily ironed in the hold, and in all ways treated as a common mutineer; or, it may be, rather as a lion ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... of the city were ordered to appear before the emperor barefoot and bare-headed, clothed in black gowns, and with halters around their necks. They were compelled to sue for pardon on their knees. As an additional penalty, the magistrates were forbidden to appear in public without a halter on their necks, as a badge of their ignominy. The rope was worn; but, in the lapse of time, it became a silken cord, tied in a true-lover's knot, and was regarded as an ornament which the magistrate ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... halter, Mistress Nancy, you'll make me melancholy," replied Jemmy, "and I sha'n't be able to sing any more. Well, if they want to hang me, they need not rig the yard-arm, three handspikes as sheers, and I ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... Barry, Yank and myself to accompany him. Don Gaspar was suffering from a slight attack of malarial fever; and Johnny, to his vast disgust, was left to hold him company. We took each a horse, which we had to ride bareback and with a twisted rope "war halter." ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... and rueful, he still gave proof of the levity of his disposition by impudently wagging his ears at me as I drew near. I say he was somewhat solemnised just then; for, with the admirable instinct of all men and animals under restraint, he had so wound and wound the halter about the tree that he could go neither back nor forwards, nor so much as put down his head to browse. There he stood, poor rogue, part puzzled, part angry, part, I believe, amused. He had not given up hope, and dully revolved the problem in his head, giving ever and again another ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... resolved not to be outdone; and though by this time it was blowing half a gale of wind, had not only his whole mainsail, but his square-sail and gaff-topsail all set. This circumstance made me pretty certain that Myers was on board, for he knew well that a halter would be his lot if he was caught. I think he would have done better by keeping on a wind, for before the wind her larger size gave the Serpent a decided advantage over him. After an hour's chase, if we had not overhauled him, he certainly had not increased his distance from us; ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... fastening, tie; ligament, ligature; strap; tackle, rigging; standing rigging, running rigging; traces, harness; yoke; band ribband, bandage; brace, roller, fillet; inkle^; with, withe, withy; thong, braid; girder, tiebeam; girth, girdle, cestus^, garter, halter, noose, lasso, surcingle, knot, running knot; cabestro [U.S.], cinch [U.S.], lariat, legadero^, oxreim^; suspenders. pin, corking pin, nail, brad, tack, skewer, staple, corrugated fastener; clamp, U-clamp, C-clamp; cramp, cramp iron; ratchet, detent, larigo^, pawl; terret^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... horses to the saddle here is interesting, though it is rough and cruel. The horses are kept all together in a large paddock; some of them already broken, and some that have never known saddle, bridle, or halter. Every morning they are driven up by the black boys. Selections are made of the animals required for the day's riding, and then the remainder are turned loose into the paddock again. The daily visit to the paddock accustoms the younger horses to the presence of men, so that they are not altogether ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... venerable Pontiff concluded this speech when a peasant woman passed along the road, dragging by the halter an old mare so heavily laden with branches cut with their leaves on that her knees were trembling, and ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... fools being mad, all the Natural Causes of Love, abundance of Demonstrations of the Synonimous Nature of Love and Leachery, especially consider'd a la Modern, with an absolute Specifick for the Frenzy of Love, found out in the Constitution, Anglice, a Halter. ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... The halter or slip knot is often convenient, but should never be used around the neck of an animal, for if either end is pulled it will slip and tighten, thereby strangling ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... quoth my father, as if thinking of the king's last words. "If that does not mean a halter for my neck, I am mistaken. What have we ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... Clothes-brush. Cod-line. Coffee and pot. Comb. Compass. Condensed milk. Cups. Currycomb. Dates. Dippers. Dishes. Dish-towels. Drawers. Dried fruits. Dutch oven. Envelopes. Figs. Firkin (see p. 48). Fishing-tackle. Flour (prepared). Frying-pan. Guide-book. Half-barrel. Halter. Hammer. Hard-bread. Harness (examine!). Hatchet. Haversack. Ink (portable bottle). Knives (sheath, table, pocket and butcher.) Lemons. Liniment. Lunch for day or two. Maps. Matches and safe. Marline. ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... EMILIA. A halter pardon him! and hell gnaw his bones! Why should he call her whore? who keeps her company? What place? what time? what form? what likelihood? The Moor's abused by some most villainous knave, Some base notorious knave, some scurvy fellow:— ...
— Othello, the Moor of Venice • William Shakespeare
... Jais in the United Provinces. Many of them serve as grooms, and are accustomed to state their caste as Jaiswara, considering it a more respectable designation than Chamar. The Jaiswaras must carry burdens on their heads only and not on their shoulders, and they must not tie up a dog with a halter or neck-rope, this article being venerated by them as an implement of their calling. A breach of either of these rules entails temporary excommunication from caste and a fine for readmission. Among a number of territorial groups may be mentioned ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... dear. Dad reminds me of a horse at a livery-stable fire. You rescue him from the flames, but the instant you let go his halter-shank, he dashes into the burning barn." She winked ever so slightly at Farrel. "Thanks to you, Don Mike," she assured him, "father's claws are clipped for one year; thanks to you, again, we now have a nice, quiet place ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... who had been misled by dreams of assimilation. They suffered most, for they lost most. Their hopes were blighted, their hearts broken. The leading-strings proved to be a halter. They saw they had little to expect at the hands of those they had believed to have become fully civilized, and they were embittered toward civilization, which had showed them flowers, but had given ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... a levity here, would be a serious immorality there; and a little lower down again, a mere domestic arrangement, slightly more decorous and a shade more legal than the old system of the halter and the public sale. It was declared, however, that this "relief"—that is the popular phrase in such matters—should be extended to the poor man. It was decided that the privilege to get rid of a wife was, as Mr Gladstone says of the electoral ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... leap, to hurry you down the stream; or, such a delicate steeple, in the town as Bow, to vault from; or, a braver height, as Paul's; Or, if you affected to do it nearer home, and a shorter way, an excellent garret-window into the street; or, a beam in the said garret, with this halter [HE SHEWS HIM A HALTER.]— which they have sent, and desire, that you would sooner commit your grave head to this knot, than to the wedlock noose; or, take a little sublimate, and go out of the world ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... speak as though your task were accomplished. It isn't. Phyllis Poynton may indeed be where you say, but if so it is Phyllis Poynton with the halter about her neck, with the fear of terrible things in her heart. It is not you nor I who is the jailer of her captivity. It is some power which has yet to be discovered. Our task is not finished yet. To-night ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the letter than the gentleman intended. To his great astonishment, it was not long before he one day saw Johnny Darbyshire come riding on a little shaggy horse down the village where he lived, leading the foal in a halter. ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... rank and degree. Presently, in walked Abu Nowas and was about to take his usual seat, when the Caliph cried to Masrur, the sworder, and bade him strip the poet of his clothes and bind an ass's packsaddle on his back and a halter about his head and a crupper under his rump and lead him round to all the lodgings of the slave-girls, —And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... were many who wished that the question of taxation had never been raised. In 1769, it was conceded that the duties on most specified articles should be abolished; nevertheless, Hillsborough, Secretary for the Colonies, said that he would "grant nothing to Americans except what they might ask with a halter round their necks"; and the great Samuel Johnson did not scruple to add that "they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." Against such intemperate vaporings are to be set the noble resolutions of the Virginia assembly, of which Jefferson, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... indifferent to him, has, in his eyes, only a marketable value. It may be that some excuse can even be found for his way of regarding things. It is, possibly, an atavistic relapse into the views of his ancestors, who, when they were sick of their wives, led them with a halter round their necks into the marketplace and sold them to the highest bidder. They say it is not so long ago that this pretty custom ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... question was a mild-eyed, rather good-looking quadruped, tied by a halter to the elm at Miss Cordelia's door and contentedly munching a mouthful of geranium stalks. Cynthia Ann came through ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Farmer Weathersky with the horse. Now when he had gone a little way, Farmer Weathersky thought he would just stop and have another glass of brandy; so he put a barrel of red-hot nails under his horse's nose, and a sieve of oats under his tail, hung the halter, upon a hook, and went into the inn. So the horse stood there and stamped and pawed, and snorted and reared. Just then out came a lassie, who thought it a shame to treat a ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... loudly, "here's an exchange! from the altar to the halter; from the matrimonial noose to honest Jack Ketch's—and a devilish good escape it would be to many unfortunate wretches in this ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... men, with their bright red sashes, and the gold rings in their ears, stood together. Each one had hold of the halter of a horse he was leading. And the horses did not seem to be the kind that belonged in a circus, for they pranced about, and did not like to hear the music. Nor did they like the sight of the elephants ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... with his cousins before breakfast, getting their feet well soaked by the dewy grass out in the cedar-field as they took it in turns to have a ride upon the pony—one boy running by his side once up and down the field, and holding the pony by his halter. He was a capital quiet fellow, was old Dumpling, and put up with the tricks of his young masters as good-naturedly as possibly, and, on the whole, rather seeming to join in the fun, for he stood perfectly still by their ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... on the trail. We were a little chilled by the cold mountain air and very willing to travel. Towards nightfall I heard the welcome tinkling of a bell, and soon saw first the smoke of camp fires, and then a village of tents and grime-covered wagons. How I tugged at Bobby's halter to make him go faster and then mounted him, without getting much more speed, can better be imagined ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... unless you tighten a halter round their necks to loosen their tongues," said she. "They are ungrateful. What do they not owe to Camusot! Camusot brought the House of Orleans to the throne by enforcing the ordinances ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... a little depressed when he found Jennings away. The next house along the pleasant lane was inhabited by a "newcomer." He was sitting on the horse trough, holding a horse's halter, while his hired man dashed cold water upon the galled spot on the ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... makes no inconsiderable part of a modern gentleman's education. I have known many young men, who could not write two consecutive sentences, without coming to an open rupture with orthography, grammar, or common sense, or all three, if it was to save their well-stocked necks from the halter, or their souls, (what of that commodity they have,) from Satan's grip, but who stood very high, and, doubtless, deservedly so, in the estimation of the fair sex, simply from their skill and precision in going ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... they being willing and resolved for heaven, what could stop them? Could fire or faggot, sword or halter, stinking dungeons, whips, bears, bulls, lions, cruel rackings, stoning, starving, nakedness, &c. (Heb 11). 'Nay, in all these things they were more than conquerors, through him that loved them' (Rom 8:37); who had also made them 'willing in the day ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a living fire, the delicate nostrils were a-quiver every moment, the faultlessly curved ears alert as a wild creature's. And he WAS half wild, for never had saddle rested upon his back, girth encircled him or bit fretted the sensitive mouth. A halter thus far in his career had been his only badge of bondage and the girl caressing him had been the one to put it upon him. It would have been a bad quarter of an hour for any other person attempting it. But she was his "familiar," though far from ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Nothing can be more beautiful than the training of the Lapland reindeer. With a simple collar of skin round his neck, a single trace of the same material attached to the "pulk" or sledge, and passing between his legs, and one rein, fastened like a halter about his neck, this intelligent and docile animal is perfectly under the command of an experienced driver, and performs astonishing journeys over the softest snow. When the rein is thrown over on the off side of ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... companion of his journey, whose extreme whiteness, as well as its projecting bones and hollow eyes, indicated its antiquity. It was harnessed in the most simple manner, with a pair of branks, a hair tether, or halter, and a sunk, or cushion of straw, instead of bridle and saddle. A canvass pouch hung around the neck of the animal, for the purpose, probably, of containing the rider's tools, and any thing else he might have occasion to carry with him. Although ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the plebeian breed, thick at every point where he should be thin, and thin at every point where he should be thick, is not one of those noble objects that bewitch the world. The best horsemen outside of the cities are the unshod country-boys, who ride "bare-backed," with only a halter round the horse's neck, digging their brown heels into his ribs, and slanting over backwards, but sticking on like leeches, and taking the hardest trot as if they loved it. This was a different sight on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... across his breast and another down his middle, and tying his hands and feet to these with thongs of buffalo skin: stakes were driven into the earth, and his pinioned arms and legs were bound to them, while a halter, which was passed round his neck and then round a sapling near by, kept him from moving his head. All the while they were making sure in this way that he should not escape, the Indians were cuffing his ears, ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells |
