"Reprieve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her back with its light clatter. Perhaps at last it had good tidings to offer. Unless it brought them soon it would bring them too late—like a reprieve after execution. She took the narrow thread of paper in her hand and glanced at its latest entries. As she watched the small type wheel revolve and stamp, it broke upon her that the inanimate herald was spelling out, letter by ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the right of reprieve; they felt it their duty to refer the case to the Council of Five Hundred, asking 'whether Lesurques was to die because of his resemblance to a criminal?' The Council passed to the Order of the Day on the report of Simeon; and Lesurques was ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... from the warm milk in the pail, and held it out to him. He took it as a man on the scaffold might a reprieve from death, half lifted it to his lips, then let his hand sink. It trembled so, as he set the cup down on a shelf beside him, that he spilled a little. He looked ruefully at the ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... of this struck even Dale, distraught as he was, and the three settled down to discuss the possibility of rescue, of reprieve, or whatever seemed likely to put off the evil hour, ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive Unless her prayers, whom Heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath Of ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... strangled man was then removed; while fresh exertions were made to obtain his reprieve; this time with a better result; and, notwithstanding the strenuous opposition of the master, Dick's life was spared; though it was only to undergo the horrors of a stricter servitude. This he bore for some three years; and if by that time, he was not reformed, he was certainly subdued; ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... with you, when we have time, about some of your points, but the last one—if it's valid—has tremendous force. I didn't know men felt that way. But no matter what my feeling for you really is, I'm really grateful to you for the reprieve ... and you know, Clee, I'm pretty sure you're going to get us back home. ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... when this was deposited on the ground all the rustlers sat down around it. They had brought food and drink. Jean had to utter a grim laugh at their coolness; and he was reminded of many dare-devil deeds known to have been perpetrated by the Hash Knife Gang. Jean was glad of a reprieve. The longer the rustlers put off an attack the more time the allies of the Isbels would have to get here. Rather hazardous, however, would it be now for anyone to attempt to get to the Isbel cabins in the daytime. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... doubt of the genuineness of the document; but his objection would at least give him the respite of another day or two, and a respite seemed almost a reprieve. ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... are breathing leisurely about him,—I suppose the minutes lengthen as time approaches eternity, in the same manner as the miles get longer as you travel northward),—after hanging four minutes, according to the best calculation of the bystanders, a reprieve came, and I ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... your secret thoughts escaped me? No, no, I read them all! You trusted that you should still have time for repentance. I saw your artifice, knew its falsity, and rejoiced in deceiving the deceiver! You are mine beyond reprieve: I burn to possess my right, and alive you ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... others to fight with the wasps, others to clear away all dirt, others to accompagny and escort the king; and when he is old and has no wings they carry him. And if one of them fails in his duty, he is punished without reprieve. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... last, and their minds have a temperature a little below normal. In Ypres, whatever may have been their heroic and exalted dreams, they awake, see the world is mad, and surrender to the doom from which they know a world bereft will give them no reprieve. ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... our surprise and comfort it passed on and descended the stairs. It was like a reprieve to ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... true, come over his character; he became more desperate, but if was only because the deeper had become this affection. The incident of the reprieve of la Tour, which had meanwhile reached him, sank deeper into his heart than the whole round of his pleasures, and made him anxious for the moment when he ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... my last writing. To-morrow morning the hour is set. The governor has declined to pardon or reprieve, despite the fact that the Anti-Capital-Punishment League has raised quite a stir in California. The reporters are gathered like so many buzzards. I have seen them all. They are queer young fellows, most of them, and most queer is it that they will thus earn bread and butter, cocktails and tobacco, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Council, or in Jamestown, or in Virginia dreams of a duel behind the church at sunrise to-morrow." He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and by degrees got his fat body up from the doorstep. "So there's a reprieve for you, Ralph Percy, unless you kill or are killed to-morrow morning. In the latter case, the problem's solved; in the former, the best service you can do yourself, and maybe the Company, is to walk out of the world of your own accord, and that as quickly as possible. ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... a short reprieve, because Dick has had to go away again; not to his mother, this time, but to London. A telegram was forwarded to him from Gloucester, where he had left sending-on instructions; and he knocked at my door early yesterday morning (at ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the tension, grown almost unendurable, came with the arrival at Suda of the Psyche, with Admiral Lord Clarence Paget, direct from Constantinople, to inform us that the Arethusa frigate had been ordered to Crete. If the Psyche had been a reprieve the Arethusa was a pardon. The hilarious blue-jackets flying over the plains of Crete brought all the Mussulman world to its senses, and we took down our barricades; but for the poor Cretans there was no change,—the Turks were so fully persuaded that England was with ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... Poitiers, whose footsteps we followed at Chenonceaux, was once imprisoned here. Even the powerful influence of Diane scarcely gained her father's pardon from Francis I. His sentence had been pronounced and he was mounting the steps of the scaffold when the reprieve came. ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... with hesitating steps and guilty looks, to the saloon. Their mother was not there. Here was a reprieve. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... (I use the word as indicating mental or physical suffering—in my case, the former—not with any local significance) there are moments when the anguish-stricken spirit is mercifully allowed a temporary reprieve. Such a moment occurred after the first awful paroxysm of self-loathing and torture which I experienced when my past life was made known to me in its true colours, and it was in this saner and comparatively painless interval that I met one whom I had known ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... "For what did you stipulate but rescue from the Inquisition? Learn that when you signed, the steps in the corridor were the steps of those who were bringing you a pardon. But now you are mine beyond reprieve, to all eternity, and alive ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... from this remark why Lina had asked her to go home with her. It was not because she wished to hear any of Dotty's brilliant stories, for she had not asked a single question about Out West; it was because she hoped for a reprieve from the dreaded knitting. ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... in the success of his undertaking, sparing none of those who had mocked him for a sucker and a fool. A cool breath of reviving wind was moving, fresh, sweet, rain-scented; as hopeful, as life-giving, as a reprieve to one chained among faggots at ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... lay writhing, Richard's inclosure of the French shares arrived by post. Mr. Harley at sight of them came as near fainting as any gentleman coarsely grained and hearty ever comes. Ten minutes went by in stupid gazing, and in handling and feeling those certificates that were to him as is the reprieve that comes to one who else would die ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Peg was as a reprieve from death! The trot had almost dislocated her bones, and shaken her up like an addled egg, and the change to racing speed afforded infinite relief. She could scarcely credit her senses, and she felt a tendency to laugh again as she glanced over her shoulder. But that ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... at Askatoon before the stroke of the hour, but still he would be too late, for in her pocket now was the Governor's reprieve. The man had slept soundly. His wallet was still in his breast; but the reprieve was ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... house is not like these summer lodgings, which are snapped up before you can look at them," said Mrs. Langford; "I have no fears but that it is to be had." But Henrietta could not help fancying that her mother would regard it somewhat as a reprieve, if the bargain was to go off independently of any determination ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Secretary of State, and he assured me, very civilly, that not even the highest personage in the land...." He dropped his voice, "Jackie, boy," he said, his narrow-lidded eyes peering miserably across at me, "there's not even hope of a reprieve afterwards." ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... sounded like a reprieve to a condemned man on the morning of his execution, and in the revulsion of my ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... of so many years there is no need for lack of candor in discussing the events of 1885. To put it plainly Riel's fate turned almost entirely upon political considerations. Which was the less dangerous course,—to reprieve him or let him hang? The issue was canvassed back and forth by the distracted ministry up to the day before that fixed for the execution when a decision was reached to let the law take its course. The feeling in Quebec in support of the ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... asked herself, the very lifting of the cloud—remote, unthreatening as it had been—which gave such new serenity to her heaven? It was horrible to think that one's deepest security was a mere sense of escape—that happiness was no more than a reprieve. The perversity of such ideas was emphasized by Peyton's approach. He had the gift of restoring things to their normal relations, of carrying one over the chasms of life through the closed tunnel of an incurious cheerfulness. All that was restless and questioning ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... sentinel himself had committed the theft. The man was tried by a court-martial, and condemned to death, a circumstance which, as may naturally be supposed, was very distressing to us. Madame de Bourrienne applied to the commanding officer for the man's pardon, but could only obtain his reprieve. The regiment departed some weeks after, and we could never learn what was the fate of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... sterner and healthier spirit was called for at the present juncture. The time had come to make an example, and a more suitable case than the one now before him could not have been found for such a purpose. He would accordingly hold out no hope of a reprieve, but would counsel prisoner to make the best use of the ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... and can not be forgiven by God—never has been forgiven on earth, and never will be. Death—death inexorable, is declared by God's judgments on the world and on nations; and he has declared death as its punishment by his law—death to both male and female, without pardon or reprieve, and beyond the power of any ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... where the robbery was done; and to St. Mary Axe, where he lived. And there I got for a shilling to stand upon the wheel of a cart, in great pain, above an hour before the execution was done; he delaying the time by long discourses and prayers one after another, in hopes of a reprieve; but none come, and at last was flung off the ladder in his cloak. A comely-looked man he was, and kept his countenance to the end: I was sorry to see him. It was believed there were at least 12 or ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... crowd, but their voices were drowned by the beating of drums. While the Rev. John Wilson railed and scoffed at them from the foot of the gallows the two brave men were hanged. The halter had been placed upon Mrs. Dyer when her son, who had come in all haste from Rhode Island, obtained her reprieve on his promise to take her away. The bodies of the two men were denied Christian burial and thrown uncovered into a pit. All the efforts of husband and son were unable to keep Mrs. Dyer at home. In the following spring she returned ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... undoubtedly some time fall into the hands of the law, though not extended on purpose to seize him; and, therefore, they constituted their proceedings in such a manner, that innocence might at least not be entrapped, though guilt should sometimes gain a reprieve. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... the hour of execution. Dorothea begins to sob, and Gentleman Jim clenches his hands. The back of the stage opens to disclose a street, a crowd, a hangman, and the fatal Tyburn tree. Faint cheers are heard from the wings. The sheriff enters, bearing in his hand a reprieve, written apparently on a window-blind. He is attended by the comic servant, through whose mysterious agency a pardon has been granted, and who sticks by his ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Looking-Glass Drops. "They not only kill soonest, and most surely defy detection," she proceeds, "but I have it on the authority of the label, that my husband has tried to find the antidote to these Drops, and has tried in vain. If my heart fails me, when the deed is done, there can be no reprieve for the woman whose tongue I must silence for ever—or, after all I have sacrificed, my child's future ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... which was not shared by Pasque nor Manginot, who were now fully persuaded that the prisoner had only wanted to gain time, or some chance of escape. They thought of abandoning the search and returning to Paris, but Querelle begged so vehemently for twenty-four hours' reprieve that Manginot weakened. The third day, therefore, they explored the environs of Taverny and the borders of the forest as far as Bessancourt. Querelle now led them by chance, thinking he recognised a group of trees, a turn of the road, even imagining ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... United States paused in the midst of the important business under discussion, and with the gravity due to a solemn occasion, took a card and wrote on it an order of reprieve for the turkey, which Tad seized, and fled with all speed, and Jack's life was saved. He became very tame, and roamed peacefully about the grounds at will, enduring petting and teasing alternately, from his capricious young master. At that time the White House was guarded by a company ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of one of the chaplains of the famous Montrose; how, being condemned in Scotland to die for attending his master in some of his expeditions, and being upon the ladder and ordered to select a psalm to be sung, expecting a reprieve, he named the 119th Psalm, with which the officer attending the execution complied (the Scottish Presbyterians were great psalm-singers in those days), and it was well for him he did so, for they ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... express to the life what the ecstasies and transports of the soul are when it is so saved, as I may say, out of the very grave; and I do not wonder now at that custom, viz., that when a malefactor who has the halter about his neck, is tied up, and just going to be turned off, and has a reprieve brought to him—I say, I do not wonder that they bring a surgeon with it, to let him blood that very moment they tell him of it, that the surprise may not drive the animal spirits from the heart, and ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... frowning head, when vapors made a smudge there in the midst of the glittering assemblage of the peaks, and when, for a meager hour, once in a while, the summit stood clear in the sunshine, as if the tortured mountain, condemned to everlasting punishment, had been given a brief reprieve. ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... your Puritan yet. We sent your hostage to Oxford for safe-keeping. News came of your death, and but now the King sent an order to have the fellow shot. But you can overtake the order, outstrip it. Here is a reprieve for the prisoner." ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... sensitiveness, and the man who smiles at the trivial misfits of life realizes also that all men who tread the earth are living under a sentence of death, and that Fate has merely allowed them an indefinite, but limited, reprieve. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... fright, and we shall have a rupture of the aneurism. I have seen instances of it. O my God! what is to become of us? Is she asleep? Yes. She is asleep. Is she in a swoon? No. Her pulse is pretty strong. She is only asleep. Sleep is a reprieve. It is the happy blindness. What can I do to prevent people walking about here? Gentlemen, if there be anybody on deck, I beg of you to make no noise. Do not come near us, if you do not mind. You know a person in delicate health requires a little attention. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... me, Daubrecq; yes, by Jove! I have a trump card, the son's head, and I am playing it. When I have procured a nice little death-sentence for Gilbert, when the days go by and Gilbert's petition for a reprieve is rejected by my good offices, you shall see, M. Lupin, that his mummy will drop all her objections to calling herself Mme. Alexis Daubrecq and giving me an unexceptionable pledge of her good-will. That fortunate issue is inevitable, whether you like it or not. It is foredoomed. All I ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... ought to feel very glad, Edwards," he said. "This is a reprieve, don't you see, so far as I am concerned. And yet I can't realize it; I don't seem to care about it; ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... poor; her life seemed flickering out like a taper in the breeze. Now grief had something to leaven it. Something had set up a screen between her and the wind of unmerciful events. There was a possibility, not of reprieve, but of a message from the unseen good, and for a moment the candle of her life burned steadily. Since the dead could not return, stricken mortality had one shadowy hope: that it should go, in its course, to them, and find them living. Again she vowed her belief to the God who would send one sign ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... destined victim of the thank-offering, having not only heard but also understood everything that had transpired, had fainted from excess of emotion produced by the revulsion of feeling from that of lofty exaltation to relief and joy at her reprieve from death—even though that death had come, through long usage, to be regarded as more honourable and glorious than anything that this life had to offer—and had been delivered to her father, who had lost not a moment in conveying her back to ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... district, and incurred the capital penalty. Santa Cruz went to Bordeaux to beg for their lives at the feet of Dona Margarita. She received him most graciously, and promised to send a special courier to her husband to intercede in their behalf. Before the King's reprieve could possibly have ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... their icy varnishing—then all was over. There was an iceberg of another shape astern of us, the gale recommenced, the waves pressed each other on as before, and we felt the return of the gale, awful as it was, as a reprieve. That was a dreadful voyage, Jacob, and turned one-third of my hair grey; and what made it worse was, that we had only three fish on board on our return. However, we had reason to be thankful, for eighteen of our vessels were lost altogether, and it was the mercy of God ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... on the island for many years. I suppose she has made some application to Mr. G—— for a respite for Edie, on finding how terribly unfit she is for work; or perhaps Mr. ——, to whom I represented her case, may have ordered her reprieve; but she came with much gratitude to me (who have, as far as I know, had nothing to do with it), to tell me that she is not able to be sent into the field for another week. Old Sackey fully confirmed Edie's account of the terrible hardships the women underwent in being thus driven to labour before ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... to sweet Life; and I shall think my self ever obliged to my dear Wife, for this kind Reprieve;—had she been cruel, I had been strangled, or hung in the Air like our ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... perception, and utter absence of all overplus of chivalrous feeling, in matters of cool dispassionate reasoning—were unanimous in their belief in the prisoner's guilt, and only acquiesced in the month's reprieve, because it was Isabella's wish. Against their verdict what could be brought forward? In reality nothing but the prisoner's own strongly-attested innocence—an attestation most forcible in the minds of the Sovereign and the nobles, but of no weight whatever to men accustomed ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... among them shouted, "Pause before the deed is done; We have asked reprieve and pardon For the ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... evening, a dozen in one field sometimes, where they are to be milked, to keep the torments away. The cows are wonderfully clever, they know the value of the fires, and all huddle close up to them, glad of the restful reprieve, after the worry they have endured all day. Poor patient beasts, there they stand, chewing the cud, first with one side of their body turned towards the flames and then the other, the filmy smoke, the glow of the fire and the rays of ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... the chief administrator of justice, who, having read the memorial and the note I had affixed to it, said, "That is sufficient, sir; have the goodness to assure madame la comtesse du Barry, my cousin, that the reprieve she desires is already granted; and as my fair relation appears to fear trusting implicitly to my personal friendship and humanity, I will set her mind at rest by putting you in possession of the legal forms requisite for the prisoner." He immediately issued the necessary ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... he can reveal to the king the hiding-place of a vast treasure which would enable him to outwit the plots of some rebels who are even now conspiring to kill him. The king, hearing this, immediately orders a reprieve, and, questioning the Fox in secret, learns that the conspirators are Brown the Bear, Isegrim the Wolf, and others. To reward the Fox for saving her husband's life, the queen now obtains his pardon, which Noble ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... Nearer, nearer still. Then suddenly a sharp exclamation broke from the watcher. It was a cry which had in it a strange thrill. It might have been the gasp of the condemned man at the sound of the word "reprieve." It might have been the cry of one momentarily relieved ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... march leaders won the administration a reprieve from the threat of a mass civil rights demonstration in the nation's capital, but at the price of promising substantial reform in minority hiring for defense industries and the creation of a federal body, the Fair Employment Practices ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... went on cutting the leaves of the books placed before him. Still utterly incapable of preparing myself in any way for the disclosure expected from me; without thought or hope, or feeling of any kind, except a vague sense of thankfulness for the reprieve granted me before I was called on to speak—I mechanically looked round and round the room, as if I expected to see the sentence to be pronounced against me, already written on the walls, or grimly foreshadowed in the faces ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... yesterday, when I saw that you had recognized me. It was very merciful in you to reprieve me, even for a few hours; but you will pardon me if I ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... with another at the passion which was such a tragedy to her. This was the point that, put aside however often, still presented itself, and its recurrence, if he could have known it, was mercy and reprieve from the only source out of which ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... next to be done? This was but a momentary reprieve. Another copy would be had—no, not till to-morrow though. The sound of the words that had been read from the bookseller's note by Lady Castlefort, though scarcely noticed at the time, recurred to her now; and ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... I could not tell. It was a reprieve; but then I knew positively it was nothing more than a reprieve. The sentence must be executed. Julia came to me, bent her cheek toward me, and I kissed it. That was our usual salutation when our morning's interview ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... to the park wall; and, listening, he heard the river murmuring among the alders. He halted, utterly at a loss. If he were caught again could Rickerl save him? What could a captain of Uhlans do? True, he had interfered with Von Steyr's hangman's work, but that was nothing but a reprieve at best. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... made such an appeal as men are rarely able to make, because a regenerated life was also vocal in utterance. To him a miracle seemed to have been wrought, and he listened to each word as if to a reprieve ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... a new place every day, and every time he broke out it cost the house money. Finally, I made up my mind to swallow the loss, and Mister Jim was just about to lose his job sure enough, when the orders for Extract began to look up, and he got a reprieve; then he began to make expenses, and he got a pardon; and finally a rush came that left him high and dry in a permanent place. Jim was all right in his way, but it was a new way, and I hadn't been broad-gauged enough to see that ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... sentenced to be hanged in six weeks. Then this valiant woman's energy and perseverance rose to their highest. She set off for an audience with the Governor, Sir Henry Moore, Bart., and returned about the first of September with a reprieve. Just in time she arrived, for a company of fifty mounted men had ridden the whole length of the county to rescue her husband from the jail. She convinced them of the folly of such action as they proposed, and sent them home, while she turned to the task of obtaining a pardon from ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... blaze up, indeed, with a great brilliance the dull printer's ink expended on the assemblage of the few letters that form the ship's name to the anxious eyes scanning the page in fear and trembling. It is like the message of reprieve from the sentence of sorrow suspended over many a home, even if some of the men in her have been the most homeless mortals that you may find among the wanderers ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... said. "Sure. O.K. It isn't urgent." He was just as glad of the reprieve; it gave him one more chance to work matters through to a solution, and hand it to Burris on a silver platter. "But ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... passion" is a remarkable contribution to Greek political thought, the abstract personifications reading like the work of a poet or philosopher. An exciting race against time is most graphically described. After great exertions the ship bearing the reprieve arrived just in time to save Mytilene. This act of mercy stands in sinister contrast with the treatment the unhappy Plataeans received from the liberators of Greece. The citizens were captured, Athens having strangely abandoned them in spite of her promise to help. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... king by appointment, and found a large court, where the Wakungu caught yesterday, and sentenced to execution, received their reprieve on paying fines of cattle and young damsels—their daughters. A variety of charms, amongst which were some bits of stick strung on leather and covered with serpent-skin, were presented and approved of. Kaggao, a large district officer, considered the second ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... provocation and in the face of an outbreak which might well appear to resemble riot. The Government in London came to the conclusion that it would not do to hang John Porteous, and a message was sent by the Duke of Newcastle notifying her Majesty's pleasure that Porteous should have a reprieve for a period of six weeks—a preliminary step to the consequent commutation ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... consultation, however, they were induced to forego the pleasure of this horrible sacrifice. Perhaps they thought the cacique too important a personage to be executed thus obscurely. Granting him, therefore, a transient reprieve, they conveyed him to the caravel, and sent him, bound with heavy chains, to San Domingo. Ovando saw him in his power, and incapable of doing further harm; but he had not the magnanimity to forgive a fallen enemy, whose only crime was the defence ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... the squadron as prisoners, had made their escape by swimming to the shore, three miles off; and this feat encouraged a bold pilot of Seville, named Ledesma, who was on board the admiral's caravel, to attempt a similar exploit. Never was bearer of reprieve for the condemned more welcome. Ledesma communicated with the Adelantado, and conveyed to the admiral intelligence of the desperate state of affairs. The result was, that when in a few days the wind moderated, all ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... let him off so easy," said Jack, but he did as Melville wished. But the colonel had a short reprieve. On his way to jail, a bullet from some unknown assailant pierced his temple, and Jerry Lane, the notorious road agent, died, as he had lived, ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... ecstasies and transports that my soul felt at the happy deliverance. It was like a reprieve to a dying malefactor, with a halter about his neck, and ready to be turned off. I was wrapt up in contemplation and often lifted up my hands, with the profoundest humility, to the Divine Powers, for saving, my life, when the rest of my companions were all drowned. And now I began to cast ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... man: 'We will try, but it will be hard work. One oughtn't to begin dancing at twenty-eight.' I limbered him up as best I could. I had only two weeks to do it in. I begged him to put off his departure, to obtain a reprieve of three or four months—I could have made something of him. He would not. He went without knowing anything. I often think of him. He will represent us out there; he will represent us very badly; he will not be an honor to his country. ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... reprieve, went up stairs; and while Sally was laying out the law, and prating away in her usual dictorial manner, whipt on another gown, and sliding down the stairs, escaped to her relations. And this flight, which was certainly more owing to terror ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... When I took him the time before, I told him what he would come to if he did not mend his Hand. This is Death without Reprieve. I may venture to Book him [writes.] For Tom Gagg, forty Pounds. Let Betty Sly know that I'll save her from Transportation, for I can get more by her ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... There are two wild beasts, like those which Daniel saw in vision, contending together in fierce warfare,—the old Babylonish beast, horrid with the blood of saints, and its cruel executioner—the monster of Atheistic Liberalism; but Christ has identified His cause with neither. No reprieve from the prince awaits the condemned culprit; and with the disreputable and savage executioner he will hold no intercourse. Destruction, from which there is no escape, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... But I knew the reprieve would be but for a short time, and though I had no wish to die, I must confess that I rather wished the ordeal over and the peace ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thought she could sleep, and, in fact, sank to rest. She felt refreshed on awakening and said, 'I wish it was over; it is only a reprieve to make me suffer a little longer; I cannot recover, but my nasty heart will not break yet.' She had an impression that she should die on a Wednesday: she had, she said, been born on a Wednesday, married on a Wednesday, crowned on a Wednesday, her first ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... graces can your form improve, But all are lost, unless you love; While that sweet passion you disdain, Your veil and beauty are in vain: In pity then prevent my fate, For after dying all reprieve's too late. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... enough in some respects, was not quite such a fool as that. Sometimes the Jinn could be mollified and induced to grant a reprieve by being told stories, one inside the other, like a nest of Oriental boxes. Unfortunately Fakrash did not seem in the humour for listening to apologues, and, even if he were, Horace could not think of or improvise any just ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... Esmond's ambassador came back from the mission with which the poor young gentleman had charged him, with a sad blank face and a shake of the head, which told that there was no hope for the prisoner; and scarce a wretched culprit in that prison of Newgate ordered for execution, and trembling for a reprieve, felt more cast down than Mr. Esmond, innocent ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wish to justify myself," he said. "I say merely that, inasmuch as I was promised a reprieve at the trial, I told everything, and was therefore allowed to go free, while my uncle and my brother were sentenced to ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... water, it was impossible to get at while we were at sea. Such was our situation, when, on the 12th, at break of day, we discovered land: The sudden transport of hope and joy which this inspired, can perhaps be equalled only by that which a criminal feels who bears the cry of a reprieve at the place of execution. The land proved to be a cluster of islands, of which I counted seven, and believe there were many more. We kept on for two of them, which were right a-head when land was first discovered, and seemed to lie ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... From underground of our night-mantled foe: 10 The flame-winged feet Of Trade's new Mercury, that dry-shod run Through briny abysses dreamless of the sun, Are mercilessly fleet, And at a bound annihilate Ocean's prerogative of short reprieve; Surely ill news might wait, And man be patient of delay to grieve: Letters have sympathies And tell-tale faces that reveal, 20 To senses finer than the eyes. Their errand's purport ere we break the seal; They wind a sorrow round with circumstance To stay its feet, nor all unwarned displace ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... as you'll easily believe. "O GILBERT, you must spare him, for I bring him a reprieve, It came from our Home Secretary many weeks ago, And passed through that post-office which I used to ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... melted with grief. She played on him with all a woman's artillery; and at last actually wrung from him what she called a reprieve. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... morning by the jailor, who said, roughly enough, 'You've escaped the gallows this time, lad. A reprieve has come for you.' ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... the word. It was like proclaiming a reprieve to a wretch upon the scaffold about to be launched into eternity. It caused such excitement in the minds of the motley crew—all of them suffering from extreme thirst—that, without further hesitancy, they bent eagerly ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... true that, although Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN is still nominally Chancellor of the Exchequer, he is really a prisoner in the Tower, conveyed under guard to and from the House, and that the reprieve of the sentence of capital punishment passed on him by The Daily Mail may expire—and he with it—at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... day Uncle Tobe hanged all sorts and conditions of men—men who kept on vainly hoping against hope for an eleventh-hour reprieve long after the last chance of reprieve had vanished, and who on the gallows begged piteously for five minutes, for two minutes, for one minute more of precious grace; negroes gone drunk on religious exhortation who died in a frenzy, sure of salvation, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... he had a partial reprieve; but then it was so partial that it would have been much better for him to have had no such reprieve at all. Mrs. Woodward was at Sunbury with Linda, and no one was at home but Katie. What was he to do? was he to tell Katie? or was he to pretend that ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... angles to the course he had just been taking, the guide, on reaching the spot, imitated his example, and, first removing the snow to make sure of the fact, he joyfully proclaimed to those who came after him that the lost path was found. This intelligence sounded like a reprieve from death, though the mountaineers well knew that more than an hour of painful and increasing toil was still necessary to reach the hospice. The chilled blood of the tender beings who were fast dropping into the terrible ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... generals, they had always one eye in their own camp, and the other in the enemy's; and all their efforts were paralysed by their fear of being too successful. Their situation had become desperate: if any event in the chapter of human accidents should fall out to give them a reprieve, the only consequences would be, that as they had dwindled, dwindled before, they would dwindle, dwindle again. There was no stock of good luck which such conduct would not run out. It was clear what was coming: the Tories must return to power. How long they would stay there was another question; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... administrative duties, the President has the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in the case of impeachment. A pardon fully exempts the individual from the punishment imposed upon him by law; a reprieve, on the other hand, is simply a temporary suspension of the execution ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... for thee bound, with thee and for thee given, A mystery seal'd from hell, and wonder'd at in heaven; I send thee rest at heart to love, and still believe; But not for thee—nor Me—is found from death reprieve." ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... majority of those we met with shouts of, "Who killed Myles Joyce?" [Footnote: One of several men hanged for the Maamtrasna murders. All the other men sentenced protested that Myles Joyce was innocent, and died protesting it. Strong efforts were made to gain a reprieve for this lad.] while some varied the proceedings by calling "Murderer!" after him. A few days later, when I was driving with Lady Spencer in an open carriage, a well-dressed bicyclist came riding through the cavalry escort, and in a quiet, conversational tone ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Froude,[19] "the Black Prince had lived, or if Richard II. had inherited the temper of the Plantagenets, the ecclesiastical system would have been spared the misfortune of a longer reprieve." ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Sense, reason, memory, increase my woe? And shall my voice, ordain'd on hymns to dwell, Corrupt to groans, and blow the fires of hell? Oh! must I look with terror on my gain, And with existence only measure pain? What! no reprieve, no least indulgence given, No beam of hope, from any point of heaven! Ah mercy! mercy! art thou dead above? Is love extinguish'd in the source of love? "Bold that I am, did heaven stoop down to hell? Th' expiring Lord of life my ransom seal? Have I not been industrious to provoke? From his embraces ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... Emperor reprieved him. The hour for the execution passed, and, being now free for the time, he fled the country. He went to Africa, and there he so disgraced the state that bore him that of late times I hear he has been sent for to come back to Austria. Even yet the Emperor may suspend the reprieve and send him to the block for his ancient crime. If he had a thousand heads, he could not atone for the worse ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... this country uncertain if it has got a total pardon or only a reprieve. I won't think of it, as I can do no good. It seems to be in one of those crises by which Providence reduces nations to their original elements.[477] If I had my health, I should take no worldly fee, not to be in the bustle; but I am as ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... naturally said, "What do you mean? Where did you ever see it before?" "Well, I saw it first, some years ago, as Dr. Holmes's dedication to his Songs in Many Keys." Of course my first impulse was to prepare this man's remains for burial, but upon reflection I said I would reprieve him for a moment or two, and give him a chance to prove his assertion if he could. We stepped into a book-store. and he did prove it. I had stolen that dedication almost word for word. I could not imagine how this curious thing happened; for I knew one thing, for a dead certainty—that a certain ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine |
