"Gunpowder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... greatest part of the city was in a flame. Captain Morgan pretended the Spaniards had done it, perceiving that his own people reflected on him for that action. Many of the Spaniards, and some of the pirates, did what they could, either to quench the flames or by blowing up houses with gunpowder, and pulling down others to stop it, but in vain: for in less than half an hour it consumed a whole street. All the houses of the city were built with cedar, very curious and magnificent, and richly adorned, especially with hangings ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... their ears are deaf to the cries of the wounded and dying. The varying chances of the combat, the uncertainties of fear and hope produce in them emotions that they prefer to all others, however poetic and charming. It is with a sort of intoxication that they inhale the smell of gunpowder, perhaps even that of blood. A hotly contested victory is more agreeable to them than one too easily gained. Fortune is, in their eyes, a difficult mistress, whose favors seem the dearer, the harder they are of attainment. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... wrap the child in it, and if she found anything therein to throw it in the fire. A very large toad was found, which on being put in the fire "made a great and horrible noise, and after a space there was a flashing in the fire like gunpowder ... and thereupon the toad was no more seen or heard." More wonderful still, "the next day there came a young woman and told this deponnent that her aunt (meaning the said Amy) was in a most lamentable condition, having her face all scorched ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... back a few score of years on seeing the old rings for carrying gun-caps, and also gunpowder flasks, and even old picturesque flintlocks and matchlocks; but still, taking things all round, it is rather interesting to note that there is a considerable number of men in Iran who are well-armed with serviceable cartridge rifles, which they can use with accuracy. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... dashing English landau. It contains a "lady," who married a poor half-pay lieutenant, and who now drinks tea that would cost in England twenty shillings the pound. They emigrated to New South Wales in 1815. But how did she get that carriage, and how does she manage to send to China for the gunpowder? Thus:—Her husband is both landowner and merchant. Being constantly supplied with a number of convict labourers, he breeds cattle and cultivates grain; and as he gives to his labourers but just enough ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... of blowing up positions that cannot be taken otherwise is by no means a new one. Probably it dates back almost as far as the invention of gunpowder itself. Doubtless, if we only knew of them, there have been attempts to mine the Great Wall of China. It was, therefore, only natural that, when the Austrians had us held up before a position it was vitally necessary we should have, we should begin to consider the possibility of mining it as the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... or whether she doesn't," broke in Miss Felicia, "hasn't got a single thing to do with it, Peter. You just go back to your work, Mr. Breen, and look after your gunpowder plots, or whatever you call them, and if some one of these gentlemen of elegant leisure—not one of whom so far has offered his services—cannot manage to escort you to your father's house, Ruth, ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of liquid fuel was very large, and it would have taken the place of coal if the siege had been indefinitely prolonged. Among miscellaneous articles which were luckily to be obtained at Weil's stores were 2 tons of gunpowder and other ammunition, 132 rifles, insulated fuses, and electric ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... and that a well-served battery of Parrotts would have silenced them in fifteen minutes. By giving him a few pieces of the kind the poet would have further brightened the feather he sets in Satan's cap as the benefactor of mankind by inventing gunpowder and shortening wars. The bow he presents to us as an old and familiar weapon even at the date of that first and greatest of pitched battles. Its claim, as the parent of projectile implements, is recognized in the common etymology of arcus, arcualia—artillery. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... impossible to sit down and scribble glibly of such a people. In Japan there is no record. It is a new race appearing almost for the first time among civilized nations. It has given the world nothing, but how widely different here! It is to China the world owes the compass, gunpowder, porcelain, and even the art of printing, and to her also alone the spectacle of a people ruled by a code of laws and morals embracing the most minute particulars, written two thousand four hundred years ago, and taught to this day in the schools as the rules of life. It is an old and true ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... the loss we sustained was not so great as we had at first apprehended; our medicine sustained the greatest injury, several articles of which were intirely spoiled, and many others considerably injured; the ballance of our losses consisted of some gardin seeds, a small quantity of gunpowder, and a few culinary articles which fell overboard and sunk, the Indian woman to whom I ascribe equal fortitude and resolution, with any person onboard at the time of the accedent, caught and preserved most of the light articles which were washed overboard all matters ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... by a mallet and spike-nail that lay close at hand; and a fearful explosion ensued, in which the poor marine, cleaning his bayonet near, was shockingly burnt and disfigured, the very skin of all the lower part of his face being utterly destroyed by gunpowder. They said it was a mercy that his eyes were spared; but he could hardly feel anything to be a mercy, as he lay tossing in agony, burnt by the explosion, wounded by splinters, and feeling that he was disabled for life, if life itself were ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... passed in feasting, drinking, praying, preaching, sporting, gambling and scrambling. On the thirteenth, the double urn, with its melancholy moral, was removed from the pyramid, and the inner one, with the grating, was laid on a bed of fragrant sandalwood, and aromatic gums, connected with a train of gunpowder, which the king ignited with a match from the sacred fire that burns continually in the temple Watt P'hra Keau. The Second King then lighted his candles from the same torch, and laid them on the pyre; and so on, in the order ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... those virtues which were useful at the time of Theseus, as Stendhal rightly tells us. Individual force, which was everything of old, amounts to almost nothing in our modern civilization. The monk who invented gunpowder modified sculpture; strength is only necessary now among subalterns. No one thinks of asking whether Frederick the Great and Napoleon were good swordsmen. The strength we admire, is the strength of Napoleon ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... brilliancy may perhaps decay with time, being thus fixed in the flesh, are of course indelible, just as much as the marks of a similar nature which our own sailors frequently make on their arms and breasts, by introducing gunpowder under the skin. One effect, we are told, which they produce on the countenances of the New Zealanders, is to conceal the ravages of old age. Being thus permanent when once imprinted, each becomes also the peculiar distinction ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... pocket hardware, and the skill with which they use it. But we must henceforth look to our laurels. France is competing alarmingly with us in the use of the revolver. They were always a revolutionary people, were the French, and revolving seems, therefore, to suit their temper to a T, (Gunpowder T, of course.) Since the slaying of NOIR by BONAPARTE, the affectation of readiness with the pistol has become quite the thing in Paris. New-York and Paris will soon be exactly alike in the bullet business—especially Paris. PAUL DE CASSAGNAC, it seems, has been invited by some anonymous ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... a little bomb-shell, which it uses as a weapon of defense when disturbed by an enemy. It is a very sociable little bug, and will gather in a crowd under big flat stones in damp places. If the stone is suddenly overturned, the bombardiers at once begin a cannonade like the explosion of a grain of gunpowder, and throw out a puff of whitish vapor resembling smoke. The bombardiers of South America, China, and other warm countries, are much larger than those found in England, and the fluid they eject, which causes the tiny explosion, is capable of making a black stain, and leaving an unpleasant ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... left it weeks ago. There has been no soul within. Gunpowder, faggots, iron bars, and stones—all are as before; and above, the coal and faggots carefully concealing all. Why this anxiety and fear, Catesby? it was not wont to ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... said she, twitching at her own hair to arouse herself. "Just as Abraham always said; the rats have been nibbling matches in the store; they've burned a hole through the floor, and set fire to that keg of gunpowder. Yes, ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... me, that cave contained other stores—item, kegs of gunpowder; item, casks of cheap spirit; item, bars of lead, also a box marked "bullet moulds" and another marked "Percussion caps." I think, too, there were some innocent bags full of beads and a few packages of Birmingham-made ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... of black paper, with a little gun-cotton folded up within it. The paper immediately ignites and the cotton explodes. Strange, is it not, that the beam should possess such heating power after having passed through so cold a substance? In his arctic expeditions Dr. Scoresby succeeded in exploding gunpowder by the sun's rays, converged by large lenses of ice; here we have succeeded in producing the effect with a small lens, and with a terrestrial source ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... when Wilkes and Colonel Luttrell are to fight a pitched battle at Brentford, the Phillippi of antoninus. Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fogi, know nothing of these broils. You don't convert your ploughshares into falchions, nor the mud of Adderbury into gunpowder. I tremble for my painted windows, and write talismans of number forty-five on every gate and postern of my castle. Mr. Hume is writing the Revolutions of Middlesex, and a troop of barnacle geese are levied to defend the capital. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... because, in its system of physics, the Cross had absorbed all the old occult or fetish-power. The symbol represented the sum of nature - the Energy of modern science - and society believed it to be as real as X-rays; perhaps it was! The emperors used it like gunpowder in politics; the physicians used it like rays in medicine; the dying clung to it as the quintessence of force, to protect them from the forces of evil on their road to the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... must it be noticed that our nitrogen compounds are being lost to plant life—viz., by the use of various nitrogen compounds to form explosives. Gunpowder, nitro-glycerine, dynamite, in fact, nearly all the explosives that are used the world over for all sorts of purposes, are nitrogen compounds. When they are exploded the nitrogen of the compound is dissipated into the air in the form of gas, much ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... the length of a day—on to Saabic, a village solely inhabited by Maraboos or priests. To gain the goodwill of Allah, he dwelt there a few days, and discovered a relation of one of his wives (no rare occurrence, seeing how many he kept) whose heart he rejoiced with some gunpowder and a gay piece of cloth. At the very next village, Tallimangoly, he fell across another, who cost him three grains of amber. Indeed, it seemed as though his store of presents would never hold out; for, no sooner had he digested the sheep his cousin killed for him, than the Bambarra army ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... directly or indirectly, to these men. Cheap and tawdry enough were the commodities bartered for these wonderful beaver and otter pelts—ribbons and gewgaws, looking-glasses and combs, blankets and shawls of gaudy color. But scissors and knives, gunpowder and shot, tobacco and whiskey, went also in the traders' packs, though traffic in fire-water was forbidden. These goods, upon arrival at Mackinac, were sent out by canoes and bateaux to the different posts, where they were dealt out to the savages ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... these tunnels was thought to be unsafe; the immense mass of rock above it seemed likely to crush downwards upon the passage, and the engineers thought that their best course would be to remove the hill from above it. Three and a half tons of gunpowder were placed at intervals in the tunnel, and connected by wires with a galvanic battery placed a long distance off. The operation of firing the mine was made a public occasion, and Lady Belmore agreed to go up to the mountains and perform the ceremony of removing ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... and hotel habitue—each type or stratum as distinctly marked as in a pousse cafe, or jelly cake. What a comparison! I ask Santa Barbara's pardon, and beg not to be struck with lightning, or destroyed by gunpowder.—"Yes, to the Arlington." ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... tubes for squirting the substance upon the enemy's ships. These are sometimes referred to as "siphons," but it is not clear just how they were operated. One writer[2] is of the opinion that something of the secret of gunpowder had been obtained from the East and that the substance was actually projected by a charge of gunpowder; in short, that these "siphons" were primitive cannon. In addition to these tubes other means ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... soldierly principle, to do your commerce, and your feeding of nations, for fixed salaries; and to be as particular about giving people the best food, and the best cloth, as soldiers are about giving them the best gunpowder, I could carve something for you on your exchange worth looking at. But I can only at present suggest decorating its frieze with pendant purses; and making its pillars broad at the base for the sticking of bills. And in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... reign ever commenced with more sinister omens than that at which we have now arrived. The new King had not been on the throne a month, when a conspiracy was discovered, surpassing in its treasonable atrocity any that had been heard of in the kingdom since the days of the Gunpowder Plot; and, even before those concerned in that foul crime had been brought to punishment, the public mind was yet more generally and profoundly agitated by a scandal which, in one point of view, was ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... an era of peace, there followed a desolating war in itself worse than fifty years of African Slavery. The abolitionists were blamed for that calamity very much as the Protestants have been blamed for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; and yet without doubt they were responsible for a portion of it. Gunpowder cannot be made of sulphur and carbon alone, but saltpetre ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... I can't forgive him for having wronged him. Good Powers! How I have been hating him for these months past! Oh, Harry! I was in a fury at the tavern the other day, because Mountain came up so soon, and put an end to our difference. We ought to have burned a little gunpowder between us, and cleared the air. But though I don't love him, as you do, I know he is a good soldier, a good officer, and a brave, honest man; and, at any rate, shall love him none the worse for not wanting to be ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are dealing with two things, when as a matter of fact we are dealing with only one. Cause and effect are not two separate things, they are the same thing viewed under two different aspects. When, for example, I ask for the cause of gunpowder and am told that it is sulphur, charcoal, and nitre, or for a cause of sulphuric acid and am given sulphide of iron and oxygen, it is clear that considered separately these ingredients are not causes at all. Whether charcoal and sulphur will become ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... party knows an additional fact, by reason of which he foresees that death will be the consequence of a slight blow, as, for instance, that the other has heart disease, the offence is equally murder. /3/ To explode a barrel of gunpowder in a crowded street, and kill people, is murder, although the actor hopes that no such harm will be done. /4/ But to kill a man by careless riding in the same street would commonly be manslaughter. /5/ Perhaps, however, a case could ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... book for those who have the gift of reading. I will be very frank—I believe it is so with all good books, except, perhaps, fiction. The average man lives, and must live, so wholly in convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are more apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer round that little idol of part-truths and part-conveniences which is the contemporary deity, or he is convinced by what is new, forgets ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Maxine, with a kind of desperate calmness, "as if we were in a house with gunpowder stored underneath, and a train laid to fire it. But"—she broke off bitterly, "why do I say 'we'. To you all this can be no more than ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... world is talking of a pamphlet written by Seor Gutierrez Estrada, which has just appeared, and seems likely to cause a greater sensation in Mexico than the discovery of the gunpowder plot in England. Its sum and substance is the proposal of a constitutional Monarchy in Mexico, with a foreign prince (not named) at its head, as the only remedy for the evils by which it is afflicted. The pamphlet ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... we got come from Shreveport, and was brung in by the stage and the freighters, and that was only a little coffee or gunpowder, or some needles for the sewing, or some strap iron for the blacksmith, or something like dat. We made and raised everything else we needed ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... that the mind thus exerted was made to do so by the mysterious and irresistible impulse of a superior being, we should instantly declare that being the agent, and the mind irresistibly influenced only a passive instrument, and no more to blame than the gunpowder. Now, if the sinner is passive he is no more to blame or praise than the passive instruments employed by the murderer. And if he is not passive, but active, then the thing is begun and done by himself as the real agent. Action implies motion, and where there is no ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... this denomination of contraband and merchandizes prohibited, shall be comprehended only warlike stores and arms, as mortars, artillery, with their artifices and appurtenances, fusils, pistols, bombs, grenades, gunpowder, saltpetre, sulphur, match, bullets and balls, pikes, sabres, lances, halberts, casques, cuirasses, and other sorts of arms, as also soldiers, horses, saddles, and furniture for horses; all other effects and merchandizes, not before specified expressly, ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... words all the hearers concluded that he must be a madman, and began to laugh heartily, and their laughter acted like gunpowder on Don Quixote's fury, for drawing his sword without another word he made a rush at the stand. One of those who supported it, leaving the burden to his comrades, advanced to meet him, flourishing a forked stick that he had for propping up the stand when resting, and with this he caught ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of their murderous instincts, and a little later he discovered another plot. The prospective assassins having piled a little wood where they intended to kindle a fire, went off to search for more. While they were gone Burton made a hole under the wood and buried a canister of gunpowder in it. On their return the assassins lighted the fire, seated themselves comfortably round, and presently there weren't any assassins. We tell these tales just as Burton told them to his intimate friends. The first may have been ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... monastery garden on the hill-top the Battalion rested for three days, that is, rested from fighting and marching, but the time was not wasted. The Division set to work on the Roman Road with pick and shovel and gunpowder and in the three days made it passable for 60-pounder guns ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... How wonderful this is! If you were to mix them together as carefully as you could, using exactly the same proportion of each as is found in water, you would make something very dangerous, which might blow up with a terrible noise like gunpowder. It is only when they are "combined," which means very closely joined ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... eyes to the fact that, with the republic destroyed, and a Spanish sacerdotal despotism established in Holland and Zeeland, with Jesuit seminaries in full bloom in Amsterdam and the Hague, his own rebels in Ireland might prove more troublesome than ever, and gunpowder plots in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Miscellany" still records;—leave him to hunt and play at tennis, serve in the Hudson's Bay Company and the Board of Trade;—leave him to experiment in alchemy and astrology, in hydraulics, metallurgy, gunpowder, perspective, quadrants, mezzotint, fish-hooks, and revolvers;—leave him to look from his solitary turret over hills and fields, now peaceful, but each the scene of some wild and warlike memory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... in reply was like a spark to gunpowder. In a moment the cavern presented a scene singularly tragic-comic; the whole party was one busy mass of battle, with the exception of Ted and Batt, and the wife of the latter, who, having first hastily put aside everything that ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... done to death by handicraft industry, commercial traffic, gunpowder, and the state-making politicians. But the political States of the statemakers, the dynastic States as they may well be called, continued the conduct of political life on the personal plane of rivalry and jealousy between dynasties and between their States; ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... when near Missolonghi, he made another capture—a Turkish brig, with eight guns, bearing Austrian colours, which was proceeding from Previsa to Navarino. In her, besides a good store of flour and gunpowder, were found some Turkish officials and several members of Reshid Pasha's harem. The alarm of these prisoners was very great at first; but they were treated with courtesy, and landed, with all their personal properties, at the first convenient halting-place, the brig and its cargo ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... touching for the king's evil (IV, iii, 140-159),—a custom which James revived. The reference to an equivocator in the porter's soliloquy (II, iii) may allude to Henry Garnet, who was tried in 1606 for complicity in the {190} famous Gunpowder Plot, and who is said to have upheld the doctrine of equivocation. The date of composition is usually ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... he goes in fer the war; He don't vally principle more 'n an old cud; Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood? So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall vote ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... inflict at their hill fortress. But Skobeleff excelled Lomakin in skill no less than in prowess and magnetic influence. He proceeded to push his trenches towards the stronghold, so that on January 23, 1881, his men succeeded in placing 2600 pounds of gunpowder under the south-eastern corner of the rampart. Early on the following day the Russians began the assault; and while cannon and rockets wrought death and dismay among the ill-armed defenders, the mighty shock of the explosion tore away fifty ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... for my missis he'd ha' been married over and over agin,' he ses one day. 'He's like a child playing with gunpowder.' ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... all his fine flourishes and outsides, and then to judge for himself. A projector is to a tradesman a kind of incendiary; he is in a constant plot to blow him up, or set fire to him; for projects are generally as fatal to a tradesman as fire in a magazine of gunpowder. ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... what, young gentlemen," he remarked, when, ascending, he showed his honest face again, thrust in a log of wood, and exhibited an armful of shavings, "I'm agreeable to anything but gunpowder, or that there spark as comes cantering out o' your engine with a crack. No, Miss Gladys, ex-cuse me, I don't give up these here shavings till I ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... the stage of the world. But, in almost every case on record, it was the beauty of the fair disturbers, that, inflaming the spirit of rivalship, set men a-fighting with so much zeal; and true it seems to be, that, when beauty went into disrepute, and gunpowder came into fashion—both much about the same time—we have never had what may be called a bona fide heroic battle. But the part which the Border fair ones had in the bloody scenes of that distracted section of the country, is represented to have been very different. The housewife, in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... invention ever made was the invention of gunpowder. Why? Because it put into the hands of man a tremendous force, compressed into a very small volume, which he could use instantaneously or refrain from using at his will. Its first use was in war; and in war ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... mastery over nature's latent resources which is the spring and fountain of their confidence. Cardan, in the sixteenth century, marveling at the then modern inventions of the compass, the printing press, and gunpowder, cried, "All antiquity has nothing comparable to these three things." [7] Every year from that day to this has deepened the impression made upon the minds of men by the marvelous prospect of harnessing the resources of the universe. The last one hundred and twenty-five years have seen ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... great solemnity at Pembroke College, and exercises upon the subject of the day were required[181]. Johnson neglected to perform his, which is much to be regretted; for his vivacity of imagination, and force of language, would probably have produced something sublime upon the gunpowder plot[182]. To apologise for his neglect, he gave in a short copy of verses, entitled Somnium, containing a common thought; 'that the Muse had come to him in his sleep, and whispered, that it did not become him to write on such subjects as politicks; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... attract your attention without letting the Haytians see what we were up to, as, to the best of our belief, they had no inkling of your proximity; so we were puzzling our brains how to let you learn our need in some quiet way, when little Mr Johnson suggested our burning a devil, composed of wet gunpowder piled up in the form of a cone. This was accordingly done, and the 'devil,' when lit, placed on the top of the wheel-house, all the rest of those around discharging their revolvers in rapid succession at the rascals on the forecastle to take off their ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... the present, since the appearance of a note from the illustrious cause of my sudden decampment has driven the "natural ruby from my cheeks," and completely blanched my woebegone countenance. This gunpowder intimation of her arrival (confound her activity!) breathes less of terror and dismay than you will probably imagine, from the volcanic temperament of her ladyship; and concludes with the comfortable assurance of present ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... of idle waiting Schiller was able to report that Dalberg had returned and was showing himself very friendly. The man was 'all fire,'—only it was gunpowder flame that would not last long. The genial intendant insisted that Schiller should by all means remain in Mannheim. 'Fiesco,' now in print as a tragedy, should be put upon the stage at once; 'Louise Miller' should be taken ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... passage where the rebel angels cast cannon, make gunpowder, and mow the good angels down in rows, is incredibly puerile and ridiculous. The hateful materialism of the whole thing is patent. I wish that the English Church could have an Index, and put Paradise Lost upon it, and allow no one to read ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... minutes!" went on Ardan. "Only think of it! We are shut up in a bullet that lies in the chamber of a cannon nine hundred feet long. Underneath this bullet is piled a charge of 400 thousand pounds of gun-cotton, equivalent to 1600 thousand pounds of ordinary gunpowder! And at this very instant our friend Murphy, chronometer in hand, eye on dial, finger on discharger, is counting the last seconds and getting ready to launch us into the limitless regions ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... Island of Leyte, abundance of sulphur is met with, and from thence the gunpowder works of Manila are supplied at very reasonable prices. Jaspers, cornelians and agates, are also found in profusion in many of these provinces; everything, indeed, promises varied mineral wealth worthy of exciting the curiosity and useful ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... barrels of gunpowder, by my conscience! What a devil will it signify talking, if thus you are to blow one another ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... I steal?" he asked with dull apathy. "The gold vessels from the Catholic Cathedral of Quebec, after—after trying to blow up Government House with gunpowder." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... but did you but know how that Gerald O'Blaney insulted your shister with his vile proposhals, you'd no more ask the loan of his horse!—and I in dread, whenever I'd be left in the house alone, that that bad man would boult in upon me—and Randal to find him! and Randal's like gunpowder when his heart's touched!—and if Randal should come by himself, worse again! Honor, where would be your resolution to forbid him your presence? Then there's but one way to be right—I'll lave home entirely. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... here of a prohibition of gunpowder, at this moment some Europeans are popping away incessantly at Embabeh just opposite. Evidently the Pasha wants to establish a right of search on the Nile. That absurd speech about slaves he made in Paris shows that. With 3,000 in his hareem, several ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... various odds and ends, which are sold by thousands in Mexico. In Europe, the bark of this tree is used for well-ropes, and the charcoal made from its wood is preferred to any other for the manufacture of gunpowder. Few trees are more useful, and its beautiful green foliage makes it highly ornamental in ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... purpose of the castle. Until the introduction of gunpowder and cannon, the only siege engines employed were those known in ancient times. They included machines for hurling heavy stones and iron bolts, battering rams, and movable towers, from which the besiegers crossed over ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... here be told; nowhere has it been recorded with more picturesque and energetic brevity than in the glowing pages of Gibbon. Operations were carried on with unprecedented vigour and effect, rendered more terrible by the lavish use of gunpowder and artillery, then almost new elements in the art of war. Constantine did all that a Christian prince and a brave general could do. By his example he animated the courage of his soldiers, and revived the hearts of the citizens, sinking in despair. The scene on the day before the assault ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... but in the very next town! The safe blown open with gunpowder! Five thousand dollars in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... vassals and clergy; and, thirdly, which is the most surprising feature of the whole statement, the Turks were so far ahead of others in the race of improvement, that to them belongs the credit of having first adopted the extensive use of gunpowder, and of having first brought battering- trains against fortified places. To his artillery and his musketry it was that Selim the Ferocious (grandson of that Sultan who took Constantinople) was indebted for his victories in Syria and Egypt. Under Solyman ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... renowned for her graceful dancing. When she made her great public appearance she spun round nineteen times before she went out, and each time that she did so she threw into the air seven pink stars. She was three feet and a half in diameter, and made of the very best gunpowder. My father was a Rocket like myself, and of French extraction. He flew so high that the people were afraid that he would never come down again. He did, though, for he was of a kindly disposition, and he made a most brilliant descent in a shower of ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... But gunpowder changed all that. In the chase it gave weak men their innings beside the strong. Man could kill at long range, with little danger to himself, or even with none at all. And then in the wild beast world the great final struggle ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the second day surpassed the first. The cannon fire was distant, yet the waves of air beat heavily upon them, and the earth shook without ceasing. Wisps of smoke floated toward them and the air was tainted again with the acrid smell of burned gunpowder. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... two invalids, who had got under the altar in the night, with no other design, as they declared, than a childish and obscene curiosity. The report instantly spread that the altar of the country was undermined, in order to blow up the people; that a barrel of gunpowder had been discovered beside the conspirators; that the invalids, surprised in the preliminaries to their criminal design, were well known satellites of the aristocracy; that they had confessed their deadly ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Pelle," answered Morten seriously. "But let the young ones light the fire underneath, and it'll go all the quicker. That new eventualities crop up in this country is no disadvantage; the governing body may very well be made aware that there's gunpowder under their seats. It'll immensely strengthen their sense of responsibility! Would you like to see Johanna? She's been wanting very much to see you. She's ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... I ever saw. Can't have no crackers, because somebody's horse got scared last year," growled Sam Kitteridge, bitterly resenting the stern edict which forbade free-born citizens to burn as much gunpowder as they liked on that ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... a party led by a violin, women applauding. But the women do more than applaud. They carry great paving-stones to the top of the house, to be thence precipitated on the heads of the soldiers; they tend the wounded, they bruise charcoal for gunpowder. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... latter to Girdwood, who volunteered to be his second, and who took care to put nothing in more dangerous than gunpowder. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... none at all, or at most only a pack of small nonsense that nobody would give three farthings to know. However, it is quite certain they are as jealous of strangers hearing their discourse as if they were plotting gunpowder treason or ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... leader of mercenaries in France, a grim fighting-man, hostile to the show of feudal warfare, and herald of a new age of contests, in which the feudal levies would fall into the background. The invention of gunpowder in this century, the incapacity of the great lords, the rise of free lances and mercenary troops, all told that a new era had arrived. It was by the hand of Du Guesclin that Charles overcame his cousin and namesake, ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... always prefer giving credit on gunpowder, flints, lead, knives, tomahawks, hoes, domestic cottons, etc.; which they do at the rate of 300 or 400 per cent, and if one-fourth of the price of these articles be paid, ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... some commanders took one course, some another. General Butler, a volunteer from Massachusetts, hit on a happy solution; he declared that slaves, being available to the enemy for hostile purposes, were like arms, gunpowder, etc., "contraband of war," and could not be reclaimed. The stroke was welcomed with cheers and laughter; and "contraband" became a catchword. Congress, in March, 1862, forbade the army and ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... part, I don't quite see the use of burning so much gunpowder by way of celebrating the Fourth of July. From all I can make out, the mere making sure of that day burned up ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... quick!" he answered, slowly. "There you are wrong. I am not your prisoner, for I see a barrel of gunpowder on the deck, and, if you do not release me immediately, I will ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... who seems to have known him well, assures us that the devil was the inventor of gunpowder. But, for my own part, were I in the humor to ascribe any particular invention to the author of all evil, it should be that of distilling apple-brandy. We have scripture for it, that he began his capers ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... Gunpowder was first used in 1350; so the old Romans knew nothing of its power. They flung javelins a few rods by the strength of the arm; we throw great iron shells, starting with an initial velocity of fifteen hundred feet a second and going ten miles. The air pressure against ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... stones by ramming in cartridges. But while there was any possibility of making adventurous raids in all directions where patches of trees existed, and the men could gallop out, halt, and each man, armed with sword and a piece of rein, cut his faggot, bind it up, and gallop back, gunpowder was too valuable to be used for blasting roots. This was now, however, becoming a terribly difficult problem, for the enemy—eagerly seizing upon the chance to make reprisals when these were attended by no great ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... one of the casks which they had rolled up opposite to the little shelter. The top presently came away, and they saw, disclosed before their longing and hungry eyes, not the provisions they so much needed, but a hard and rocky mass of caked gunpowder, made useless and solid by the action of the sea-water that had penetrated through the ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... to the wilderness I will come with him. Gracious me! what noise is that?" she exclaimed, as a sudden report of firearms from below struck her ear. "I do believe there is that Frank Billington at the gunpowder; that boy will never leave, I do believe, till he hath blown up the ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... accident, might have maintained its ground much longer. When the Iroquois bad advanced sufficiently near the fort to render the attempt practicable, Daulac determined to attach a fuse to a barrel of gunpowder, and fling it into the midst of them. Unfortunately the missile caught in a branch, and was thrown back into the fort, exploding with disastrous consequences to the besieged. The savages taking advantage of the confusion, forced their way into the fort;—one more ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... Adam, sitting at the table and beginning to set his papers in order, "because there's nought like liquor for putting the devil into a man, and of all liquor commend me to rum with a dash o' tobacco or gunpowder, d'ye see. We shall be heaving dead men overboard ere dawn, I judge, and all along of this same rum, Martin. Black mutiny, murder and sudden death, shipmate, and more's the pity say I. But if Providence seeth ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... departed hence, the Cape marchant of the Factorie wrote a letter vnto our capitaine in the way of friendship, as he pretended, requesting a iarre of wine and a iarre of oyle, and two or three pounds of gunpowder, which letter hee sent by a Negro his man, and Moore in a Canoa: we sent him his demaunds by the Moore, but tooke the Negro along with vs because we vnderstood he had bene in the East Indies and knew somewhat of the Countrey. [Sidenote: A Iunco ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... the precepts of commutative justice. In one sense it might be said to be a corollary of the doctrine of just price. This is apparently the suggestion of Dr. Cleary in his excellent book on usury: 'It seems to me that the so-called loan of money is really a sale, and that a loan of meal, wine, oil, gunpowder, and similar commodities—that is to say, commodities which are consumed in use—is also a sale. If this is so, as I believe it is, then loans of all these consumptible goods should be regulated by the ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... and squared. During this time Martin had several meetings with the old hunter, and it was agreed that he should sell his property to Mr Campbell. Money he appeared to care little about—indeed it was useless to him; gunpowder, lead, flints, blankets, and tobacco, were the principal articles requested in the barter; the amount, however, was not precisely settled. An intimacy had been struck up between the old hunter and John; in what manner it was difficult to imagine, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... a hopeless snarl, but it made me what I was when I entered college, distant, sullen, and ferocious. My only joy was in my work, and I spent all my spare time in the studio. Then the second summer I shot off the gunpowder, and blindness came." ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... before it can be obtained. In this case the following treatment will work well. Tie a ligature tightly ABOVE the bite, scarify the wound deeply with a knife, and allow it to bleed freely. After having drawn an ounce of blood, remove the ligature and ignite three times successively about two drams of gunpowder right on ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... been imposed on the poor scholars," but "the velvet cap was the cap of liberty," and the gentleman commoner consulted only his own pleasure. Johnson was a poor scholar, and on him duties were imposed. He was requested to write an ode on the Gunpowder Plot, and Boswell thinks "his vivacity and imagination must have produced something fine." He neglected, however, with his usual indolence, this opportunity of producing something fine. Another exercise imposed on the poor was the ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... greater numbers than they are," muttered General Tassara. "But we have no General Scott, and we have no officers like his. Almost all that we really have is courage and gunpowder, and these are not enough to defeat such an attack as he will make. The city is ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... pleasure and the privilege of passing, in the ordinary way, through all the intermediate stages. Nor would I alter the arrangement with regard to spiritual growth. It is best to learn a lesson at a time. You might raise the dough quicker by gunpowder than by leaven or yeast; but I prefer to see it raised in the ordinary way. I am content to grow in grace and knowledge, as people grow in strength and stature. It is God's plan, and I like it. If anybody can pass from the gates of hell to the gates of heaven, from the bottom of the ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... These guys were used to having people think violence at their boss. I thought a little harder. Maybe if I made 'em mad enough one of them would belt me on the noggin and put me out, and then I'd be cold when that cigarette fell into the gunpowder ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... passed; to prevent the decline of productivity corn laws were passed fixing arbitrary prices for grain. For a time monopolies creating artificial prosperity were granted to individuals and to corporations for the manufacture, sale, or exploitation of certain articles, such as matches, gunpowder, and playing-cards. ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... remedy that I had found a specific for mange in dogs, and this treatment became equally successful in cases of coorash. Gunpowder, with the addition of one-fourth of sulphur, made into a soft paste with water, and then formed into an ointment with fat: this should be rubbed over the whole body. The effect upon a black man is that of a well-cleaned boot—upon a white ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... mine," he said, laughing, "to put down the slave-trade. I don't like it, and so I put it down. Now, a fine young likely fellow, such as you, is just the man I want for my ship. How would you like to go sailing the lovely seas catching slave-dealers, and giving them what-for with the best steel and gunpowder that money can buy?" ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... gravity, and of the undulatory theory of light. He expounded the laws of the motion of the pendulum, increased the power of the telescope, invented the micrometer, discovered the rings and satellites of Saturn, constructed the first pendulum clock, and a machine, called the gunpowder machine, in principle the precursor of the steam engine. For sheer brain power and inventive genius Christian Huyghens was a giant. He spent the later years of his life in Paris, where he was one of the founders and original members of the Academie des Sciences. Two other names of scientists, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... possible and imperative. Mrs. Eddy says that Christian Science would abolish war; but the diminution of war has come about, not through any growth of "Divine Mind" but, as Buckle pointed out, through three triumphs of the experimental tendency of the intellect;—the discovery of gunpowder, the discovery that war was detrimental to trade and to the best economic conditions, and the improvement in methods of transportation. Contemplating the history of civilization from Mrs. Eddy's point of view, we have simply gone on developing this injurious ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... bartering and dazzled the eyes of their customers with rolls of English and French silks, pigs of iron, copper, and brass, sacks of rice and sugar, glittering Manchester cutlery, American beads, and cans of gunpowder. ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... people became cordial. The king's son came to visit the admiral, accompanied by a train of courtiers splendidly dressed, and a choir of musicians, who played upon various instruments. The greatest astonishment was shown at the artillery practice, for the invention of gunpowder was not yet known on the east coast of Africa. A solemn treaty was made, ratified by oaths upon the Gospel and the Koran, and cemented by an interchange of presents. From this moment the ill-will, the treachery, the difficulties of all ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Noblemen and Members of Parliament meet the "food" crisis by organising an Upper-class Co-operative Society, and bring up their own cattle to London. Being, however, unable to kill them professionally without the aid of a butcher, they blow them up with gunpowder, and divide them with a steam-scythe, for which proceedings they are somewhat maliciously prosecuted by the Society for the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... human form; it was the figure of a French dragoon with his carbine slung behind his back. He was stopping by the side of a number of gunpowder bags. A little further away were little groups of soldiers at work by two bridges, one over a stream and one over a road. They were working very calmly, and I could see what they were doing; they were mining bridges to blow them up ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... low boat, built apparently for speed, as it did not seem to have much room for cargo, and what cargo was being loaded aboard I noticed consisted mostly of oil and gunpowder. However, I was well pleased enough with the accommodation offered me, and in due time ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... trick that I should care to have played upon me,' said Lord Grey, amid a general murmur of applause and surprise. 'Od's bud, man, you have lived two centuries too late. What would not your thews have been worth before gunpowder put all men upon ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cannot do without sulphur and noise, there are always fireworks. It is difficult to imagine festivity without them, and yet there must have been a time when rockets did not rise or Catherine wheels go round. You cannot have fireworks without gunpowder, and every school-boy knows that gunpowder was only invented in—I haven't got a dictionary of dates handy. Surely we ought to let off fireworks on Roger Bacon's birthday. "They let off fireworks when he was born," say the French in a slyly ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... without putting one another out." While the fellow was lighting the upper candles, he cried out to Mrs. Miller, "Look, look, madam, the very picture of the man in the end of the common prayer book before the gunpowder-treason service." Nor could he help observing with a sigh, when all the candles were lighted, "That here were candles enough burned in one night to keep an honest poor family ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... the town boys and bull-dogs; free vent was given to spite, and a broken or bruised head, or body, might be the result; but we made no complaint; as loyal subjects we had done our duty in protesting against all such underhand doings as "Gunpowder Plot;" and, after a hearty supper, given by our kind Head Master, we enjoyed the rest, well earned by the exertions and trials of ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... in the army, sir, when I was with Sir Edward. It's done by gunpowder. It can do no harm, and will at any time durin' his life make him known among millions. It can do no ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... heretofore made mercury column gauges for gunpowder pressures, which were too large for direct attachment to guns, but were connected with special powder chambers to test the pressure, etc., of confined explosives. The experience thus gained enabled ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... It was almost like dropping a spark into gunpowder. The flame ran quickly, reached the pine-needles, then sputtered and fizzed into a big blaze. The first pine-tree exploded and went off like a rocket. We were startled by the sound and the red, up-leaping pillar of fire. Sudden heat shot ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... way of a general rejoicing over what the people believe to be a total annihilation of the ills of the past twelve months. The destruction is supposed to be effected in the following way. A large earthenware jar filled with gunpowder, stones, and bits of iron is buried in the earth. A train of gunpowder, communicating with the jar, is then laid; and a match being applied, the jar and its contents are blown up. The stones and bits of iron represent the ills and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... submarine boat just big enough to hold him, and in the darkness and gloom of the under-water world propelled his turtle-like craft toward the British ships anchored in mid-stream. On the outside shell of the craft rested a magazine with a heavy charge of gunpowder which the submarine navigator intended to screw fast to the bottom of a fifty-gun British man-of-war, and which was to be exploded by a time-fuse after he had got well out ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... becomes discoloured and permeated by black or yellow nodules containing the organism. These nodules break down by suppuration, and numerous minute abscesses lined by granulation tissues are thus formed. In the pus are found yellow particles likened to fish-roe, or black pigmented granules like gunpowder. Sinuses form, and the whole foot becomes greatly swollen and distorted by flattening of the sole and dorsiflexion of the toes. Areas of caries or necrosis occur in the bones, and the disease gradually extends up the leg (Fig. 32). There is but little pain, ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... produce subsistence for a multitudinous population during that long period, while Western peoples have worn out their soil in less than that many centuries; that has produced many of the most influential of modern inventions, such as printing, gunpowder, and the compass; that has developed such mechanical ingenuity and commercial ability as are shown in its everyday life, undoubtedly possesses the ability to accomplish results by the use of methods worked out ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... at the foot of the statue, which was enveloped in a cloud of flame and smoke, and, had the original been alive he must have delighted in the baptism of gunpowder. ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... after a pause, 'what most exasperates me is that they are such a pack of wordmongers, for ever ranting about things which may have intoxicated our grandfathers in 1792—they don't seem to me to have invented gunpowder, our grandfathers!—but which simply make sensible ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Duchess of Burgundy, much encouraged a printer named Caxton, whose books she sent her brother, and other presses were set up in London. Another great change had come in. Long ago, in the time of Henry III., a monk name Roger Bacon had made gunpowder; but nobody used it much until, in the reign of Edward III., it was found out how cannon might be fired with it; and some say it was first used in the battle of Crecy. But it was not till the reign of Edward IV. that smaller guns, such as each ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... If he's anything of a man he can stand it, and feel all the better for it; but it's a precious sight too easy a lesson to learn, and there's them that can't stop, once they begin, till they've smothered what brains God Almighty put inside their skulls, just as if they was to bore a hole and put gunpowder in. No! they wouldn't stop if they were sure of going to heaven straight, or to hell next minute if they put the last glass to their lips. I've heard men say it, and knew they meant it. Not the worst sort ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... I thought when I seen that ere feller stand up to be shot at, that he had smelled gunpowder afore. Give us your hands, my chickens! Cuss me, if ye ain't an honor to ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... his voice, "In the name of God, why don't Col. Bigelow order us to retreat?" This man in after life received a pension from government, and died respected a few years since in this city. His children are now living here, and therefore we shall not call his name. He was always afraid of gunpowder. The English were also frightened and fled, leaving the hay on the hands of Col. Bigelow, who, having no use for it, returned it to its tory owner, on the express condition that he should not sell ...
— Reminiscences of the Military Life and Sufferings of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Commander of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Massachusetts Line in the Continental Army, during the War of the Revolution • Charles Hersey
... everlastin Jocks," shouted Abner. "Ef thar's any vartue in gunpowder them times shan't come back," and there was an answering yell ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... its silver foreground, and Lochar Moss is its mysterious background; so it is perfect in beauty as in strength, and if only no such hateful things as cannons had been invented, it would not now be a ruin. Although it lies so low, it was built to resist everything but gunpowder: for how could the Maxwells dream that all their beautiful arrangements for pouring down molten lead and boiling oil would be useless ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in Congo Francais, but the native always wants it because he can get a tremendous profit on it from his black brethren in the bush; hence it pays the trader to give him his bon out in Boma check, etc., better than in gunpowder. This is a fruitful spring of argument and persuasion. However, whether the native is passing in a bundle of rubber or a tooth of ivory, or merely cashing a bon for a week's bush catering, he is in Congo Francais incapable ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... conceals a sentry-box. It overlooks the whole estancia. It conceals something else, a small barrel of gunpowder, which you are to hang to the hook yonder on the wooden lock, and explode the moment ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... the increasing violence of the storm or by the change in Vere. It would have been difficult to say by which. The lightning flashed. The thunder at moments seemed to split the sky asunder as a charge of gunpowder splits asunder a rock. The head wind rushed by, yet had never passed them, but was forever coming furiously to meet them. On the roof of the little cabin the rain made a noise that was no longer like the rustle of silk, but was ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... concerned in the affair would be arrested and duly dealt with. He then entered the house with four of his men, leaving the rest to wait. Vincent entered with the constables, saying that he was staying at the house. The fumes of gunpowder were still floating about the hall, three bodies were lying on the floor, and several men were binding up their wounds. The police officer inquired into the origin of the broil, and all present concurred in saying that it arose from ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... which pertains to the Sovereign."[377] To intimidate them, Dunmore issued proclamations, and threatened freeing the slaves against their masters. On the night of the 20th of April he sent a body of marines, in the night, to carry off a quantity of gunpowder belonging to the colony, and stored in its magazine at Williamsburg. As soon as this arbitrary seizure of the colony's property became known, drums sounded alarm throughout the city of Williamsburg, the volunteer company ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... said that it was the last war that would come, because gunpowder made fighting impossible. It could smite a man down, he said, at two hundred paces, and a man be slain not knowing whom he fought. Some loved fighting and some loved peace, he said, but gunpowder ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... laughed again inconsequently. She was spoken of by some as the spoilt beauty of the county. "Oh, Piers is stuffed tight with gunpowder as everybody knows. He explodes at a touch. Get along, Barchard! What are you waiting for? I told you ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the English, and near Quebec in the month of April. He collected our army as soon as the season permitted; got together about twelve pieces of old cannon, which had been laid aside for many years, and with a small quantity of gunpowder and very few bullets, he set out from Montreal with his army towards the beginning of April, the snow being as yet upon the ground; and he conducted his march so well that the army arrived at Cap Rouge, three leagues from Quebec, without the enemy ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... from the characters and subsequent conduct of some of these persons,—the most noted fanatics certainly of their party,—and amongst whom we read the names of Talbot, Catesby, and Tresham, afterwards principal conspirators in the detestable gunpowder plot[98]. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... being the most notable instances in history of the triumph of a handful of men well led over a great but feebly-handled host. The age of knighthood and chivalry reached its culmination on these three memorable days. It ended at Agincourt, "villanous gunpowder" sounding its requiem on that great field. Cannon, indeed, had been used by Edward III. in his wars; but not until after this date did firearms banish the spear and bow from the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... answered the shots with a volley, and for a few moments a lot of ammunition was wasted while the odor of gunpowder assailed nostrils on ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... calculated the march to last about ten days, but he hoped to accomplish it within a briefer time. The supplies they had would last ten days, and Sam hoped to add to them by killing game from time to time, for although the party were unarmed, Sam knew ways of getting game without gunpowder, and meant to put ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston |
