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Hearse   Listen
verb
Hearse  v. t.  To inclose in a hearse; to entomb. (Obs.) "Would she were hearsed at my foot."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hearse" Quotes from Famous Books



... question, which of the two next doors? I was going for the one, and my darling was going for the other; and my darling was right again. So up we went to the second story, when we came to Richard's name in great white letters on a hearse-like panel. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... appearance in the early days of August, and continues till October. During that era New Orleans appears like a deserted city; all who possibly can, fly to the north or the upper country; most of the shops are shut; and the silence of the streets is only interrupted by the sound of the hearse passing through them. In one year two thousand died of this fever. Since the morasses have been partially cleared, its ravages have been less destructive; and, as this work is going on, the city may hope, in time, to be almost free from this terrible ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... such epitaphs as Ben Jonson's, witness the charming ones on his own children, on Salathiel Pavy, the child-actor, and many more; and this even though the rigid law of mine and thine must now restore to William Browne of Tavistock the famous lines beginning: "Underneath this sable hearse." Jonson is unsurpassed, too, in the difficult poetry of compliment, seldom falling into fulsome praise and disproportionate similtude, yet showing again and again a generous appreciation of worth in others, a discriminating taste and a generous personal regard. There was no man in England ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... scribblers who keep scribbling at little articles until their temper is a cross to all who come about them, as though Pharaoh should set the Israelites to make a pin instead of a pyramid: and fine young men who work themselves into a decline, and are driven off in a hearse with white plumes upon it. Would you not suppose these persons had been whispered, by the Master of the Ceremonies, the promise of some momentous destiny? and that this lukewarm bullet on which they play their farces was the bull's-eye and centrepoint of all the universe? ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... stopped to hitch the horse beside the others, "we want it nearest that lower gate. When we newspaper men leave this place we'll leave it in a hurry, and the man who is nearest town is likely to get there first. You won't be a-following of no hearse when you make ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... Marshal, Gen. Henry V. Boynton. Clergymen in Attendance. Physicians who attended the late President. Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. Grand Army of the Republic. Guard of Honor. Guard of Honor. Hearse. Bearers. Bearers. ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... instead of witty, and aiming rather at all-round neatness than at pungency or point. Our language abounds, of course, in examples of short lyrical compositions, such (to name familiar instances) as Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Lay a garland on my hearse,' Congreve's 'False though she be to me and love,' Goldsmith's 'When lovely woman stoops to folly,' Shelley's 'Music, when soft voices die,' and MacDonald's 'Alas, how easily things go wrong!'—all of these being only eight lines long. There are, indeed, plenty of lyrical performances even more ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... you bring me a message it'll be the last you'll take to a livin' soul. Drive your old hearse away from my door, will you, an' tell your lies to somebody that's big enough ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith

... villain, and brings an end to the poem, by breathing her last. Blake's story is faintly reminiscent of the popular legend of Anne Boleyn, who, with her bleeding head in her lap, is said to ride down the avenue of Blickling Park once a year in a hearse drawn by horsemen and accompanied by attendants, all headless out ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should mock your pain, But look that ye win to worthier sin ere ye come back again. Get hence, the hearse is at your door—the grim black stallions wait— They bear your clay to place today. Speed, lest ye come too late! Go back to Earth with a lip unsealed—go back with an open eye, And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye come to die: ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... double, having a first and second class car, both of which are seemingly well filled at all hours of the day. Funerals are conducted by turning one of the street cars, made for the purpose, into a catafalque, or hearse, another being reserved for the pall-bearers and mourners. Sometimes one sees a long string of these cars occupied for this purpose gliding into the suburbs where the grave-yards are located. The use of cow-horns ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... popular with his world and Dives knew Petitjean to be as honest as a pedler can ever hope to be in a world where small pence are only made large by some one being sacrificed on the altar of duplicity. Therefore it was that Petitjean's hearse-like cart was always a welcome visitor;—one could at least be as sure of a just return for one's money in trading with a pedler as from any other source in this thieving world. In the end, one always got something else besides ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... When the hearse came, Eugene had the coffin carried into the house again, unscrewed the lid, and reverently laid on the old man's breast the token that recalled the days when Delphine and Anastasie were innocent little maidens, before they began "to think for themselves," as ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... persons at least were present. The ceremony of High Mass was performed at ten o'clock. The coffin, of lead, measured 9 feet 2 inches in the clear, and the wooden case 4 inches more. It was 3 feet across the shoulders. No hearse could be procured sufficiently long to contain it; on which account, that end of the coffin which could not be shut in, was covered with black cloth. Fourteen men bore him from the hearse to the grave, into which he was let down with pulleys. To prevent any attempt ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various

... what he had said. Thus does the presence of the dead accuse living men, as if by our mere retention of life we did them injury. Wheresoever we encounter them, whether in the hired pride of the vulgar city hearse, or in the pitiful disarray of bleached bones and tattered raiment strewn on a mountainside, they make even those of us who are remotest ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... Marie Toro to her home in Pere-La-Chaise; We're taking Marie Toro to her last resting-place. Behold! her hearse is hung with wreaths till everything is hid Except the blossoms heaping high upon her coffin lid. A week ago she roamed the street, a draggle and a slut, A by-word of the Boulevard and everybody's butt; A week ago she haunted us, we heard her whining cry, We brushed ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... her at midnight. There were few That knew it; for the high State Funeral Was held upon the morrow, Lammas morn. Anon you shall hear why. A strange thing that,— To see the mourners weeping round a hearse That held a dummy coffin. Stranger still To see us lowering the true coffin down By torchlight, with some few of her true friends, In Peterborough Cathedral, all alone." "Old as the world," said Ford. "It is the way ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... my great grandfather said, that to see all the women even in their red cloaks, you would have taken them for the army drawn out. Then such a fine whillaluh![C] you might have heard it to the farthest end of the county, and happy the man who could get but a sight of the hearse! But who'd have thought it? just as all was going on right, through his own town they were passing, when the body was seized for debt—a rescue was apprehended from the mob; but the heir who attended the funeral ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... had not passed before we were flying in a hansom down Baker Street. But even so it was twenty-five to eight as we passed Big Ben, and eight struck as we tore down the Brixton Road. But others were late as well as we. Ten minutes after the hour the hearse was still standing at the door of the house, and even as our foaming horse came to a halt the coffin, supported by three men, appeared on the threshold. Holmes darted forward ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle

... marble hearse, Lies the subject of all verse: Sidney's sister, Pembroke's'mother; Death! ere thou hast slain another, Learned and fair, and good as she, Time shall ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... gray dawn of that ill-fated day. Men bowed their faces in their hands, and on the straw-covered floor hot tears fell fast. Silently the driver took the bells from his horses, and we started like a hearse cityward. What a changed city since the day before! Then all was joy over the end of the war; now we were plunged in a deeper gulf of woe. The sun rose on a city smitten and weeping. All traffic stood still; the icy hand of death lay flat on the heart of commerce, and it gave not ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... your nails, oh ye waves! to their utter-most heads drive them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no coffin and no hearse can be mine:—and hemp only ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... wave-length, which was to be the wave-length of his endowed broadcasting station. I don't know how Remington Solander first got his remarkable idea, but just about that time an undertaker in New York had rigged up a hearse with a phonograph so that the hearse would loud-speak suitable hymns on the way to the cemetery, and that may have suggested the loud-speaking tomb to Remington Solander, but it is not important where he got the idea. He had it, and he was set ...
— Solander's Radio Tomb • Ellis Parker Butler

... Carson's, they took the shorter way across the fields, and approached the Barton farm-house from below. A large concourse of people was already assembled; and the rude black hearse, awaiting its burden in the lane, spread the awe and the gloom of death over the scene. The visitors were grouped around the doors, silent or speaking cautiously in subdued tones; and all new-comers passed into the house to take their last look at ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... Meeting in one full centre of delight. The bird (ordain'd to be Music's first martyr) strove to imitate These several sounds; which when her warbling throat Fail'd in, for grief down dropt she on his lute, And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness To see the conqueror upon her hearse To weep a funeral elegy of tears. He look'd upon the trophies of his art, Then sigh'd, then wiped his eyes; then sigh'd, and cry'd "Alas! poor creature, I will soon revenge This cruelty upon the author of it. Henceforth this lute, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... when more snowdrops were out—but she caught sight of a long black line, slowly climbing up to the church by the road from town. The sight of a funeral always depressed Jane, but there was something specially gloomy about this one. The wet road looked so cold, the sky so grey, and the black hearse and six mourning carriages came heavily along, as though they were ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick

... 1867, we bore him through the streets of Quito to this quiet resting-place, without parade and in solemn silence—just as we believe his unobtrusive spirit would have desired, and just as his Savior was carried from the cross to the sepulchre. No splendid hearse or nodding plumes; no long procession, save the unheard tread of the angels; no requiem, save the unheard harps of the seraphs. We gave him a Protestant Christian burial, such as Quito never saw. In this corner of nature's vast cathedral, the secluded shrine of grandeur ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... shame to the business-like street, One terrible blot in a ledger so neat: The shop full of hardware, but black as a hearse, And the rest of the mansion a thousand ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... Lost life, Matilda; therefore weep no more: And since our mirth is turned into moan, Our merry sport to tragic funeral, We will prepare our power for Austria, After Earl Robert's timeless burial. Fall to your wood-songs, therefore, yeomen bold. And deck his hearse with flowers, that loved you dear: Dispose his goods as he hath them dispos'd. Fitzwater and Matilda, bide you here. See you the body unto Wakefield borne: A little we will bear ye company, But all of us at London 'point to meet: Thither, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... unusual scene in the alley. It was no uncommon thing to see a coffin carried out from there, but on this day there was a hearse, and a minister in Dr. Everett's carriage, and Dirk and his sister, in neat apparel, came out together and were seated in Mr. Roberts' carriage; and all the boys of the Monday-evening Class walked arm in arm after the slow-moving carriages; ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... to a gun carriage and pulled by bluejackets. The state of Victoria's streets at that time was such that it required a deal of power to propel any vehicle, and especially was this the case with Quadra Street. I have often seen a funeral come to a dead standstill and the hearse dug out of the mud, as also teams loaded with stones for monuments ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... or figures. Patrone, forme to werke by. Prompt. Parvul. MS. Harl. 221. There is probably here an allusion to the waxen or wooden effigies placed on the hearse of distinguished personages. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... up my pen with a feeling of disappointment such as I never felt before. Yesterday was the day appointed for the funeral of the good old king, and it was agreed that we should go to Windsor, to pour the tribute of our tears upon the royal hearse. Captain Sabre promised to go with us, as he is well acquainted with the town, and the interesting objects around the Castle, so dear to chivalry, and embalmed by the genius of Shakespeare and many a minor bard, and I promised myself a day of unclouded ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt

... Westminster, it was early in the morning. A group of some thirty gentlemen, connected with the ceremonies, was at the station; among them the Duke of Norfolk, About two hundred people looked silently on while the body was removed from the train to the hearse, and the funeral cortege moved on to Westminster Hall at once and entered the Palace Yard just as "Big Ben" tolled the hour of one like ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... they place it in the hearse and lower it into the grave, will be sure to feel that there is ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... present at a spiritualist seance where an old gentleman had died in a fit on seeing a materialization of his mother-in-law; she had escaped from two fires in her night-gown, and at the funeral of her first cousin the horses attached to the hearse had run away and smashed the coffin, precipitating her relative into an open man-hole before the eyes of ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... should have said "passengers," but the sombre character of the omnibus suggests "Black Maria;" it is depressing (I repeat to myself), to be the only two passengers driving through a dead town at night-time, as if we were the very personification of "the dead of night" being taken out in a hearse to the nearest cemetery. Even DAUBINET feels it, for he is silent, except when he tries to rouse himself by exclaiming "Caramba!" Only twice does he make the attempt, and then, meeting with no response ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various

... properties, however, were probably a valuable part of the theatrical belongings. If we glance over the stage-directions in the plays of Greene, Peele, Kyd and Marlowe, we come upon such visible objects as a throne, a bower, a bed, a table, a tomb, a litter, a cage, a chariot, a hearse, a tree; more elaborate would be Alphonsus's canopy with a king's head at each of three corners, Bungay's dragon shooting fire, Remilia's 'globe seated in a ship', the 'hand from out a cloud with a burning sword' (A Looking-Glass), and the Brazen ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... flight with three knights, all escaping the eyes of the besiegers by the brightness of their raiment; Maud having just previously escaped from the castle of the Devizes, as a dead corpse, in a funeral hearse or bier. The reader will not be surprised at the decay of the castle, when he is informed that it was in a dilapidated state in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various

... Within our body as a tabernacle! Thou bittest with thine ordinance The jaws of Time, and thou dost mete The unsustainable treading of his feet. Thou to thy spousal universe Art Husband, she thy Wife and Church; Who in most dusk and vidual curch, Her Lord being hence, Keeps her cold sorrows by thy hearse. The heavens renew their innocence And morning state But by thy sacrament communicate: Their weeping night the symbol of our prayers, Our darkened search, And sinful vigil desolate. Yea, biune in imploring dumb, Essential Heavens and corporal ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... day when the long line of buggies and carryalls and folk on foot followed the hearse to the cemetery amid the pines. Captain Sears, looking back at the procession, thought of the judge's many prophecies and grim jokes concerning this very journey, and he wondered—well, he wondered as most of us wonder on such occasions. Also he realized that, although their acquaintanceship ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... metropolitan, city of Wales, though now, alas! retaining more of the NAME than of the OMEN, {120} yet I have not forborne to weep over the obsequies of our ancient and undoubted mother, to follow the mournful hearse, and to deplore with tearful sighs the ashes of our half-buried matron. I shall, therefore, endeavour briefly to declare to you in what manner, from whence, and from what period the pall was first brought to St. David's, and how it was taken away; how many prelates were ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis

... from their camp on the Company Canal, were there to act as an escort; and Esplanade Street, for more than a mile, was lined with colored societies, both male and female, in open order, waiting for the hearse to pass through. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... master, the undertaker, which was not quite so desirable. Although Jonathan wept not, yet did he express mute sorrow as he marshalled him to his long home, and drank to his memory in a pot of porter as he returned from the funeral, perched, with many others, like carrion crows on the top of the hearse. ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat

... published.[A] "Of Italy's last struggle for liberty and light," he says, "she might not merely say, with the Grattan of Ireland's kindred effort, half a century earlier, 'I stood by its cradle; I followed its hearse.' She might fairly claim to have been a portion of its incitement, its animation, its informing soul. She bore more than a woman's part in its conflicts and its perils; and the bombs of that ruthless army which a false and traitorous government ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... her friend, were as unlike as they could well be. Silence Withers was something more than forty years old, a shadowy, pinched, sallow, dispirited, bloodless woman, with the habitual look of the people in the funeral carriage which follows next to the hearse, and the tone in speaking that may be noticed in a household where one of its members is lying white and still in a cool, darkened chamber overhead. Bathsheba Stoker was not called handsome; but she had her mother's youthful smile, which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... now," he said—"I'm riding Contractor, and he'll run well, but he always seems to fall at those logs. Still, I ought to have luck to-day. I met a hearse as I was coming out. I'll get ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... idea. I hope so, poor devil! but I never found out. We pulled up in front of the place I was going to in Wall Street, but I sat still in the carriage, and at last the driver scrambled down off his seat to see whether his carriage had not turned into a hearse. I couldn't have got out, any more than if I had been a corpse. What was the matter with me? Momentary idiocy, you'll say. What I wanted to get out of was Wall Street. I told the man to drive down to the Brooklyn ferry and to cross over. When we were over, I told him to drive me out into the ...
— The American • Henry James

... is called the Garden of Eden, full of beautiful trees, shrubs and flowers, pagodas, little temples and shrines. Josiah and I and Tommy went there in the evenin' and hearn beautiful music. Josiah wanted to ride in a palanquin. It is a long black box and looks some like a hearse. I hated to see him get in, it made me forebode. But he enjoyed his ride, and afterwards I sot off in one, Josiah in one also nigh by with Tommy. One side of it comes off so you can git in and set on a high cushion and read or ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... weariness, of lingering sickness, of long pain and suffering, or of swift dissolution, and piercing beneath the surface may see the blessed central reality and thankfully feel that Death, too, is God's angel, who' does His commandments, hearkening to the voice of God's word' when in his dark hearse he carries ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... wish, the funeral was simple in the extreme—flowers, and flowers only, adorned the plain coffin. There was no hearse to drag it up the steep incline that leads to the beautiful cemetery where he lies. The service was taken by Dean Paget and Canon Grant, Rector of Holy Trinity and S. Mary's, Guildford. The mourners who followed him in the quiet procession were few—but the mourners who were not there, and many ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... she was—brought her home—aunt following in that hearse with its five-foot cushions she always rides in," Hunt explained. And then: "Well, I suppose you've got to give me the once-over. Hurry up, and get it ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... have met with the applauses of the Directors. Colonel Monson, one of the best of men, had his days shortened by the applauses, destitute of the support, of the Company. General Clavering, whose panegyric was made in every dispatch from England, whose hearse was bedewed with the tears and hung round with the eulogies of the Court of Directors, burst an honest and indignant heart at the treachery of those who ruined him by their praises. Uncommon patience and temper supported Mr. Francis a while longer under the baneful influence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Longueville, and the men of Lanark, all determined to make this division the stay of their little army, or the last sacrifice for Scottish liberty and its martyred champion's corpse. There stood the sable hearse of Wallace, rather than yield the ground which he had rendered doubly precious by having made it the scene and the guerdon of his invincible deeds! When Kirkpatrick approached the side of his dead chief, he ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... in England at that date, laudatory verses and sentences were fastened to the bier or herse. The name herse was then applied to the draped catafalque or platform upon which the candles stood and the coffin rested, not as now the word hearse to a carriage for the conveyance of the dead. Sewall says of the funeral of the Rev. Thomas Shepherd: "There were some verses, but none pinned on the Herse." These verses were often printed after the funeral. The publication ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... value? But there was Annie! He would go home to her; she would comfort him—yes, she would die with him! There was no other escape; there was no sign of coming deliverance. All was black within and around them. That was the rain on the gravestones. He was in a hearse, on his way to the churchyard. There the mourners were already gathered. They were before him, waiting his arrival. No! He would go home to Annie! He would not be a coward soldier! He would not kill ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald

... I am old that Fate will give me a garden and a view of the sea. I should hate to decay in a suburban row and be carried away at the end of all my mostly fruitless longings in a hearse; the seven minutes' wonder of the small children of the street, who will cry, "Oo-er" when my coffin is borne out by poor men whose names I can't ever know! Not that it really matters, I suppose; and yet, we all of us hope to satisfy our ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... arranged and conducted by the members of G. A. R. Post Number I of Alton, to which John Clark had belonged. There was a military band and the post colors, and a number of oldish men in blue uniforms trailed behind the hearse all the way to the cemetery where the veteran was laid away in the lot with his mother and father. Little Adelle, riding in the first carriage with her aunt, observed all this military display over the dead ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... leave the residence of the deceased at half-past twelve drew many hundreds to the house, anxious, if possible, to obtain a look at that which contained the body of him whose acquaintance numbers of them had esteemed it an honour to possess. At the time appointed the body was placed in the hearse, and the family and friends of the deceased, as they entered the coaches, were watched by hundreds who sympathised in no common degree with their deep affliction and irreparable loss. The coaches ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock

... minute, as if they wanted to keep the rest of us from speaking a word. It was all about the Works. Father was describing some new designs he had accepted, and telling how Charles Edward said they would do very well for the trimmings of a hearse, and mother coughed and said Charles Edward's ideas were always good, and father said not where the market was concerned. Aunt Elizabeth had put on a white dress, and I thought she looked sweet, because she was sad and had made her face quite ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo

... appetite for breakfast that day. After the story was told and recorded, we went sadly to work unmooring the vessel, bringing her slowly like a hearse to an anchorage in front of Bangalang, the residence and factory of Mr. Ormond, better known by the country-name of "Mongo John." This personage came on board early in the morning with our returned captain, and promised to ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... mistaking it for the highest! His poor Wife, a born Borck,—hastening from Berlin, but again and again delayed by industry of kind friends, and at last driving on in spite of everything,—met, in the last miles, his Hearse and Funeral Company. Adieu, a pitying adieu to him forever,—and even to his adoring La Beaumelle, who is rather less a blockhead than he ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... and sobbed, as if in sympathy, and the rain drizzled against the window glass. When the procession reached the cemetery, it was too wet to think of leaving the carriages, but Beulah could see the coffin borne from the hearse, and heard the subdued voice of the minister; and when the shrouded form of the only child was lowered into its final resting-place, she groaned, and hid her face in her hands. Should they meet no more? Hitherto Mrs. Asbury had forborne to address her, but ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... passed this way more frequently than usual. The customhouse officers, amazed at the sudden mortality of the worthy inhabitants of the little suburb, insisted on searching one of the vehicles, and on opening the hearse it was found to be filled with sugar, coffee, vanilla, indigo, etc. It was necessary to abandon this expedient, but others ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Eb, between bites of a doughnut, 'I don' care what I ride in so long as 'tain't a hearse. I want sumthin' at's comfortable an' purty middlin' spry. It'll do us good up here t' git jerked a few hunderd miles an' back ev'ry leetle while. Keep our j'ints limber. We'll live longer fer it, an' thet'll please God sure—cuz ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... mourning and adorned with the escutcheons of the family. At the head of the body was a pall of death's heads, and above and about the hearse was a canopy richly embroidered, from the centre of which hung a garland and an hour-glass. At the foot was a gilded coat of arms, four feet square, and near by were candles and fumes which were kept continually burning. At one side was placed a cupboard containing plate to the value of L200. ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... covering. Each passing pedestrian and cabman took off his hat a moment. The Southern Colony were in the landlady's bureau enjoying a lunch and liquor, and precisely at three o'clock they came down stairs, not more dilapidated than usual, while at the same moment the municipal hearse drove up, attended by one ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... never have conjectured that Death was conveying its victims through those smiling scenes. As the procession approached the portals of the Abbey, it was met, as was then customary, by the young men and maidens of the surrounding villages, in their best array, who hung upon the hearse chaplets of fragrant flowers, and strewed its path with rosemary, pansies, and rue. At the same moment the solemn chant of the Miserere thrilled upon the soul, and was succeeded, as it gradually melted into silence, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various

... or eight weeks since the hearse carrying away the remains of the ill-fated Sir Wynston Berkley had driven down the dusky avenue; the autumn was deepening into winter, and as Marston gloomily trod the woods of Gray Forest, the withered leaves whirled drearily along his pathway, ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... murdring Mordred did the vitall breath expell, Monstrum, horrendum, ingens, dirum, saeuumque tyrannum, That monster grislie, lothsome, huge, that diresome tyrant fell, Hoc iacet extinctus monumento Arthurius alto, Heere liuelesse Arthur lies intoomd, within this statelie hearse, Militiae clarum decus, & virtutis alumnus: Of chiualrie the bright renowme, and vertues nursling fearse: Gloria nunc cuius terram circumuolat omnem, Whose glorie great now ouer all the world dooth compasse flie, Aetherijque petit sublimia ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed

... three months the rector and several ladies went down and sang hymns for him in his mission-house. But his work was really very easy. A funeral, for example, at the mission, was a simple affair, meaning nothing more than the preparation of a plain coffin and a glassless hearse and the distribution of a few artificial everlasting flowers to women crying in their aprons; a thing easily done: whereas in St. Asaph's parish, where all the really important souls were, a funeral was a large event, requiring ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... come even to their house-door to look; the little boys busy playing marbles down some side street are too much absorbed in their game to run and see the show. This is a curious contrast to the rapidity with which a crowd will gather on the smallest provocation in a European city. Even a hearse, standing at a house-door in England, will draw a very respectable crowd, merely in order to see the door open and the coffin brought out. A funeral procession in India is of much greater possible interest, because most Hindus are carried ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... going on steadily, successfully, drawing near an end. I was like a man emerging from a thicket, and suddenly coming on some unmeaning tragedy. I went to bury him. My mind was still on this research, and I did not lift a finger to save his character. I remember the funeral, the cheap hearse, the scant ceremony, the windy frost-bitten hillside, and the old college friend of his who read the service over him—a shabby, black, bent old man with a ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... acquainted, are funerals so simple, or so touching; placing the judgment and sins which lead to it, in a far more conspicuous light than rank, or riches, or personal merits. Scarfs and gloves are given in town, and gloves in the country, though scarfs are rare; but, beyond these, and the pall, and the hearse, and the weeping friends, an American funeral is a very unpretending procession of persons in their best attire; on foot, when the distance is short; in carriages, in wagons, and on horseback, when the grave is far from the dwelling. There is, however, one feature connected ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... arose, at which his Chinese domestics used to fill the silver pitchers, which they carried to Longwood for Napoleon's use. "All the troops were under arms upon the solemn occasion. As the road did not permit a near approach of the hearse to the place of sepulture, a party of British grenadiers had the honour to bear the coffin to the grave. The prayers were recited by the priest, Abbe Vignali. Minute guns were fired from the admiral's ship. The coffin was then let down into the grave, under a discharge ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various

... mighty genius lives in Glory's page, He on the Muses' consecrated ground Sinking to rest, while his young brows are bound With their unfading wreath! To bands of mirth No more in Tempe let the pipe resound! Harold, I follow to thy place of birth The slow hearse,—and thy last sad ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... the coffin to Westminster Abbey to the splendid monument which Wolsey had built there for his royal master. But the way was long, and the panting horses with black housings, which drew the hearse, had often to stop and rest. And all of a sudden, as the carriage stood still on one of the large open squares, blood was seen to issue from the king's coffin. It streamed down in crimson currents and flowed over the stones of the streets. ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... of the fingers or changes in the position of his hand, so slight as to thwart discovery. Through it all the girl stood by and followed his every word and motion with eager attention. She needed no explanation of the terms they used. She knew them all, knew that the "hearse-driver" was the man who kept the cases, knew all the code of the "inside life." To her it was all as an open page, and she memorized more quickly than did Toby the signs by which the Bronco Kid proposed to signal what card he had smuggled from ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... with more and more hopeless brilliance the images of freedom, until finally they refused to delude him with blooming tree or flourishing field; then they resembled the desolate gray of an autumn evening, when the air already smacks of winter, the hearse rattles oftener than usual past the garden-gate toward the little churchyard, and the rising half-moon floats in glowing radiance in the misty azure like a bleeding, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... said Skippy disdainfully, "but if that red-haired, knock-kneed, overfed beau of yours ever sets foot on this place again, he comes in a hearse! And what goes for him, goes for all! Go on and tell, but you'll have the loneliest summer you've ever ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... the bottom of an abyss, and they came up again when from the tempest rending them emerged such a savior. But here the formula may render impossible the appearance of such a savior. The formula is the nation's hearse. The formula has neutralized the best men in Congress, the best men in the Cabinet, as ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... frightened the coachmen, but with less cause. The saddle trade prospered. The Civil War caused many saddles to be made and many emptied. Their records tell of much old-time civic life and customs. They had a barge on the river; they buried their deceased members with much ceremony, and their old hearse-cloth still remains; they can boast of having a Royal master, Frederick ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... refuge may be safely taken under an Elder tree in a thunderstorm, because the cross was made therefrom, and so the lightning never strikes it. Elder was formerly buried with a corpse to protect it from witches, and even now at a funeral the driver of the hearse commonly has his whip handle made of Elder wood. Lord Bacon commended the rubbing of warts with a green Elder stick, and then burying the stick to rot in the mud. Brand says it is thought in some parts that beating with an Elder rod will check the growth ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... with the grinding of the brakes on the hill; the brake of the hearse going in front; the brake of their carriage; the brake of the one that followed with ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... his sake, and will guard with zeal the whole country which he loved so well. I swear you, on the altar of his memory, to be more faithful to the country for which he has perished. They will, as they follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery against which he warred, and which, in vanquishing him, has made him a martyr and a conqueror. I swear you, by the memory of this martyr, to hate slavery, with an unappeasable hatred. They will admire ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... toot of a fish-horn behind, and the sound gradually overhauled us. Now, a fish-horn on a country road in Japan means a basha, and a basha means the embodiment of the objectionable. It is a vehicle to be avoided; both externally like a fire-engine, and internally like an ambulance or a hearse. Indeed, so far as its victim is concerned, it usually ends by becoming a cross between the latter two. It is a machine absolutely devoid of recommendations. I speak from experience, for in a moment ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... hidden away under ground: papers had to be obtained in one place and signed in another; officials had to be seen. For three days Philip was occupied from morning till night. At last he and Albert Price followed the hearse to the ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... tears I shed? Hover'd thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, Wretch even then, life's journey just begun? Perhaps thou gayest me, though unfelt, a kiss; Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss— Ah, that maternal smile!—it answers—Yes. I heard the bell toll'd on thy burial day, I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, And, turning from my nursery window, drew A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu! But was it such?—It was.—Where thou art gone Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, The parting word shall pass ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... we knelt and prayed, Mad mourners of a corse! The troubled plumes of midnight shook The plumes upon a hearse: And bitter wine upon a sponge ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols

... time watching the people thronging into the Gayety Theater. Some came in motor cars, others in carriages. Many hearse-like cabs deposited weighty and respectable solemnities under the glass-roofed vestibule. Swift outside cars buzzed on rubber tires with gentlemen clad in evening dress, and ladies whose silken wraps blew gently from their shoulders, and, in addition, a constant ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... expressed by the poet, that his dust might be mingled with his mother's. Yet, unmeet and plain as the solemnity was in its circumstances, a remarkable incident gave it interest and distinction: as it passed along the streets of London, a sailor was observed walking uncovered near the hearse, and on being asked what he was doing there, replied that he had served Lord Byron in the Levant, and had come to pay his last respects to his remains; a simple but emphatic testimony to the sincerity of that regard which ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... until the coffin had been actually packed in the hearse and the long procession started. To her dismay, they had parted her from Clem. He rode in the first coach beside Aunt Hannah and vis-a-vis with her Uncle Samuel and Cousin Calvin; she in the second with Mr. Purchase, Peter Benny, and Mr. ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... at it, while I can. I shan't have the chance very long, if the other folks in this town are like that hack driver. A dollar to drive half a mile in that hearse! Why, the whole shebang wa'n't worth more than two dollars, to buy. And then he had the cheek to ask me to give ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the boat, through a concourse of people, to whom he seemed as much a show as to us. The state boat was a large flat-bottomed barge, covered with an awning of dark blue, with white stars on it, the whole having much the appearance of a hearse. It was preceded by two boats bearing flags with an inscription upon them, having in the bow an officer of justice carrying a lackered bamboo, and in the stern a man beating a gong. A vast number of boats were in attendance, some bearing presents, and others following ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall

... stood before the civil wars, was one of those beautiful Gothic obelisks, erected to conjugal affection by Edward I., who built such a one wherever the hearse of his beloved Eleanor rested in its way from Lincolnshire to Westminster. But neither its ornamental situation, the beauty of its structure, nor the noble design of its erection (which did honour to humanity), ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... think, when there was a death in her family. The one little kitten that she loved with all her mother heart died and left her desolate. It was a very sad occasion, I remember, but we had a great funeral. We dug the grave at the end of the garden. Johnny's express wagon was the hearse, and Johnny drew it, and was very serious indeed. We borrowed Mrs. Martin's baby carriage, and that was the mourning coach. Juno rode in it, with Ned and Gimps walking one on each side and holding her in. I pushed ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... the tomb. The procession was led by mules bearing plumes of white feathers. A mourning-carriage, containing the heart of the deceased in an urn, was drawn by six horses, decorated with the richest funereal caparisons, and led by postilions in the mourning-livery of the house of Orleans. The hearse followed, preceded by a herald with a coronet on ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... was at the door—the hearse. The whole party had assembled to see him go. Good-bye, good-bye. Mechanically he tapped the barometer that hung in the porch; the needle stirred perceptibly to the left. A sudden smile lighted up his ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... in the court-yard, coachmen quarrelling; orders were given; and at last the hearse rolled away solemnly—and that ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... uncovering and soldiers saluting as it passed—the dirge-like chant of the Miserere never failed to fill my eyes with unbidden tears of sympathy for the mourners, who, with bowed heads, walked behind the wreath-laden hearse. ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... their spears, played upon their features and made them ghastly; the chilly night wind tossed their tall and hearse-like plumes. There they lay in wild confusion, with arms outstretched and twisted limbs; their stern, stalwart forms looking weird and unhuman ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard



Words linked to "Hearse" :   motor vehicle, automotive vehicle



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