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Tombstone   Listen
noun
Tombstone  n.  A stone or small stone monument erected over a grave, bearing the name of the dead person interred there, to preserve the memory of the deceased.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tombstone" Quotes from Famous Books



... thou reads, At Edinburgh lie our bodies, here our heads; Our right hands stood at Lanark, these we want, Because with them we signed the Covenant.' Epitaph on a Tombstone at ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... him; they were without God in the world. The child alone had their affections, and they had been lost had not He in His mercy removed it. Come this way, Jacob." I followed the Dominie till he stood before another tombstone in the corner of the churchyard. "This stone, Jacob, marks the spot where lies the remains of one who was my earliest and dearest friend—for in my youth I had friends, because I had anticipations, and little thought that it would ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... and her eyes sank to the ground. Her knees were resting on a tombstone, and she saw many of the same kind about her. She read the names engraven on the stones; they were all Swedish, correct and well-known. "Oh," she said to herself with a sigh, "I have not a name like ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... old timers will gather the setting of my tale. Indian days over; "nester" days with frame houses and vegetable patches not yet here. Still a few guns packed for business purposes; Mexican border handy; no railroad in to Tombstone yet; cattle rustlers lingering in the Galiuros; train hold-ups and homicide yet prevalent but frowned upon; favourite tipple whiskey toddy with sugar; but the old fortified ranches all gone; longhorns crowded out by shorthorn ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... were all married and gone. But Anne had never had another lover. There had to be an old maid in every big family she said, and she was not going to marry Jerome Irving just for the sake of having Mrs. on her tombstone. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... From the judge's garden came the faint sound of a negro voice as the old gardener weeded the vegetables. Nicholas rolled over again and faced the outstretched wings of the noseless angel on the nearest tombstone. The loss of the nose had distorted the marble smile into a grimace, which gave a leer to the remaining features. As the boy looked at it he laughed suddenly, and his voice startled him amid the droning of bees. Then he ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... boy loved that kid. 'E told Lovaina 'at 'is whole bloody family was drowned when the Rio Janeiro went down off Mile Rock in Frisco bay. The kid was 'is sister's only child, an' 'is uncle left a thousand francs with the American consul for a proper tombstone on 'is grave in the cemetery. The ol' ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... prevented from visiting by the swollen waters. The rich yellow light streamed through the interstices of the tall hedge of forest-trees that encircles the eminence, once an island, and fell in fantastic patches on the gray tombstone and the graves. The ruinous little chapel in the corner, whose walls a quarter of a century before I had distinctly traced, had sunk into a green mound; and there remained over the sward but the arch-stone of a Gothic window, with a portion of the moulded transom attached, to indicate ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... was the foe, And now what refuge but their frail canoe? This Torquil asked with half upbraiding eye, Which said—"Has Neuha brought me here to die? Is this a place of safety, or a grave, And yon huge rock the tombstone of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... he also brought with him a wife— Biscayan as himself—and a daughter, at the time turned eight years old. His wife has been long ago buried; a tombstone in the cemetery of the old Dolores Mission commemorating her many virtues. Since, he has had an accession to his contracted family circle; the added member being a grand-daughter, only a year younger ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... went down and a tombstone fell over him, his plaintive cry of 'Oh, I am killed!' was received with shouts ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar

... died poor and would have been in want had not a subscription paper been started for him by the local paper. This, made up in large part by summer visitors and off-islanders, amounted to several hundred dollars, and at the end there were forty dollars left with which to buy him a tombstone. I have not seen this tombstone. It ought to have a horn neatly graven, but I suppose it has not. The town misses him, needs him, more than one citizen says that, but so individualistic a place makes ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... the Times was flooded with other versions by people who remembered the lines more or less imperfectly, who had clung each to his own version since childhood, who doubted if the epigram were originally written on Lord Sherbrooke, who had seen it on an eighteenth-century tombstone in several parts of England, and so on. London Correspondents took up the game and carried it into the provincial press. Then country clergymen bustled up and tried to recall the exact rendering; while others who had never heard of the epigram waxed emulous ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the last day of the poor old man, who did not live to see the coronation of King Louis the Eleventh. He founded a daily mass in the Church of Roche-Foucauld, where in the same grave he placed mother and son, with a large tombstone, upon which their lives are much ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... right," he says. "I'm fond enough of the gell, but I shan't clamour for a tombstone with wiolets, even if she ain't ever Mrs. Capt'n Kit. Business is business; and I ain't going to queer ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome

... Wilhelmina's high and unfortunate Daughter there should be some Biography; and there will surely, if a man of sympathy and faculty pass that way; but there is not hitherto. Nothing hitherto but a few bare dates; bare and sternly significant, as on a Tombstone; indicating that she had a History, and that it was a tragic one. Welcome to all of us, in this state of matters, is the following one clear emergence of her into the light of day, and in company ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... As cut on the tombstone after revision the epitaph was substantially the same. "Interred" was changed to "deposited"; "theatre" was stricken out and "aim" inserted and "honor" added after "usefulness"; "became" was changed to "was"; "Virtues as a Man" was made to ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin

... said Flemming. "The child seems to have been born only to be buried, and have its name recorded on a wooden tombstone." ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... round. He has been too late several times, and when he sees he is too late he runs back to the Thrush's Nest for his paddle, of which Maimie had told him the true use, and he digs a grave for the child and erects a little tombstone, and carves the poor thing's initials on it. He does this at once because he thinks it is what real boys would do, and you must have noticed the little stones, and that there are always two together. He puts them in twos because they seem ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... Mulkey, had been arrested for a political offense by order of Major Rinehart, and it had been determined to send him to Ft. Vancouver and possibly to Alcatraz. I went to Major Rinehart's headquarters and applied for a pass to see Mr. Mulkey. That I played good-goody—lied like a tombstone in order to get the pass, is not necessary here to state, but I got it and arranged an escape with Mulkey. That the arrangement miscarried was due to Mr. Mulkey, and not to the prudence of Major Rinehart or the failure upon my part ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson

... Portas and the Piombos and their terrible passions were inscribed on this page of the civil law as the annals of a people (contained, it may be, in one word only,—Napoleon, Robespierre) are engraved on a tombstone. Ginevra trembled. Like the dove on the face of the waters, having no place to rest its feet but the ark, so Ginevra could take refuge only in the eyes of Luigi from the cold ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac

... then the man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down and emptied my pockets, but there was nothing in them except a piece of bread. When the church came to itself, for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me,—I was seated on a high tombstone trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously. Then he came nearer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me, looking into ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... his abode, and an hour after midday they gathered in the church burial-ground, and they drew up a tombstone, and with it rammed the door; and they hurled stones at the windows; and in the darkness they built a wall of dung in the room of ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans

... know what she's made of," giggled Dorothy, hysterically. "She looks like a tombstone dressed in deep mourning, and carries with her the atmosphere of a graveyard. We have to call her 'Mrs. Smithers,' if we don't want her to call us by our first names, and she has two dollars a week. She says Claudius is a cat that uncle killed the week before he died, and she thinks you hit me and ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... genius would find full recognition. Perhaps he was right: more than one book which seemed dead and was dead for contemporary readers has had a resurrection when the rivals who triumphed over it lived only in the tombstone memory of antiquaries. Comfort for some ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Means I can improve my self with those Objects, which others consider with Terror. When I look upon the Tombs of the Great, every Emotion of Envy dies in me; when I read the Epitaphs of the Beautiful, every inordinate Desire goes out; when I meet with the Grief of Parents upon a Tombstone, my Heart melts with Compassion; when I see the Tomb of the Parents themselves, I consider the Vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: When I see Kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival Wits placed Side by Side, or the holy Men that divided ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... here is a woman who has seen and felt far more than her reticent nature readily betrays; she sometimes smiles, but behind that concession, controlling it in a manner hardly less than adorable, lurks the sigh called Knowledge; a strangely interesting face, mysterious; a line for her tombstone might be 'If I had been a man what adventures I could have had ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie

... this; but here have we been for more than a month, without a single pennant belonging to the station having looked in: our money is running short, and if we are to hold on in Carthagena for another six weeks, we shall not have a shot left in the locker—not a copper to tinkle on a tombstone." ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... so hard and so long at March without speaking or smiling, or taking any more notice of him than if he had been an effigy on a tombstone, seemed unaccountable to that youth. Had he been able to look at himself from her point of view he would not have ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... days bygone, When glad its banks I strolled upon, The river Doon so bonnie; The roofless kirk and yard so green, Where many a tombstone may be seen, ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... till a vary short time before her death, which was one of peace and humble trust in her Redeemer, and occurred at Ramsgate on the sea-side. The following epitaph, dictated by herself, is inscribed on her tombstone: ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... Mr. McQuirk spent fifteen minutes before the corrugated mirror, subjugating his hair and arranging his green-and-purple ascot with its amethyst tombstone pin—eloquent of his ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... Treatise on some Urns dug up in Norfolk—how earthy, how redolent of graves and sepulchres is every line! You have now dark mould, now a thigh-bone, now a scull, then a bit of mouldered coffin! a fragment of an old tombstone with moss in its "hic jacet";—a ghost or a winding sheet—or the echo of a funeral psalm wafted on a November wind! and the gayest thing you shall meet with shall be a silver nail or gilt "Anno Domini" from a perished coffin top. ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... you should have a guide. The pleasure of this country is much in the legends, which grow as plentiful as blackberries." And directing my attention to a little fragment of a broken wall no greater than a tombstone, he told me, for an example, a story of its earlier inhabitants. Years after it chanced that I was one day diverting myself with a Waverley Novel, when what should I come upon but the identical narrative of my green-coated gentleman upon the moors! In a moment the scene, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... calculating the other day that I've baked more than 400 loaves a year for the last fifteen years. That's more than 6,000 loaves of bread. They can put that on my tombstone." ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... you give me a full report of the action taken upon it?... I hope you and your daughters arrived home safe. Say to the elder I shall be most happy to hear from her when she shall have fairly inaugurated some noble life work. I trust each will take to her soul a strong purpose and that on her tombstone shall be engraved her own name and her own noble deeds instead of merely the daughter of Judge Ormond, or the relict of some Honorable or D. D. When true womanhood shall be attained it will be spoken of and remembered for itself alone. My ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... whole affair lasted seventeen days. Shortly after, Mr. Brown prosecuted the Sheriff for trespass, when the Council declined to be accountable for these official doings. He soon announced to the public in a card a resumption of his business. His tombstone bears a eulogy on the bravery which thus long and successfully resisted an attempt to force a citizen from his legal habitation. "Happy citizen," the stone reads, "when called singly to be a barrier to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... as he sat himself down on a flat tombstone which was a favourite resting-place of his, and drew forth his wicker bottle. "A coffin at Christmas! A Christmas box! ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... the close of his essay on the tombs of Westminster Abbey: "When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... 'twas because two men came just then from Casterbridge and began putting up a grand carved tombstone," said Liddy. "The lads went to see ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... grave by my own men, rigged in the black caps and white shirts which my barge's crew were wont to wear; and they must keep a good look out, that none of your pilfering rascallions may come and heave me up again, for the lucre of what they can get, until the carcase is belayed by a tombstone. As for the motto, or what you call it, I leave that to you and Mr. Jolter, who are scholars; but I do desire, that it may not be engraved in the Greek or Latin lingos, and much less in the French, which I abominate, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... many show places and "points of interest" in India that have a hundred times more attention in the guide books, but there is a simple tomb in Lucknow—it cost no more than many a plain farmer's tombstone in our country burying-places—which impressed me more than anything else I saw excepting only the Himalayas, the Taj Mahal and the view of Benares ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... of a balance-sheet) under the compelling spell of wizard Pinkerton. Dollars of mine were tacking off the shores of Mexico, in peril of the deep and the guarda-costas; they rang on saloon-counters in the city of Tombstone, Arizona; they shone in faro-tents among the mountain diggings; the imagination flagged in following them, so wide were they diffused, so briskly they span to the turning of the wizard's crank. But here, there, or everywhere I ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... by dying, in 1714. Sophia, the Electress of Hanover, who had only wished to live, she said, long enough to have engraved upon her tombstone: "Here lies Sophia, Queen of England," died, in spite of this desire, only a few weeks before the queen; and the new heir to the throne was her son, George Louis of Brunswick-Luneburg, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... vanishing into the darkness of the vaulted arches, was a figure, wrapped in a long cloak which revealed nothing whatever of its wearer. Instinctively Frank attempted to pursue, but he had not gone many yards, when he fell over a tombstone with such a clatter that it caused the preacher to stop and order the officers to take into custody the ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... godlike master slain before their eyes, They wept, and shared in human miseries.(248) In vain Automedon now shakes the rein, Now plies the lash, and soothes and threats in vain; Nor to the fight nor Hellespont they go, Restive they stood, and obstinate in woe: Still as a tombstone, never to be moved, On some good man or woman unreproved Lays its eternal weight; or fix'd, as stands A marble courser by the sculptor's hands, Placed on the hero's grave. Along their face The big round drops ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... to the Pall Mall Gazette:—"Our poetic literature, so rich in other respects, is entirely wanting in epitaphs on the victims of railway accidents. A specimen of what may be turned in this line is to be seen on a tombstone in the picturesque churchyard of Harrow-on-the-Hill. It was, I observe, written as long ago as 1838, so that it can be reproduced without much danger of hurting the feelings of those who may have known and loved the subject of this touching elegy. The name of the victim was Port, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... deeply dug, come, let us throw in all the hard things that have been said and written between Jew and Gentile, between Protestant and Catholic, between Turk and Russian, between French and English, between Mongolian and anti-Mongolian, between black and white; and then let us set up a tombstone and put upon it the epitaph: "Here lies the monster that cursed the earth for nearly three thousand years. He has departed to go to perdition, from which he started. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... was taken ill, and, receiving proper treatment, he died. There was a tombstone put up over him, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... morning to you, Michael Daragh! Here in the rich cream of the day we're waiting for the mail, Dan'l and I and the pup. Guess where? In the graveyard, and I'm sitting on a tumbled-over tombstone. I wish I could make you see this spot. I've always hated cemeteries, the sleek, prosperous, well-fed, well-groomed sort, but this is indeed God's Acre. You step over the broken stones of the wall into a land of gracious gray; gray stone and moss, gray sky and feathery fog. Twice only ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... said PLUNKET—watching him as, with legs reverently crossed, and elbow sympathisingly resting on box, carefully suggestive of life-sized figure of tombstone-mourner, he intoned his lamentation—"is not fitted for the part, and consequently overdoes it. L'Allegro is his line. Il ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various

... the defacement of Mr. Skinner's tombstone?" asked Mr. Brown a few days after the funeral of that eminent captain ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... I have seen her but three times since her childhood—once riding with her father, then accidentally at church, and again a few evenings before I left, at the graveyard, where she was dressing a tombstone with flowers. There we exchanged a few words for the first time, and this reminds me that I am bearer of a message yet undelivered. She inquired after you, and desired me to tender you ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... out," said the philanthropist. "I have all the money I can carry. When the rainy day comes I will be well in out of the drip, and my tombstone will be ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... the tombstone, that he would have been President of the Royal College of Physicians, Lord High Admiral, Commander-in-Chief, Lord Chancellor, and Archbishop of Canterbury, if—he ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various

... knee-breeches and coarse grey stockings, and the old woman wore mittens like unto his stockings in texture and in colour. They took no heed of me as I looked on, unable to account for them. The old woman was much too bright for a pew-opener, the old man much too meek for a beadle. On an old tombstone in the foreground between me and them, were two cherubim; but for those celestial embellishments being represented as having no possible use for knee-breeches, stockings, or mittens, I should have compared them with the hay-makers, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... anticipated much pleasure in life, after the war, in shooting ducks and holding office, I was willing to give up all hope of pleasure in the future, and die like a thoroughbred. I was glad that I had been promoted, and wondered if they would put "Corporal" on my tombstone. I wondered, if I fell that day at the head of my mem, if the papers at the North, and particularly in Wisconsin, would say "The deceased had just been promoted, for gallant conduct, to the position of Corporal, and it will be hard ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck

... man were interred in St Peter's Churchyard at Ratisbon, and the following inscription, embodying an epitaph which he had written for himself, was engraven on his tombstone. ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... prettiest thing that ever was seen or heard of; and Miss Milly was commissioned to write immediately to York to bespeak fifteen bonnets exactly like her own. This transaction was settled before they had left the churchyard; and Miss Milly was leaning upon a tombstone to write down the names of those who were most eager to have their bonnets before the next Sunday, when Wright and Marvel came up to the place where the crowd was gathered, and they saw what was ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... took his flies from his Scotch cap and found a tangle; and I saw the glistening of his rod, as the sunshine pierced the valley, and then his tall, straight figure pass the corner of a crag that stood as upright as a tombstone; and after that no more of any live ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... by repairing the gravestones (if there existed any) belonging to the family or ancestors of his host. As the wanderer was usually to be seen bent on this pious task within the precincts of some country churchyard, or reclined on the solitary tombstone among the heath, disturbing the plover and the black-cock with the clink of his chisel and mallet, with his old white pony grazing by his side, he acquired, from his converse among the dead, the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... make a tombstone, like the one he made for my bird; And he'll put what I tell him on it—yes, every single word! I shall say: "Here lies Hildegarde, a beautiful doll who is dead; She died of a broken heart, and a ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... the weeds and flowers in their briefer period. The English climate is very unfavorable to the endurance of memorials in the open air. Twenty years of it suffice to give as much antiquity of aspect, whether to tombstone or edifice, as a hundred years of our own drier atmosphere,—so soon do the drizzly rains and constant moisture corrode the surface of marble or freestone. Sculptured edges loose their sharpness in a year or two; yellow lichens overspread a beloved name, and obliterate it while it is yet ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... has succeeded. Learn to act as if you realized that you were born into this world the child of the Ruler of the universe, that this is his world and that you have as much right in it as she has. I think it was Gilbert Haven, a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a man for whose tombstone I do not think America has any marble too white or any laurel too green, who saw on his travels a statue of Cleopatra, which suggested to him this thought, 'I am black, but comely, the sun has looked down upon me, but I will make you who despise ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... with God's noblest work, "an honest man," written on his tombstone. Here, too, is the grave of the hero, William Jackson, who was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. While the judge was still pronouncing the awful doom, the man grew faint and in a few minutes fell down dead. He had swallowed poison on hearing ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... upon the street, so that its dust must be continually scattered over the spot, I saw a heavy gray tombstone, with a Latin inscription, purporting that Bishop Butler, the author of the Analogy, in his lifetime had chosen this as a burial-place for himself and his family. There is a statue of him within the church. From the top of the spire a man, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to the dust whirl that advanced up the road that ran round the corral. "That doesn't prove anything, Alan. Everybody knows Jose. He's lived all over Arizona—at Tucson and Tombstone and Douglas." ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... is the moment—the only moment, perhaps, which I shall have; creeping on his hands and feet, he reached the grave yard, a stone's throw from the church, and here behind a tombstone, succeeded ...
— Whig Against Tory - The Military Adventures of a Shoemaker, A Tale Of The Revolution • Unknown

... ghouls, but her will was firm, as well as her trust in Providence. Eliza went, and the king and the archbishop followed her. They saw her vanish through the wicket gate into the churchyard, and when they came nearer they saw the ghouls sitting on the tombstone, as Eliza had seen them, and the king turned away his head, for he thought she was with them—she whose head had rested on his breast that very evening. "The people must condemn her," said he, and she was very quickly condemned by every one to suffer death by fire. Away from the gorgeous regal ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... a smile on his countenance that completed his ugliness, and would have frightened any honest man from his side at once. Merely glancing my way, he shuffled up to my companion, and leading him aside, drew out a paper which he laid on a flat tombstone with a gesture significant of his desire that the other should affix to it ...
— The Staircase At The Hearts Delight - 1894 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)

... it and disappeared into the churchyard. He followed, stumbling along the narrow path, and overtook her at the angle of the south porch. She was in the act of mounting upon a flat tombstone which lay close in the wall's shadow. A panel of light streamed from the window directly above, and fell on Vashti's face as she drew herself erect upon the slab and leaned forward, her fingers resting on the granite mullions; but a ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... threatened to toss that burden back on me. Well, if he had, Matt, I just couldn't have carried it without competent help—and by the time I had competent help broken in they'd be measuring me for a tombstone." ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... Vane, who's got a head like a billiard ball and has to wear a wig for decency's sake, drew herself up twice and then relaxed with a sickly grin. . . . All the same I don't think Mary felt any more comfortable or liked it much better than the rest of us. Too much like reading your own epitaph on a tombstone. I thought ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... body. A few followed it to the cemetery of Saint-Maur where the criminals were usually buried. The basket was emptied into a ditch that had been dug not far from a young tree to which some unknown hand had attached a black ribbon, to mark the spot which neither cross nor tombstone might adorn. The rain and wind soon destroyed this last sign; and nothing now remains to show the corner of earth in the deserted and abandoned cemetery in which still lies the body of the woman whose rank in other times ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... father—and when I married his brother I swore that she should pay me for that, and she has! If she can see you as you are to-day, all heaven cannot dry her tears, for all heaven itself cannot give you a name, since the one on her own tombstone is not hers by any right. I hope she sees you! Oh, I hope it was not for nothing that she fasted till she fainted, and prayed till she was hoarse, and knelt in damp churches till she died of it! I hope she has starved and whined her way to paradise and is looking down at this very moment and can ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... from the neck of the fork ahead. And as they all pressed forward after King the hairless mullah gave a signal and the great stone door slid slowly into place. It was like a tombstone. It was as if the world that mortals know were a thing of the forgotten past and the underworld lay ahead. "Lead along, Charon!" King grinned. He needed some sort of pleasantry to steady his nerves. But even so he wondered what the nerves of ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... case with Peter Anderson: he was ninety-seven when he died, but long before that time his mind was quite gone. Still he was treated with respect, and many were there who attended his funeral. I erected a handsome tombstone to his memory, the last tribute I could pay to a worthy, honest, sensible, and highly religious ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... Matty Bell did not sink into an early grave. That report which had got into the country with regard to her funeral and tombstone began to be very flatly contradicted. It was now whispered on the breeze that Matty was not only in a fair state of recovery but also that a substantial means of consolation had ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... thief, sor, av coorse, who was standin' tremblin' fornint him, while the sexton was diggin' the grave to putt him in alive—in the dark shadow of a big tombstone." ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... here in town, but it blighted her whole life in a way, although she was just in her teens when it happened. It helped her to bear up, knowing he'd died such a hero. Some of the town people put up a tombstone to his memory, with a beautiful inscription on it that the summer people go to see, almost as much as the landing place of the Pilgrims. She'll be true to his memory always, and it's something beautiful to see her devotion to Emmett's father. ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... Scotland. Then he was suddenly recalled home by the terrible news that his wife had died suddenly while out driving. It was a crushing blow. Only when it was too late did Carlyle realize all that his wife had been to him. She was, as he wrote on her tombstone, "Suddenly snatched away from him, and the light of his life as ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... wind blew. They hadn't the decency to pin even a name—they might have got one out of a novel or a story-book, you know, to start a poor fellow in life with—to my shirt; no—they just set me afloat on that bit of a tombstone, and cast off the standing part of what fastened me to anything human. There they left me, to generalize on the 'arth and its ways, to ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... from tombstone of Sir William, who lies buried at Greencroft, near Petersburg, Virginia."—See South. Messenger, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various

... "I'm a tombstone. Well, me an' Angel Face here," and he slapped his horse affectionately, whereat Angel Face reared and pranced, giving the lie to her name, "we may as well git started fur camp so's to feed you when ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... life a bit, his mother died, and that rather knocked him up, you see. He fell sick, and came to grief generally, Uncle Josh said; so he was ordered off to get righted, and here he is, looking like a tombstone. I've a regard for Frank, for he took care of me through the smallpox a year ago, and I don't forget things of that sort; so, if you wish to be introduced, Mrs. Carroll, I'll trot him out with pleasure, and make a proud man ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... tired of life. My nose is turn-up, my mouth is large; I pocket other people's saucers and napkins; I am always making blunders. This is my last blunder. I shall never blush again. Farewell. Let the inscription on my tombstone ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... priest said, "God was in," when He looked down on the camp ground and saw the priest sleeping with a Congregational Chaplain. Or in the same state of mind you'll be in when you look down and see the sexton keeping your tombstone up to date. The truth of Joachim offsets the repose of Paganini and Kubelik. The repose and reputation of a successful pianist—(whatever that means) who plays Chopin so cleverly that he covers up a sensuality, and in such a way that the purest-minded ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... and wife, whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward, I dedicate this volume." Not less touching is the testimony borne by another great living writer to the character of his wife, in the inscription upon the tombstone of Mrs. Carlyle in Haddington Churchyard, where are inscribed these words:—"In her bright existence, she had more sorrows than are common, but also a soft amiability, a capacity of discernment, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... fallen into the hands of Danishmend; and the dissensions among the Mahommedans alone made possible the subsequent consolidation of his kingdom. But he had virtu as well as fortuna; and on his tombstone it was written that he was "a second Judas Maccabaeus, whom Kedar and Egypt, Dan and Damascus dreaded." As king, he still retained something of the clerk in the habit of his dress; but he was at the same time a warrior so impetuous, as to be sometimes foolhardy, and his policy was on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... I received your letter I was transcribing for The Star my letter to the magistrates of the Canongate of Edinburgh, begging their permission to place a tombstone over poor Fergusson. [102a] Poor Fergusson! if there be a life beyond the grave, which I trust there is; and if there be a good God presiding over all nature, which I am sure there is, thou art ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... heart she died; and she was only twenty-six at the time—so we can imagine how young and lithely beautiful she must have been. Her name, too, was Joanna Gavadia—a sweet name, surely never wasted on an ungraceful woman; and on her tombstone she is called "pudicissima et musicis scientissima." So she was good and she was skilful in music, like Bach's second wife; and doubtless, like her, of infinite help and delight to ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... pen. In its higher flights it will, in a disputed district, bury ancient-looking stones with suitable inscriptions. It will go beyond the simple changes in the termination of the surnames of those who come under its dominion; the name upon a tombstone will be made to end, according to circumstances, in "off" or "vitch," sometimes in the Roumanian "esco" or the Greek "opoulos." If this is known to the departed, one would like to learn how it affects them. A great deal of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... it was only human nature that, as I come round the church, I should get on the top of a tombstone and look in to see what they was doing. It was the little window where a pane was broken by a stone last summer, and so I heard what they was saying. He was trying to tell her what I had told him—quite as much for her own good as for ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit

... busts of the bishop, dean, and chapter? Or perhaps, if I achieve a great success, obtain a commission to put up an elaborate tombstone over a prebendary's widow, a dead lady with a Grecian nose, a bandeau, and an intricate lace veil; lying of course on a marble sofa from among the legs of which death will be creeping out and poking at his ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... own act, Irons. I did not want it; but I'll protect myself, and won't hold my life on ransom, at the hands of a Jew or a Judas," said he, smiling through his black hair, as white as a tombstone. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... together put up a little slab for a tombstone; and she hangs flowers upon it, and ties them there with a bit of ribbon. You can scarce play all that day; and afterward, many weeks later, when you are rambling over the fields, or lingering by the brook, throwing off sticks into the eddies, you think of old Tray's shaggy ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Mrs. Lippett would use a little more ingenuity about choosing babies' names. She gets the last names out of the telephone book—you'll find Abbott on the first page—and she picks the Christian names up anywhere; she got Jerusha from a tombstone. I've always hated it; but I rather like Judy. It's such a silly name. It belongs to the kind of girl I'm not—a sweet little blue-eyed thing, petted and spoiled by all the family, who romps her way through life without any cares. Wouldn't it be nice to be like that? Whatever ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... too—hang the old rascal, he won about fifty pounds of me. But to continue. Now, Mr Malcolm Stratton, time is flying, and the lady will soon be at the church, where you must be first. I tell you that I will consent to keep under the tombstone where the law and society have placed me, for a handsome ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn

... mass of white marble and red sandstone. It has a fine dome, around which cluster several smaller structures, such as we should call cupolas in America or England. Under the great dome in the building is a plain tombstone, beneath which are the remains of the first of the Mogul emperors. The mausoleum is placed on an esplanade, like the great mosque in the city. The sides present a vast display of pointed arches, and ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... wise disdain'd, Is perfect wisdom, while mankind are fools, And think a turf or tombstone ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... you, I see the resemblance. You're complected like your pa. He had red hair. But you favor your ma in your eyes and mouth. She was a nice little thing. My darter went to school to her and was nigh crazy about her. They was buried in the one grave and the School Board put up a tombstone to them as a reward for faithful service. ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... in my entire existence, so far as I can now remember, I was totally nonplussed and abashed. I could not have been more astonished had I walked into the family lot in the Salem cemetery and found my grandfather sitting on his own tombstone; but there the old lawyer surely was, as certainly as he had been there twenty years before; and the same sensations that I had always experienced as a child while in his presence now swept over me and made me feel like a whipped school-boy. Not for the world would ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... events in the family history of the Ferrars and Collets (such as baptisms and burials) as early as the year 1650—and at frequent dates afterwards. The Gidding estate, which had originally been bought by old Mrs. Ferrar, passed to her eldest son John, which is proved by his being described on his tombstone as "Lord of this Manor," and he was succeeded by his eldest son, who was resident there in the year 1715, as stated by Dr. Mapletoft in ...
— Little Gidding and its inmates in the Time of King Charles I. - with an account of the Harmonies • J. E. Acland

... migrated to Virginia was Colonel Joseph Bridger of Isle of Wight County. The date of his coming is unknown, but he appeared in the records as a member of the House of Burgesses, 1657; thus, apparently, he had been in the county several years prior to that time. His tombstone, uncovered at the site of his home plantation, "White Marsh," was removed in the late nineteenth century and placed in the chancel of the Old Brick Church (St. Luke's) ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester

... always did when excited, with: "Clara, now Clara, you know I told my vater of you, for dat you were goot to me, und he say, vat he alvays say—not'ing. Dat day I come tell you vat his work vas, I vent home und I say, 'Vater Waacker, I told my fraeulein you made your livin' in de tombstone yard,' und he say, quvick like, 'Vell,'—you know my vater no speak ver goot English" (Semantha's own English was weakening fast),—"'vell, I s'pose she make some big fool laugh, den, like everybodies, eh?' Und I say, 'No, she don't laugh! de lips curdle a little'" (curdle was Semantha's own word ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris

... was grateful to her; there was scarcely any one in the place. While Madame Potecki busied herself with some catalogue or other, the girl turned aside into a recess, to look at a cast of the effigy on the tomb of Queen Eleanor of Castile. A tombstone stills the air around it. Even this gilt plaster figure was impressive; it had ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... at sunrise, no tombstone at his head, Nothing but a little board and this is what it said, "Charlie died at daybreak, he died from a fall, And he'll not see his mother when the work's all ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various

... teachers out for self-improvement began to write it all in their note-books, while a stout matron evidently of good old Dutch stock looked sadly down at the flat, gray stones. "Poor things!" she murmured, "and there ain't one of them got a respectable white tombstone with a wreath carved on it." Then, in their usual two-by-two line, the party moved down the aisle wearily, but triumphant in the fact that they had succeeded in doing the Tower, the Abbey, and the Museum all in one ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... answered him; "you need not insist upon it. I shall never marry; my kingdom takes the place of a husband for me, and my subjects are my children. When I am dead, I wish graven on my tombstone: 'Here lies Elizabeth, who reigned so many years, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... where he buried his faithful dog, with the inscription, 'Life to the last enjoyed, here Pompey lies.' There were agreeable excursions, too, from Chiswick to the neighbouring places, particularly to Richmond, where Clare visited Thompson's monument on the hill, as well as his tombstone in the old church, which, covered as it was with cobwebs, he thought much less beautiful than that of Hogarth's dog. It was Clare's intention to stop at least a week with his kind host at Chiswick, but an awkward circumstance occasioned his departure at the end of a few ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... muttered Bruno, shaking his fairly athletic shoulders and fingering the knife at his belt as though making preparations for an inevitable struggle. "All right. They may kill, but I'll furnish some red paint for my tombstone, anyway!" ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... again, and write. We'll suppose our hero to have retired from the crowded festivities of a ball-room at some lordly mansion in the country, and to have wandered into a churchyard, damp and dreary with a thick London fog. In the light dress of fashion, he throws himself on a tombstone. "Ye dead!" exclaims the hero, "where are ye? Do your disembodied spirits now float around me, and, shrouded in this horrible veil of nature, glare unseen upon vitality? Float ye upon this intolerable mist, in yourselves still more misty and intolerable? Hold ye high jubilee to-night? or ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... how it is on an island like this. The tiny thing of everyday life becomes a subject for a day's discussion. That affair of six months ago was like dropping a tombstone in a mud-puddle—everything is profoundly stirred, but no one gets spattered except the one who dropped it. In ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... gathered from the wording of the inscription on the tombstone that covers the victim, his name never transpired. No relations claimed the right to bury him. None appeared to take charge ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould



Words linked to "Tombstone" :   monument, headstone, memorial, gravestone, stone, grave, tomb



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