"Truncheon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... taste of the day lies in more direct caricature, and our volatile friend Punch does the needful in his wicked sallies of wit, and his fertile pencil. His sharp rubs are perhaps more effective to John Bull's temper, who can take a blow with Punch's truncheon and bear no malice after it,—the heavy lectures of the ancients are not so well ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... embers, other flaming suns, wheel and race in the apparent void; the nearest is out of call, the farthest so far that the heart sickens in the effort to conceive the distance. Shipwrecked seamen on the deep, though they bestride but the truncheon of a boom, are safe and near at home compared with mankind on its bullet. Even to us who have known no other, it seems a strange, if not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... things to them, namely a knife fastened to a piece of board, and a glass bottle corked up with some beads in it, which they took up and seemed well pleased. They often struck their left breast with their right hand, and as often held up a black truncheon over their heads, which we thought was a token of friendship; wherefore we did the like. And when we stood in towards their shore they seemed to rejoice; but when we stood off they frowned, yet kept us company ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... took him in, who manfully made good the head of the boat against the savages, that pressed sore upon us. Now Michael Perse had got an hatchet, wherewith I saw him strike one of them, that he lay sprawling in the sea. Henry Greene crieth Coragio, and layeth about him with his truncheon. I cryed to them to cleere the boat, and Andrew Moter cryed to bee taken in. The savages betooke them to their bowes and arrowes, which they sent amongst us, wherewith Henry Greene was slaine out-right, and Michael Perse received many wounds, and so did ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... signifies the chief or principal of a crew. The vilest, stoutest rogue in the pack is generally chosen to this post, and has the sole right to the first night's lodging with the dells, who afterwards are used in common among the whole fraternity. He carries a short truncheon in his hand, which he calls his filchman, and has a larger share than ordinary in whatsoever is gotten in the society. He often travels in company with thirty or forty males and females, abram men, and others, over whom he presides arbitrarily. Sometimes the women and children ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... yourself you'll be locked up," said a severe voice, and, turning around, the children beheld a very stern-looking fish, wearing a helmet, and carrying a truncheon. ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... semi-darkness Doomsman and Stockader were hardly to be told apart. So closely packed was the scrimmage that the use of any missile weapon was impossible. The dagger and the night-stick (the latter a stout truncheon weighted with lead) were doing the work, and effectively, too. And in that press a man might be struck and die upon his feet, the corpse being stayed from falling through its juxtaposition to the bodies ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... would have been impossible. I could not have got anywhere near him without using my truncheon—which I ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... at last introduced to a real member of the theatrical profession—a bona fide flesh and blood, silk-stocking'd and tinsel-rapier'd "pride of Astley's stage." If you unite in your own person the artist and the player; if you occasionally handle the painter's brush as well as the field-marshal's truncheon—for have I not seen you lead the British troops with heroic valour through the awful passes of Cabul, which I had seen you creating with lamp-black and grey chalks in the morning?—it will only prove that your genius is universal, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... the inside; his second, to polish his head and countenance very carefully with a cotton handkerchief; his third, to place his hat, with the cotton handkerchief in it, on the nearest chair; and his fourth, to produce from the breast-pocket of his coat a short truncheon, surmounted by a brazen crown, with which he beckoned to Mr. Pickwick with a grave ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... he took the place of an elder native god, and was represented in art according to the traditions of Egyptian sculpture. The marble statue of the Vatican is devoid of hieratic emblems. Antinous is attired with the Egyptian head-dress and waistband: he holds a short truncheon firmly clasped in each hand; and by his side is a palm-stump, such as one often finds in statues of the Greek Hermes. Two colossal statues of red granite discovered in the ruins of Hadrian's villa, at Tivoli, represent ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... silence followed. Six men, partially dressed, with disheveled hair, stood regarding me angrily. They all carried candles. One of them had a bootjack, which he held like a truncheon. Another, the foremost, had a pistol. The night ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... The brutes—trying to take away the poor man's food! And as for that CROWN PRINCE, when you get 'im, just you 'it 'im right over the 'ead with your truncheon!" ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914 • Various
... the Prophet, sternly. "This is no game. Stand there, by the area gate, and if anyone should run out, knock him down with your truncheon. Do you hear me?" ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... sore hurt, and cared not for honour; and groaning piteously, he rode at a great gallop away-ward from all the knights, until he came under a wood's side. When he saw that he was from the field nigh a mile, so that he was sure he might not be seen, he besought Sir Lavaine as he loved him to draw the truncheon out of his side. This Sir Lavaine dreaded sore to do, lest Sir Launcelot should be in peril of death from loss of blood, if the truncheon were drawn out. Yet he did as his lord would have him do, and Sir Launcelot gave a great shriek, and so ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... was a box on the ear, so well applied, that it overthrew the falconer into the cistern in which water was kept for the benefit of the hawks. Up started Adam Woodcock, his wrath no way appeased by the cold immersion, and seizing on a truncheon which stood by, would have soon requited the injury he had received, had not Roland laid his hand on his poniard, and sworn by all that was sacred, that if he offered a stroke towards him, he would sheath the blade in his bowels. The noise was now so great, that more than one of the household came ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... to great ones 'longs, Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe, Become them with one half so good a ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... were not neglected during the meal; but over-eagerness was repressed by a stout truncheon lying handily near the old negro Jarl. The animals are small and stunted, long-nosed and crooked-limbed, with curly tails often cut, sharp ears which show that they have not lost the use of the erecting muscles, and so far wild that they cannot bark. The colour is either black and ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... becomes one whose fault, or whose misfortune it is, that he simply cannot believe,—Mr. Jowett assumes throughout, the insolent air of intellectual superiority; the tone of one at whose bidding Theology must absolutely 'keep moving.' A truncheon and a number on his collar, alone seem wanting. The menacing voice, and authoritative air, are certainly not away,—as I ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... mother's house. I certainly never had been before so much awed during my short existence as I was with the appearance of my pedagogue, who sat before me somewhat in the fashion of a Roman tribune, holding in his hand a short round ruler, as if it were his truncheon of authority. I had not been a minute in the school before I observed him to raise his arm; away went the ruler whizzing through the air, until it hit the skull of the lad for whom it was intended at the other end of the schoolroom. The boy, who had been talking to his neighbour, rubbed ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... Europe, since Turenne and Conde were gone, the man whose genius and valour had saved the Portuguese monarchy on the field of Montes Claros, the man who had earned a still higher glory by resigning the truncheon of a Marshal of France for the sake of the true religion. It was not forgotten that the two heroes who, indissolubly united by their common Protestantism, were entering Exeter together, had twelve years before been opposed to each other ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... victory burst from the soldiers, mingled with the clangor of their striking shields at the inspiring voice of their leader. Wallace waved his truncheon (round which the plan of his array was wrapped) to the chiefs to fall back toward their legions; and while some appeared to linger, Athol, armed cap-a-pie, and spurring his roan into the area before the regent, demanded, in a haughty ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... something of fatality in the affair. The instinct was terrible; a demoniacal possession. It was for women a veritable curse, a disease. M. Jouffroy had pronounced views on the subject. He regarded the maternal instinct as the scourge of genius. It was, for women, the devil's truncheon, his rod of empire. This "reproductive rage" held them—in spite of all their fine intuitions and astonishing ability—after all on the animal plane; cut them off from the little band of those who could break up new ground in human knowledge, and explore ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... every freak of destiny. Place him in London, and let it be his interest to please the English government, he would not hesitate, and with the very hand which now seeks to seize the sceptre of Charlemagne, he would grasp the truncheon of a policeman. If I were not ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... The caretaker, fancying he heard a noise, armed himself with a truncheon, and came downstairs to the first-floor, where he found the door of one of the rooms open, and a light burning inside. He stepped on tiptoe to the open door, and was peering in, when he was seized from behind, half suffocated by a pad held over his mouth, ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... in command of this army. The queen, however, herself, went to visit this encampment, and reviewed the troops in person. She rode to and fro on horseback along the lines, armed like a warrior. At least she had a corslet of polished steel over her magnificent dress, and bore a general's truncheon, a richly-ornamented staff used as a badge of command. She had a helmet, too, with a white plume. This, however she did not wear. A page bore it, following her, while she rode, attended by Leicester and the other generals, all mounted on horses and splendidly ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... unstained, as the arms of a maiden knight; it was full of suppressed but lofty enthusiasm. He had been ill used, whether by Fate or the Horse Guards; his career had been a failure; but he was as loyal as if his hand held the field-marshal's truncheon, and the garter bound his knee. He was above all querulous discontent. From him, no less than from his parents, Percival caught, not only a spirit of honour worthy the antiqua fides of the poets, but that peculiar ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now before me a print of John, the first Lord Byron, engraved from a painting in the collection of Lord Delaware; in which he is pourtrayed in armour, with a truncheon in the left hand, and the right arm bare to above the elbow. Can this have suggested to Lord Byron the idea of describing "Alp the renegade" as fighting with "the white arm bare," in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... lorication^, helmet, helm, bassinet, salade^, heaume^, morion^, murrion^, armet^, cabaset^, vizor^, casquetel^, siege cap, headpiece, casque, pickelhaube, vambrace^, shako &c (dress) 225. bearskin; panoply; truncheon &c (weapon) 727. garrison, picket, piquet; defender, protector; guardian &c (safety) 664; bodyguard, champion; knight-errant, Paladin; propugner^. bulletproof window. hardened site. V. defend, forfend, fend; shield, screen, shroud; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hidden treasure, soon prompted him to force open the door. He was immediately surprised by a sudden blaze of light, and discovered a very fair vault. At the upper end of it was a statue of a man in armour, sitting by a table, and leaning on his left arm. He held a truncheon in his right hand, and had a lamp burning before him. The man had no sooner set one foot within the vault, than the statue, erecting itself from its leaning posture, stood bolt upright; and, upon the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... it was all over, the heavy thud of a policeman's truncheon was heard, and a few minutes later, with Bob's help, the two men were led away to ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... of Wales stood face to face. Then the trumpets sounded; the red cross of St. George and the odd-looking banner of the Trinity fluttered above the English ranks; stout Lord Talbot rode before the lines and tossing his truncheon in air shouted: "Now—strike!" There is a sudden rush, and as the battle-cries "St. George and England!" "St. David for Wales!" rise in air the opposing armies join in deadly fight. Short, but stubborn and bloody was the conflict. Victory rested ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... in long array; With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers, And Appenzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears. There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land; And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand; An as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood, And good Coligni's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood; And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war, To fight for His own holy name, and Henry ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... new mode of government. But now were introduced new regulations: the tribune was selected for his military qualities and experience: none was appointed to this important office, "nisi barb plen" The centurion's truncheon, [Footnote: Vitis: and it deserves to be mentioned, that this staff, or cudgel, which was the official engine and cognizance of the Centurion's dignity, was meant expressly to be used in caning or cudgelling the inferior ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... were sent to that emporium of wealth, Bengal, as soon as their ages fitted them for admission into the world. Had he lived till our hero was of a suitable age the probability is that the American stage would at this day want one of its greatest ornaments; and that the hand which now wields the truncheon of Macbeth, Richard, and Coriolanus on the American boards, would be grasping a sword or driving a quill in the service of the East India company in Bengal, whither doctor Cooper at last went himself, being promoted to a respectable rank on the medical staff of that settlement, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... seen in these rooms the Emperor Alexander, Platoff, Schwarzenberg, old Blucher, Fouche, and many a marechal whose truncheon had guided armies—all now at peace, without subjects, without dominion, and where their past life, perhaps, seems but the recollection of a feverish dream. What a group would this band have made in the gloomy regions described in the Odyssey! ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... to be a native of the same province, was annoyed and wanted to arrest the fool. Now it is just as difficult for a fool to take a thing seriously as it is for a policeman to understand a joke; therefore the fool resisted and created such a disturbance that the policeman struck him with his truncheon. ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... men on his place together and told them that every man who joined would have his wages paid to his wife, and his wife or his mother, as the case might be, could stop on in her cottage. And Mr. Withells became a special constable, with a badge and a truncheon. But he worried every soldier that he knew with inquiries as to whether there wasn't a chance for him in some battalion: "I've taken great care of my health," he said. "I do exercises every day after my bath; ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... Jap. The constable was wise enough to give him the point of his truncheon in the gullet, and ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... and the passive acceptance of the other, is the strongest support of his social position. Because the English bourgeois finds himself reproduced in his law, as he does in his God, the policeman's truncheon which, in a certain measure, is his own club, has for him a wonderfully soothing power. But for the working-man quite otherwise! The working-man knows too well, has learned from too oft-repeated experience, that the law is a rod which the bourgeois has prepared ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... snuff-coloured clothes, grasping a guinea in his red hand, I conceive a comely young man, with a tolerable pig-tail, wielding a pen with all the noble fierceness of the Duke of Marlborough brandishing a truncheon upon a sign-post, surrounded with types and emblems, and canopied with cornucopias that disembogue their stores upon his head; Mercuries reclin'd upon bales of goods; Genii playing with pens, ink, and paper; while, in perspective, his gorgeous vessels 'launched ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... late."—"Too late!" said Isabel: "Why, no: I that do speak a word may call it back again. Believe this, my lord, no ceremony that to great ones belongs, not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, the marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe, becomes them with one half so good a grace as mercy does."—"Pray you begone," said Angelo. But still Isabel entreated; and she said, "If my brother had been as you, and you as he, you might have slipped like him, but he, like you, would not have been so stern. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... shade, his eye, Dark rolling, glanced the ranks along, And his steel truncheon waved on high, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... you to denounce probably the most consummate Villain that has ever existed,"' Mr. Micawber, without looking off the letter, pointed the ruler, like a ghostly truncheon, at Uriah Heep, '"I ask no consideration for myself. The victim, from my cradle, of pecuniary liabilities to which I have been unable to respond, I have ever been the sport and toy of debasing circumstances. Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, have, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... is to her as humble and obedient as when he was Simon Glover's apprentice. See, here is the stick I had from you when we nutted together in the sunny braes of Lednoch, when autumn was young in the year that is gone. I would not exchange it, Catharine, for the truncheon ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... was conducted by a middle-aged woman of tall, commanding aspect, and expression both cunning and fierce. She walked by the donkey's head carrying a short stick, with which she struck him now and then, but which she oftener waved over his head like the truncheon of an excited marshal on the battle-field, accompanying its movements now with loud cries to the animal, now with loud response to the chaff of the omnibus conductor, the dray driver, and the tradesmen in carts about her. She was followed by a very handsome, olive-complexioned, wild-looking ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... an earl but that there was a slight incompleteness about his hands and feet, the former being uncommonly red, and the latter large and irregular, was introduced to Mrs. Timmins by the page, who announced him as Mr. Truncheon. ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the ape-man is bad for some temperaments. It is apt to become a habit of mind. It may surge up again when there are no Germans present, but some old woman behind an open till, or some policeman with a bull's-eye lantern and a truncheon, or in a street riot where fellow-citizens are for the time ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... toasting upon it that it was too little, he thereupon gave them ten shillings more, which both he and his companions averred was all that they took from him, though Sells at their trial, swore to a much larger sum, and that one of them held a truncheon over him, and threatened him with abundance of oaths in case he made any resistance. All of them denied this part of the charge, even to death, and said that though they had truncheons, yet they made no use of them, but kept them either in their ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... CAN'T forget. That is a sort of disease with me.... He was a special constable in the Chartist riots; and being a very strong and powerful man, like his nephew Hugo, he used his truncheon—his special constable's baton, or whatever you call it—with excessive force upon a starveling London tailor in the mob near Charing Cross. The man was hit on the forehead—badly hit, so that he died almost immediately ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... of chivalry will be very unhandsome in applying to them the rules of the tourney. Amadis, it will be observed here, does not condescend to use his sword against a woman. And this is not from tenderness, but from contempt. For when the Queen saw that he only took the broken truncheon of his lance to her, she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... silent. On his native asphalt, there are few situations capable of throwing the New York policeman off his balance. In that favored clime, savoir faire is represented by a shrewd blow of the fist, and a masterful stroke with the truncheon amounts to a satisfactory repartee. Thus shall you never take the policeman of Manhattan without his answer. In other surroundings, Mr. McEachern would have known how to deal with the young man whom with such good ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... helmet was cylindrical, surmounted by a lion as its crest. Round the rim was a coronet of gold, worked with fleurs-de-lis and oak leaves. A gorget and tippet covering the shoulders was fastened beneath the chin, giving the head a stiff but imposing air of command. He carried a short truncheon, which he wielded with great dexterity; yet his armour, though light and of the finest temper, seemed more cumbersome to him now ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Monmouth. He is sitting: holding a truncheon in his right hand. A helmet and plume are before him. He wears a white sash. This is a dark, but may be called a finely painted, picture. Yet the Duke is not represented as a ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to approach the leader of the procession, whose morion, distinguished by its lofty plumes, and right hand holding his truncheon, or leading-staff, was all he could see, on account of the crowd of officers and armed men around him. At length his exertions prevailed, and he came within three yards of the Constable, who was then in a small circle which had been with ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... even gladsome; but at sundown in September, with a high wind, and a heavy surf rolling in close along the links, the place told of nothing but dead mariners and sea disaster. A ship beating to windward on the horizon, and a huge truncheon of wreck half buried in the sands at my feet, completed the innuendo ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Oliver has cantered through the crush; Broken his spear, the truncheon still he thrusts; Going to strike a pagan Malsarun; Flowers and gold, are on the shield, he cuts, Out of the head both the two eyes have burst, And all the brains are fallen in the dust; He flings him dead, sev'n hundred else amongst. Then has he slain Turgin and Esturgus; Right to the ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... Her experts in explosives were set to work, and by the time we were ready for active service, ten or a dozen varieties of bombs were in use, all of them made in the munition factories in England. The "hairbrush," the "lemon bomb," the "cricket ball," and the "policeman's truncheon" were the most important of these, all of them so-called because of their resemblance to the articles for which they were named. The first three were exploded by a time-fuse set for from three to five seconds. The fourth was a percussion ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... properly; none of your underhand dodges like hiding behind places and throwing brickbats when one isn't looking. So that the Hooligan ways of fighting were quite too much for him at first. And although Mr. Bull spent a lot of money in buying him a new watchman's rattle and a very expensive second-hand truncheon, nearly as good as the best kind, still it was all no good, and Thomas couldn't turn the ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... said, and laid a hand upon his truncheon. I stood still, with the handcuffs still dangling from my wrists, and the man, reassured by my manner, completed his task. The door was open, and any number of dishevelled heads and staring eyes crowded ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... when, on making application at a free dispensary, his sores were dressed for him by a Hindu assistant apothecary who lectured him on brotherly love with interlarded excerpts from Carlyle done into Hindustani. But the climax came when a native policeman poked him in the ribs with a truncheon and ordered ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... god Mars he rode through the battle; and as he went he met Oliver, with the truncheon or a spear in ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... if, exempted from the Herculean toil, A fairer field awaits him, rich with spoil, There shall he shine, with mingling honours bright, His master's pathic, pimp, and parasite; 80 Then strut a captain, if his wish be war, And grasp, in hope, a truncheon and a star: Or if the sweets of peace his soul allure, Bask at his ease, in some warm sinecure; His fate in consul, clerk, or agent vary, Or cross the seas, an envoy's secretary; Composed of falsehood, ignorance, and pride, A prostrate ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... Discard your truncheon for a tract; Strive to admonish ere you act; In Virtue's force enrol recruits And stamp out Belial ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... inheritance derived from ancient Carthage; here, it was said, survived the arts and arms of that injured state; hither, across Bilidulgerid, had the children of Phoenicia fled from the wrath of Rome; and the mighty phantom of him whose uplifted truncheon had pointed its path to the carnage of Cannae, was still the tutelary genius watching over a vast posterity worthy of himself. Here was a wilderness of lies; yet, after all, the lies were but so many voluminous fasciae, enveloping the mummy of an original truth. Mungo Park came, and the city ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... was now fallen fluid on these mad terms, flowed all away in different rills, each by the course straightest home; and Hildburghausen arriving at Bamberg, with hardly the ghost or mutilated skeleton of an Army, flung down his truncheon,—"A murrain on your Reichs Armies and regimental chaoses!"—and went indignantly home. Reichs Army had to begin at the beginning again; and did not reappear on the scene till late next Year, under a new Commander, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... the wars. His health was drunk with great applause, and thanks were voted to him by one of the Houses of Congress. It was said that a sword was to be given to him, but I do not think that the gift was consummated. Should it not have been a policeman's truncheon? Had he at the best done any thing beyond a policeman's work? Of Captain Wilkes no one would complain for doing policeman's duty. If his country were satisfied with the manner in which he did it, England, if she quarreled at all, would not quarrel with him. It may now and again become the duty ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... give over the instruction of his brother, being enjoined so to do by one of the heavy-hatted policemen in his front, who enforced his commands for silence, with a backward shove of his wooden truncheon, which came with rather unnecessary violence against the pit of ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... styles. It was Sir Thomas Erpingham whom Henry V. in Shakespeare's play addresses as "Good old Knight," and it was he who gave the signal to the English at the Battle of Agincourt, saying, as he threw up his truncheon, ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... formidable. The necessity of military operations required their absence from Paris; but they preferred rather to there exhibit themselves to their mistresses, decked out in a general's uniform, and grasping the truncheon of command. No greater harmony existed between the Prince de Conti and Madame de Longueville than when La Rochefoucauld severed them. At Bordeaux they favoured opposite parties, and contributed to augment the discord prevailing, and to weaken the party of the Princes by dividing ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... poetry. The purple pall, the nodding plume of tragedy are exploded as mere pantomime and trick, to return to the simplicity of truth and nature. Kings, queens, priests, nobles, the altar and the throne, the distinctions of rank, birth, wealth, power, "the judge's robe, the marshall's truncheon, the ceremony that to great ones 'longs," are not to be found here. The author tramples on the pride of art with greater pride. The Ode and Epode, the Strophe and the Antistrophe, he laughs to scorn. The harp of Homer, the trump of ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... odious truth from the summit of empire! Lo! at his palace gates the fierce Apollyon's great army, With maces uplifted, stand to make way for great Cyrus of Elam. Watching for signal from him whose truncheon this way or that bids: 'Strike!' said Cyrus the King. 'Strike!' said the princes of Elam; And the brazen gates at the word, like flax that is broken asunder By fire from earth or from heaven, snapped as a bulrush, Snapped as a reed, as a wand, as the tiny toy of an infant. Marvellous ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... as Ulysses near th' enclosure drew, With open mouths the furious mastiffs flew: Down sat the sage and, cautious to withstand, Let fall th' offensive truncheon ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... his revolver and warned Cock to stand back. The policeman came on. Peace fired, but deliberately wide of him. Cock, undismayed, drew out his truncheon, and made for the burglar. Peace, desperate, determined not to be caught, fired again, this time fatally. Cock's comrade heard the shots, but before he could reach the side of the dying man, Peace had made off. He returned to Hull, and there learned shortly after, ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... any real good. Both are in England, and one will never leave it. But if things were different.... If only that soldier brother had joined earlier and had written to me from Rheims, say, or Compiegne, how my stock would fly up! Or if that other one would even now fling away his truncheon, enlist in time to share the march to Berlin, and then sit down to tell me all about it, what a swell I should become! How dinner-parties would assemble to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... the truncheon of his lance, Spurs through the storm and fury of the fight, And rushes on the Pagan Malsarun, Breaks down his shield with flowers and gold embossed, Thrusts from their orbs his eyes; his brains dashed out Are crushed and trampled 'neath the victor's feet; With seven hundred men of ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... in their rent and battered war-gear: and the tall Hiarandi bore but the broken truncheon of his sword; and Valtyr a woodman's axe notched and dull with work; and Geirbald a Roman cast-spear, for his own weapons had been broken in the medley; and he came the last of the three, going as a belated ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... careering on an osseous sea-horse, a strange, lank, sinewy being, fury stretching every tendon, his long-clawed feet striking into the flanks of his steed, his sharp, reed-crowned head turned fiercely, with clenched teeth, on his opponent, and stretching forth a truncheon, ready to run down his enemy as a ship runs down another; and further off a young Triton, with clotted hair and heavy eyes, seems ready to sink wounded below the rippling wavelets, with the massive ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... a town besieged on a note of hand; a prince dethroned for the balance of an account. Thus it was they exhibited a government, which united the mock majesty of a bloody sceptre, and the little traffic of a merchant's counting-house, wielding a truncheon with one hand, and picking a pocket ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... excited as out of temper. He did not know what Marco knew or what The Rat knew. Some common lad had got himself locked up in a house, and some one would have to go to the landlord and get a key from him. He had no intention of laying himself open to the law by breaking into a private house with his truncheon, as The Rat ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... maintained his seat firmly in the saddle, though his steed had been forced back upon its haunches by his opponent's blow, who had touched his gorget; and riding on with all the ease, vigour, and grace, our young knight had previously exhibited, he threw down the truncheon of his lance, and opened his gauntlet to show that ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... neighbourhood. An Irish M.P. on the platform was waving his gingham like a shillelagh in sheer excitement, forgetting his new-found respectability and dreaming himself back at Donnybrook Fair. Him a conscientious constable floored with a truncheon. But a shower of fists fell on the zealot's face, and he tottered back bleeding. Then the storm broke in all its fury. The upper air was black with staves, sticks, and umbrellas, mingled with the pallid hailstones of knobby fists. Yells, and groans, and hoots, and battle-cries blent in ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... received the Imperial crown at the hands of the kings, princes, and other hereditary rulers of the various German States. Bismarck was graciously pleased to bestow unity and internal peace—a Prussian peace—upon Germany on condition of its abasement before the Prussian corporal's stick and police-truncheon. Such was the united Germany of Bismarck. Germany meant for Bismarck and his followers Prussia, and Prussia meant their own Junker and military caste, under the titular headship ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... he stood On Highland heath or Holy-Rood? He rights such wrong where it is given, If it were in the court of heaven.' 'Still was it outrage;—yet, 'tis true, Not then claimed sovereignty his due; While Albany with feeble hand Held borrowed truncheon of command, The young King, mewed in Stirling tower, Was stranger to respect and power. But then, thy Chieftain's robber life!— Winning mean prey by causeless strife, Wrenching from ruined Lowland swain His herds and harvest reared in vain,— ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... on his foe? What recked the Chieftain if he stood On Highland heath, or Holy-Rood? He rights such wrong where it is given, 120 If it were in the court of heaven." "Still was it outrage—yet, 'tis true, Not then claimed sovereignty his due; While Albany, with feeble hand, Held borrowed truncheon of command, 125 The young King, mewed in Stirling tower, Was stranger to respect and power. But then, thy Chieftain's robber life! Winning mean prey by causeless strife, Wrenching from ruined Lowland swain 130 His herds and harvest reared ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... silent gathering—all eyes were strained to watch those grim and silent horsemen that fronted each other, the length of the lists between; even Duke Ivo, leaning on lazy elbow, looked with glowing eye and slow-flushing cheek, ere he let fall his truncheon. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... secluded dwelling lay a hamlet where lived one of the two constables who preserved the peace in the parish of Alderworth, and Wildeve went straight to the constable's cottage. Almost the first thing that he saw on opening the door was the constable's truncheon hanging to a nail, as if to assure him that here were the means to his purpose. On inquiry, however, of the constable's wife he learnt that the constable was not at home. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... fealty to St. Peter and the Pope, swearing ever to protect the latter and his successors from harm to life, limb, or possessions. Thereafter the Pope takes the blessed banners and gives the charge of them to Cesare, delivering into his hands the white truncheon symbolic of his office, whilst the Master of Ceremonies hands the actual banners to the two deputies, who in full armour have followed to receive them, and who attach them to the lances ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... at a crown a head," said he. "Here, my man, out you go on the roof to make one less, and have your truncheon handy." ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... A signe at which few dwell, pure honesty. I am a vassaile to Medina's house; He taught me first the A, B, C of warre[203] E're I was Truncheon-high I had the stile Of beardlesse Captaine, writing then but boy: And shall I now turne slave to him that fed me With Cannon-bullets, and taught me, Estridge[204]-like, To digest Iron and Steele? no: yet I yeelded With willow-bendings to ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... common termination, the difference squared by time alone, and meaning ten or threescore and ten as the case may be. Misery is but a mockery of language after all; for have I not heard it rampant with lungs, and hoarse with disciplined harmony in Exeter Hall, as Hullah cut capers with his tiny truncheon, with Royalty itself, heroic field-marshals, and grave ministers of state, in seeming ecstasy at the sleight of hand? Just as I have heard and seen in the barracones of Bozal negroes for sale, when, at the crack ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... church of Boxstead, in the county of Suffolk, there is a large and very handsome monument of marble, in a niche of which stands, in full proportion, a man in armour, his head bare, with moustaches and a tuft on his chin; in his right hand he holds a truncheon, and by his side is his sword; his armour is garnished with gold studs, and his helmet stands on the ground behind him; from his right ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... glorious hearts, who were not slow To follow, nor far off, the gorgeous oak Seized, and shook down the golden acorns so, And so the red and yellow truncheon broke, That we to you our festive laurels owe, And the fair lily, rescued from its stroke; Another wreath may round your temples bloom, In that Fabricius ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... water to drink, which I did, to my great joy; and having drank, and put a little tobacco into my mouth to prevent hunger, I went to the tree, and getting up into it, endeavoured to place myself so that if I should sleep I might not fall. And having cut me a short stick, like a truncheon, for my defence, I took up my lodging; and having been excessively fatigued, I fell fast asleep, and slept as comfortably as, I believe, few could have done in my condition, and found myself more refreshed with it than, I think, I ever ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... him by Rubens. The Earl was rather given to having Arundel family portraits, for there are no less than three in which he figures. One by Van Somer, in which the hero is pointing somewhat comically with his truncheon to the statues of his collection in the background, and the last one projected by Van Dyck, but executed by an inferior artist, in which various family pieces of armour, swords, and shields, worn at Flodden, or belonging to the poet Earl of Surrey, are introduced in the hands ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... any man his life dear to him. Archbishop Turpin, resting for a moment to get fresh breath, cried out, "Thank God to see the rear-guard fight to-day!" then spurred in again among them. Roland saw Oliver still fighting with the truncheon of his spear and said, "Comrade, draw thy sword," but he answered, "Not while a handful of the stump ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... their way with nothing else. They seem to stand for vague bodies of theory in the background. The imputed virtue of folios full of knockdown arguments is supposed to reside in them, just as some of the majesty of the British Empire dwells in the constable's truncheon. They are used in pure superstition, as old clodhoppers spoil Latin by way of an exorcism. And yet they are vastly serviceable for checking unprofitable discussion and stopping the mouths of babes and sucklings. And when a young man comes to a certain stage of intellectual growth, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... luce, the workmanship whereof was almost all defaced and worn out. Thus went he out in a fair long-skirted jacket, putting his frock scarfwise athwart his breast, and in this equipage, with his staff, shaft or truncheon of the cross, laid on so lustily, brisk, and fiercely upon his enemies, who, without any order, or ensign, or trumpet, or drum, were busied in gathering the grapes of the vineyard. For the cornets, guidons, and ensign-bearers had ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Rattle-Snakes. Ground Rattle-Snakes. Horn-Snakes. Water-Snakes, four sorts. Swamp Snakes three sorts. Red-bellied Land-Snakes. Red-back'd Snake. Black Truncheon Snake. Scorpion-Lizard. Green Lizard. Frogs, many sorts. Long black Snake. King-Snake. Green Snake. Corn Snake. Vipers black and gray. Tortois. Terebin Land and Water. Brimstone-Snake. Egg, or Chicken-Snake. Eel-Snake, or great Loach. Brown ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... after night, the one or other part of the camp is entertained by the edifying spectacle of natives being thrashed, tents being burnt, and white people surrounded by ferocious crowds who can scarcely be kept back from carrying out their desire for vengeance by a small truncheon and a ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... the warder over him, holding up his chest with one arm, had also poured chloroform upon the rag, and when the convict- orderly came, Hogarth, by means of a short struggle, had him asleep, then seized the warder's truncheon and keys, and ran out in ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... two or three of the guard, attired in round hose, long stockings, a close doublet, a high-crowned hat, with a brooch, a long, thin beard, a truncheon, little ruffs, white shoes, his scarfs and garters tied cross, and his ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... shore when Cope had "saved" Amy Leffingwell from a watery death, and they knew how far heroics might be pushed by women who were willing to idealize. Cope saw their smiles and felt that he had fumbled an opportunity: when he might have been a truncheon, he had been ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... across the bed, to shut from the old warrior the horrors that lay in the middle of the room. The constable, too, stepped softly across to fasten the window. Then, following the others out, he closed and locked the door, turning round directly, ducking down, and involuntarily attempting to draw his truncheon, as he raised his left arm to ward ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... bauble, in its literal meaning, is the carved truncheon which the licensed fools or jesters anciently carried in their hands. See notes on "All's Well that Ends Well," act ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various |
