"Hangman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wisha, wisha! isn't this the fine village? isn't this the exceeding village? The village where there be that many rogues hanged that the people have no want of ropes with all the ropes that they steal from the hangman! ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... pillory where some too easy-going husband sat crowned with a paper-cap in a hail-storm of mud and egg-shells and fruit-peelings, round the scaffold where some petty offender was being flogged by the hangman, until the fortunate appearance of a clement cardinal or the rage of the sympathising mob put a stop to the proceedings. Barbarous as we remember the Rome of the Popes, we must imagine it just a hundred times more barbarous, more squalid, picturesque, filthy, and unsafe if we would know what it ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... hysterically. "You're in the same boat with me, my lord. But I fancied when you knocked that the police—the police"—his voice died weakly in his throat: he cast a wild glance around and touched his neck uneasily as though he already felt the hangman's ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... spare me a little of their cast-linen! Were it only to put it in my power to say, that I have a shirt on my back! But the idle wenches, like Solomon's lilies, "they toil not, neither do they spin;" so I must e'en continue to tie my remnant of a cravat, like the hangman's rope, round my naked throat, and coax my galligaskins to keep together their many-coloured fragments. As to the affair of shoes, I have given that up. My pilgrimages in my ballad-trade, from town to town, and on your stony-hearted turnpikes too, are not what even the hide of Job's ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... cried "Kill him!" and some (but they were not near enough) strove to trample him to death. Tug as he would at the old man's wrists, the hangman could not force him ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... to the market-place they found a dense crowd of sympathizers watching pityingly the hangman's cart, in which lay William of Cloudeslee, bound hand and foot, with a rope round his neck. The sheriff and the justice stood near the gallows, and Cloudeslee would have been hanged already, but that the sheriff was hiring a man to measure the outlaw for his grave. "You shall have the dead man's ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... yourself, you half-French poodle hound," cried the captain, "and I'll show you what stuff I'm made of, and save you the trouble of going through a trial before reaching the hangman." ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... blood, Judge Harbottle cursed his servant roundly, swore he was drunk, threatened him with an indictment for taking bribes to betray his master, and cheered him with a perspective of the broad street leading from the Old Bailey to Tyburn, the cart's tail, and the hangman's lash. ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... book provoked the faithful—his proclamations breathed a most orthodox and fanatical spirit. He was a sceptic; neither Mussulman nor Christian, but surprisingly inconsistent and capricious. His, we fear, were 'hangman's hands,' and 'not ordained to build a temple ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that although the Penal Laws still existed, in all their blood-thirsty and stupid clauses, he might profess and practise his religion without the slightest fear of the informer, the prison, the transport ship, or the hangman. Chesterfield asked for no additional troops from England. On the contrary, he sent away some of the soldiers in Ireland to help the cause of the empire on the Continent. He was buoyant with a well-grounded ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... with his large sombrero and long pigtail hanging down his back, like a mandarin of twenty buttons. Next followed his two black assistants, naked as I have described them, all three with their coils of rope in their hands, like a hangman and his deputies; then advanced friend Bang and myself, without our coats or hats, with handkerchiefs tied round our heads, and our bodies bent down so as to stem the gale ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... in this paper of a sailor being killed," said the Jew, holding it up. "Have you ever heard of the police, of prison, and of the hangman?" ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... himself, in order that others might not suffer for his offence. He was indicted on the 24th of February. On the 25th, the Shortest Way was brought under the notice of the House of Commons, and ordered to be burnt by the common hangman. His trial came on in July. He was found guilty of a seditious libel, and sentenced to pay a fine of 200 marks to the Queen, stand three times in the pillory, be imprisoned during the Queen's pleasure, and find sureties for his good ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... to you of yesterday, the President of Castile having by the King's special and angry command, gone forth to the neighbouring villages, attended with the hangman, and whatsoever else of terror incident to his place and derogatory to his person, the markets in this town begin to be furnished again plentifully enough, yet so as that the bullion remaining fallen to the half value, bread, wine, and other provisions, are held up much higher than ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... morn is hangman's day; Fast in the noose I dangle. At four A. M. the clam I seek, And get into a tangle. Alas! my wish—a one-eyed fish[B]— To find a juicy ration; The clam on high began to die— A sweet anticipation! Beware the scent, tho' hunger groan! My gentle kiss (a ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... of the Scriptures against him. Now the jester thought he was in his element, and laid about him freely. 'Good friar,' said he, 'be not angry, for it is written, "In patience possess your soul."'—The friar answered (for I shall give you his own words), 'I am not angry, you hangman; at least I do not sin in it, for the Psalmist says, "Be ye angry, and sin not."'—Upon this the Cardinal admonished him gently, and wished him to govern his passions. 'No, my lord,' said he, 'I speak not but from a good zeal, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... let us say the assaults of the New York World, the New York Journal or the Post Dispatch upon Pierpont Morgan and the trusts? And yet, if any trust magnate, crucified as a blood-sucker on the poor, were to shoot the editor of one of these sheets, he would be howled to the hangman's noose. The trust magnate would be told he should have had recourse to law. But in the south, no—Mr. Brann was rightfully assassinated. No law for him! Why? Because Mr. Brann assailed a few southern "josses." If Mr. ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Coutu, after that they have passed the sallett, att their entering in to the village, and the rencounters that they meet ordinarily in the wayes, as above said. They tie the prisoners to a poast by their hands, their backs tourned towards the hangman, who hath a bourning fire of dry wood and rind of trees, which doth not quench easily. They putt into this fire hattchets, swords, and such like instruments of Iron. They take these and quench them ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... conclusion. The historical painter of Altenoetting was in attendance in the arcade, bearing the votive picture which was to perpetuate the latest miracle of the Black Lady; and as far as I could observe or ascertain of the sacerdotal hangman of the consecrated gallery, the oldest and most weather-stained of the pictures was made to yield precedence to the new comer. Having profited by a stranger's privilege, and the English garb, which is held as sacred as a herald's tabard in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... this occasion. The place was crowded with people of all descriptions, and a strong guard of soldiers, three deep, surrounded the gallows, forming a circle, the area of which was about two hundred feet in diameter. The hangman was habited in a red jacket and trousers, with a cap of the same color upon his head. This fellow had been formerly condemned to death for parricide, but was pardoned on condition of turning executioner, and ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... man would Desire to have her, and by any means, At any rate too, yet this common hangman That hath whipt off a thousand maids heads already— That he should glean the harvest, sticks ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... physician grants the husband's prayers, Or gives relief to long-expecting heirs. The sleeping hangman ties the fatal noose, Nor unsuccessful ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... frightful shriek, he fell. Then I ran forward and looked at him. The moonlight made him look deathly white, and I felt sure I had shot him. I'll never forget the sickening sensation that came over me at that moment! The hangman's noose seemed to dangle before my eyes. I dropped the pistol and rushed away to my room. I think I was stunned, for Horner found me sitting on a chair and staring blankly at the wall about an hour afterward. Then he said the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... had so done, I was again a little flustered; for in came the coachman with the look of a hangman, I thought, and madamed me up strangely; telling me, he would beg me to get ready to pursue my journey by five in the morning, or else he should be late in. I was quite grieved at this; for I began not to dislike my company, considering how things stood; ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... when seated in Freeman's house waiting to receive the rents, four priests, a reporter of the Freeman's Journal, some local reporters, and four of the tenants rushed into the room; and the priests in the rudest possible manner (the Rev. P. Farrelly, one of them, calling me "Francy Hyne's hangman," and other terms of abuse) informed me that unless I re-instated a former Roman Catholic tenant in a farm which he had previously held, and which was then let to a Protestant, and gave an abatement of 30 per cent., no rent would be paid me that day. Dr. Dillon, C.C., was not present on ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... of it," said Scaife, "is Billington's, the hangman! The Duffer shivers whenever he looks ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... enraged crowd had to be satisfied with giving Skoonly the promised "hoss-licken," and running him out of town the next morning, with a warning never to show his cowardly face on their streets again, unless he was looking for the job of dancing the hangman's hornpipe at the ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... is impossible in a study of this length to deal fully with the attacks and refutations that were published immediately. We may mention first the condemnation of the book by the Parlement de Paris, August 18, 1770, to be burned by the public hangman along with Voltaire's Dieu et les Hommes, and Holbach's Discours sur les Miracles, La Contagion sacre and le Christianisme dvoil, which had already been condemned on September ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... you, worshipful Sheriff!" said the palmer. "Heaven protect you! What will you give a silly old man to-day to be your hangman?" ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... employment, take the hundred reals, and, some time to-morrow, be sure you get out of this island, nor set foot in it again these ten years, unless you would finish your banishment in the next life: for if I find you here, I will make you swing on a gibbet—at least the hangman shall do it for me: so let no man reply, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... my buckedness. It can be readily imagined. Talk about chaps with the noose round their necks and the hangman about to let her go and somebody galloping up on a foaming horse, waving the reprieve—not in it. Absolutely not in it at all. I don't know that I can give you a better idea of the state of my feelings than by saying that as I started to cross the hall ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... apart by the summer's heat, always a-staling. This object swives girls enow, and fancies himself a handsome fellow, and is not condemned to the mill as an ass? Whatso girl would touch thee, we think her capable of licking the breech of a leprous hangman. ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... have blushed deeper had she guessed who had been witnesses of her first meeting with Contarini, and old Beroviero's temper would have broken out furiously if he could have imagined that the Greek pirate who had somehow miraculously escaped the hangman in Naples had been contemplating with satisfaction the progress of the marriage negotiations, sure that he himself should before long be enjoying the better part of Marietta's rich dowry. If the old ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... with your finger. At last, Bill could stand it no longer; he let go his hold and roared like a bull, and clapping both hands ahind him, he out of the door like a shot. If it hadn't been for them 'ere spurs, I guess Bill would have saved the hangman a ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... me for a hangman," said he, "that he speaks to me thus? But such is the way of the great. If you neglect your duty, they haul you over the coals; if you do it, you must do it on your own responsibility. Farewell, Amyas; you will not shrink from me as a butcher when ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... themselves might have to undertake the unpleasant office, that they would have given the prospective victim almost anything he liked, on the principle of letting the condemned criminal choose what he prefers for his final meal before that brief interview with the hangman. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... take such terms?" asked Balian in dismay. "Rather, I think, would she choose to die by her own hand than by that of your hangman, since she can ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... resuscitate Brodie immediately after the execution. The operator was Degravers, whom Brodie himself had employed. His efforts, however, were utterly abortive. A person who witnessed the scene, accounted for the failure by saying that the hangman, having been bargained with for a short fall, his excess of caution made him shorten the rope too much at first, and when he afterwards lengthened it, he made it too long, which consequently proved fatal to the experiment."—Curiosities ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... no scribbling of name on walls.—Warwick. The castle. A village festival, "The Opening of the Meadows," a true exhibition of the semi-barbarism which had come down from Saxon times.—Yorkshire. "The Hangman's Stone." Story told in my book called the "Autocrat," etc. York Cathedral.—Northumberland. Alnwick Castle. The figures on the walls which so frightened my man John when he ran away from Scotland in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... lead to his apprehension—like a silent, implacable bloodhound following close on the track of the murderer. This terrible broadsheet I read, was certain that he had read it also, and fancy ran riot over the ghastly fact. For him no hope, no rest, no peace, no touch of hands gentler than the hangman's; all the world is after him like a roaring prairie of flame! I thought of Doolan, weary, foot-sore, heart-sore, entering some quiet village of an evening; and to quench his thirst, going up to the public well, around which the gossips are talking, and hearing that they were talking of ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... to question the opinion of Dr. Price, and not wishing to add to her mistress's distress, was secretly oppressed by forebodings which she was unable to shake off. The child was born for bad luck. The mole under its ear, just at the point where the hangman's knot would strike, had foreshadowed dire misfortune. She had already observed several little things which had rendered her ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... enjoyed more fully by the people? No: the king did from that time redouble his oppressions as if to avenge himself for the shame of having been compelled to renounce them. Then were our estates laid under shameful impositions, our houses ransacked, our bodies imprisoned. Then was the steel of the hangman blunted with mangling the ears of harmless men. Then our very minds were fettered, and the iron entered into our souls. Then we were compelled to hide our hatred, our sorrow, and our scorn, to laugh with hidden faces at the mummery ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... your side, shall be the cause of her ruin and your own,* and shall die in disgrace and exile. You, son of the Condes, shall live long enough to see your royal race overthrown, and shall die by the hands of a hangman.** You, oldest son of Saint Louis, shall perish by the executioner's axe; that beautiful head, O Antoinette, the same ruthless blade shall sever." "They shall kill me first," says Lamballe, at the queen's side. "Yes, truly," replies the soothsayer, "for Fate prescribes ruin for your mistress ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... therefor in the penitentiary, and permitting the presence of a greater number of invited witnesses;[1574] or providing for close confinement of six to nine months in the penitentiary, in lieu of three to six months in jail prior to execution, and substituting the warden for the sheriff as hangman, have been sustained.[1575] ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... you. For I see that you would not understand. You are very young (as I hope). Perhaps you may soon grow older (which I pray for you). Let this suffice then. My Benjamin may deserve a hanging. Who knows? We are not God, ma'am, neither you nor I. Therefore I have no mind to be a hangman. And you—why, you are young enough to wait another occasion. And so I give you ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... hangman," shrieked Griffith, still staring at the horizon. "Stay me not; my hands itch for their throats; my heart thirsts for their blood; but I'll not hang for a priest and a wanton." Then he suddenly turned on Leicester, "Let thou ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Remonstrances and protests poured in upon him from every part of the Union. The sailors and shipowners of Portsmouth burned Jay and Grenville in effigy, together with a miniature ship of seventy tons. In Charleston, the flags were put at half-mast and the public hangman burned copies of the treaty in the open street. While remonstrating with a disorderly crowd in Wall Street which was vilifying Jay, Hamilton was stoned and forced to give way with the blood streaming down his face. Personal abuse of the coarsest ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... the most terrible moments of my life. I shudder still when I think of it. It was only a cowardly love of life that hindered me from running my sword through the body of the Statthalter, who had treated me as if he were a hangman and not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... by influential relatives of the prisoner, induced the court to delay sentence until the culprit should be ninety-nine years old, but it was ordered that, while released on his own recognizance, in the interim, he should keep a hangman's noose about his neck and show himself before the judges in Catskill once every year, to prove that he wore his badge of infamy and kept his crime in mind. This sentence he obeyed, and there were people living recently who claimed ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... and others of them he caused to be drowned: If Witches are immersible, how came they to die by drowning in Bohemia? Besides, it has sometimes been known that Persons who have floated on the Water when the Hangman has made the Experiment on them, have sunk down like a Stone, when others ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... villain can ever be too great, nor can any penalty that is allowed for any crime be too severe for this. If capital punishment is to be on our statute books for anything, it should certainly be for the train-wrecker. Let there be a law which shall with certainty bring to the hangman's noose every person who makes even an attempt to destroy a moving train, and this fiendish crime may be less frequent ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... young men have received? Just to see you kicked out of your profession before you've fairly well put a foot into it, or a knife into a plutocrat, or a pill into a pauper? No, sirree, my boy. You sit tight and let the hangman do all the legal killing that has to ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... O sheriff!" he said; "O Christ you save and see! And what will you give to a silly old man To-day will your hangman be?" ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... Something of this I attempt, my dear sir, in my humble way: 'tis a panegyric I mean to write, and not a satire. Were I to sing as you would have me, the town would tear the poet in pieces, and burn his book by the hands of the common hangman. Do you not use tobacco? Of all the weeds grown on earth, sure the nicotian is the most soothing and salutary. We must paint our great duke," Mr. Addison went on, "not as a man, which no doubt he is, with weaknesses like the rest of us, but as a hero. 'Tis in a triumph, not a battle, that your humble ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fellows to take advantage of his superior abilities is nothing other than a slightly more roundabout expression of the doctrine that might is right. It was precisely to prevent their doing this that the policeman stood on the corner, the judge sat on the bench, and the hangman drew his fees. The whole end and amount of civilization had indeed been to substitute for the natural law of superior might an artificial equality by force of statute, whereby, in disregard of their natural differences, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... cheat the hangman. I told those doctors yesterday that they were giving themselves and me a great deal of useless trouble. The villains, as I told you, could not believe we should not betray them, and meant to make an end of us all. It's best as it is. My poor faithful ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so important, "a man who was about to be hanged had a dog named Betty. It scampered all around him as he walked to the gallows and then dashed off and no one saw where it went. The hangman told him if he could make up a riddle that no one could riddle they would set him ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... of the king's countenance moved. "I know no Lieutenant Keith," he said, sternly; "he who was once known to me by that name was stricken from the officers' roll with the stigma of disgrace and shame, and was hung by the hangman in effigy, upon the gallows. If Mr. Keith is still living, I advise him to remain in America, where no one knows of his crime, or ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... shameful death. But I cannot face the scaffold. As men go, I do not believe I am a coward and I am not afraid to die. But the inexorable deliberation of justice appals me. When I have written what I have to write, I shall be hangman to myself. My pistol they ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... Ferrara, where she wore a Spanish costume, was sung to by Spanish buffoons; their confidential servants consisted of Spaniards, as did also the most ill- famed company of the troops of Cesare in the war of 1500; and even his hangman, Don Micheletto, and his poisoner, Sebastiano Pinzon Cremonese, seem to have been of the same nation. Among his other achievements, Cesare, in true Spanish fashion, killed, according to the rules of the craft, six wild ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... me forty shillings, (my wife lent him out of her purse; by sixpence a time,) besides his lodging; I would I had it: I shall have it, he saith, next Action. Helter skelter, hang sorrow, care will kill a cat, up-tails all, and a pox on the hangman. ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... appeared, with a dedication to King William. It at once created an immense sensation, was fiercely condemned as seditious and libellous by the English Parliament, by whom, as a mark of its utter abhorrence, it was condemned to be burned by the common hangman. ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... to Edinburgh, which he entered on a horse with his head bare and his face to the tail, the hangman carrying Cameron's head on a halter before him. The indignities and cruelties which were perpetrated on this man had been minutely pre-arranged by the Privy Council. We mention a few in order that the reader may the better understand the inconceivable brutality of the Government against ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... sat at the table, Peteheia! Said all the bad words that they were able, Polemeia! In summer the happy starlings sing, Peteheia! May devil take Nille, the dirty thing, Polemeia! One day I went out upon the grass, Peteheia! The deacon, he is a hangman's ass, Polemeia! On my dappled horse I ride to the east, Peteheia! The deacon, he is a nasty beast, Polemeia! If you would know my wife's real name, Peteheia! I'll tell you: it is ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... dissipate any distrust he had conceived of him. Gordo, thus assured, was invited at one of those interviews to withdraw into a retired apartment, where the prince wished to confer with him on business of moment. On entering the chamber he was surprised by the sight of the public executioner, the hangman of the city, whose presence, together with that of a priest, and the apparatus of death with which the apartment was garnished, revealed at once the dreadful ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... nerve-tonic, forget that these remedies do not grow under glass. They are hardy plants, springing naturally in eager and animated natures. Artificial remedies might be efficacious in an artificial world. In a real world, the best we can do is to meet the plagues of life as Dick Turpin met the hangman's noose, "with manly resignation, though with considerable disgust." Moreover, disagreeable things are often very stimulating. A visit to some beautiful little rural almshouses in England convinced me that what kept the old inmates ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... future was impossible, unthinkable. At the best of times he could not hope that proud Lord Dunseveric would consent to let him marry Una; and now, of all times, now, when he was engaged in a dangerous conspiracy, pledged to a fight which he felt already to be hopeless; when he had the hangman's ladder to look forward to, or, at best, the life of a hunted outlaw and exile to some foreign land; what could he expect now to come of his love for Una? His mind refused to dwell on such thoughts for long. It went back to the simple fact, the glorious, ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... King Arthur agreed, "I have found no fancy to act as hangman to him. For knave and villain though he is, yet is he still a king. What ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... opposition's being in it, are but proofs that men will do in politics what they would do in nothing else. Is this the plea? If so, the rejoinder is, that the mighty conspiracy includes the whole circle of Artists of all kinds, and comprehends all degrees of men, down to the worst criminal and the hangman who ends his career. For, all these are intimately known to the London Correspondent of the Tattlesnivel Bleater, and all ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... be forgotten Mr. James Renwlck told me, that he was Witness to their Public Murder at the Gallowlee, between Leith and Edinburgh, when he saw the Hangman hash and hagg off all their Five heads, with Patrick Foreman's Right Hand: Their Bodies were all buried at the Gallows Foot: their Heads, with Patrick's Hand, were brought and put upon five Pikes on the Pleasaunce-Port.... Mr. Renwick told me that it was the first ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of his uncle, Mr. Gavin Cochrane of Craigmuir, who lived at no great distance from the place of encounter. Here he was seized and removed to Edinburgh, where, after being paraded through the streets bound and bare-headed, and conducted by the common hangman, he was lodged in the tollbooth on July 3rd, 1685, there to await his trial as a traitor. The day of trial came, and he was condemned to death, in spite of the most strenuous exertions of his aged father, Earl ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... much readiness to die, whereas he manifested great fear. It was also reported that the people interposed and prevented the executioner from quartering him while he was alive, but this favour was granted by the command of the king; that the crowd nearly destroyed the hangman, whereas no violence of any sort was used; and that the people were perfectly silent when the head was held up on the scaffold, whereas that act was attended with loud acclamations. On the contrary, the people were with ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... Scogan, Edward the Fourth's jester, or his 'aretinisms,' from Aretin; these being probably not intended even by their authors to endure; a Roman cobbler named Pasquin has given us the 'pasquil' or 'pasquinade.' Derrick was the common hangman in the time of Charles II.; he bequeathed his name to the crane used for the lifting and moving of heavy weights. [Footnote: [But derick in the sense of 'gallows' occurs as early as 1606 in Dekker's Seven Deadly Sins of London, ed. Arber, p. ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... Blanchard; but the ne plus ultra of his exploits, the cream of all his comicalities, the grand event, is the ingenious trick by which Mr. Punch, when about to suffer on the scaffold, disposes of the executioner, and frees himself from purgatory, by persuading the unsuspecting hangman, merely for the sake of instruction to an uninitiated culprit, to try his own head in the noose: Punch, of course, seizes the perilous moment—runs him up to the top of the fatal beam—Mr. John Ketch hangs suspended in the air—Punch shouts a glorious triumph—all ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the Jaylors be so pregnant what is the hangman, troe? By the time my misery hath brought me to climbe to his acquaintance I shall find a frend to the last gaspe. What's here? a Lady? are the weomen so cruell here to insult ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... intervals to her confused intelligence; Mr. Juxon was safe. Whatever other fearful thing had happened, he was safe, saved perhaps by her warning—but what was that, if Walter had escaped death only to die at the hands of the hangman, or had found it in the jaws of that fearful bloodhound? What was the safety even of her best friend, if poor Nellie was to know that her father was alive, only to learn that he was to ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... Lovers,' printed at Liege in 1712; no printer's name. Ah, mon Dieu! what amusement can Christians possibly find in reading such books? It would be better if they were all burned in the Place de Greve by the hand of the public hangman! Chut! What name have I been pronouncing there! I wonder who this Prince de Listhnay, who has made me copy such things, is; and the young man who, under pretense of doing me a service, introduced me to such a scoundrel. Come, come, this is not the place to think about that. How pleasant ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... therefore forfeited to society, belong to us; and it does not follow because they were not all killed in the attempt, that therefore they are not now to be brought out for punishment. And as there is no common hangman here, we, of course, must do this duty as well as every other. I have now clearly proved that I am justified in what I am about to do. But the argument does not stop there— self-preservation is the first law of nature, and if ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... representations, was debarred his rooms (he was a barrister), by the Court of Star Chamber, sentenced to be imprisoned for life, fined L5,000, committed to the Tower, placed in the pillory, both ears cut off, and his book burnt by the common hangman; yet after undergoing all these pains and penalties, he published a recantation of all that he had previously written in his "Histrio-Mastix"—says "It seems that the Grecian actors did now and then to refresh the spectators, bring a kind of cisterne on ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... Church and State Were wedded by your spiritual fathers! And on submissive shoulders sat Yours Wilsons and your Cotton Mathers. No vile "itinerant" then could mar The beauty of your tranquil Zion, But at his peril of the scar Of hangman's ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... at these bold doctrines, seldom heard across the channel since the days of Patrick Darcy and the Catholic Confederacy. They ordered the book to be burned by the hands of the common hangman, as of "dangerous tendency to the crown and people of England, by denying the power of the King and Parliament of England to bind the kingdom and people of Ireland, and the subordination and dependence that Ireland had, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... there was no hint at superannuation in either port or movement. He was dressed in a long skirtlike garment of black cloth—true priest garb—and for a girdle he wore a length of hempen rope tied in the peculiar and sinister fashion known as the "hangman's knot." Around his neck, suspended like a priest's stole, hung a steel chain with pendent manacles or handcuffs that jangled unmusically as he moved. A grotesque, almost ridiculous figure this priest of the Doomsmen, but with the first look into the man's face one forgot about ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... enough in the West to know what I mean, but I'll explain to you." He faced Pratt, and with easy, almost gentle utterance, continued: "I've spent some thirty-five years on the border, where a man is called upon now and then to serve as his own judge, jury, and hangman. Perhaps we're a little prone to take matters into our own hands; but be that as it may, the professor here has posted me about you and your ways, and I merely want to state, once for all, that if you utter one word public or private against my wife or daughter I'll kill you ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... certaine pieces of canes, cleft in the middle, in such sort that they seeme rather plaine then sharpe. He that is to be whipped lieth groueling on the ground: vpon his thighes the hangman layeth on blowes mightily with these canes, that the standers by tremble at their crueltie. Ten stripes draw a great deale of blood, 20. or 30. spoile the flesh altogether, 50. or 60. will require long time to bee healed, and if they come to the number ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... me that there was no criterion by which vice might be prevented from being mistaken for virtue, what benefit would arise from that? I must part with all my interior consolation, and all my external connections. And for what? What is it you propose? The death of Mr. Falkland by the hands of the hangman." ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... were crowded men and women to be transported. When the ship was full, crowded to her utmost, she sailed away with her living cargo. From Sixteen Hundred Fifty to Seventeen Hundred Fifty, over forty thousand people were sent away for their country's good. The hangman worked overtime, all prisons were crowded, and the walls of Newgate bulged with men and women, old and young, who were believed to be dangerous to the stability and well-being of the superior class—that is, those who had the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... fust place," commented Ike Hoe; "it bothers a man to git his mouth around it and it hain't any music, like the other names such as Starvation Kenyon, Hangman's Noose, Blizzard Gorge and the rest. I stick to mine as the ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... "his sentiments are worth more than his ideas." The English Letters of 1735, written some years before, and now issued with much hesitation, created a great storm: they boldly attacked the royal power, the clergy, the faith; they were burned by the hangman; and Voltaire had to go into voluntary exile for a while. There his literary activity was unwearied: many of his works were written, or at least sketched, during the next five years. Strange problem of the human mind. While he here composed his Mahomet and other serious works, he also wrote ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... pollycie should fayle Tyll thou forsakst it, & then, wretched clay, Thou fyndst a horsse & dogge thy betters: they Dye unperplext with sence of dyinge, thou Seest what thy sence abhorrs thy falts allowe. I feele thee comeinge, my distracted chaunge, Like an ill-favord hangman: pray thee strike, Aproatche ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... motionless as a statue. Not a tremor or quiver was perceptible. The white cap covered his head and face to below the chin. At the conclusion of Casey's brief speech, the cap was drawn over his face, and as the hangman pulled it down he whispered in his ear something that made the doomed man start as if to break the bands which held his arms. In an instant the signal was given, the traps sprung, by the two men on the roof cutting the ropes which upheld them, and Casey and Cora ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... villages for even a single year—when the first thing that they do, and in which they most delight, is immediately to place the picota [306] in front of their houses, in order to apply lashes with the hangman's strap [penca]. What tyranny will the cura practice on them, such as they are wont to practice if they have any power and authority! How well the wedge of the same wood will force its way, without there being any one to say to him, curita ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... coming, as it did, from one who had shed the blood of a fellow-creature upon very slight provocation; who had been tried for murder, and acquitted because the crime was sanctioned by the usages of society; and who, moreover, in the estimation of many people, richly deserved the hangman's noose—such language, under the circumstances, was not merely injudicious and unfeeling, but positively revolting. The only conceivable excuse that can be made for it arises from the fact that Jarvis ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... said the goldsmith, quietly, "and don't call the lady names, or you'll repent it. She happens to be my particular friend. And let me tell you before you go, that the one thing that will save you from the hangman's noose is that you don't set foot inside this door again. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... of direction or objective he raced here and there, doubling like a frightened rabbit, taking no account of paths or obstructions, seeing nothing but hordes of pursuing furies urged on by a parson and a hangman ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... out, boys! Clear the track! The witches are here! They've all come back! They hanged them high,—No use! No use! What cares a witch for a hangman's noose? They buried them deep, but they wouldn't lie still, For cats and witches are hard to kill; They swore they shouldn't and wouldn't die,— Books said they did, but they lie! ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... proposed to call in the assistance of Dr. Baxter, the principal medical officer of the island, but this offer Napoleon refused at once, alleging that, although "it was true he looked like an honest man, he was too much attached to that hangman" (Lows), he also persisted in rejecting the aid of medicine, and determined to take no exercise out-of-doors as long as he should be subjected to the challenge of sentinels. To a representation ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... dog's eyes. A curious smile, unspeakably tender and sad. It was the idiosyncrasy of the man's face, rarely seen there. He might have looked with it at a criminal, condemning him to death. But he would have condemned him, and, if no hangman could be found, would have put the rope on with his own hands, and then most probably would have sat down pale and trembling, and analyzed his sensations on ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... Lawry had concealed themselves behind the curtains of a tier of berths, directly in the rear of the chair where Baker was to sit at the table. In his hand Ethan held the heave-line, at one end of which Lawry had made a hangman's noose. Mrs. Light and the girls had been instructed to rattle the chairs, make as much noise as they could, and otherwise engage the attention of the robber, as soon as he sat ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... "there was once a man named Dr. Chovet. He lived in London. A gentleman who turned highwayman was to be hanged. You see," said I, "this was about 1760. Well, his friends bribed the jailer and the hangman. The doctor cut a hole in the man's windpipe, very low down where it could be partly hid by a loose cravat. So, as they hanged him only a little while, and the breath went in and out of the opening below the noose, he was only just insensible ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... indignant at being continually called upon to remedy evils due to the general indiscipline of the Channel Fleet. "What do they mean by invariably sending the mutinous ships to me? Do they think that I will be hangman to the fleet?" Both versions are likely enough to be correct. There is a limit to all human endurance, and the earl was now broken in health; he was sixty-four, had borne his load for three years, and was on the point of resigning his command to Lord Keith. The Court, however, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... eager and alert, was leaning forward, anxious not to miss a word. A great deal of what had been obscure was being cleared up. But so far nothing that Grell had said but could be interpreted as a motive—and a singularly strong one—which might in other circumstances weave a hangman's rope about ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... who, as head of Prussian Fiscals (kind of Public Prosecutor, or supreme Essence of Bailiffs, Catchpoles and Grand-Juries all in one), wears a red cloak,—gave the Prince a dreadful start. Red cloak is the Berlin Hangman's or Headsman's dress; and poor Friedrich had the idea his end had summarily come in this manner. Soon seeing it was otherwise, his spirits recovered, perhaps rose by ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... that he is in great disgrace, and Trump in better favour; that Bankert's ship is burned, himself hardly escaping with a few men on board De Haes; that fifteen captains are to be tried the seventh of August; and that the hangman was sent from Flushing to assist the Council of Warr. How much of this is true, time will shew. Thence to Westminster Hall and walked an hour with Creed talking of the late fight, and observing the ridiculous management thereof and success of the Duke of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... in him not merely a doubt in the efficacy of violent revolutions, but a dislike of all concerted political effort and the whole collective work of political associations. He had felt the lash of repression, saved one friend from the hangman, and seen others depart for Botany Bay: he remained to the end, the uncompromising foe of every species of governmental coercion. He had listened to Horne Tooke perorating "hanging matters" at the Corresponding Society; he had seen the "electric ruby" circulating at its dinners; ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... went too far; that Religion, being a great sanction to civil morality, is of use for keeping society in order, at least the lower classes, who have not the feeling of Honour in due force; and therefore, as a considerable help to the Constable and Hangman, /ought/ decidedly to be kept up. But such toleration is the fruit only of later days. In those times, there was no question but how to get rid of it, root and branch, the sooner the better. A gleam of zeal, nay we will call it, however basely alloyed, a glow of real enthusiasm and love of truth, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... and carrion that thou art, so to speak of a betrothed bride to her promised husband! If it were true, wretched villain! I would save the hangman his task, and break your traitor's throat with this hand—but thou liest! thou liest!" he shouted, pushing him to the other end of the narrow sleeping chamber. "In poor revenge thou liest! But if you wish to live, beware how you so lie ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Bishop Stortford to Hoddesdon. Charles II. had a violent hatred to Armstrong, who had been his Gentleman of the Horse, and was supposed to have incited his illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, to rebellion. Sir Thomas was hanged at Tyburn. After the body had hung half an hour, the hangman cut it down, stripped it, lopped off the head, threw the heart into a fire, and divided the body into four parts. The fore-quarter (after being boiled in pitch at Newgate) was set on Temple Bar, the head was placed on Westminster Hall, and the rest of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... merry Vauxhalling, with pistols at all your noddles! thought as much! thought he'd tip the perch; saw he wasn't stanch; knew he'd go by his company,—a set of jackanapes! all blacklegs! nobody warm among 'em: fellows with a month's good living upon their backs, and not sixpence for the hangman in ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... let no mercy be shown to them!" said one voice, in low, menacing accents. "Six saintly priests have died in cruel agonies by the bloody hangman's hands but a few weeks past; and look ye, what has been the fate of that godly, courageous old man of Lancashire who has dared to raise his voice in reprobation of these barbarities? Fined, imprisoned, despoiled of all; and all but condemned ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Eng., I met Billington, the official hangman, who was convinced that I could not escape from the restraint he used to secure those he was ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... There is no need for me to tell you that Mr. Fauntleroy was found guilty, and that he died by the hangman's hand. It was in my power to soothe his last moments in this world by taking on myself the arrangement of some of his private affairs, which, while they remained unsettled, weighed heavily on his mind. They had no connection with the crimes he had committed, so I could do him the last little ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... one cheek with a letter the wrong way, the hangman burnt that again, and presently a surgeon clapped on a plaster to take out the fire. The hangman hewed off Prynne's ears very scurvily, which put him to much pain, and after, he stood long in the pillory before his head could be got out, but ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... of husband and son, the blinded law bade her go unscathed, unsuspected. Direct, as from heaven, without a cloud, fell the thunderbolt. Is the life they have saved worth the prizing? Doth the chalice, unspilt on the ground, not return to the hand? Is the sudden pang of the hangman more fearful than the doom which they breathe and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... removed,(593) but others had apparently been set up in their place. The demolition of the cross, which took place on the 2nd May amid signs of public rejoicing, was followed (10 May) by the public burning of the "Book of Sports" by the hands of the common hangman in Cheapside.(594) Another measure in the same direction was the placing of the appointment of preachers in St. Paul's Churchyard in the hands of the mayor and aldermen, a proposal which the mayor had formerly suggested to ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... host;—"and is it thou, in good earnest? Nay, I have judged so for this half-hour; for I knew no other person would have ta'en half the interest in thee. But, Mike, an thy shoulder be unscathed as thou sayest, thou must own that Goodman Thong, the hangman, was merciful in his office, and stamped thee with ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... that healthful desire is astir. It unites in one object men of parties the most opposed; it affords the most attractive nucleus for public meetings; it has cleansed the statute-book from blood; it is ridding the world of the hangman. It animates the clergy of all sects in the remotest districts; it sets the squire on improving cottages and parcelling out allotments. Schools rise in every village; in books the lightest, the Grand Idea ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mother and the expense of her bantling; for which reason I would not have you trust implicitly to the report he makes of her wealth, which is inconsistent with his behaviour, nor run your head precipitately into a noose, that you may afterwards wish exchanged for the hangman's." He seemed very much startled at my insinuation, and promised to look twice before he leaped; saying, with some heat, "Odds, if I find his intention is to betray me, we shall see which of us is the better man." My prediction was verified in less than a ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... young man's head, since it may not better be, and let the others go free for this time. Hah! what sayest thou? and thou, youngling? 'Tis but the stroke of a sword, since thou hast fallen into my hands, and not into the hangman's or the King's." ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... poor preservers of the Church who call on the secular arm to execute their 'laws.' Rome went a long way in letting subject peoples keep their institutions; but it was too much to expect Pilate to be the hangman for these furious priests, on a charge scarcely intelligible ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... one knew exactly where. He had there, it was said, a sort of field, a hole, a lair. There were no neighbors, not even passers-by. Since he had dwelt in that valley, the path which led thither had disappeared under a growth of grass. The locality was spoken of as though it had been the dwelling of a hangman. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... was the last emotion for such an hour; the judge might as well feel exasperated with the prisoner at the bar, the common hangman with the felon on the drop. Langholm only wished that, on even one moment's reflection, he could rest content in so primitive and so single a state of mind. He knew well that he could not, and that every subtle sort of ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... shall come by our own then. But to sail with this treasure on board—without a crew to defend the vessel—by this hand! the first cruiser that sighted us would make a clean sweep, and then, ho, for the hangman, Mr. Rodney!" ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... Wilde in a high, harsh voice. "Come, now, that's too good. It's me that's making the sacrifice, by cheating the hangman and justice of their just due, Moore; and don't ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... I; but is the workingman such a fool that his eyes are not opened when a man of Bismarck's way of thinking, when an autocrat like the Emperor have favored state socialism! Does he not see that socialism is the neatest hangman of them all to strangle his discontent! Does he not see the demagogue gradually assuming the features and the powers of the tyrant! Tyranny is not alone the prerogative of an aristocracy. "It is the place of a court to make its servants insignificant. If the people should fall into the ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... told your hangman no, twelve times within this hour, when I was at the last gasp; and that is a time, I think, when ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... always the religion of the prince; the true God is the God, whom the prince desires his people to adore; the will of the priests, who govern the prince, always becomes the will of God. A wit justly observed, that the true religion is always that, on whose side are the prince and the hangman. Emperors and hangmen long supported the gods of Rome against the God of Christians; the latter, having gained to his interest the emperors, their soldiers, and their hangmen, succeeded in destroying the worship of the Roman gods. The God of Mahomet has dispossessed the God of Christians of ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... fails, turn atheist! We might fall foul of the four Gospels, get our book burned by the hangman, and then it would sell ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... "Supposing they contained instructions to our Ambassador which you might consider inimical to your interests? Do you mean that you would look at home for the murderer? You mean that you have men so devoted to their native land that they were willing to run the risk of death by the hangman to aid her? You mean that your Secret Service is perfected to that extent, and that the scales of justice are held blindfolded? Or do you mean that Scotland Yard would have its orders, and that these men ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and made nowhere else than here. Leland, that industrious chronicler, came to grief in this matter, for he calls Bridport 'a fair, large town,' where 'be made good daggers.' He shows the danger of taking words too literally, since a 'Bridport dagger' is only another name for the hangman's rope." ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... justice, he wasn't at all surprised at Guy's shrinking and shunning him; what astonished him rather was the man's occasional and incredible fits of effrontery. How that fellow could ever laugh and talk at all among the ladies on deck—with the hangman at his back—simply appalled and horrified the proud soul of a Kelmscott. Granville had hard work to keep from expressing his horror openly at times. But still, with an effort, he kept his peace. With the picture of his father and Lady Emily now strong before ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... hangman, one of the ringleaders of the "No Popery Riots;" the other two were Hugh, servant of the Maypole inn, and the half-witted Barnaby Rudge. Dennis was cheerful enough when he "turned off" others, but when he himself ascended the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... book reaching the Pope, his silence was at once broken. The book was condemned and all copies found were ordered to be burned by the hangman in the public streets. But the book had met with a wide sale and many copies had been carried to Germany, England and France, and in these countries the work was reprinted and sent ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Sheriff McLendon, accompanied by Deputies Perkins, App and Harvey and a Scimitar reporter, arrived on the scene of the execution about 3:30 in the afternoon. The body was suspended from the first limb of a post oak tree by a new quarter-inch grass rope. A hangman's knot, evidently tied by an expert, fitted snugly under the left ear of the corpse, and a new hame string pinioned the victim's arms behind him. His legs were not tied. The body was perfectly limber when the ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... seeing how he trembled, Granger knew that he had not answered truly. With a shrug of his shoulders, twisting round on his heel, he had said sneeringly, "On the Last Chance River we don't run away from loneliness as though the hangman were behind us. If we did, we should be running ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... "in my youth there were detestable books which ought to have been burned by the hands of the common hangman, for they contained questions and answers to be learned by heart, of this sort, 'What is a horse? The horse is termed Equus caballus; belongs to the class Mammalia; order, Pachydermata; family, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... and bankers from whom they could not extort money. The warriors who, under Hoche, had guarded the walls of Dunkirk, and who, under Kleber, had made good the defence of the wood of Monceaux, shrank with horror from an office more degrading than that of the hangman. "The Convention," said an officer to his men, "has sent orders that all the English prisoners shall be shot." "We will not shoot them," answered a stout-hearted sergeant. "Send them to the Convention. If the deputies ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I quit the subject, to say a word or two respecting the minister of justice in this country; in plain words, I mean the hangman. It has always appeared to me that, in the mode of inflicting capital punishments with us, there is too much of the ministry of the human hand. The guillotine, as performing its functions more of itself and sparing human agency, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Ravachol, Vaillant, and Henry seemed obsessed with the idea that upon their individual acts rested the burden of deliverance. Bonnot's last words were, "I am a celebrated man." From the gallows in Chicago Fischer declared, "This is the happiest moment of my life."[15] "Call your hangman!" exclaimed August Spies. "Truth crucified in Socrates, in Christ, in Giordano Bruno, in Huss, in Galileo, still lives—they and others whose name is legion have preceded us on this path. We are ready ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... they were all in the cart together, with the ropes about their necks, and the hangman down again upon the ground; and as soon as that was done, a great silence fell everywhere. I had seen Mr. Gavan say something to the hangman, and he answered again; but I could not hear what ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... to a fair level enough for him to get at his food. His whole appearance was so grotesque, I felt for a minute as if there was a showman behind him who would pull him down presently and put up Judy, or the hangman, or the Devil, or some other wooden personage of the famous spectacle. I contrived to lose the first part of his sentence, but what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... The official order was given, and all of Paine's books that could be found were seized and publicly used for a bonfire by the official hangman. Paine was burned in effigy in many cities, the charge being made that he was one of the men who had brought about the French Revolution. With better truth it could have been stated that he was the man, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... stock in such truck as judges an' lawyers an' orders of court. They ain't intended to be took serious. They're all right for children an' Easterners an' non compos mentis people, I s'pose, but I've always been my own judge, jury, an' hangman, an' I aim to continue workin' my legislatif, executif, an' judicial duties to the end of the string. You look out! My pardner is young an' seems to like the idee of lettin' somebody else run his business, so I'm goin' to give him rein and let him amuse himself for a while ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... trees. On, on to the gallows the sheriffs are gone, An' the cart an' the sodgers go steadily on; An' at every side swellin' around of the cart, A wild, sorrowful sound, that id open your heart. Now under the gallows the cart takes its stand, An' the hangman gets up with the rope in his hand; An' the priest, havin' blest him, goes down on the ground, An' SHAMUS O'BRIEN throws one last look round. Then the hangman dhrew near, an' the people grew still, Young faces turned sickly, and warm ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... authors, have been blessed with the same talents, and have employed them to the same purposes. There are some, however, who, though not void of these talents, have made so wretched a use of them, that, had the consecration of their labours been committed to the hands of the hangman, no good man would have regretted their loss; nor am I afraid to mention Rabelais, and Aristophanes himself, in this number. For, if I may speak my opinion freely of these two last writers, and of their works, their design appears to me very plainly to have been to ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... skeert em more'n did us Berkshire folks." Abner explained to a crowd at the tavern. "They all wanter be on the hangman's side wen it comes tew the hangin. They hain't got the pluck of a weasel, them fellers daown east hain't. This ere war'll hev tew be fit aout in this ere caounty, I guess, ef wuss comes ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... extremely severe to foreigners, so that I would hardly advise you to tempt the gallows, unless, indeed, you have less objection to suicide, for I really think that is the only way you can possibly cheat the hangman, unless you condescend to allow me to pay my respects to the American Legation to-morrow, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... foul with slander, Poisonous treacherous tongue of pander, Tongue the hangman's knife should sever, Tongue in flames ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... not a heller; my father was hangman of Lucerne, and when he died, his body was seized to ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... President, if we understand you correctly, you think that we of the Confederacy have committed treason; are traitors to your Government; have forfeited our rights, and are proper subjects for the hangman. Is not that ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... trades have their moments of pleasure. Now, if I were a grave-digger, or even a hangman, there are some people I could work for with a great ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... Muecke suddenly asked in between, "if anything has happened to the Sydney? At the Dardanelles maybe?" And his hatred of the Emden's "hangman" is visible for a second in his blue eyes. Then ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... over. At last he dared to look at her. The colour and youthful roundness had gone out of her face. It was gray as her dress, fixed and rigid as a marble mask. Ormiston was overcome with a consuming pity for her and with a violence of self-hatred. Hangman, and to his own sister—in truth, it seemed to him to have come to that! He knelt down in front of her, laying ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... breaks the shackles which force had put on, And the hangman completes what the judge but began; There the squire of the poet, and knight of the post, Find their pains no more baulked, and their hopes no more ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... he uttered a cry, then plunged through the crowd like a bull, but the lariat loop slipped to his neck and tightened like a hangman's noose. ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... the poisonous East, Over a continent of blight, Like a maleficent Influence released From the most squalid cellarage of hell, The Wind-Fiend, the abominable - The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light - Comes slouching, sullen and obscene, Hard on the skirts of the embittered night; And in a cloud unclean Of excremental humours, roused to strife By the operation of some ruinous change, Wherever ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... her, they were safe away; and the water widened between them and her damning evidences. On the other hand, they were drawing nearer to the ship of war, which might very well prove to be their prison and a hangman's cart to bear them to the gallows of which they had not yet learned either whence she came or whither she was bound; and the doubt weighed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shrugged his shoulders. "He'd be an over-bold man who'd venture into the alleys and courts of Alsatia with less than fifty good swords at his back. The hangman would be busy for a month if all who merited his rope were dragged out of yonder dens. But we must be going; the captain is almost out of sight, and thou hast matters on hand that are of greater moment than the ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan |
