"Coffin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Irishman, leaning against a lamp post as a funeral was passing by, was asked who was dead. "I can't exactly say, sir," said he, "but I presume it's the gentleman in the coffin." ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... dies, the spirit of a thousand Beethovens sob and wail in the air; dull cannon roar slowly out their heavy grief; silly rifles gibber and chatter demoniacally over his grave; and a cocked hat, emptier than ever, rides with the mockery of despair on his coffin. ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... followed by a retinue of crippled veterans, by a forest of banners, by the envoys of three hundred towns, by everything which represents the power and the glory of a people, it arrived before the august temple where the tomb awaited it. At that moment twelve cuirassiers removed the coffin from the car. At that moment Italy bade her last farewell to her dead king, to her old king whom she had loved so dearly, the last farewell to her soldier, to her father, to the twenty-nine most fortunate and most blessed years in her history. It was a grand and solemn moment. ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... as it was done, they aver, before he died. Its companion, equally superb, is Cardinal Beaufort, uncle of Harry VI. William Rufus, slain in the neighbouring forest, is buried in the old choir: his monument is of plain stone, without any inscription or ornament, and only shaped like a coffin. Hardyknute had a much more splendid monument preserved for him; but Harry I. had other business to attend, I presume, than to decorate the tomb of one brother while despoiling of his kingdom another. An extremely ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... I'd rather take you to her in your coffin. She's never known you, never seen what most of us have seen, that all you have—or nearly all—is your lovely looks, and what they call a kind heart. There's only you two in your family, and she's got to live with you—awhile, anyhow. She couldn't stand this ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shining down and watching over his tribe. The tattooed head of the dead man was usually reverently preserved—stored away in some secret recess and brought out by the priest to be gazed upon on high occasions. The body, placed in a canoe-shaped coffin, was left for a time to dry on a stage or moulder in a hollow tree. After an appointed period the bones were scraped clean and laid away in a cavern or cleft known only to a sacred few. They might be thrown down some dark mountain abyss or torere. Such inaccessible resting-places of famous ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... all the pomp indicative of the high position of the deceased. The mourners wear robes of white cloth, and all the feudal paraphernalia are draped with the same material; which, as before mentioned, is used in Japanese mourning. The coffin is carried near the head of the procession; it is a square box of resinous wood, covered over with white, and the body is placed in it ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... have laughed, had I come coffin'd home, That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear, Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... its environs. Considering herself unworthy to inhabit the monastery which she had founded, she had begged as an alms a last resting-place in the vault destined for the religious. Contrary to her intentions, her remains were inclosed in a leaden coffin. By her own directions, her heart was buried under the altar step of the Jesuits' Church, that it might crumble into its original dust at the feet of the God of the Tabernacle, ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... and going over to the coffin, read in a loud and sonorous voice the De Profundis and other prayers for the dead, casting his eyes from time to time upon the unfortunate clerk with a contemptuous bitterness and scorn that, for force of ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... came, Eugene had the coffin carried into the house again, unscrewed the lid, and reverently laid on the old man's breast the token that recalled the days when Delphine and Anastasie were innocent little maidens, before they began "to think for themselves," as he had moaned ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... execution of the Earl of Lancaster, a large stone coffin, massive and roughly hewn, was found in a field that belonged of old to the Priory of Pomfret, but at least a quarter of a mile distant from the hill where the chapel stood. Within was the skeleton of a full-grown man, partially preserved; ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.19 • Various
... dead; and the Imam went back with her. Then four neighbours took up the bier[FN300] and bore it on their shoulders and fared forth with the Imam and others who were wont to give assistance at such obsequies. After the funeral prayers were ended four other men carried off the coffin; and Morgiana walked before it bare of head, striking her breast and weeping and wailing with exceeding loud lament, whilst Ali Baba and the neighbours came behind. In such order they entered the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... fact, I knew that he had had in mind the safety of her crew under javelin-fire—the lofty sides made an admirable shelter. Inside she reminded me of nothing so much as a floating trench. There was also some slight analogy to a huge coffin. ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and a few poor women were left to perform the last offices on the mass of pestiferous corruption that once was the fifteenth Louis of France.[154] None could be found to embalm the corpse, and spirits of wine were poured into the coffin which was carried to St. Denis without pomp and amid the half-suppressed curses of the people. Before the breath had left the body, a noise as of thunder was heard approaching the chamber of the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette: ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... looking at nothing. He seemed not so much sorry, as scared and dazed like, by what had happened. My mistress managed all that was to be done about the funeral. It must have cost a sight of money—the coffin, in particular, being most beautiful. The dead lady's husband was away, as we heard, in foreign parts. But my mistress (being her aunt) settled it with her friends in the country (Cumberland, I think) that she should be buried there, in the same grave ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... abandoned of her sex, who crowd our thoroughfares at night. Their fate must be her fate; an outcast—then the tenant of a public prison where her associates will be the thief and the felon. That's her second step. The third is—to her coffin; broken down; beggared, perhaps starving, she'll die surrounded by the offscouring of the earth—happy if she reaches her grave before she has run ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... and capes of the same material, warming themselves by fires of birchwood charcoal, reading books bound in birch, and eating herrings from a birchen platter, pickled in a birchen cask. Their baskets, boats, harness, and utensils are all of Birch; in short, from cradle to coffin, the Birch forms the peculiar environment of the Laplander."[36:1] In England we still admire its graceful beauty, whether it grows in our woods or our gardens, and we welcome its pleasant odour on our Russia leather bound books; but we have ceased to make beer from its young ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... undisturbed by the sufferings of his victims, was busy enriching himself. Gradually he got control of all the trades in the city; he even made himself chief undertaker and passed a law by which those who dared to bury their dead in a coffin not of his providing could be severely punished. That his coffins cost a small fortune was only to be expected. At the end of two years he had exhausted the patience of the Alexandrians, pagans and Christians alike. There was a popular rising, in which the Patriarch, ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... on the coffin loud and long I strike—the murmur sent Through the gray chambers to my song, Shall be ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the house, and did not see Valmai again until on Monday he met the funeral in the churchyard. Valmai, to the horror of Nance and her friends, wore her usual white dress. She had a bunch of white jessamine in her hand, and, as the little coffin disappeared from sight, she showered the flowers upon it. Nance was too infirm to accompany her, so that she stood alone beside the grave, although surrounded by the fisher folk of the island. She sobbed bitterly as she heard the heavy clods fall on the coffin, ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... till the Resurrection. Often did Carey officiate at the burial of Europeans in the Danish cemetery. Previous to his time the only service there consisted in the Government secretary dropping a handful of earth on the coffin. In the native God's-acre, as in the Communion of the Lord's Table, and in the simple rites which accompanied the burial of the dead in Christ, the heathen saw the one lofty platform of loving self-sacrifice to which the Cross ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... days before among the ancestors whom he had dishonoured. It was a lonely funeral, for Lucy had asked Robert Boulger, her only friend then in England, not to come; and she was the solitary mourner. The coffin was lowered into the grave, and the rector read the sad, beautiful words of the burial service. She could not grieve. Her father was at peace. She could only hope that his errors and his crimes would be soon forgotten; ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... memory seems to have been so dear to the faithful, led the explorers to carefully sift the earth which filled the place; and their pains were rewarded by the discovery of a fragment of a marble coffin, inscribed with the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... cannery the preceding summer, and her slim, pretty hands were all scarred with the tomato-knives. Besides, the tips of two of her fingers had been left in the cutting machine at the paper-box factory the preceding winter. He remembered the hard palms of his mother as she lay in her coffin. And his father had worked to the last fading gasp; the horned growth on his hands must have been half an inch thick when he died. But Her hands were soft, and her mother's hands, and her brothers'. This last came to him as a surprise; it was tremendously indicative of the ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... whispered Hitty to her child, as Keery's peaceful, shrouded face was hidden under the coffin-lid and carried away to Greenfield Hill. Pitiful whisper! happily all-unmeaning to the child, but full of desolation to the mother, floating with but one tiny plank amid the wild wrecks of a midnight ocean, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... claimed to be a nephew of old Peleg, but who had never been known to be recognized by the crusty old farmer. He clerked in one of the general stores, of which Stanhope boasted several big ones, where everything, from a package of pins to a coffin could ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... old, go about begging for their own funerals; that is, begging for money to buy a coffin, candles, pipes, and tobacco. For the use of the candles, pipes, and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... of the funeral the horses attached to the gun-carriage became restive, and the sailors who formed the guard of honour took their place, and drew the coffin, draped in the Union Jack, to ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... little Henry Parsons, his godchild, a miniature dagger with a jewelled handle, with which the child nearly destroyed his right hand. When poor Mary was married, he walked mournfully up to the altar, and stared during the ceremony unmistakably at an imaginary coffin, hanging, like Mohammed's, midway between the ceiling and the floor. Poor man, it's really curious, but he contrives to be always in mourning, and everybody knows that he goes only to see tragedies, and has the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... us battle side by side! Thou fresh glad blossom flowering by the tomb,— See what the life is that they call youth's bloom! There's coffin-stench wherever two go by At the street corner, smiling outwardly, With falsehood's reeking sepulchre beneath, And in their blood the apathy of death. And this they think is living! Heaven and earth, Is such a load so many antics worth? For such an end to haul up babes in shoals, To ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... the dying, and thoughts, of which the good might have been proud, flashed through his mind. Who, at such moments, would recognize David White, the bold, dark, dangerous man? But thus it is; mirthful feelings will sometimes obtrude when the heavy clod is falling upon the coffin of a friend, and the grave closing over him forever; thoughts of the last agony, the bourne of death, and the curtained futurity, will sometimes come like a pall over our minds, when the dance is at its flush, and pleasure in its spring-time; and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... possessed a heart full of love. The young man had himself made his shoemaking bench, and the bedstead with which he began housekeeping; this bedstead he had made out of the wooden frame which had borne only a short time before the coffin of the deceased Count Trampe, as he lay in state, and the remnants of the black cloth on the wood work kept ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... musician and his barbiton together, in the same coffin. That famous Steiner—primeval Titan of the great Tyrolese race—often hast thou sought to scale the heavens, and therefore must thou, like the meaner children of men, descend to the dismal Hades! Harder fate for thee than thy mortal ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... closed, in a possibility of his return, and he had found himself installed in them upon his arrival. The library was today rather a melancholy room: the great book-cases did not enliven it; the grand-piano, with its old dark polish, seemed like a coffin, the sarcophagus of unrisen music; the oak panelling had absorbed a richer hue with the years than once it wore; the portrait of his mother seemed farther withdrawn from sight and air; Antinoues took a tawnier tint in his long reverie. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... cripple, as he stood by the wasted form shrouded in grave-clothes, and looked upon it for the last time ere the coffin-lid closed over it. "What would I have been ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... brings a bier to man, Coughing a coffin brings, And too much ale will make us ail, As well ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... tempest, the demon, or a malevolent spirit might bear her away on unbridled wings. In one poem she apostrophizes Marie Bashkirtseff as warring with vast genius against unknown powers, but who now is in her coffin among worms, her skull grinning and showing its teeth. She would be possessed by her and thrilled as by an electric current. A dwarf beggar wrings her heart with pity, but she will not be overwhelmed. Though a ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... marriage, the chastity of his wife, and the execution of six militiamen convicted of mutiny. Thurlow Weed, who conducted the Adams campaign in the western part of the State, indulged in no personal attacks upon Jackson or his wife, refusing to send out the documents known as "Domestic Relations" and "Coffin Handbills." "The impression of the masses was that the six militiamen deserved hanging," he says, in his autobiography, "and I look back now with astonishment that enlightened and able statesmen could believe that ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... hide her away in the black ground." And they had made a coffin of clear glass, so as to be looked into from all sides, and they laid her in it, and wrote in golden letters upon it her name, and that she was a king's daughter. Then they set the coffin out upon the mountain, and ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... on. The grand and solemn funeral was planned and the plans carried out. Mr. Wayne was among the very wealthy of the city. His father's mansion was shrouded in its appropriate crape, the rooms and the halls and the rich, dark solemn coffin glittering with its solid silver screws and handles, were almost hidden in rare and costly flowers. Ruth, in the deepest of mourning robes, accompanied by her father, from whose shoulder swept long streamers of ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... then lay in the old tomb near the river. The door was opened, and Lafayette went down into the vault, where he remained some moments beside the coffin of his great chief. He came out with his head bowed, and with tears streaming down {212} his face. He then led his son into the tomb, where they knelt reverently, and, after the French ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... by the captain, who apologized for the discomfort under which we must pass the night. He gave us the best he had, and that was bad enough, both of food and wine, before showing us into the hut, where we found a rough deal coffin lying on the very bench that was to be our bed. This he ordered away with all the coolness in the world. "It was only one of his people who had died that morning of vomito, or yellow fever." "Comfortable country this," ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... deck seems a vast coffin to be. Yes! 'tween the cradle and coffin, we totter and ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... wrapper imperfectly shrouded. She enchanted by the mere contour; it was her weird burden which appalled the watcher. In one hand, suspended horizontally, lengthwise parallel to her course, she held what seemed by shape and somber hue to be an infant's coffin. ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... youth, and manhood come in vain, And genius given, and knowledge won in vain; And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild, And all which patient toil had reared, and all, Commune with thee had opened out—but flowers Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier, In the same coffin, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... cigarette and thought about it some more. I looked around at the interior of my expensive, ten-foot coffin. I figured I would last for about another seventy-five hours. Of course I could take cyanide and get it over with. But this wouldn't be such a bad way to go. Within seventy-five hours the last of my reserve tanks would be empty. ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew
... a mother who several years since lost by death a beautiful daughter. The mother was a Christian woman, and her child was also a Christian, dying in sweet hope. Yet never since that coffin was closed has the mother lifted up her eyes toward God in submission and hope. She visits the cemetery on Sundays, but never the church. She goes with downcast look about her home, weeping whenever her daughter's name is mentioned, and ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... In rush the neighbours, and join in the shouting, until all settle down quietly to a feast. The body is then sprinkled with salt and camphor and dressed in white, with the kris attached to the waist. There is little ceremony about placing the body in the coffin and burying it. The mortuary is marked by a wooden tablet—sometimes by a stone, on which is an inscription in Arabic. A slip of board, or bamboo, is placed around the spot, and a piece of wood, carved like the bows of a canoe, is stuck in the earth; in front ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... morn he sang mass. And there was prepared an horse-bier, and Sir Launcelot and his fellows followed the bier on foot from Almesbury until they came to Glastonbury; and she was wrapped in cered clothes, and laid in a coffin of marble. And when she was put in the earth Sir Launcelot swooned, and lay long as ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... the lives of others brighter, helping our neighbour, and happiness will come to us. We often see people who are neglected and uncared for in life, and when they die men scatter flowers upon their coffin, and write ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... respectable, unfriendly-looking building of red brick, with a narrow, black-painted arched door. On the cross-section of the center panel was screwed a silver plate, with the name of the institution inscribed in black letters, which gave to the door the gruesome suggestion of a coffin set on end. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... coffins, each containing a Frenchman of the past; now and again the Frenchman wakes up and kicks against his English-made casing; but ambition stifles him, and he submits to be smothered. The coffin is always ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... officials, who, as there was reason to believe, could throw light upon Sir Peregrine's reasons for such arbitrary conduct as that of which he had been guilty. The officials whose evidence it was thought desirable to obtain were Colonels Coffin and Givins, both of whom were heads of departments. The former occupied the position of Adjutant-General of Militia for Upper Canada; the latter was Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Both of these gentlemen were summoned to attend before the Committee at a specified time. In ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... camp," fourteen feet square—that is to say, a covered shed of three sides, the fourth side being open to the weather. Then the family achieved the luxury of a cabin, but a cabin without floor or door or window. Amid this wretchedness, Lincoln's mother died, and was laid away in a rough coffin of slabs at the edge of the little clearing. Three months later, a passing preacher read the funeral service ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... done more for him that the wit of his father. Therefore, said he, she might dispose of his life and his property as she pleased; and he gave her his word that when she died, which he prayed might not be for a hundred years, he would have her embalmed and put into a golden coffin, and set in his own chamber, that he might keep her memory always before ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... is a large aumbry, and a very perfect stone coffin which was dug up in the south ambulatory near the Trinity Chapel. The metallic sound given forth by the coffin when tapped seems to be of more interest than anything else to the ordinary visitor. Various interesting fragments of stonework are in the chapel, one being ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... slowly to the dreary inclosure on a hill-top, where the grass grows rank and very green round a number of white wooden crosses, which mark the graves of the officers and soldiers who fell in 1876. The Union Jack was thrown over the coffin, which was carried by six Sikhs, and Mr. Low, Major Swinburne, Rajah Dris and some followers, and Sultan Abdullah's two boys, who had nothing better to do, followed it. By the time the grave was reached torches were required, and the burial service was read from my prayer-book. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... out while Thorstan and his host were making the coffin. She put candles at her head and feet in the Christian fashion, with a cross of wood between her hands. Then she knelt by the bed to watch the corpse. It was piercingly cold, and she grew numb with it, and then drowsy. It is likely that she dropped off to sleep as she lay, for she came ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... seems hard that they should have been just too late to give them to him. The next day I went to his funeral—the first soldier's funeral I have seen. I was impressed with the dignity and simplicity of it. The plain deal coffin was covered with a black pall, which had a white cross at the head, the French flag covered the foot and a bunch of purple violets, tied with red, white and blue ribbon, lay between. It was carried in one of the covered ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous
... Sarah has of her mother is seeing her as she lay in her coffin, as she was very young when her mother died. She remembers asking her sisters why they didn't give her mother ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... trouble me now," said Rose. "I can shut my eyes, and see him, Oh! so plainly, in the church, and at home in the study, and out under the trees, and as he lay in his coffin—" She was smiling still, but the tears were ready to gush over her eyes. Mr Snow turned, and laying his hand on her ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... looking people, horses, and "fixes" I have ever seen. The services were brief, but most impressive, and it must have been a trying ordeal for the aged clergyman, an old friend of the deceased. Several times his voice faltered, and he seemed about to break down. The coffin was borne to the grave by six stalwart negroes, laborers on the estate. A lad followed, leading poor Thurlow's favorite horse. Then the widow and her son, the relatives, friends, and family servants. A fine male quartet sang "Nearer, my God, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... of the Maori word tapu is 'sacred'; tabut is a Malay word, and is rendered 'the Ark of the Covenant of God'; taboot is a Hindoo word signifying 'a bier,' 'a coffin,' or 'the Ark of the Covenant'; ta is the Sanscrit word 'to mark,' and ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... within six hours after his tragic death. Ala had been informed of the tragedy, and had visited the car and looked upon the dead form, which I thought greatly affected her. Edmund held little communication with her, but it was evidently with her cooperation that he was able to procure a kind of coffin, in which we placed Juba's body. I do not know whether Edmund informed her of his purpose to quit the planet, but she must have known that we were going to convey our friend ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... decayed bananas, acid cherries, whipped cream, and gelatinous ice-cream, they screamed to one another, "Hey, lemme 'lone," "Quit dog-gone you, looka what you went and done, you almost spilled my glass swater," "Like hell I did," "Hey, gol darn your hide, don't you go sticking your coffin nail in my i-scream," "Oh you Batty, how juh like dancing with Tillie McGuire, last night? Some ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... from what I could learn there of Obeahism, the power seemed to be obtained by the Obeah-man or woman, by working upon the fears of their fellow-negroes, who are notoriously superstitious. The principal charm seemed to be, a collection of feathers, coffin furniture, and one or two other things which I have forgotten. A small bundle of this, hung over the victim's door, or placed in his path, is supposed to have the power of bringing ill luck to the unfortunate individual. And ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda corner, galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... making a master-mason, and in a dark room, with a coffin in the centre covered with a pall, the brethren standing around in attitudes denoting grief and sorrow, the mysterious official who has the privilege of three stars before his name gives the aspirant this interesting history of the origin and ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... of those wonderful days from Tuesday morning till Sunday night, when the coffin containing the precious remains of our Army Mother lay at the Congress Hall, Clapton, and when more than fifty thousand people came to have a last look at her ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... father's death. Peter's remains were exhumed—placed beside those of Catherine lying in state, to share all the honors of her obsequies and to be entombed with her; while Alexis Orlof, his supposed murderer, was compelled to march beside the coffin, bearing his crown. ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... he mended in right time, He need not in night time, (That black hour, and fright-time,) Till sexton interr'd him, Have groan'd in his coffin, While demons stood scoffing— You'd ha' thought him a-coughing— ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in a coffin, above which deals, supported on trestles, and covered by white sheets, bore candles, plates of cut tobacco, pipes, and whiskey. Although but little of the night remained after the coroner had performed his duties, yet so quickly ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... amputation at the shoulder-joint, a foot had been taken off, a humerus resected; but would gangrene or purulent contagion be clement and spare the patient? Or else they had been burying some one of their inmates, most frequently a Frenchman, now and then a German. Scarcely a day passed but a coarse coffin, hastily knocked together from four pine boards, left the hospital at the twilight hour, accompanied by a single one of the attendants, often by the young woman herself, that a fellow-creature might not be laid away in his grave ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and also, in the discretion of the judge, be hanged in chains. The first person to benefit by the provisions of the new Act did so on 1st July. But although Mary Blandy's body escaped these legal indignities, as neither coffin nor hearse had been prepared for its reception, it was carried through the crowd on the shoulders of one of the Sheriff's men, and deposited for some hours in his house. There suitable arrangements were made, and at one o'clock in the morning of Tuesday, 7th April, 1752, the body, by her own request, ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... and to show that he had not been murdered, the corpse was placed in the doorway. A small coffin of cedar-wood, painted red and black, stood on a bier, and showed the dead child dressed in a white shroud. He had a garland on his head, woven of the plant of death, the strong-scented Apium or celery. In his mouth he had an obol ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... philosopher was "the first real American in fiction," an important contribution to the world's literature. In addition, Cooper created the Indian of literature—perhaps a little too noble to be entirely true to life—and various simple, strong seamen. His Chingachgook and Uncas and Long Tom Coffin justly brought him added fame. In these narrative gifts, as well as in the robustness of his own character, Cooper was not unlike Sir Walter Scott. He once modestly referred to himself as "a chip from Scott's block" and has frequently ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... chamber where sleeps some mighty king, and out of this passage open other chambers. Into the first of these the light of the morning sun struggles feebly. I entered it, seeking somewhere to hide myself, and saw a painted coffin lying on the floor near to the marble sarcophagus from which it had been dragged. It was that in which we had found the body of my ancestress; but since then thieves had been in this place. We had left the coffin in the sarcophagus ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause; What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... lips had ever pressed his, and the last kiss he had bestowed was upon his mother's brow, as she lay in her coffin. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Captain, "it lies next to my heart while I live. It shall be buried in my coffin, and I shall rise with it, at the word of command, on the day of the Grand Review!" So saying, the Captain leisurely unbuttoned his coat, and detaching from a piece of striped ribbon as ugly a specimen of the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of any living thing in the miserable hovel, except the old fellow. On two low trestles, in the middle of the floor, lay a coffin with the lid on, on the top of which was stretched the dead body of an old emaciated woman in her graveclothes, the quality of which was much finer than one could have expected to have seen in the midst of the surrounding squalidness. The face of the corpse was uncovered, the hands were crossed ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... Her coffin was buried in flowers, many of them the plain flowers she loved, the gillies and stock and verbena, and even the sweet, sober wall-flowers that were somehow like herself. But it was the roses that scented the whole world for Alix to-day, and fresh ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... of Ishmael, and of Keturah went on purpose to dispute the burial (of Jacob); but when they saw that Joseph had placed his crown upon the coffin, they did the same with theirs. There were thirty-six crowns in all, tradition says. "And they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation." Even the very horses and asses joined in it, we are told. On arriving at the Cave of Machpelah, Esau once more protested, ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... Newfoundland, and the Alert, which was generously provided by the British Government. Preparations for the expedition were promptly made by the Secretary of the Navy, with the active cooperation of the Secretary of War. Commander George W. Coffin was placed in command of the Alert and Lieutenant William H. Emory in command of the Bear. The Thetis was intrusted to Commander Winfield S. Schley, to whom also was assigned the superintendence of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... bier before the high altar while the requiem mass was sung, six monks kneeling beside it, three on each side, with lighted tapers. Then the coffin was sprinkled with hallowed water, perfumed with sweet incense, and borne to its last resting place in the chapel of St. Cuthbert, where they laid him by the side of his father, Alfgar ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... you ass!" snapped he, with a short, crisp, self-satisfied laugh. "None of your blessed squirming now. Keep still. You'll get out of your coffin, you bounder, as soon as out of my grip. Got ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... into his half-open eye, felt his little heart, and finding him stiff and cold, shook her head, and offered her domino box for a coffin. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... all this!—It showed, indeed, that she herself had well considered it. But yet we could not help being shocked at the thoughts of the coffin thus brought in; the lovely person before our eyes who is, in all likelihood, ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... must come. You may weep as though your heart would break, but it will not recall the past, and it will not delay their death. They must die; and you will probably gaze upon their cold and lifeless countenances in the coffin. You will follow them to the grave, and see them buried for ever from your sight. Oh, how unhappy you will feel, if you then have to reflect upon your misconduct! The tears you will shed over their graves will be the more bitter, because you will feel that, ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... when the new bookkeeping machine of a large Midwestern coffin manufacturer slipped a cog, or blew a transistor, or something. It was fantastic that the error—one of two decimal places—should enjoy a straight run of okays, human and mechanical, clear down the line; but when the figures clacked out at the last ...
— And All the Earth a Grave • Carroll M. Capps (AKA C.C. MacApp)
... earliest dynastic times he occupied the position of god and judge of those who had risen from the dead by his help, for already in the IVth dynasty, about B.C. 3800, king Mea-kau-R[a] (the Mycerinus of the Greeks) is identified with him, and on his coffin not only is he called "Osiris, King of the South and North, Men-kau-R[a], living for ever," but the genealogy of Osiris is attributed to him, and he is declared to be "born of heaven, offspring of Nut, flesh and bone of Seb." It is evident that the priests of Heliopolis "edited" the religious texts ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... himself made its grave, and carried the coffin in his arms across the fields to the little pasture burying-lot where lay all the Kildares of Storm. It was a queer funeral; none the less pitiful for its queerness. First Basil with the coffin, the two great hounds gamboling and baying around him in their delight ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... you will give me something to eat and have this horse taken care of. Then, Bob, I want you to ride into Oroville and reconnoitre. This is mail day and I understand some of the boys are buying postage stamps to put on my coffin." ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... from the heights of Pere-Lachaise. He thought that had he died then, Micheline would have wept for him. Then, as in a nightmare, it seemed to him that this hypothesis was realized. He saw the church hung with black, he heard the funeral chants. A catafalque contained his coffin, and slowly his betrothed came, with a trembling hand, to throw holy water on the cloth which covered the bier. And a voice ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... foot—were too much interested and absorbed in their melancholy task to feel either the one or the other, for such an occasion as this had never taken place in all that quiet country-side before. Inside of that hearse, in a snow-white coffin covered with flowers and gayly decorated with cut paper, silver crosses and waxen saints, reposed the mortal remains of Madame Hypolite Levassour, who had died at midnight thirty-six hours previously; and by her side in another coffin, more hastily contrived, lay the body of her well-beloved ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... whereunto God made all men free—shut up from every face that I knew and loved, saving one of mine ancient waiting-maids—verily, if they would use me worser than so, they shall be hard put to it, save to thrust me into my coffin and fasten down the lid on me. I want my life back again! I want the bright harvest of my youth, which these slugs and maggots have devoured, which I never had. I want the bloom of my dead happiness which men tare away from me. I want my dead lord, and mine ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... came, Mrs. Davenport was neatly arrayed in black, a satisfaction to her poor heart in the midst of her sorrow. Barton and Wilson both accompanied her, as she led her two elder boys, and followed the coffin. It was a simple walking funeral, with nothing to grate on the feelings of any; far more in accordance with its purpose, to my mind, than the gorgeous hearses, and nodding plumes, which form the grotesque funeral pomp of respectable people. There was no ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... of the house, with unshaken simplicity, merely asks for the whereabouts of some domestic implement; I think it was a screw-driver. It seems to me a harmless request, but from the way people talked about it one might suppose he had asked for a screw-driver to screw down the wife in her coffin. And a great many advanced persons would tell us that wooden house in which she lived really was like a wooden coffin. But this appears to me to be taking a somewhat funereal view of the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... girl in a hoarse voice. 'I'll swear I saw "coffin" written in every page of the book in large black letters,—aye, and they carried one close to me, in the ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... strange interest to me, and I looked about for the funeral cortege. Presently a group of three or four figures appeared at the head of the avenue of limes, the foremost of them a woman, bearing an infant's coffin under her arm, wrapped in a white sheet. The clerk and sexton, with their robes on, went out to meet them, and conducted them into the church, where the service proper to such occasions was read, after which the coffin was ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... young bloods of a later age, how full and strong had been that tide of young English life. And what was left now of all those hopes, those strivings, those fiery energies, save here and there in some old-world churchyard a few scratches upon a stone, and perchance a handful of dust in a mouldering coffin? Yet here were the silent stair and the grey old wall, with bend and saltire and many another heraldic device still to be read upon its surface, like grotesque shadows thrown back from ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... meetings, because what I wanted to say was said so much better by others. But, while attending an anti-slavery convention at Nantucket, on the 11th of August, 1841, I felt strongly moved to speak, and was at the same time much urged to do so by Mr. William C. Coffin, a gentleman who had heard me speak in the colored people's meeting at New Bedford. It was a severe cross, and I took it up reluctantly. The truth was, I felt myself a slave, and the idea of speaking to white people weighed me ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... Christmas Day found London laid out in a shroud of snow. Like a body wasted by diseases that had triumphed over it at last, London lay stark and still now, beneath a sky that was as the closed leaden shell of a coffin. It was what is ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... was found to be only smouldering in the basement of the house, and the men of another engine were swarming through the place searching for the seat of it. I went in with our men, and the first thing I saw was a coffin lying ready for use! The foreman led me down into a vaulted cellar, and here, strange to say, I found myself in the midst of coffins! It seemed like the realisation of the story I had just heard. There were not fewer than thirty of them on the floor and ranged round the ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... promised his deceased friend, that if he was in the country when he died, he would put him into his coffin. He kept his promise. The child hearing a noise, and knowing that Mr. Harry had gone into the room, could not be kept out; the crowd had left that room, and the child looked at the bed with the curtains looped up with black—and at the table at the foot of the bed, with ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... day. A short sketch of him as given by Benson J. Lossing is as follows: "John Parke Boyd was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, December 21, 1764. His father was from Scotland, and his mother was a descendant of Tristam Coffin, the first of that family who emigrated to America. He entered the army in 1786, as ensign in the Second Regiment. With a spirit of adventure, he went to India in 1789, having first touched the Isle of France. In a letter to his father from Madras, in June, 1790, he says: 'Having procured recommendatory ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... children were left destitute for Madame de Balzac to care for. Balzac always spoke tenderly of her, and once in despair he exclaimed that at times he envied his poor sister Laurentia, who had been lying for many years in her coffin. ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... would have been my coffin but for you, Mr. Rodney?" said he. "I was in good company, though," pointing over his shoulder at the crucifix with his thumb. "Lord, how the rogues prayed and cursed in this same cabin! In fine weather, and when all was well, the ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... chronicle as by a tributary wind. When there is a mystery, and you cannot fathom it by direct evidence, you are driven back on motives. They are, in fact, the nut and kernel of what lawyers call circumstantial evidence, a fitting together of suspicions which have made the coffin of many ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... is sometimes told of these last sad days,—how the hero's body was laid in a coffin, and buried in the quiet earth, amid the sorrowful lamentations of all the Rhineland folk; and how, at Kriemhild's earnest wish, it was afterwards removed to the place where now stands the little minster of Lorsch. As ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... it; I never would have otherwise. Of course what I looked at was a dead face in the coffin, a dead face that was seared and burned. But anyway, I was already convinced that he was not the man. I am not sure what I should have thought if I had met him ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... much hurt to speak on, for all of his looking so much like coffin-meat at the first jump: it war a kind of narvousness come over him that men feels when they gets the thwack of a bullet among the narves. And so, you see, d'you see, says I, 'Tom Bruce, do you stick to ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... physically incapable of proceeding many steps with their burden, but for the support it received from the two younger men who sustained the feet of the saint, using some dexterity in adapting their strength so that the coffin ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is the way it is, you see. When a poor creature comes to be buried—no matter who it is, a pauper, or a tenant, or any one—the people all go to the chapel; and every man he walks up and lays his offering for the priest on the coffin; and the others, they watch him. And, you see, if a man that thinks a good deal of himself walks up and puts down five shillings, why, another man that thinks less of him, and more of himself, he'll go up and make it a gold ten-shilling piece, or perhaps even ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... has been contradicted. He was, however, one of the pallbearers on the long way from the church to Pere la Chaise. When the remains were lowered into the grave, some Polish earth, which Chopin had brought with him from Wola nineteen years before and piously guarded, was scattered over the coffin. There is nothing to show what part, save that of a mourner, Delphine Potocka took in his funeral. But though it was the famous Viardot-Garcia whose voice rang out in the Madeleine, it was hers that had sung him to his ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... Crypto-Calvinist Christian Schuetze, then court-preacher in Dresden [who studied at Leipzig; became superintendent at Chemnitz in 1550, court-preacher of Elector August in 1554; when he was buried, boys threw a black hen over his coffin, crying, 'Here flies the Calvinistic devil;' Joecher, Lexicon 4, 372], which he had addressed to the wife of the court-preacher in order to avoid suspicion. By mistake the letter was delivered to the wife of the court-preacher Lysthenius [born 1532; studied in Wittenberg; ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Colonel,'though Heaven knows with a heart distressed for him as an individual, that this young gentleman has studied and fully understood the desperate game which he has played. He threw for life or death, a coronet or a coffin; and he cannot now be permitted, with justice to the country, to draw stakes because the dice have gone ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Canterbury sang the mass of Requiem with great devotion. And Sir Launcelot was the first that offered, and then also his eight fellows. And then she was wrapped in cered cloth of Raines, from the top to the toe, in thirtyfold, and after she was put in a web of lead, and then in a coffin of marble. And when she was put in the earth Sir Launcelot swooned, and lay long still, while the hermit came and awaked him, and said: Ye be to blame, for ye displease God with such manner of sorrow-making. ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... ever permit herself to be kissed by a man unless she had every intention of marrying him immediately or was already married to him. Miss Eliza had often said that she would far rather see Arethusa dead and cold in her coffin than to see her the sort of girl who thought so little of herself as to kiss a man she was not to marry. This was really at the bottom of Arethusa's expressed objection to being kissed by Timothy on those occasions when such unexpected conduct of his ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... stones standing on their edges, with a flat atone covering the whole. It was enveloped in coarse clothes, * * * the whole wrapped in deer-skins, the hair of which was shaved off in the manner in which the Indians prepare them for market. Enclosed in the stone coffin were the working utensils, beads, feathers, and other ornaments of dress which ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... wreath. "When she died," said he, in a very hoarse solemn voice, "when she died, the sound-post of that violin broke into pieces with a ringing crack, and the sound-board was split from end to end. The faithful instrument could only live with her and in her; it lies beside her in the coffin, it has been buried with her." Deeply agitated, I sank down upon a chair, whilst the Councillor began to sing a gay song in a husky voice; it was truly horrible to see him hopping about on one foot, and the crape strings (he still had his hat on) flying about the room and up to the violins ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... insignia from the minister for war, a fervent Royalist. When he received no reply to this reasonable request, in an act of courage, rare at the time, he let it be known to the court that if a baton did not arrive in time for his father-in-law's funeral, he would place ostentatiously on his coffin, the baton awarded to him by the Emperor. The government then decided that they would supply ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... it was not all over! That group around the foot of the gallows; that cart and empty coffin; that shrouded and bound figure, convulsed and swaying in the air—blasted his sight. With a loud cry he dashed his hand up to his eyes to shut out the horrible vision, and fell heavily upon the floor. He lay there as one dead until ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... it by the aid of the modern discoveries in antiseptics of Laskowski, Signer Franchina of Naples, and Dr. Dupre of Paris. This physician told me that by his process the body would, without the peculiarly-sealed coffin used by the Swiss embalmers, last 'firm and white as Carrara marble ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... death, not life, that opened her eyes. When David Loring lay in his coffin, Robinette's heart was suddenly seized with growing pains. Her vision widened; words and promises took on a new and larger meaning, and she became a serious woman for her years, although there was an ineradicable gaiety of spirit in her ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... goodwife of Ladyfield in her appointed place beside her husband and her only child, Gilian taking a cord at the head of the coffin as it was lowered into the red jaws of the grave prepared for it. The earth thudded on the lid, the spades patted the mould, the people moved off, and he was standing yet, listening to the bird that shook a song of passionate melody from its little throat as it becked upon a table tombstone. ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... an' it canna be I sud ever forget yon face ye shawed me i' the coffin, the bonniest, sairest sicht I ever saw," returned Malcolm, with a quaver ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... bundle a good pillow. It was a descent from the luxury of last night; but a spy, I reflected philosophically, cannot expect a feather bed two nights running, and this one was at any rate airier and roomier than the coffin-like bunk of the Dulcibella, and ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... alone; our children are dead, and, therefore, we are at liberty to pursue such a course. Oh, William, then we shall be happy forever! Go, my beloved husband! and when the hour comes, call me to your side. Let us live, and, if need be, die for the fatherland! Let it be inscribed on our coffin: 'They have done their duty. The fatherland ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... pride quickened in her. She wanted none of that beast's pity. She responded to the strange sense of discipline before fate that makes a man walk soldierly to the electric chair; inspires a caught spy to stand placidly before his own coffin and face the firing-squad; led Joan of Arc after one panic of terror to wait serene among ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... he met a ponderous motor-driven trolley of great length—the thing was evidently bound for the Temple. Two hundred workmen followed behind the trolley, and the Temple-messenger noticed that on the trolley, lying beside the huge coffin-like packing-case that formed its chief burden, were a number of hoisting and hauling tackles, with a pile of ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... the plumed hearse, a stately affair, with a bas-relief of funereal figures upon its sides. We proceeded quite across the city to the Necropolis, where the coffin was carried into a chapel, in which we found already another coffin, and another set of mourners, awaiting the clergyman. Anon he appeared,—a stern, broad-framed, large, and bald-headed man, in a black-silk ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... productions, it still depends upon its Northern partner to fetch and carry all that it produces, and the little that it consumes. Possessed of all the raw materials of manufactures and the arts, its inhabitants look to the North for everything they need from the cradle to the coffin. Essentially agricultural in its constitution, with every blessing Nature can bestow upon it, the gross value of all its productions is less by millions than that of the simple grass of the field gathered into Northern barns. With all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various |
