"Executioner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... charger the head of John the Baptist. 26. And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath's sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. 27. And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, 28. And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... roads of blood. Perhaps of all the uncivilized nations under the sun, the native Indians of America were the most humane; I have seen an hundred instances of their humanity and integrity;—when a white man was under the lash of the executioner, at Savannah in Georgia, for using an Indian woman ill, I saw Torno Chaci, their King, run in between the offender and the corrector, saying, "whip me, not him;"—the King was the complainant, indeed, but the man deserved a much severer chastisement. This was a Savage ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... unexpected which he tried to shake off lest it should fasten itself upon his life for good and all. And the other, muttering cautiously with downcast eyes, supposed that his comrade had seen the news of de P—-'s executioner—that was the expression he used—having been ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... "I beseech you all," he said again, "to believe that I die in the Catholic faith." He repeated the Miserere psalm, the psalm De Profundis, and the Paternoster. The executioner, as usual, begged his pardon. "I have deserved a thousand deaths," he muttered. He made the sign of the cross upon the saw-dust, and kissed it, then laid ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... fetch the poison; and this is the only chance they have of saving their lives. After sentence is pronounced upon them by the judge, they are asked in court, whether they will die by the hands of the executioner, or whether they will go to the Upas tree for a box of poison? They commonly prefer the latter proposal, as there is not only some chance of preserving their lives, but also a certainty, in case of their safe return, that a provision will be made for them in future by the Emperor. They are also ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... been selected to act as herald, provoked by the reception he had met with, undertook to act as executioner. Dermot's arms were bound tightly behind him, and he was again placed on the pony from which he had dismounted. The rope was secured to the beam, and the savage remorselessly prepared to ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... his rooms at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Every fact which was calculated to arouse sympathy for her was also helping to condemn her. No one doubted that she had shot Stephen Ballantyne. He deserved shooting—very well. But that did not give her the right to be his executioner. What was her defence to be? A sudden intolerable provocation? How would that square with the dragging of his body across the carpet to the door? There was the fatal ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... you have caused many an Englishman's body to be unburied, and to rot above ground, not one of your bones shall be buried," pronounced Captain Church. And he ordered an old Indian, who acted as executioner, to ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... and sentencing those which they had never studied nor understood: as also these by the approbation of the ignorant multitude, with whose mind they have most affinity, can easily demolish the humanities and ratiocination of Aristotle, as the latter was the executioner of the Divine philosophies of others. See, then, what it comes to, if all should aspire to the sacred splendour, and yet are occupied ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... himself as a young man with only his tragedy in his wallet. Shall I ever be able to get mine played? Can you fancy the catcall music beginning, and the pit hissing at that perilous part of the fourth act, where my executioner comes out from the closet with his great sword, at the awful moment when he is called upon to amputate? They say Mr. Fielding, when the pit hissed at a part of one of his pieces, about which Mr. Garrick had warned him, said, 'Hang them, they have found it out, have they?' and finished ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... It is said that the championship of England was to be decided at some little distance from London on the morning of the day on which Thurtell was executed, and that, when he came out on the scaffold, he inquired privily of the executioner if the result had yet become known. Jack Ketch was not aware, and Thurtell expressed his regret that the ceremony in which he was chief actor should take place so inconveniently early in the day. Think of a poor Thurtell forced to take ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... question of crime on one side," said I, "abortion is out of our power. If the means employed are not violent they are uncertain, and if they are violent they are dangerous to the mother. I will never risk becoming your executioner; but reckon on me, I will not forsake you. Your honour is as dear to me as your life. Becalm, and henceforth think that the peril is mine, not yours. Make up your mind that I shall find some way of escape, and that there will be no need to cut short that life, to preserve which I would gladly ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... understood everything," was the quick reply. "That man," he went on, "robbed me and gave me deliberately into the hands of the police. I swore to be avenged, and I have killed him—as he deserves. He was an assassin, and I am his executioner!" ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... from all the mental and moral philosophers, could wrestle with French and Latin verbs, and had memorized half the things Tennyson and Emerson had ever written, but could not milk a cow or churn up a week's supply of butter if the executioner stood ready with his axe to chop off her pretty yellow mop of a head in case she failed. How old Billy stormed when Sam started "keeping company" ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... sent word that he would be glad to see me, I, accompanied by the Interpreter, the Commander of the Escort, and last, but certainly not least, Herr VON KLEVERMANN, arrived at the Palace. Found that the Lord High Chamberlain had been removed yesterday. The Lord High Executioner was acting in his stead. In fact, this overworked official seemed to be the solitary survivor of the Imperial Household. The Lord High Executioner told us that His Majesty had been very irritable yesterday. The ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... The executioner obeyed, but the blow had been barely delivered when a loud snap was heard, and the tortured man experienced instant relief. Jock Bruce's little device had been successful, the instrument of torture ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... neck in the socket of a mock guillotine. Above him was suspended a huge gleaming knife that seemed to tremble, as if about to fall. At his side was a fellow dressed in the somber garments of an executioner. ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... trifle have them boiled in the bazaar by persons who are not only cooks, but sellers of sheepsheads, and are therefore called raa"s, or in the Egyptian dialect rewwas." The proverb is in the present case evidently meant as a play upon the literal meaning ("headsman," hence by implication "executioner") of the word rewwas, although I cannot find an instance of the word being employed in this sense. It is, however, abundantly evident from the general context that this is the author's intention in the passage in question, Alaeddin's head being metaphorically ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... then joy and solace have from me, I tears from thee, and punishment and woe? Now these mine hands shall make an end of thee. This, if thou know'st it not, for poison know. Much grieve I that thou should'st too honoured be By the executioner who deals the blow; Should'st die a death too easy: since I wot, For thee too shameful hand ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... the scaffold gravely. He shook hands with the chaplain first, then the executioner, thanking the one, forgiving the other. The executioner pushed him back gently, says one account. At the moment when the assistant put the hideous rope round his neck, he made a sign to the chaplain to take the crown-piece which he had in his right hand, and said to him, "For ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... in the last Act may be noticed here. A Chandala or executioner leads a criminal to the place of execution. The latter bears a stake (Sula) on his shoulder, and is followed by his wife and son who use no expressions suggestive of tenderness but only of sacrifice—a stern sense of duty. At ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... being declared enemies by the senate, he starved them to death; Nero in the island of Ponza, and Drusus in the vaults of the Palatium. It is thought by some, that Nero was driven to a voluntary death by the executioner's shewing him some halters and hooks, as if he had been sent to him by order of the senate. Drusus, it is said, was so rabid with hunger, that he attempted to eat the chaff with which his mattress was stuffed. The relics of both were so scattered, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... Alesia's husband), he being loyal to his half-brother, King Richard, while Joan was a vehement partisan of her son-in-law, Henry the Fourth. When no one came forward, in answer to her appeal, as the Duke's executioner, Joan exclaimed, "Cursed be you villains! are none of you bold enough to kill a man?" A squire volunteered to officiate, but when he had seen and heard the man whom he was to slay, he shrank from the terrible task. "Madam," was his remonstrance to the Countess, ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... the hands of the executioner, I could not observe what was going on around me. When I began to awake from the absorption of my pain and indignation, I found myself in my room. I had been ordered thither, and had mechanically obeyed. I was on my bed, ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... the table furiously with his clenched fist, shrieking: "Then Hell ought to open its jaws and swallow the whole band! But wait, I know what to do. Six months will soon be over, and then I'll make short work with the fine gentleman. I'll be judge and executioner in one person, and the trial won't last long, that I swear ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... tears then assisted her to remove her clothing, but she firmly said, "Instead of weeping, rejoice; I am very happy to leave this world and in so good a cause." Then she knelt, and after praying stretched out her neck to the executioner, imagining that he would strike off her head while in an upright posture and with the sword, as in France; they told her of her mistake, and without ceasing to pray she laid her head on the block. There was a universal feeling of compassion, even the headsman himself being so moved ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... through Dacre. His hands clenched. He was as a man in the presence of his executioner. The paralysing spell was upon him again, constricting as a rope about his neck. But sacrifice was no part of his nature. With despair at his heart, he yet made a desperate ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... desperate panic. The sight of his brother's flesh bared to the bite of the lash brought home to him the horrifying significance of a flogging, and then, as if to emphasize that significance, the executioner gave his cat-o'-nine-tails a practice swing. As the lashes hissed through the air the victim at the post stiffened rigidly, but his brother, outside the inclosure, writhed in his tracks and uttered a faint moan. Profiting ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... host may be the Archangel Michael himself, or the holy Saint Mark, and the house to which you are bidden may be a paradise full of other angels! But I would as soon sit down before the grating and look at the hooded brother, while the executioner slipped the noose over my head to strangle me, as to go to any place on a bidding delivered by a fellow with such a jail-bird's head. It is as round as a bullet and as yellow as cheese. He has eyes like a turtle's and teeth like ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... to the most brutal. The hangman uses an argument which everyone can understand. In this sense, therefore, force must be the ultimate sanction, though it is equally true that to get the force you must appeal to motives very different from those wielded by the executioner. The application of this analogy of criminal law to questions of morality and religion affects the final conclusions of ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Countess of Salisbury who, when an old woman upwards of seventy, was beheaded by the order of Henry VIII, and caused the headman much trouble by refusing to place her head upon the block; an illustration by Cruickshank depicts the executioner chasing ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... God permits that one shall be the executioner of the other for his evil deeds, that both may give place to his most holy gospel which, by the hands of the Spaniards, and by order of the most happy, catholic, and unconquered Emperor and King of Spain, Charles V of glorious memory, ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... Prince never existed: you will read that "the mission of Napoleon" was to be the "testamentary executor of the revolution;" and the Prince should have added the legatee; or, more justly still, as well as the EXECUTOR, he should be called the EXECUTIONER, and then his title would be complete. In Vendemiaire, the military Tartuffe, he threw aside the Revolution's natural heirs, and made her, as it were, ALTER HER WILL; on the 18th of Brumaire he strangled her, and on the 19th seized on her ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The offender was slung by a chain over a fire, and by means of a crane was dipped up and down into the flame, the torture being thus prolonged for an indefinite time. Francis was occasionally present in person at these exhibitions, the executioner waiting his ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... died of a single blow!" Presently, as his drunkenness fled, came dolour in its stead. So the Broker and the body were kept in the Governor's place till morning morrowed, when the Wali came out and gave order to hang the supposed murderer and commanded the executioner[FN508] make proclamation of the sentence. Forthwith they set up a gallows under which they made the Nazarene stand and the torch bearer, who was hangman, threw the rope round his neck and passed one end through the pulley, and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... thought and conduct. It is the source of his moral codes, of the sanctions of his ethics and philosophy. It can endow him with energy, courage and endurance, and can as easily take these away. It can make him acquiesce in his own punishment, and embrace his executioner, submit to poverty, bow to tyranny, and sink without complaint under starvation. Not merely can it make him accept hardship and suffering unresistingly, but it can make him accept as truth the explanation that his perfectly preventable afflictions are sublimely just ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... city on that epoch-making night, dared to send back a prompt and spirited refusal. "Your Majesty," he reported, "I have examined those under my command touching your mandate; all are good citizens and brave soldiers, but I am unable to find for you among them a single executioner!" ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... walking about in the allees. What a residence—what a life—what a people!" Dumouriez could but lament with the royal family, and exhort them to be patient. But the endurance of the victims is exhausted sooner than the cruelty of the executioner. How could it be expected that a courageous and proud princess, who had been constantly surrounded by the adulation of the court, could love the Revolution that was the instrument of her humiliation and her torture? or see ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... without any start; it was the voice she expected, and she was meeting the expected eyes. Her face was as grave as if she had been looking at her executioner, while his was adjusted to the intention of soothing and propitiating her. Once a handsome face, with bright color, it was now sallow and deep-lined, and had that peculiar impress of impudent suavity which comes from courting favor while accepting disrespect. He ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... writer says of them: "The Mang is a village menial in the Maratha villages, making all leather ropes, thongs and whips, which are used by the cultivators; he frequently acts as watchman; he is by profession a thief and executioner; he readily hires himself as an assassin, and when he commits a robbery he also frequently murders." In his menial capacity he receives presents at seed-time and harvest, and it is said that the Kunbi will never send the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... woman in her nakedness is put to death. The queen believed herself exercising her right; only inasmuch as the injury had been secret, she was doing herself justice as best she could. The passive accomplice would become the executioner of the other, and the punishment would thus spring from the crime itself. The hand would ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... British, from Gilbert & Sullivan's 'lord high executioner'] n. The person in an organization who knows the most about some aspect ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... went on, "the executioner driving four little pieces of wood between the cords, after the Capuchins have blessed the hammer and nails. Ah, heavens! Sister, how enraged they seem with him, because he will not speak. Mother! mother! give me your hand, I want to ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... fret of a rope. Many a beautiful woman has swung from that beam by neck, or feet, or wrists, and her body dropped through the well into the Holy Jumna without the knowledge of any save her master and her executioner." ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... touch the music—and soon I was rattling through it, all my thoughts three thousand miles away in a little Ohio town. When I had finished I arose in grim silence, took the music, held it toward the chief executioner, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... among all the inhabitants of Venice! Monstrous! Because they were the enemies of this infamous government, because they were reputed heretics, were they to languish in The Leads where he had languished twenty-five years ago, or were they to perish under the executioner's axe? He detested the government a hundred times more than they did, and with better reason. He had been a lifelong heretic; was a heretic to-day, upon sincerer conviction than them all. What a queer ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... probably never know now; but the fact remains that, instead of turning out the Fiend I'd been led to expect, he was one of the most considerate men I've ever met. He wouldn't even let me unlock my own boxes, but took the keys and opened them for me himself. (Didn't an executioner braid the hair of some queen whose head he was going to chop off? I must look the incident up, when I have time.) Anyway, I thought of it when the Custom House man was being so polite; but the analogy didn't go any farther, for my ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... which was indignantly denied by Bragadino. The pasha, becoming enraged, ordered the four Venetians to be put to death, and in a few minutes Generals Baglioni, Martinengo, and Quirini were executed in the presence of Bragadino, for whom a more terrible death was reserved. The executioner cut off his nose and ears; three times he was made to lay his head upon the block, as if to be beheaded, then, heavily chained, was thrown into a dark dungeon, and left for nine ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... do; I had warned myself. Would I sacrifice a retribution sacred and comprehensive, for the momentary triumph over an individual? If not, let me forbear to look out of doors; for I felt that in the selfsame moment in which I saw the dog of an executioner raise his accursed hand against my mother, swifter than the lightning would my dagger search his heart. When I heard the roar of the cruel mob, I paused—endured—forbore. I stole out by by-lanes of the city from my poor exhausted sisters, whom I left sleeping in each other's innocent arms, into ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... thing is to see this executioner chap going along behind all the kneeling figures, afore he knocks their heads off, and pulling this one here and a-shovin' that one theer, so arrangin' on 'em that he can have a clean stroke when he ups ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... said she, pointing to Lepretre. The four accused, who were included in a common alibi, fell by this one admission under the executioner's axe. They rose and bowed to her ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... up his abode. He seized them, held them prisoners all night, and led them out in the morning to be the principal actors in a farce which he dared not turn to tragedy. Condemned to death, their sins confessed, they heard the tolling of the great bell, and stood bareheaded before the executioner. The scene was prepared with the art of a consummate playwright, and the spectators were delighted by a speech of rare eloquence and amazed by the sudden exhibition of a clemency that was born of fear. Magnanimously pardoning those whom he dared not destroy, Rienzi received a new oath ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... in this, as in almost every other respect connected with the subject, there is a considerable degree of cant, and a very great deal of wilful blindness. If a man be viciously disposed—and with very few exceptions, not a man dies by the executioner's hands, who has not been in one way or other a most abandoned and profligate character for many years—if a man be viciously disposed, there is no doubt that he will turn his Sunday to bad account, that he will take ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... Law as it appears to the imagination of the lower classes; something terrible, indefinable, inevitable, which is everywhere, and lurks in everyone's shadow; an omnipotent source of calamity which appears vaguely in the judge's black gown, between the police sergeant and the executioner, with the hands of the gendarme and the arms of the guillotine! She, who was subject to all the instinctive terrors of the common people, and who often repeated that she would much rather die than appear before the court—she ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... was forced to dance through the gloomy night. The shoes carried her over stack and stone; she was torn till she bled; she danced over the heath till she came to a little house. Here, she knew, dwelt the executioner; and she tapped with her fingers at the window, and said, "Come out! come out! I cannot come in, for I ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... ever, from all that existence has to bestow—from all the high hopes I had so often conceived—from all the future excellence my soul so much delighted to imagine,—to spend a few weeks in a miserable prison, and then to perish by the hand of the public executioner. No language can do justice to the indignant and soul-sickening loathing that these ideas excited. My resentment was not restricted to my prosecutor, but extended itself to the whole machine of society. ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... beautiful country," said the stern old Brown glancing upward to the eternal hills on his way to the gallows, as calmly as if he were returning home from a long journey. "So perish all such enemies of Virginia. All such enemies of the Union. All such foes of the human race," solemnly announced the executioner as he fulfilled ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... a peacock's tail in the full beauty, or of some meadow garnished with infinite kinds and diversity of pleasant flowers." Such was the discipline of Elizabeth's court that any man who struck another within it had his right hand chopped off by the executioner in a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Above was the executioner-in-chief, with two grim, truculent-looking assistants, making preparations for the fearful operation they were about to perform, or leaning indolently on ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... electrocution was a very small one. We four members of the committee were, of course, present with the executioner, who was to act under their orders. The others were the United States Marshal, the governor of the gaol, the chaplain, and three members of the press. The room was a small brick chamber, forming an outhouse to the Central ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... favored by Guido Fawkes. I wondered what he was looking up at. It couldn't be at the stars; such a desperado was neither astrologer nor astronomer. It must be at the high gallows, and he was going to be hanged presently. Would the executioner come into possession of his conical crowned hat and plume of feathers? I counted the ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... he belongs to God," said Christian. "And hark 'ee, Matthew Quintal, if ever again you do such a dastardly, cowardly, brutal act, I'll take on myself the office of your executioner, and will beat out your brains. You know me, Quintal; ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... and in cases in which nothing of the kind occurs, the erotic feelings of childhood may still exercise influence later in life. As examples from world-literature, I may mention: Heine, who was still a boy when he was so greatly attracted by his Sefchen, the executioner's niece, whose personality made a definite impression on the poet's maturer work;[107] Goethe, whose friendship with the sister of the little Derones, likewise had certain artistic results; Dante, who first met his Beatrice at the age of nine years, and ever thenceforward remained under her ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... The executioner was in great disorder, trembling all over; so he gave him two or three strokes without being able to finish the matter and then flung the axe out of his hand. But the sheriff forced him to take it up; and at three or four ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... what was it? The situation of common hangman was offered me. The employment was disgusting and horrible; but, at the same time, it was all I could get, and that was a sufficient inducement for me to accept of it. I was, therefore, the common executioner; and in that employment for some time earned a living. It was terrible; but necessity compelled me to accept the only thing I could obtain. You now know the reason why I became what I ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... followers what was essential to membership in the Christian Church, as well as what was essential to its existence and prosperity. I may also observe, that if the existence of class-meetings cannot be maintained except by the terror of the scorpion-whip, or rather executioner's sword, of expulsion from the church, it says little for them as a privilege, or place of delightful and joyous resort. My own conviction is, that if class-meetings, like love-feasts, were maintained and recommended as a privilege and useful means of religious ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... executioner; thou, the great, the dreadful, the eternal God. These words, therefore, as I have already said, signify that Christ the Mediator, through whom alone salvation comes, and by whom alone execution hath been deferred, now giveth up the soul, forbears to speak one syllable more for him, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... kind but firm; treating a man, although he may be a prisoner, as a man. If he violates rules, lock him up. Give him an opportunity to commune with himself and his Maker; also give him to understand that he is the executioner of his own sentence, and when he concludes that he can do right, release him. It matters not how vicious, how stubborn, or what kind of a temper he may have, when left with no one to talk to, and an opportunity to cool down, and ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... example to be made, extended lenity to some others who were tried the following day; and one convict, James Freeman, was pardoned on condition of his becoming the public executioner. ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... the greatness of the Seymours. But the tyrant died before the sentence was carried into effect, much to the joy of the good people of England, whom he had robbed and massacred. Several thousands perished by the axe of the executioner during his disgraceful reign, and some of them were the lights of the age, and the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... be; God would not allow it! Spurling himself had said that he had not sunk so low as that. Yet, in case it might be so, he would keep his word and help him to escape—from the Mounted Police, but not from himself. He would be the executioner if there must be one. The law should not rob him of his revenge. He would save Spurling's life in case he ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... the rope, the mulatto pulled it gently at first, but gradually increasing the pressure upon the prisoner's throat, as if to give him a satisfactory foretaste of the hanging sensation. This slow torture was too much for the attorney's fortitude; and, as his respiration grew painful, he called to his executioner to stop. Hatchie promptly ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... member of your family shall be respited, but on one condition.' To the agonised family conditions are as nothing. But they don't know the man of iron is determined to make a terrible example, and they cry, 'Any conditions.' 'He who is respited must serve as executioner to the others.' Great is the doom; you understand; but after all the name must be saved. Then in the family council the father goes to his youngest son and says, 'I have been a good father to you, my son; I have always been a kind father, have I not? answer me; I have never refused ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... said the Marquis of Brandenburg to the emperor, "instantly offer my head to the executioner, than renounce the gospel and approve idolatry. Christ did not institute the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to be carried in pomp through the streets, nor to be adored by the people. He said, 'Take, eat;' but never said, 'Put this sacrament ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... most abstruse points of the controversy concerning the Nature of Christ, without apparently one wavering thought as to the Deity of the Son of Mary. There, in the 'Consolation,' a book written in prison and in disgrace, with death at the executioner's hands impending over him—a book in which above all others we should have expected a man possessing the Christian faith to dwell upon the promises of Christianity—the name of Christ is never once mentioned, the tone, though religious and reverential, is that of a Theist only; ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... in the mere demonstration of hostility, and gently gathering up his oar gave the countryman the right of way. The courage of the latter rose as the danger passed, and as far as he could be heard, he continued to exult in the wildest excesses of insult: "Ah-heigh! brutal executioner! Ah, hideous headsman!" Da capo. I now know that these people never intended to do more than quarrel, and no doubt they parted as well pleased as if they had actually carried broken heads from the encounter. But at the time I felt affronted and trifled with ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... sensation in England, as well they might, for they heralded the struggle which within half a century was to deliver up James's son to the executioner. The Parliament of 1604 met in angrier mood than any Parliament which had assembled at Westminster since the dethronement of Richard II. Among the churches non-conformity began more decidedly to assume the form of secession. The key-note ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... of a few moments, his EYES WERE DUG OUT, AND THEIR SOCKETS FILLED WITH HOT EMBERS!! All this time the prisoner instead of bewailing his fate, seemed to surpass his tormentors in expressions of joy. At length when exhausted with loss of blood and unable to stand, his executioner closed the tragic scene by beating out his brains with a ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... people accustomed to live in the bright rays of the sun, and sung by the people and their princes, is most impressive. There is something relentless in that slow phrase of music; it is cold and sinister, like an iron bar wielded by some celestial executioner, and dropping in regular rhythm on the limbs of all his victims. As we hear it passing from C minor into G minor, returning to C and again to the dominant G, starting afresh and fortissimo on the tonic B flat, ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... he should myself, but I'm not the public executioner, and one can't fight a duel ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... very well pleased with the arrangement. Particularly pleased was I with Piragoff's transparent plan for disposing of me. For, now that it really came to action, I found myself shying somewhat at the office of executioner; though I meant to do my duty all the same. But the fact that this man was already arranging coolly to murder me made my task less unpalatable. The British sporting ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... the executioner of Madrid!" repeated he. "I have never committed crime in my life, though my blade has been reddened with the blood of my fellow-creatures. Yet no man takes my hand,—no man breaks bread or drinks wine with me. I, the dread minister of justice, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... in his palace for the return of the Magi; and his secret executioner was at hand, ready to set out for Bethlehem at any moment. And when he found that they had discovered his hypocrisy and wicked intentions, and that his infamous design was thwarted, his rage knew no bounds; and he vowed to himself that the Child-King should not ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... dogs!" I shouted, "if ye would see to-morrow's light. Touch one hair of his head and your king dies," and I covered Twala with my revolver. Sir Henry and Good also drew their pistols, Sir Henry pointing his at the leading executioner, who was advancing to carry out the sentence, and Good taking a deliberate ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... frightened and strangling lieutenant; and, as his executioner again relaxed a little, he continued: "Just let me up, and I'll do ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... of our father's fate, Abhorred, dishonored, self-convinced of sin, Blinded, himself his executioner. Think of his mother-wife (ill sorted names) Done by a noose herself had twined to death And last, our hapless brethren in one day, Both in a mutual destiny involved, Self-slaughtered, both the slayer and the ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... herself up erect. "No, I do not despise you, but I love you, and because I love you I will not that you should be a criminal. Had you poisoned the count, then I should have said, 'You have accomplished a good work. God has killed him by your hand; you are nothing more than the executioner, who has inflicted merited death upon the wicked, and has rid the world of him. Lift up your head and be joyful, for you were a tool in God's hand!' But you have poisoned a noble, good man, the son of your benefactress, and his death would cry out against you, and our child ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... Marie Louise, and she primped herself like another Mary Queen of Scots receiving a call from the executioner. She was calmed by the hope that she would learn her fate, at least, and she cared little what it was, so long as ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Sunday and feast-day, "with ringing of bells and with candles lighted and then extinguished and thrown upon the earth, in token of eternal malediction."[181] Leclerc was discovered, and taken to Paris for trial. The barbarous sentence of parliament was, that he be whipped in Paris by the common executioner on three successive days, then transferred to Meaux to receive the like punishment, and finally branded on the forehead with a red-hot iron, before being ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... pride as no doubt they hoped to do. This spirit bore him through those few moments that preceded the first words of his mock interrogation, but he felt himself shrink on the floor when he saw the slightest movement on the part of his executioner. The torture of that short period was the refinement of cruelty, but never for one moment did he waver from his fixed determination to face his inquisitors like a man and ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... who had watched him with such concern sprang forward and clasped her arms around the poor prisoner, looking up at the Indian emperor with beseeching eyes. It was Pocahontas, his favorite daughter. Her looks touched the old man's heart, and he bade the executioner to stand back, and gave orders that the captive should be released. Powhatan soon showed that he was in earnest in his act of mercy. He treated the prisoner in a friendly fashion, and two days later set him free ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... death!" he cried. "Death the judge, the gaoler, the executioner! He has done justice on them for me, and they will not break loose from the house he has made for them to lie in and to sleep in for ever. And now, friend Death, I am master in their stead, and you must give me time to enjoy the mastership before ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... the inscription over his head should state that there was no fault found in him but only that he was a Christian. This picture my sister wants to buy, shows him stripped and bound to the tree, and the executioner's work going on. Arrows are piercing him in various places; and the saint's face is raised to heaven with the look upon it of struggling pain and triumphing faith together. You can see that the ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... better than republics; for many, they will ever so remain. And better, on all hands, that peace should rule with a scepter, than than the tribunes of the people should brandish their broadswords. Better be the subject of a king, upright and just; than a freeman in Franko, with the executioner's ax ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... walk had been built out from the second story of the prison to the executioner's platform. From this high scaffold rose a great cross with ropes and chains dangling from the arms. Below were piled high heaps of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... wicked by men or by devils, who play a large, and to themselves thoroughly enjoyable and merry, part here. The sculptor would seem to have witnessed the punishment of the blasphemer; how adroitly the executioner planted knee on the culprit's bosom, as he lay on the ground, and out came the sinful tongue, to meet the iron pincers. The minds of those who worked thus seem to have been almost insanely preoccupied just then with the human countenance, but by no means exclusively in ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... confess to you that when, having fired wide, they turned to go and the cheat was evident, twice before you pulled the bandage away I had lifted my gun. But I could not fire it, cavalier. To make me your executioner! Me, your wife—and while you thought so vilely ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... mad act, we might have gone our way unmolested. Such is your crime and its consequences; and if I deliver you up to the crew, and explain what you have done, they will save me the trouble of being your executioner. Take him on deck," he said, in Romaic, to the men who held Paolo. "I will follow shortly; and you may, meantime, make preparations to ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... shame on their brows,—pale, panting, terrified, despairing,—despairing with I know not what horrible despair,—shrinking under that public reprobation which ought to have visited the penalty, and spared the passive treatment, the executioner,—the officers strive savagely. The victim clings to the scaffold and shrieks for pardon. His clothes are torn,—his shoulders bloody,—still he resists. At length, after three-quarters of an hour of this monstrous ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... Mayton, that my experience has been the reverse of a pleasant one. If King Herod were yet alive I'd volunteer as an executioner." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... a silence. Eleanor's being was flooded with the strangest, most ecstatic sense of deliverance. She had been her own executioner; and ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... years before, would have thought himself honoured by a glance or a word from the daughter of so many Caesars, should call her the Austrian woman, should send her from jail to jail, should deliver her over to the executioner, was surely a great event in his life. Whether he had reason to be proud of it or ashamed of it, is a question on which we may perhaps differ from his editors; but they will admit, we think, that he ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... took off his hat and handed it to him, and then, letting go of Jurgis' arm, tried to get out of his overcoat. After two or three attempts he accomplished this, with the lackey's help, and meantime a second man had approached, a tall and portly personage, solemn as an executioner. He bore straight down upon Jurgis, who shrank away nervously; he seized him by the arm without a word, and started toward the door with him. Then suddenly came Master Freddie's voice, "Hamilton! My fren' will remain ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... from his heart before God, he hath gained. For God can do nothing but to be merciful towards them that humble themselves. For if God should always be stern and angry, so should I, said Luther, be afraid of him as of the executioner. And seeing that I must stand in fear of the Pope, of the Emperor, of the Papistical Bishops, and of other tyrants, which are God's enemies, to whom then should I fly and take my refuge, if I should ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... a warning example to the German scribblers, and remind them of the penalty incurred by those who stir up resistance against me by their insults and sneers. I will silence these libellers once for all, and destroy their contemptible free press by the executioner's axe. The punishment inflicted upon Palm seemed not sufficient—let M. Lange, then, be another warning to them. Let him die ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... Raleigh on the 29th of October, 1618, standing by the block, addressing the executioner and the multitude, when handling the shining axe: "This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases!" Lying down and fitting himself to the block, the executioner asked him to alter the position of his head, when he replied: "It is no matter which ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... hearts,' as your uncle has often called him. He is a daring notoriety seeker, and this is rare sport for him." Mrs. Garrison's eyes were blazing, her hands were clenched, her bearing that of one who is both judge and executioner. ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... on this probably mythical gentleman as one of the glories of our family. And then there was an old man—very old—who walked up and down Sixth Street with his head wrapped in a bandanna handkerchief, bearing a parrot on his shoulder. The boys of the neighbourhood believed that he was Sanson, the executioner of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. We shivered when we saw him; but we boasted of his existence in our neighbourhood, all the same. After I had read "Cagliostro" I devoured every line on the subject of the French Revolution I could find. It seemed to me that I would have ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... engine to be employed on trifles. Who wants a wheel to break a butterfly upon; or, to crush a worm who calls for a pavior's rammer? Monsieur Montigny, listen. Mercy is Heaven's first attribute, and the executioner is the State's meanest, as well as last, servant; shall I, then, stoop to this, who may aspire to that? Shall I wield a whip of legal scorpions before your son, should he seek to re-enter Stillyside? Would you have me, as once Heaven's ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Nature has supplied his lordship with characteristics of countenance admirably befitting such a scene. Had he been only elevated to the kindred office of actual executioner, he would have been spared the expense of a mask; for without it, no one could look into his eyes. Of course, he was teeming with compassion and regret, which jointly resulted in a sentence of transportation for TEN YEARS. Mr. O'Doherty, who stood unmoved, after a few preliminary ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... no more. Indeed, it hastened to assure the executioner that it was only too anxious to be comfortably pinned ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sent orders to the governors in the several provinces for the Huguenots to be murdered, Viscount Dorte, who commanded at Bayonne, wrote thus to the King: 'Sire, Among the inhabitants of this town, and your Majesty's troops, I could not find so much as one executioner; they are honest citizens and brave soldiers. We jointly, therefore, beseech your Majesty to command our arms and lives in things that are practicable.' This great and generous soul looked upon a base action as ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... in these hidden, secret chambers. These Turks were as much masters here as their old predecessors who had reared these stones. This black upon his heels might have been the grinning, faithful executioner of some Khedive or Caliph—he might have been the very Masrur, the Sworder of Vengeance ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... weep, but were not able to touch the hearts of her tormentors. You had ordered her to be racked, if she would not retract. They did not ask her whether she would do this—they racked her. But her soul was strong and full of courage; and, under the tortures of the executioner, her lips remained mute. Let theologians say and determine whether Anne Askew's faith was a false one; but this they will not dare deny: that in the noble enthusiasm of this faith, she was a heroine who at least did not deny ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... the fire, nor all the brimstone and tortures they endure, which murders them alive. No, no; it is the domestical cause of all these mischiefs that racks their consciences and is their crudest executioner. This, this is the greatest of their evils; for a soul that has shaken off the fetters of flesh and blood, and is full of the love of God, no more disordered with unruly passions, nor blinded with the night of ignorance, sees clearly the vast injury she has done to herself to have offended ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier |
