"Halter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... George thought that if he could ride a pony, which he sometimes did, he certainly could ride a donkey, and at any rate he was determined to try. He went back to the stable therefore to ask the groom for a halter, but the groom was not in the stable, unfortunately, or he would have known better, it is to be hoped, than to have encouraged the young gentleman in what he knew to be wrong. So George helped himself to an old piece of rope which he found under ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... the canyon, Capt. Ned climbed a tree and arranged the halter, then came down and noosed his man. He opened his Bible, and laid aside his hat. Selecting a chapter at random, he read it through, in a deep bass voice and with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 'surrounded by a fierce pack of dogs, of size proportioned to that of their masters, and which rushed forth on every side as if bent on devouring both myself and beast: being altogether unprovided with any means of defence but the rope-end of the same halter that supplied my stirrups, I was (I confess) not a little disconcerted by the assault of so unexpected an enemy.' From this he was soon delivered at the moment by some of the gentle giants, who 'pelted off the animals with the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... no tournament now; it was a struggle for life itself! And whilst Dorothy's lover was animated by a stern resolve to punish his foe, at whatever the cost, De la Zouch fought like a madman, because he fought with a halter round ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... his "fine airs" behind his back, cringed and submitted when they met him face to face—for in a convict ship the greatest villain is the greatest hero, and the only nobility acknowledged by that hideous commonwealth is that Order of the Halter which is conferred by the hand of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... system no reforms were possible, and the fact that none were ever made, was pointed to in order to justify its horrors. Society took no interest in them whatever while they were being pushed lower and lower down the social scale, but met them at the lowest steps, and, halter in hand, gravely professed the utmost concern in their ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... "And do you think I care for that? That having been driven by a woman's perfidy into crime I am going to bridle my tongue and keep down the words which are my only safeguard from insanity? No, no; while my miserable breath lasts I will curse her, and if the halter is to cut short my words, it shall be with her name blistering ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... amid the trees. Two horses, with their feet fettered, were fastened by a halter to the lower branches of ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his execution. He was drawn through the streets at the tails of horses; he was hung for some time by a halter, but was taken down while yet alive; he was mutilated and disembowelled, his head then cut off, his body divided in four, his head impaled over London Bridge, and his quarters distributed to four principal towns ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... She was in mortal terror—every second she was sure she was going to fall—but she couldn't bear the vision of Gypsy's reproachful eyes above a strangling halter; Gypsy shouldn't think her hostess, so to speak, less kind ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... creations of Hood, or George Colman, and put to shame the flights of Baron Munchausen. Not that Tom Wilson was a romancer; oh no! He was the very prose of prose, a man in a mist, who seemed afraid of moving about for fear of knocking his head against a tree, and finding a halter suspended to its branches—a man as helpless and as ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... until they are spent. For such a person to lose his money is to suffer the most shocking reverse, and fall from heaven to hell, from all to nothing, in a breath. And all the more if he has put his head in the halter for it; if he may be hanged to-morrow for that same purse so dearly earned, so foolishly departed! Villon stood and cursed; he threw the two whites into the street; he shook his fist at heaven; he stamped, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... It is given to them to bear the sword, and a command is to thee, if thy heart cannot acquiesce with all things, with meekness and patience to suffer. Discontent in the mind sometimes puts discontent into the mouth; and discontent in the mouth doth sometimes also put a halter about thy neck. For as a man speaking a word in jest may for that be hanged in earnest, so he that speaks in discontent may die for it in sober sadness. Above all, get thy conscience possessed more and more with this, that ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... having no provisions, they must either starve or seek succor at the fort. They chose the latter course, and bore away for the St. John's. A few casks of Spanish wine yet remained, and nobles and soldiers, fraternizing in the common peril of a halter, joined in a last carouse. As the wine mounted to their heads, in the mirth of drink and desperation, they enacted their own trial. One personated the judge, another the commandant; witnesses were called, with arguments and speeches on ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the names of the Saints, had been first brought into contempt by Bern and violated by her antichristian innovations: "The Articles of Confederation," said Erlach, "do not touch upon religion, and grant full liberty in regard to it."—"Well!" replied the old landamman, Halter, "if you yourselves say, that the Articles of Confederation do not touch upon religion, then they cannot be violated even by our intervention in matters of faith; and if your people or others appeal to us for sympathy or succor, where true Christianity, as we have received it from our old fathers, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... Weathersky with the horse. Now when he had gone a little way, Farmer Weathersky thought he would just stop and have another glass of brandy; so he put a barrel of red-hot nails under his horse's nose, and a sieve of oats under his tail, hung the halter, upon a hook, and went into the inn. So the horse stood there and stamped and pawed, and snorted and reared. Just then out came a lassie, who thought it a shame to ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... what to do; but all the men were shouting different advice and it was a question whether he would be able to get control before a disaster happened. I said nothing and did nothing but kept fairly close to him. Narayan Singh found his proper place alongside me, with the halter of Ayisha's camel in his hand; and ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... peck me to bits, he carried me in his arms, and had to bear hard words because of the burden he brought on board ship. It's not in my nature to be sick, and so I got well. Every man has his own way, and Soren has his; but the horse must not be judged by the halter. Taking one thing with another, I have lived more agreeably with him than with the man whom they called the most noble and gallant of the King's subjects. I have had the Stadtholder Gyldenlowe, the King's half-brother, for my husband; and afterwards I took Palle Dyre. One is as good as another, each ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... fashion you're meaning; having gone out so long since, 'tis barely coming in yet. I'd not give a farthing for the man who couldn't lead me; only, God help him! if he ever leaves his hands off the halter." ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... me something worse. And this is Miguel Rapponi, a whole lot whiter than he sounds. What, for Lordy sake, you wasting time on this little old hasbeen burg for? Take it from me, there ain't anything left here but dents in the road and a brimstone smell. We're all plumb halter-broke and so ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... taught that "the justice of God was the devil's armour;" [Footnote: New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 9.] and why Endicott sternly warned the first comers, "Take heed you break not our ecclesiastical laws, for then ye are sure to stretch by a halter." ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... left them, went about their sport after their own fashion, and brought us a fine buck antelope after breakfast. They have a bullock trained to go about the fields with them, led at a quick pace by a halter, with which the sportsman guides him, as he walks along with him by the side opposite to that facing the deer he is in pursuit of. He goes round the deer as he grazes in the field, shortening the distance at every circle till he comes within shot. At the signal given the bullock ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... fixed it so that he is obliged to kill me," he muttered. "It's my life, or his neck for a halter, and he knows it. The blood-thirsty devil! If I could only get to Brissac's bunk-shanty and lay my hands on ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... manuscript he had in hand, he would give up all further thought of writing. "The quill and I are divorced," he wrote to Greenough in June, 1833, "and you cannot conceive the degree of freedom, I could almost say of happiness, I feel at having got my neck out of the halter." Longings for his old sea-life often came over him. "You must not be surprised," he wrote, half-jestingly, to the same friend, "if you hear of my sailing a sloop between Cape Cod and New York." But he had no definite plans marked out. The only thing about ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... pluck fro thy seed hemp, the fimble hemp clean, This looketh more yellow, the other more green; Use this one for thy spinning, leave Michael the t'other, For shoe-thread and halter, for ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... hurry you down the stream; or, such a delicate steeple, in the town as Bow, to vault from; or, a braver height, as Paul's; Or, if you affected to do it nearer home, and a shorter way, an excellent garret-window into the street; or, a beam in the said garret, with this halter [HE SHEWS HIM A HALTER.]— which they have sent, and desire, that you would sooner commit your grave head to this knot, than to the wedlock noose; or, take a little sublimate, and go out of the world like a rat; or a fly, as one said, with a straw in your arse: any way, rather than to follow ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... reposed at a brook, where the carpets were laid out and we smoked a pipe. A curious illustration occurred here of the abundance of wood in Servia. A boy, after leading a horse into the brook, tugged the halter and led the unwilling horse out of the stream again. "Let him drink, let him drink his fill," said a woman; "if everything else must be paid with gold, at least ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... exercise, he presented his watch to Mr. sheriff Vaillant; thanked him and the other gentlemen for all their civilities; and signified his desire of being buried at Breden or Stanton, in Leicestershire. Finally, he gratified the executioner with a purse of money; then, the halter being adjusted to his neck, he stepped upon a little stage, erected upon springs, on the middle of the scaffold; and the cap being pulled over his eyes, the sheriff made a signal, at which the stage fell from under ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... terror ceased at once upon hearing his voice, and there was an instant relaxation of all violence of resistance as he came up to her, took her halter from the Schneiderlein, patted her glossy neck, and spoke to her. But the tumult of warning voices around him assured him that it would be a fatal thing to spare the steed the passage through the fire, and he strove by encouragements and caresses with voice and hand to get ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... want me to make you a present of him?" demanded Slim, indignantly sarcastic. "Maybe you think I'd ought to throw in a halter so's you ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... "'tis winter with thee now. A poor old rogue! Did the new housewife talk of a halter because he showed his teeth when her ill-nurtured brat wanted to ride on him? Nay, old Spring, thou shalt share thy master's fortunes, changed though they be. Oh, father! father! didst thou guess how it would be with thy boys!" And throwing himself on the grass, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... miles away: his section was under alfalfa, and he had a comfortable house. One dark night, going home from his place, I followed a fence until I came to a cross fence. I was going slowly, when, all of a sudden, my horse stopped dead, and I shot over the fence, the bridle and halter came off, and away went my horse, leaving me to continue ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... English captain gave up his sword to John Paul Jones, he said: "It is very hard to surrender to a man who has fought with a halter around his neck." You see, Captain Jones would have been hanged as a pirate, if taken. Jones replied: "Sir, you have fought like a hero. I hope your ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... inspired great strength into the shepherd of the people. As when some stalled horse, fed on barley[490] at the manger, having snapped his halter, runs over the plain, striking the earth with his feet (accustomed to bathe in the smooth-flowing river), exulting, he holds his head on high, and around his shoulders his mane is dishevelled; and, trusting ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... you will be ruled by me, I'll tell you what you shall do. Mark what I say; for I'll teach you the way to come to heaven, if you stumble not—give all you have to the poor but one single penny, and with that penny buy you a good strong halter; and when you ha' done so, come to me, and I'll tell you what you shall ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... want to put a halter on your tongue. You can't come here to this camp and call too many names. You don't amount to much, of course, and nothing that you know how to say should be treated very seriously. It would be hard for a ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... evening I blew my horn for the hogs, and they returned to their pen obediently as the Princess had promised. I had scarcely finished numbering them when Marc'antonio came down the track, this time haling a recalcitrant she-goat by a halter. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... women. It's all plain sailing for them! Show a nobleman a coronet, or a fine estate, and you've got him, and may lead him where you like. It's the same with a tradesman. Show him some money and stir up his covetousness, and you may lead him as with a halter. And with the women it's also plain sailing. Give them finery and sweets—and you may do what you like with them. But as to the peasants—there's a long row to hoe with them! When he's at work from morn ...
— The First Distiller • Leo Tolstoy
... your screaming in my ears, you won't make me change my mind. I'm ready to treat with people that are reasonable, but when they bite me I bite back. I agree with you it's a hateful thing to have two of our brothers hanged; noblemen are not to be insulted with the halter; their honour should be spared and their heads taken off decently. But what can we do? Can we hesitate a moment between two noblemen's deaths and the destruction of all the peasantry? One man is as good as another now. So you may make as much rumpus as you please, it won't do any good. ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... Christianized and moralized under your care and direction, and under that of your tonsured crew. The "gentlemen" murderers are your herd, O most eminent shepherd! You ought to have and you could have stopped the rioters. And now your stola is a halter and your pallium gored with blood, otherwise innocent as is the blood of the lamb incensed on the altar of Saint ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... night must go before he'd see the morrow; Dreamt of his boots and spurs, and leather breeches, Of hunting-caps, and leaping rails and ditches; Left his warm nest an hour before the lark! Dragg'd his old uncle, posting, to the Park. Halter in hand, each vale he scour'd at loss, To spy out something like a chesnut horse; But no such animal the meadows cropt— At length beneath a tree sir Peter stopt; A branch he caught, then shook it, and down fell A fine horse chesnut in its prickly shell. There Tom, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... fiery horse, and take with long bounds the road up which they had just laboured. He had stopped to equip himself in some measure for this ride, but not the horse, which was without saddle or any sort of bridle but a halter strung about ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... about to hang himself, Finding a purse, then threw away his rope; The owner, coming to reclaim his pelf, The halter found; and used it. So is Hope Changed for Despair—one laid upon the shelf, 5 We take the other. Under Heaven's high cope Fortune is God—all you endure and do Depends on circumstance ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the ravine, sometimes on one bank, sometimes crossing stepping-stones or logs to the other, looking, talking, until a full hour had passed when they returned to the buggy. Adam began changing the halter for the bridle while Kate ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... will be brought before me, and I shall want the evidence of Master Walter Fletcher and of those who were in the boat with him as to what took place on the river. Methinks the evidence on that score, and the resistance which they offered to us this evening, will be sufficient to put a halter round their necks; but from what I have heard by the letter which the Lord Mayor sent me, there are others higher in rank concerned in the affair; doubtless we shall find means to make ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... a race-course; and the three horses were going down to run a Carriera or race. Four horses were to run bare-backed, their riders being well used to dispense with saddles, and managing to guide them with a rope halter in lieu of bridle. The purse was four scudi, (four dollars.) Two horses were to run at a time, and the race was then to be run off by the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... put out on pasture, he was being led by the daughter of Jahir along the side of a lake at noonday, and there he saw the mare Helweh, who was tethered close to the tent of her master. He immediately began to neigh, and slipped his halter. The young girl in her embarrassment let him go, and for modesty took refuge in the tent of a friend. The stallion remained on the spot until the girl returned. She seized the halter and ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... a simple halter and a stick, yet sometimes travel, at least in the larger island, at a desperate gallop. As the horses usually have panniers, the rider sits sideways over the withers, and if the panniers are empty they go at full speed in this position ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... little chilled by the cold mountain air and very willing to travel. Towards nightfall I heard the welcome tinkling of a bell, and soon saw first the smoke of camp fires, and then a village of tents and grime-covered wagons. How I tugged at Bobby's halter to make him go faster and then mounted him, without getting much more speed, can better be imagined ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... and ecclesiastical intolerance had rendered Italy nearly destitute of great men. Her famous sons were all either dead, murdered or exiled; reduced to silence by the scythe of time or by the Roman 'arguments of sword and halter.' Bruno burned, Vanini burned, Carnesecchi burned, Paleario burned, Bonfadio burned; Campanella banished, after a quarter of a century's imprisonment with torture; the leaders of free religious thought in exile, scattered over northern Europe. Tasso, worn out with misery ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the shadows of the western bluffs already darkening the river bank. Suddenly a faint cheer ran along the lines, and the men lifted themselves to gaze up the river. Urging the tired animals to a trot, the strong hand of a trooper grasping every halter-strap, Brant was swinging his long pack-train up the smoke-wreathed valley. The out-riding flankers exchanged constant shots with the skulking savages hiding in every ravine and coulee. Pausing only to ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... laconism; however it is not your fault. He is glad to hear you have receiv'd his translation of Beccaria's book, Des delits et des peines and the compliments of our friend Dr Gatti to whom I gave your direction before he went to London. Our friend Suard has entered his neck into the matrimonial halter; we are all of us very sorry for it for we know that nothing combin'd with love, will at last make ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... Newgate and those frightful days in the dock; and this makes me unfit for society. Should I again have a seat in the House I shall be afraid to get up upon my legs, lest I should find myself talking of the time in which I stood before the judge with a halter round my neck. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... as butter, humorous-looking, was led into the square of cloth- covered steel cables and cloth-covered steel uprights. The halter was removed and he was turned loose. Immediately he became restless, the ears were laid back, and he was a ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... a halter," continued the commanding officer commencing anew on a fresh supply of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... schoolma'am says you'll have to anyhow, because your name's down and you told her distinct you'd do anything she asked yuh to. Annie likes yuh a heap, Happy; she said so. Only she don't like the way yuh hang back on the halter. She told me, private, that she wished ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... her papa, and having put it in her pinafore, she skipped down the lane with it to the holm, where holding it out to let Bob (for that was the pony's name) see it, he instantly began trotting towards her, neighing with pleasure. She then told John to throw the halter over Bob's neck while he was eating, and he might jump on his back and ride him up to the stable, where he would find the side-saddle. John very soon appeared in front of the house with the pony neatly combed, brushed, and ornamented ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... much as queching. I remember, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's time of England, an Irish rebel condemned, put up a petition to the deputy, that he might be hanged in a withe, and not in an halter; because it had been so used, with former rebels. There be monks in Russia, for penance, that will sit a whole night in a vessel of water, till they be engaged with hard ice. Many examples may be put of the force of custom, both upon mind and body. Therefore, since custom is ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... mistake, adding, that such engines were as necessary to the proper discipline of the negroes in that latitude as the overseer himself. He then proceeded to detail several instances of fugitive negroes being dragged in capture to the foot of the gallows, where, with halter-encircled necks, they were made not only to acknowledge the error committed and expose accessories, but "pumped dry," as he facetiously termed it, as to the intended flight of other negroes on the estate. Sometimes, he said, it was necessary to suspend the culprit for a moment or so, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... upon one beast could she have done what she did; one took her a day and a night going at the pace she exacted. She knew by her instincts where the herds of ponies ran. It was easy to catch and halter any one she chose; no forest beast went in fear of her who had the wild-wood savour in her hair—but it meant more contriving and another stretch for her tense brain. For herself, she hardly dared stay at all. Prosper's breast under a dagger! If she had stayed she would not have slept. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... man of one hundred and ten years old; and he eats five hundred loaves of bread, and a side of beef, and drinks one hundred draughts of beer, unto this day. He knows how to restore the head that is smitten off; he knows how to cause the lion to follow him trailing his halter on the ground; he knows the designs of the dwelling of Tahuti. The majesty of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Khufu, the blessed, has long sought for the designs of the dwelling of Tahuti, that he may make the like of them in ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... Ass of the milk-cart stood at the edge of the field-road, and glanced across at the blooming thistle bush; but his halter was too short, and ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... will tell us. He will soon set things right. He knows all about horses. Jolly may have thrown his leg over his halter, and got furious. He's ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... glib defence (Which thou'dst have made for Peter's Pence) Of Church-rates, worthy of a halter; Two pipes of port (old port, 'twas said By honest Newport)[3] bought and paid By ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... 'tend to 'im." Hunter tossed the halter to Washburn. "I'll be blamed ef I want 'im." And he turned and ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... wealthy old lady of good position, who was at once her benefactress and tormentor. I do not know the details, but I have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and gentle creature, was once cut down from a halter in which she was hanging from a nail in the loft, so terrible were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting nagging of this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... as to horses. The foals are not separated from their dams for the first year after they are born: during the second year they are permitted to stay with their dams at night, but they should then be tied with a loose halter or some other such restraint. In the third year you begin to break them for ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... favours the poor boy received, that she began to use him more cruelly than ever, and constantly made game of him for sending his cat to sea, asking him if he thought it would sell for as much money as would buy a halter. ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... therefore, the Grand Duke meditates vengeance on Brachiano, he finds a fitting instrument in the desperate Lodovico. Together, in disguise, they repair to Padua. Lodovico poisons the Duke of Brachiano's helmet, and has the satisfaction of ending his last struggles by the halter. Afterwards, with companions, habited as a masquer, he enters Vittoria's palace and puts her to death together with her brother Flamineo. Just when the deed of vengeance has been completed, young Giovanni Orsini, heir of Brachiano, enters and orders the summary execution of Lodovico ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... the side entrance. Suddenly, with a loud, "Hee Haw!" Dynamite shot into the ring, an attendant frantically pulling at the halter. The crowd cheered. ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... and having whisked the dusty, grooved back of the well-fed young stallion with the skirt of his coat, he put a bridle on his handsome head, straightened his ears and forelock, and having taken off his halter ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... our dreamers, for now and then they speak, like somnambulists, wondrous things in sleep, and their words become the seeds of freedom. No one can foresee the turn which things may take. The splenetic Briton, weary of his wife, may put a halter round her neck and sell her in Smithfield. The flattering Frenchman may perhaps be untrue to his beloved bride and abandon her, and, singing, dance after the Court dames (courtisanes) of his royal palace ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... people on the bridge at Niagara Falls had made a Bowline-knot in the end of the rope before throwing it as a life-line they might have saved one if not three lives. A Bowline is used chiefly for hoisting and lowering; it can be used for a halter or with the Sheet-bend in making a guard-line or fence. It is a knot holding fast a loop which can be made of any size and which will not jam ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... rode round the walls of the little city, insulting the inhabitants, one holding up a halter, which he said was for the chief magistrate; and another, pointing to the reckless waste that his comrades were perpetrating on the fields, shouted, 'Send a breakfast to the reapers.' The burgomaster pointed to the wood where his allies lay hid, and answered, 'My ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and have good reason, For there my grandsire cut his weasand: He cut his weasand at the altar; I keep my gullet for the halter. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... but remained staring at me in the posture which he had assumed on first perceiving me, his body very much drawn back, his left foot far in advance of his right, and with his right hand still grasping the halter of the horse, which gave way more and more, till it was clean ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... council broke up and adjourned to MacPhairrson's island, carrying several pieces of rope, a halter, and a couple of oat-bags. The members of the Family, vaguely upset over the long absence of their master, nearly all came down to the bridge in their curiosity to see who was coming—all, indeed, but the fox, who slunk off behind the cabin; Butters, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Live-Stock Department of the exposition was to the effect that pure-bred cattle from below the Federal quarantine line should not be allowed to participate in the live-stock show at the exposition, and that none but halter-broke cattle should be exhibited in any event. The effect of this ruling, the commission claimed, was, first, to shut out from participation the breeders of pure cattle from below the quarantine line, and, second, to prevent a demonstration that should show what the immense ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... when the caste system became hardened through the centuries into a hereditary halter. Social reformers like Gandhi and the members of very numerous societies in India today are making slow but sure progress in restoring the ancient values of caste, based solely on natural qualification and not on birth. Every nation on earth has its own distinctive misery-producing karma to deal ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... inn, and asked the landlord if he could put him up for the night, him and his mare. The landlord said, "All our beds are full, but you can put the mare up in the stable if you will." "Very well," said the man, and tied the halter of the mare into the ring of the stable. Next morning early the landlord's daughter said to her father, "That poor mare has had nothing to drink; I'll go and lead it to the river." "That is none of your business," said the landlord; "let ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... mornin', like a bolster outer a blue sky, come the word that at noon we could go. Believe me, I didn't wait for no old shoes or rice to be threw after me. I got into their old amberlance-carriage, as happy as a blushin' bride bein' led to the halter, an' Francie an' me come away reji'cin'. Say, but what ails you? You look sorter—sorter like a—strained relation or somethin'. What you been doin' to yourself to get so white an' holler-eyed? What ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... Company kneeling to him to receive their Charter. Dr. Scarborough took some of his friends, and I went with them, to see the body of a lusty fellow, a seaman, that was hanged for a robbery. It seems one Dillon, of a great family, was, after much endeavours to have saved him, hanged with a silken halter this Sessions, (of his own preparing,) not for honour only, but it being soft and sleek it do slip close and kills, that is, strangles presently: whereas, a stiff one do not come so close together, and so the party may live the longer before killed. But all the Doctors ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... the point, which terminated, as usual, in a dense hazel-thicket, Driscol at once pushed his way into the covert, and lo! there stood the stolen horse! He was tied to a sapling by a halter, which was clearly recognised as the property of Grayson, and leading off toward the latter's house, was traced a man's footstep—his, of course! These appearances fully explained the theft, and there was not a man present, who did not express a decided ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... terrible plight of rags and tatters, sitting in a cart-shed in some outlying buildings, on a roller. The cowman was standing by holding a Jersey bull. The story was soon told. The cowman, having to go into the yard, had asked E. to hold the bull a minute. Unfortunately, the animal had only a halter on him, the cowman having omitted to bring the stick, with hook and swivel, to attach to the bull's nose-ring. No sooner was the cowman out of sight than the bull began to fret, and, turning upon E., knocked him down between a mangoldbury and the outside wall of the yard. In this position ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Sir Launcelot bade Sir Peris rise. And he took the halter of Sir Peris's horse, and he bound Sir Peris's arms behind his back, and when he had done this he drove him up to his castle at the point of his lance. And when they came to the castle he bade Sir Peris have open the castle; and Sir Peris ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... himself; he called Stephen cruel, deceitful, and anything else he could think of, and he tried to seize the halter of ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... "I must find a halter for him," said Tip; and having made a search in his pocket he produced a roll of strong cord. Unwinding this, he approached the Saw-Horse and tied the cord around its neck, afterward fastening the other end to a large tree. The ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... he said. "Right there, just as Capriata swung his vessel to head for the sea, the mare broke loose from her halter, and in a bound reached the rail of the schooner and leaped into the waves. Capriata could do nothing. The schooner was in peril, and he, with his hand upon the wheel and his men at the sails, could only utter an oath. He confesses he did that, and you will find no man more ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... stripes that he had given them the day before, he told them, that since they were never like to come out of that place, their only way would be forthwith to make an end of themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison; for why, said he, should you choose to live, seeing it is attended with so much bitterness? But they desired him to let them go. With that he looked ugly upon them, and, rushing to them, had doubtless made an end of them himself, but that he fell into ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... season, the magical hour which made it seem so enchanting. Presently a young man, the first human figure that presented itself to my sight, appeared, mounted on a big carthorse and leading a second horse by a halter, and rode down into the pool to bathe the animals' legs and give them a drink. He was a sturdy-looking young fellow with a sun-browned face, in earth-coloured, working clothes, with a small cap stuck on the back of his round curly head; he probably imagined himself not a bad-looking ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... arriving at Aumale at two o'clock in the morning, and lodging with a man called Monnier, who occupied the ancient convent of the Dominican Nuns. "The stout man" rode a black horse which Monnier, for want of a stable, hid in a corridor in the house, the halter tied to the key of the door. As for the men, they threw themselves pell-mell on some straw, and did not go out during the day. M. Beaumont had reappeared at Aumale. He arrived on horseback and, after passing ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... the two of them together, tried their skill to catch the filly. This time, leaving the halter in the house, the man took bit and bridle, and the two managed to get the pretty creature into a corner; but, when they had almost captured her, away she ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... to his room, which he still shared with his brothers, and never was he so overwhelmed by disgust and despair with his life as at the moment when in his attic, with its stifling smell, he was at last permitted to take off the halter of his misery. He had hardly the heart to undress himself. Happily, no sooner did his head touch the pillow than he would sink into a heavy sleep which deprived him of all ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... us the strong hand, and curse us the weak; Let Austria's vulture have food for her beak; Let the wolf-whelp of Naples play Bomba again, With his death-cap of silence, and halter, and chain; Put reason, and justice, and truth under ban; For the sin ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... thou shalt not excel,'" he answered. "A man weak as any child, and as easily led astray. If he be your head, Avery, I would say it were scarce worth to turn out for the cause. You would have an halter round your neck ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... cold Hospitality shrinks from the labour, The slave fled his halter and the serf left his labour.—[MS.] or, Ah! there Hospitality light is thy labour, or, Ah! who for the traveller's solace ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... and nothing less. For one may stay the tongue of a scoundrel with money, or the expectation of it, until opportunity arrive to stop it with steel or prison masonry. But who shall curb or halter ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... "Sure. He' done a good job, too. He was game, all right, never whimpered nor hung back on the halter. Jest stuck the gun in his mouth an' pulled the trigger. I was goin' to bury him but I heard them mares whinner down to the water-hole so I left him fer the ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... he was strapped very tightly to a young Scotch fir. His arms were bent behind him and his wrists tied together with cords knotted at the back of the tree; his legs were shackled, and further cords fastened them to the bole. Also there was a halter round the trunk and just under his chin, so that while he breathed freely enough, he could not move his head. Before him was a tangle of bracken and scrub, and beyond that the gloom of dense pines; but as he could see only directly in front his ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... length succeeding in capturing the horse, and, after admiring the beauty of his form, and becoming familiar with him, they proceeded to tie one of their young men upon his back with cords that he might not fall off. The horse was then led cautiously by the halter until he became sufficiently tame to ride alone, and without a leader. It was in this manner that our nation procured the horse, and from this one sprung ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... Laugier's thorough-bass and a wicked invention called a chiroplast, for which, I think, he took out a patent, and for which I suppose all luckless girls compelled to practice with it thought he ought to have taken out a halter. It was a brass rod made to screw across the keys, on which were strung, like beads, two brass frames for the hands, with separate little cells for the fingers, these being secured to the brass rod precisely at the part ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... at full gallop. At the first glimpse it seemed as if the horse had run away with his bareheaded rider; but directly after it became plain that, though only riding saddleless, and with no rein but a halter, the big man was urging the horse ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... Piute, lifting a dark finger. Black Bolly had thrown her nose-bag and slipped her halter, and she moved toward the opening in the cedars, her head high, her black ears ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... second son, issued suddenly from a wood with an escort of lances and surrounded the Duke. There was no kind of indignity they did not make him suffer. He was tied upon his horse like a criminal, and conducted first to Clisson, Oliver leading him with a halter round his neck. The Penthievres, who would not let the place be guessed where they held their captive, conducted him at night, sometimes on foot, from fortress to fortress, from dungeon to dungeon; at the same time circulating the report that they had drowned ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... of Gan's fellow-traitor, Marsilius, king of Spain. They die, however, victorious; and the two royal and noble scoundrels, by a piece of prosaical justice better than poetical, are despatched like common malefactors, with a halter. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... first days of his reign, when he enforced loyalty with grape-shot and halter, Nicholas dared much and stood firm; but his character soon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... unless you tighten a halter round their necks to loosen their tongues," said she. "They are ungrateful. What do they not owe to Camusot! Camusot brought the House of Orleans to the throne by enforcing ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... soldier was dragged, heavily manacled and with a halter about his neck. He faced the Viceroy, who was a renegade and a bloodthirsty tyrant, with the same cool, smiling courage with which in the Gulf of Lepanto he had faced the Turkish guns. Once more he repeated his statement that the whole scheme was his; his comrades had but followed ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... if he escaped the halter or the wave, in after years settled down in some English coast-village, where he read Wordsworth, and attended church regularly, and was probably regarded as a gentle old duffer by the younger members of society. But take ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... brush, and her mane and tail had turned a greenish yellow. She must be eighteen years old, Claude reckoned, as he polished off her round, heavy haunches. He and Ralph used to ride her over to the Yoeders' when they were barefoot youngsters, guiding her with a rope halter, and kicking at the leggy colt ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... the Squire had no servant whose home was in Brandenburg or even on the road thither. Some men from Dresden, who had been in Wilsdruf a few days after the burning of Tronka Castle, declared that, at the time named, a groom had arrived in that place, leading two horses by the halter, and, as the animals were very sick and could go no further, he had left them in the cow-stable of a shepherd who had offered to restore them to good condition. For a variety of reasons it seemed very probable that these ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... right, Sam!" rejoined Daddy Bunker, giving the colored man a generous tip. "You get some more cups and some more ice, and call it square. I expect I'd better tie a halter to each one of my children for the rest of the journey so as to keep track of them. I can't trust them out of my sight ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... for asking. But to ask is his death-warrant. 'Oh yes!' would be the answer, 'here's your jewel, wrapt up safely in tissue paper. But here's another lot that goes along with it—no bidder can take them apart—viz. a halter, also wrapt up in tissue paper.' Francis, in relation to Junius, was in that exact predicament. 'You are Junius? You are that famous man who has been missing since 1772? And you can prove it? God bless me! sir; what a long time you've been sleeping: every body's ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey |
