"Rapier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the display of tact than in the introduction of witty or humorous stories into a discourse. Wit is keen and like a rapier, piercing deeply, sometimes even to the heart. Humor is good-natured, and does not wound. Wit is founded upon the sudden discovery of an unsuspected relation existing between two ideas. Humor deals with things out of relation—with the incongruous. It was wit in Douglass Jerrold ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... turret till James set his foot on its chain, the man with the dagger vanished. The Master was slain by two of James's attendants; the Earl, rushing with four or five men up the turret-stair, fell in fight by Ramsay's rapier. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... some reward to those y^t should find him. The Indeans came to y^e Gov^r here, and tould wher he was, and asked if they might kill him; he tould them no, by no means, but if they could take him and bring him hither, they should be payed for their paines. They said he had a gune & a rapier, & he would kill them if y^ey went aboute it; and y^e Massachuset Indeans said they might kille him. But y^e Gov^r tould them no, they should not kill him, but watch their opportunitie, & take him. And so they did, for when they light of him by a ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... the Giant on his right side, Lusine on his left, and the egg-stealer behind him. He removed the Jail-breaker's rapier from his sheath. The official ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... one of those terrible, but brilliant, duels, with which that room was so familiar, was about to be enacted.... But he laid the rapier down. After all, the rapier is scarcely a thing of this century. Cleggett, for the first time, felt a little impatient with the rapier. It is all very well to DREAM with a rapier. But now, he was free; reality was before him; the world ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... curiosity by showing every one of them to me in detail, and informing me that they had all belonged to, or were in some way relics of, Charles Edward Stuart. "And this," said the old gentleman, "was his sword." It was a light dress rapier, with a very highly cut and ornamented steel hilt. I half drew the blade, thinking how it had flashed from its scabbard, startling England and dazzling Scotland at its first unsheathing, and in what inglorious gloom of prostrate ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... first-rate fight of it, do Messrs. Irving dei Franchi and M. Terriss de Chateau Renaud, until the latter collapses, and "subsequent proceedings interested him no more." As long as the strong right arm of the Corsican Brother can draw a good and shining rapier, he will draw as good and brilliant a house as he did on the first night of this revival. Why ought this piece to go well in the first theatre in Ireland? Why? because it's a great play for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... the midst of this tumult and disorder that our young man advanced with a beating heat, ranging his long rapier up his lanky leg, and keeping one hand on the edge of his cap, with that half-smile of the embarrassed a provincial who wishes to put on a good face. When he had passed one group he began to breathe more freely; but he could not help observing that they turned ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not much vnlike our toasting yrons, but longer: these they cast out of an instrument of wood, very readily. The other sort is greater then the first aforesayd, with a long bone made sharpe on both sides not much vnlike a Rapier, which I take to bee ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... fair slenderness. Who read for me the sonnet swelling loudly Up to its climax and then dying proudly? Who found for me the grandeur of the ode, Growing, like Atlas, stronger from its load? Who let me taste that more than cordial dram, The sharp, the rapier-pointed epigram? Shew'd me that epic was of all the king, Round, vast, and spanning all like Saturn's ring? You too upheld the veil from Clio's beauty, And pointed out the patriot's stern duty; The ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... notice, without preparation. My nerves are permanently shattered. You tell me, a man; I behold a tower, a mountain, Atlas crowned with clouds! Thousand thunders! what bulk! what sinews! and of my race! Amazing effect of—what? Climate? occupation? In France, this race shrinks, diminishes; a rapier, keen if you will, but slender like a thread; here, it swells, expands, towers aloft,—a club of Hercules. And with my father, who could sit in my pocket, and my grandfather, who could sit in his! Figure to yourself, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... through. More connections between it and the Albertan railways were required; and he was in Canada looking round and negotiating. He was already known to the Chief Justice and Mariette, and Elizabeth fell quickly in love with his white hair, his black eyes, his rapier-like slenderness and keenness, and that pleasant mingling in him—so common in the men of his race—of the dry shrewdness of the financier with a kind of ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... may bear in mind that factor of observation, and give it a casting vote in any decision upon public decency. That is all too often forgotten. Before Broadbeam, the popular humorist, for example, flashes his glittering rapier upon the County Council for suppressing some vulgar obscenity in the music-halls, or tickles the ribs of a Vigilance Association for its care of our hoardings, he should do his best to imagine the mental process ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... came to be much more than a restoration!—but they could not restore the colour to her hair nor the lightness to her heart. She looked at mankind from a cynical altitude of worldly wisdom; her wit grew keen and swift as d'Artagnan's rapier; her bon-mots had a way of passing into proverbs, or of being stolen by more distinguished contemporaries. She took her revenge upon society as completely as she could, yet without bitterness. Indeed, it is probable that, could she have ordered her life anew, she would not have ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... unaccustomed delight, as she listened to the merry badinage of this group of educated city dwellers and, although it was something new to her, her quick mind soon realized that Philip was a most entertaining conversationalist, with a wit like a rapier which flashed and touched, but never hurt, and that Donald, in his slower way, possessed a dry humor which she had not suspected. At the end of that time a telephone call came for Donald which sent him forth, pretending to grumble over the lack of consideration of modern children, who ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... the said market place but onely two resolute shot, who stood at his commaund, and some ten or twelue others that followed him, most of them his owne seruants; the rest, surprised with feare, fled, whom, neither with his perswasions, nor threatning with his rapier drawne, hee ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... Fletcher of Manchester went with my letters to Vanylos this Sunday morning. Nov. 3rd, Mr. John Cholmeley toward London by Market-Harborow. Nov. 7th, the fellows and the receyver agreed not with me in accounts. Paulo post nonam mane Arthur's left eye hurt at playing at fence with rapier and dagger of sticks, by a foyne of Edmond Arnold. Nov. 10th, Mr. Burch his letter from Mathew Palmer. Nov. 14th, the fellows wold not graunt me the 5. for my howse-rent, as the Archbishops had graunted: and our foundation commaundeth an howse. Nov. 17th, I sent Ed. Arnold to London on fote ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... He is knight, dubb'd with unhatch'd rapier and on carpet consideration; but he is a devil in private brawl: souls and bodies hath he divorc'd three; and his incensement at this moment is so implacable that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre. Hob, nob, is his word; give ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... system that had afflicted Wuerttemberg during Schiller's childhood. It furnished him with his dramatic 'mythology', as it has been called. The name may be allowed to pass, only it should be remembered that this mythology was simply history. The rapier-thrusts of the dramatist were not directed against wind-mills of the imagination, but against political infamies that make one's blood boil in the reading and that would have moved a more spirited people to hang their rulers to the nearest tree. This should ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... the sharp, sparkling, audacious Fanny Newt had become the inert, indifferent woman before her. A clever villain might have developed her, through admiration and sympathy, into villainy; but a dull, heavy brute merely crushed her. There is a spur in the prick of a rapier; only stupidity follows the blow ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... picture—a slightly hazy dream-picture. Charles-Norton stretched his legs still more; his shoulders rose along the sides of his head. He was as at the bottom of the sea—a warm and quiet summer sea. Down through its golden-dusty waters, a streak of sun, polished like a rapier, diagonaled, striking him on the breast; and to its vivifying burn he felt within him his heart expand, as though it would bloom, like the red flowers about ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... clad in a lion's skin.[363] That irresistible deity assumes such a fierce shape. Assuming again the form of the sword, the bow, the mace, the dart, the trident, the mallet, the arrow, the thick and short club, the battle-axe, the discus, the noose, the heavy bludgeon, the rapier, the lance, and in fact of every kind of weapon that exists on earth, Chastisement moves in the world. Indeed, Chastisement moves on earth, piercing and cutting and afflicting and lopping off and dividing and striking and slaying and rushing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... are you doing here, Tom Thorne, on the white top-knot o' the world, Where the wind has the cut of a naked knife and the stars are rapier keen? Hugging a smudgy willow fire, deep in a lynx robe curled, You that's a lord's own son, Tom Thorne — what does ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... of the wall. The gate opened, the two men came out, and in an instant Desmond and his companion dashed forward. Taken by surprise, the men had no time to defend themselves. With his left hand Desmond caught at Diggle's sword arm, and, pointing his rapier ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... one side with his army, and now there loomed ahead the Duke of Cumberland and ten thousand English troops. Battle seemed imminent, yet again the Scots force pushed by. The 4th of December found this strange wedge, of no great mass, but of a tested, rapier-like keenness and hardness, at the town of Derby, with London not a hundred and thirty miles away. And still no English rising for the rightful King! Instead Whig armies, and a slow Whiggish buzzing beginning ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... he drew out the blade and drove it home just behind the glossy black shoulder. Night shuddered and lay still. The knife had sunken deep, and Constans had to exert all his strength to withdraw it. The bare point of a rapier touched him meaningly on the arm; he stood up and ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... takes several forms. A grandiloquence that sways uneasily between rodomontade and mere verbiage, a rotundity of diction, a choice of subjects which can only be described as sanguinolent, the use of the bludgeon where others would prefer a rapier. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... forced the attack savagely; then a sharp thrust against his jack showed him that O'Donnell was armed with a rapier, and he fell to the point with some caution. With the first moment of play, he knew that he faced a master of fence; yet almost upon the thought his blade ripped ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... here to purchase old swords, the greater part of which are mere rubbish, and never made at Toledo, yet for such they will give a large price, whilst they would grudge two dollars for this jewel, which was made but yesterday"; thereupon putting into my hand a middle-sized rapier. "Your worship," said they, "seems to have a strong arm, prove its temper against the stone wall;— thrust boldly ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... extract from a candy-pulling or a husking-bee. The Pompadours and DuBarrys didn't know how. Louis XVth went around by himself in droves, stiff and uncomfortable as a Presbyterian Sunday-school, wishing every time his rapier galled his kibes or tangled his royal legs that he had remained comfortably dead in that dog-hole at St. Denis. There was entirely too much formality for fun. The next time New York's toad-eaters give a bal-masque they should disguise themselves ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... lest a question of precedence should arise, such as no master of ceremonies would presume to settle. That is what it has come to. Once upon a time an Orsini quarrelled with a Colonna in the Corso, just where Aragno's cafe is now situated, and ran him through with his rapier, wounding him almost to death. He was carried into the palace of the Theodoli, close by, and the records of that family tell that within the hour eight hundred of the Colonna's retainers were in the house to guard him. In ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... communing with his own thoughts. The upper part of his person, which only was visible, the rest being hid by the table and depending cloth, was clothed in a black coat or doublet, without ornament or even the appearance of a button, and at his side he wore a rapier, evidently more as a badge of his ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... across the fields toward Denny's roadster, several hundred yards away—Jim, blond and bulking, a hundred and ninety pounds of hardy muscle and bone; Denny wiry and slender, dark-eyed and dark-haired. The sledge-hammer and the rapier; the human bull, and the human panther; the one a student kept fit by outdoor studies, and the other a careless, rich young time-killer groomed to the pink by the big-game hunting and South Sea sailing and other adventurous ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... of pearls. I can see her now, after the lapse of nearly twenty years, as she stood there singing in blue doublet and white mantle, with the slouched Spanish hat and plume of ostrich feathers, a tiny rapier at her side, and blue rosettes upon her white silk shoes! The Nozze di Figaro was followed by a Ballo. This had for its theme the favourite legend of a female devil sent from the infernal regions to ruin a young man. Instead of performing the part assigned her, Satanella falls ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... them? any of these. Or to praise the cleanness of the street wherein he dwelt? or the provident painting of his posts, against he should have been praetor? or, leaving his parent, come to some special ornament about himself, as his rapier, or some other of his accountrements? I have ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... comforts and consoles, save when a strict sense of duty compels it to severity: briefly, it is keen and guiding and creative. Let the young beginner learn by rote what one master says of another:—"He was never provoked into coarseness: his thrusts were made with the rapier according to the received rules of fence, he firmly upheld the honour of his calling, and in the exercise of it was uniformly fearless, independent and incorrupt." The Brazen is partial, one-sided, tricksy, misleading, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... my light rapier, worn about the garrison, while he was armed with his heavy campaign blade. I was already a dead man, or so I felt, for there was no spirit in me for the fight. Our blades crossed, and immediately he noted ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... Andy's face, as if they knew where to strike; and suddenly, while he was laughing at their rage, he got a thrust in his forehead, and another in his neck, and a third under his sleeve, where a courageous little soldier had rushed in and resolutely driven in his rapier up to the hilt! Andy, who had no idea such little weapons could hurt so, was terrified, and began to scream with pain. And now, strange to see! the fairies were no longer fairies, but a nest of bumblebees; it was the queen-bee he held in his fingers; and ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... it were out of space, and gave him a quick side-glance that was like the turn of a rapier. "I must go down to the dak-bungalow," he said, ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... sun, With glorious peal of trumpets on his ear Proclaiming victory. So had he dreamed. And there, within an arch at the stair-top And screened behind a painted hanging-cloth Of coiled gold serpents ready to make spring, Ignoble Death stood, his convulsive hand Grasping a rapier part-way down the blade To deal the blow with deadly-jewelled hilt— Black Death, turned white with horror of himself. Straight on came he that sang the blithe sea-song; And now his step was on the stair, and now He neared the blazoned ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... saw two mastiffs, exceeding great and fierce, that ran hard upon her track, and not seldom came up with her and bit her cruelly; and in the rear he saw, riding a black horse, a knight sadly accoutred, and very wrathful of mien, carrying a rapier in his hand, and with despiteful, blood-curdling words threatening her with death. Whereat he was at once amazed and appalled, and then filled with compassion for the hapless lady, whereof was bred a desire to deliver her, if so he might, from such anguish and peril of death. Wherefore, as ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... in mockery through the air. He replaced it on his head, drew his rapier, with quick turns of his wrist swished the supple blade through the air till it sang, then flashed it out at me like the tongue of an adder, and said, "Sit you still, Farmer Wheatman, sit you still. Move but your hand and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of Defence, in all its Useful Particulars, for Defending and Offending, with the Rapier or final Sword; after the exactest Method now ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... starting boldly for the King, then making a brilliant retreat, calling loudly for help, as the rapier tickled him in ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... is the way of intensity, that focuses all its impact at some brilliant point, like a rapier-thrust or a flash of lightning. Men with this kind of greatness have generally some supreme and dazzling accomplishment, and the rest of their nature is often sacrificed to one radiant faculty. Their power, in some one single direction, is absolutely distinct and ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... weapons of the times of the Coal Measures seem very formidable, just as those personal weapons of the middle ages seem so that were borne at a time when every soldier took the field cased in armor of proof. The slim scimitar or slender rapier would have availed but little against massive iron helmets or mail coats of tempered steel. And so the warriors of the period armed themselves with ponderous maces, battle-axes as massive as hammers, and double-handed swords ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Queen, as was pointed out by Doering, is trying to screen her son. She has already made the false statement that when Hamlet, crying, 'A rat! a rat!', ran his rapier through the arras, it was because he heard something stir there, whereas we know that what he heard was a man's voice crying, 'What ho! help, help, help!' And in this scene she has come straight from the interview with her son, terribly agitated, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... clipping her by the wrists. "Cold boy, you shall not so easily slip me. A pretty girl you make, Aladdin; but love pierces such disguise as a rapier might ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... a side street off the Strand, when four men sprang out and held my hands to my side, another snatched my watch and purse, and as I gave a cry for the watch, he smote me with the pommel of his rapier in my mouth, then throwing me on the ground the villains took to ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... the light of the moon how that the apparition flattened a ball of horse-dung whereon it trod, and straightway felt sure within himself that it was no ghost. Whereupon he called to the driver to stop; and as the man would not hearken to him, he sprang out of the carriage, drew his rapier, and hastened to attack the ghost. When the ghost saw this he would have turned and fled, but the young nobleman gave him such a blow on the head with his fist that he fell upon the ground with a loud wailing. Summa: the young lord, having called back his driver, dragged the ghost ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... buried. But mark me," and she clapped her hand to her heaving bosom, "mark me, somewhat else hath made entrance here, with drums and trumpets and high jubilee: Hate!—I hate you, Herdegen, as I hate death, pestilence, and hell; and I hate you twice as much since your skill with the rapier brought the combat with the Brandenburger, into which I entrapped you, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to find the judge before lunch, and at table he did not seem especially devoted to Ellen in her father's jealous eyes. He joked Lottie, and exchanged those passages or repartee with her in which she did not mind using a bludgeon when she had not a rapier at hand; it is doubtful if she was very sensible of the difference. Ellen sat by in passive content, smiling now and then, and Boyne carried on a dignified conversation with Mr. Pogis, whom he had asked to lunch at his table, and who listened with one ear to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to continue her duel with Mrs. Harmon. You could not fence with an antagonist who met rapier thrust with blow of ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Vnnaturall though thou art: Their vnderstanding Begins to swell, and the approching tide Will shortly fill the reasonable shore That now ly foule, and muddy: not one of them That yet lookes on me, or would know me: Ariell, Fetch me the Hat, and Rapier in my Cell, I will discase me, and my selfe present As I was sometime Millaine: quickly Spirit, Thou shalt ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... nothing has quite replaced the Simple Discours, the Petition pour les Villageois, the Pamphlet des Pamphlets, in which the ease of the best sixteenth and seventeenth century prose is united with a deft rapier-play like that of Voltaire, and with the lucidity of the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... like a keen rapier, with a flash like lightning, crossing a poor little broken blade, ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... natural tendency to that sort of wit which consists in veiled allusion to a very open secret. Each mail feels that there are heavy forces behind a small point, as the weight of the fencer is behind the point of the rapier. And the point can be yet more pointed because the politics of the city, when I was there, included several men with a taste and talent for such polished intercourse; including especially two men ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... plaudits of the mob. Then came another - a better courtier still - who wore a blade but two feet long, whereat the people laughed, much to the disparagement of his honour's dignity. Then came a third, a sturdy old officer of the army, girded with a rapier at least a foot and a half beyond her Majesty's pleasure; at him they raised a great shout, and most of the spectators (but especially those who were armourers or cutlers) laughed very heartily at the breakage which would ensue. But they were ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... sensible. In this room, for instance, members of this Club have, at the sword's point, disputed the proper scanning of one of Pope's couplets. Over so weighty a matter as spilled Burgundy on a gentleman's cuff, ten men fought across this table, each with his rapier in one hand and a candle in the other. All ten were wounded. The question of the spilled Burgundy concerned but two of them. The eight others engaged because they were men of 'spirit.' They were, indeed, the first gentlemen of ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... his hackney, as a gentleman should, nor have I prohibited him from occasionally taking my Lilias an airing in a neat curricle; but he is no Better on the Turf, no comrade of jockeys and stablemen, no patron of bruisers and those that handle the backsword and are quick at finish with the provant rapier, and agile in the use of the imbrocatto. I would disinherit him were I to suspect him of such practices, or of an over-fondness for the bottle, or of a passion for loose company. He hunts sometimes, and fishes and goes a birding, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... thumbs at him in an indecorous or careless manner—look to it that you be prepared to draw and mayhap to be spitted upon his sword's point, with honor. Sdeath! A gentlemen of courage carries his life lightly at the needle end of his rapier, as that wonderful Japanese, Samsori, used to make the flimsiest feather preside in miraculous equilibration upon the tip ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... her bullion,—singing, light at heart, His first love's first kiss warm upon his lip. Straight onward came young Eustace to his death! For hidden behind the arras near the stair Stood Regnald, like the Demon in the play, Grasping his rapier part-way down the blade To strike the foul blow with its heavy hilt. Straight on came Eustace,—blithely ran the song, "Old England's darlings are her hearts of oak." The lights were out, and not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... convenience, not of affection; indeed poor Anna Bland had secretly admired the curate at Isleworth, and hated Mr. Caresfoot and his glittering eye. But she married him for all that, to feel that till she died that glance was always playing round her like a rapier in the hands of a skilled fencer. And very soon she did die, Mr. Caresfoot receiving her last words and wishes with the same exquisite and unmoved politeness that he had extended to every remark she had made to him in the course of their married ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... which we call changelings," saith [1264]Scheretzius, part. 1. c. 6. make men victorious, fortunate, eloquent; and therefore in those ancient monomachies and combats they were searched of old, [1265]they had no magical charms; they can make [1266]stick frees, such as shall endure a rapier's point, musket shot, and never be wounded: of which read more in Boissardus, cap. 6. de Magia, the manner of the adjuration, and by whom 'tis made, where and how to be used in expeditionibus bellicis, praeliis, duellis, &c., with many peculiar instances and examples; they can walk in fiery ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... will perhaps never be the same again. It was impossible. She was not meant for it, and yet she made herself a martyr over it. I don't mean by this parable that it will be a strain upon your intellect to keep up with mine. But I do mean that a woman's mind is DIFFERENT from a man's. A dainty rapier is a finer thing than a hatchet, but it is not adapted for cutting down ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... argued, one had to be civil, whereas Mrs. Ogilvie was often daringly disagreeable. There was indeed something almost fine in her splendid disdain of the civility of the so-called popular person. She could wound; but she did it with the grace of a duellist of old days, who wiped his rapier with a handkerchief of cambric and lace when he had killed his opponent, and would probably expect a man to die as he himself would die, with a jest on his lips and a light laugh at the flowing blood. Mrs. Ogilvie slew exquisitely, and she never hated her opponent. She smiled at ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... noticed that they are all more remarkable for force and for a peculiar grim, sardonic humor than for delicacy of wit or grace of expression. Instead of neatly running a subject through with the keen flashing rapier of a witty analogy, as a Spaniard would do, the Caucasian mountaineer roughly knocks it down with the first proverbial club which comes to hand; and the knottier and more crooked the weapon the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... protected, encouraged by Majesty, have ages ago built walled towns, and there ply their crafts; will permit no Robber Baron to 'live by the saddle,' but maintain a gallows to prevent it. Ever since that period of the Fronde, the Noble has changed his fighting sword into a court rapier, and now loyally attends his king as ministering satellite; divides the spoil, not now by violence and murder, but by soliciting and finesse. These men call themselves supports of the throne, singular gilt-pasteboard ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... sword, n. rapier, saber, scimiter, brand, curtana, claymore, smallsword, glaive, broadsword, cutlass, Damascus blade, spadroon, creese. Associated Words: scabbard, sheathe, unsheathe, forte, hilt, sheath, foible, foil, fence, fencer, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... hand a parrot green Sits unmoving and broods serene. Hold up the canvas full in view,— Look! there's a rent the light shines through, Dark with a century's fringe of dust,— That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust! Such is the tale the lady ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... ready for innumerable adventures too terrible to be pictured. The Stanley Weyman hero has scarcely time to eat his supper except in the act of leaping from a window or whilst his other hand is employed in lunging with a rapier. In Scott's heroes, on the other hand, there is no characteristic so typical or so worthy of humour as their disposition to linger over their meals. The conviviality of the Clerk of Copmanhurst or of Mr. Pleydell, and ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... not be a Journalist-at-Arms? Life for that paladin hath poignant charms. Whether in pretty quarrel he shall run Just half an inch of rapier—in pure fun— In his opponent's biceps, or shall flick His shoulders with a slender walking-stick. The "stern joy" of the man indeed must rise To raptures and heroic ecstacies. Oh, glorious climax of a vulgar squabble, To redden your foe's nose, or make him hobble For ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... it up; when the king hath his own again, I will repay thee;" or "I will go coin it from Noll's ruby nose," and would ride away singing, and in a fortnight the poor gentleman would surely be slain. And, as for your worst kind of cavalier, when I did gently remind him, he would swear and draw his rapier and make a fearful pass near my belly—that I was glad to see him depart with a skinful of mine own wine unpaid for. Moreover, Master Will, an he were handsome and a moon-raker, my wife, that is now at rest, would ever take his part, ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... finally against the Italian newcomers, who sought to take possession of the French stage. The matter became a natioual quarrel, and it was considered an insult to France to prefer the music of an Italian to that of a Frenchman—an insult which was often settled by the rapier point, when tongue and pen had failed as arbitrators. The subject was keenly debated by journalists and pamphleteers, and the press groaned with essays to prove that Rameau was the first musician in Europe, though his works were utterly unknown outside of France. Perhaps no more valuable ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... the sea and wind, when both contend Which is the mightier: in his lawless fit Behind the arras hearing something stir, Whips out his rapier, cries 'A rat, a rat!' And in this brainish apprehension, kills ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... judgments on the subject of lithography. Now, there are many red rags in the various arts with which to encompass the discomfiture of the Philistine's bull, and the raven will always appropriate the feathers of the peacock and look ridiculous in them; but the rapier enwreathed in the red rag of painting is more readily rushed upon, and plumes of appreciation more wantonly borrowed and grotesquely worn in this walk of art than in ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... was in a sarcastic mood when he met Mike. That is to say, he began in a sarcastic strain. But this sort of thing is difficult to keep up. By the time he had reached his peroration, the rapier had given place to the bludgeon. For sarcasm to be effective, the user of it must be met half-way. His hearer must appear to be conscious of the sarcasm and moved by it. Mike, when masters waxed sarcastic towards him, always assumed ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... ledge of the inner reef, both afulu sama sama and afulu lanu uli (yellow and purple mullet) are certain to be found; and, as the little craft slips along, a large gar—green-backed, silvery-sided, and more than a yard long—may dart after you like a gleaming, hiltless rapier skimming the surface of the water. If you put out a line with a hook—baited with almost anything—a bit of fish a strip of white or red rag—you will have some sport, for these great gars are a hard-fighting fish, and do the tarpon jumping-trick ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... excessive cold, or a devouring heat, when it suddenly seizes a convulsionist, requires that he should be pushed into the midst of flames; a sharp pang, similar to that caused by an iron point piercing the flesh, demands a thrust of a rapier,[12] given in the spot where the pain is felt, be it In the throat, in the mouth, or in the eyes, of which there are numerous examples; and let the rapier be pushed as it may, the point, no matter how sharp, cannot pierce the most tender flesh, not even the eye of the patient: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Harvard College, dressed much in the fashion of half a century earlier; namely, coat and waistcoat with broad flaps, small-clothes, ruffles at his bosom and wrists, a cocked hat of the old style, and a steel-hilted rapier at his side. Ten years afterwards, one of the best governors the Commonwealth has ever had, Mr. Lincoln, who served the State in this capacity for nine several terms, wore also a distinguishing costume, but more ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... excellences are manifest: he was the master of idiomatic English, a great moralist and reformer, and the king of satire, all the weapons of which he managed with perfect skill. He had a rapier for aristocratic immunities of evil, arrows to transfix prescriptions and shams; and with snobs (we must change the figure) he played as a cat does with a mouse, torturing and then devouring. In the words of Miss Bronte, "he was the first social ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... fellow, I wish I could drive the fact into this head of yours that rudeness is not synonymous with wit. I shall not have lived in vain if I teach you in time to realize that the rapier of irony is more effective an instrument than the bludgeon ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... has stepped in blood to the throne, marches through the streets in crown and George and Garter; the climax of The Tempest is reached when Prospero, throwing off his enchanter's robes, sends Ariel for his hat and rapier, and reveals himself as the great Italian Duke; the very Ghost in Hamlet changes his mystical apparel to produce different effects; and as for Juliet, a modern playwright would probably have laid her out in her shroud, and made the scene a scene of horror merely, but Shakespeare arrays ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... Weel, away he trots to the castle to tell his story, and there he is introduced to Sir John, sitting in his father's chair, in deep mourning, with weepers and hanging cravat, and a small walking-rapier by his side, instead of the auld broadsword that had a hunderweight of steel about it, what with blade, chape, and basket-hilt. I have heard their communings so often tauld ower that I almost think I ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... her face. Her habit was to do all things with high spirit. He could guess how much she had endured to bring those hollow shadows under her dusky eyes. The woe of the girl touched his heart sharply, as if with the point of a rapier. ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... and still was, in a state of intense nervous excitement; his mind was galloping; the effect of that clash had been to rouse in him a keen exaltation and a sense of resistless power. If Henry Nelson was seriously interested in this girl, he reasoned, here then was another weapon ready shaped—a rapier aimed at his enemy's breast—and all he had to do was grasp it. That promised to be a pleasant undertaking. Nor had he any doubt of success, for Barbara Parker had aroused his liking so promptly that reason—and experience—told him ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... by any cowardice you found in me." The men armed themselves as they could with stretchers from the boat, or anything that came to hand. They hove the planks overboard to make a clear fighting space, and "took them such poor weapons as they had: viz., a broken pointed rapier, one old visgee, and a rusty caliver. John Drake took the rapier and made a gauntlet of his pillow, Richard Allen the visgee, both standing at the head of the pinnace called Eion. Robert took the caliver, and so boarded." It was a gallant, mad attempt, ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... he laid the handle of his knife; and with thongs, which he had already cut out of the strap of his bullet-pouch, he spliced the knife and pole together. This gave him a formidable weapon—for the knife was a "bowie," and had a long blade, with a point like a rapier. He was ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... partly owing to the satisfaction he got out of his clothes. He bought them at second hand—a Spanish cavalier's complete suit, wide-brimmed hat with flowing plumes, lace collar and cuffs, faded velvet doublet and trunks, short cloak hung from the shoulder, funnel-topped buskins, long rapier, and all that—a graceful and picturesque costume, and the Paladin's great frame was the right place to hang it for effect. He wore it when off duty; and when he swaggered by with one hand resting on the hilt of his rapier, and twirling his new mustache with the other, everybody ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... captain (in rank defiance of the sumptuary laws then existing) sported trunk hosen of pale pink satin, a richly embroidered and padded satin doublet of the same hue, confined at the waist by a belt of green satin heavily broidered with gold thread, from which depended on one side a long rapier and on the other a wicked-looking Venetian dagger with jewelled hilt and sheath, while, surmounting his grizzled and rather scanty locks, he wore, jauntily set on one side, a Venetian cap of green velvet adorned with a large gold and cameo ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... fully dead; His veins smok'd, his bowels all-to reeked, Ruthless were rent, and thrown about the place: All clottered lay the blood in lumps of gore, Sprent[80] on his corpse, and on his paled face; His trembling heart, yet leaping, out they tore, And cruelly upon a rapier They fix'd the same, and in this hateful wise Unto the king this heart they do present: A sight long'd for to feed his ireful eyes. The king perceiving each thing to be wrought As he had will'd, rejoicing to behold Upon the bloody sword the pierced heart, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... front of him and placed a small white chip on the ground, called him to "attention", ordered him to place his eyes on that chip, and told him if he removed them from it before I gave the command "rest", I would run him through with my rapier. ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... turning white, and was thin upon the temples. The clear-cut features were impressive, both in outline and in expression, and the eye was as the eye of the eagle, so keenly penetrating and far-seeing that many had shrunk before its gaze as before the sharp thrust of a rapier. ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... jerk of his wrist he drew from the brown paper a long, thin, highly polished rapier, the highly burnished steel of which was dulled along half its length, as if it had been first dimmed ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... still. He was short and slight, and could have slipped through a very narrow space, but Trombin seemed to swell himself out till he filled the bridge from side to side, and kept his hand on the hilt of his rapier. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... though it were wrapping itself up in its own canvas. A huge loose clue of sail—the foresail's starboard leach—flew up into the air; the boom swung after it; the gaff toppled over from above; we saw the topmast dive like a lunging rapier into the sea. We had torn the foresail in two, and the shot passing on had smashed the foremast just below the cap. All her sails lay in a confused heap just ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... Charles's rapier was shining in the sunlight, and he fell on guard in the most elegant attitude, his left ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... left the door of my room open on purpose, so that he should know I was back there, and ready for him. I took down a long straight blade, like a rapier, with a basket hilt. It was a cumbrous weapon, and with a blunt edge; still, it had a point, and I was ready to thrust and parry against the world. I called upon my foes. No enemy appeared, and by the light of two candles, with a sword in my hand, I lost myself in the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... for I heard it tear.'—'Whereabouts?' said I. 'On one side,' said she. Then we came into the house of Lieutenant Ingersoll; and I went into the great room, and Abigail came in and said, 'There he stands.' I said, 'Where? where?' and presently drew my rapier." Then Abigail said, he has gone, but "'there is a gray cat.' Then I said, 'Whereabouts?' 'There!' said she, 'there!' Then I struck with my rapier, and she fell into a fit; and, when it was over, she said, 'You killed her.'" Poor Hutchinson could not see the cat he had killed ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... improvised little melodramas. Men once wore their backgrounds as they wore their clothes—to fit their moods. A cap and feather, a gable and a latticed window for romance. A glove and rapier, a turret and a postern gate for adventure. And for our immemorial friend Routine a humpty-dumpty jumble of alleys, feather pens, cobblestones, echoing stairways ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... hours. At any rate, it was glorious. The more his opponents grew excited, the more Ernest deliberately excited them. He had an encyclopaedic command of the field of knowledge, and by a word or a phrase, by delicate rapier thrusts, he punctured them. He named the points of their illogic. This was a false syllogism, that conclusion had no connection with the premise, while that next premise was an impostor because it had cunningly ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... hall with a hard and sounding step as measured as the ticking of a clock, and placing his skinny hand upon the hilt of an immense long rapier, and stamping with his heel on the floor, he uttered in a horribly disagreeable creaking voice resembling the grating of an engine these words, which dropped in a dry mechanical ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... a long brawny arm with a clenched fist at its extremity. Richard Mivane's well-rounded periods and gentlemanly phrasings were like the educated thrusts and feints of an expert fencer who opposes his single rapier to the bludgeons and missiles of a furious mob. He saw in less than five minutes that the scheme of extenuation and conciliation was futile, that retort and retaliation would be returned in kind, that the stoppage of the pack-train from Blue Lick on the ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... a week. We shall not only let our light shine, but we shall make it shine into every human heart in this community. If they're too callous we'll punch a hole with our trusty blade and let the light in. The lantern and the rapier shall be our weapons.' ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... absolute frenzy of wrath, I turned at once upon him who had thus interrupted me, and seized him violently by the collar. He was attired, as I had expected, in a costume altogether similar to my own; wearing a Spanish cloak of blue velvet, begirt about the waist with a crimson belt sustaining a rapier. A mask of black silk entirely covered ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... such dubious results that in every generation there were critics who questioned the benefits of travel, the ideal persisted. There was always something, certainly, to be learned abroad, for men of every calibre. Those who did not profit by the study of international law learned new tricks of the rapier. And because experience of foreign countries was expensive and hard to come at, the acquirement of it gave prestige to ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... his face to the wall in the bitterness of his situation—for like some other men, he had the intensest horror of death when he came peaceably to his bedside, though ready enough to meet him with a 'hurrah!' and a wave of his rapier, if he arrived at a moment's notice, with due dash and eclat—sat up like a shot, and gaping upon Puddock for a few seconds, relieved himself with a long sigh, a devotional upward roll of the eyes, and some muttered words, of which the little ensign heard only 'blessing,' very fervently, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... dynasty was worth saving. Public opinion in Spain was therefore no less inflamed than in America, but it was less well-informed. Cartoons represented the American hog, which would readily fall before the Spanish rapier accustomed to its nobler adversary the bull. Spanish pride, impervious to facts and statistics, would brook no supine submission on the part of its people to foreign demands. It was a question how far the Spanish Government could bring itself ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... well, I hope that we shall soon agree! For now your fancies to expel, Here, as a youth of high degree, I come in gold-lac'd scarlet vest, And stiff-silk mantle richly dress'd, A cock's gay feather for a plume, A long and pointed rapier, too; And briefly I would counsel you To don at once the same costume, And, free from trammels, speed away, That what life is you ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Italian nature, open to every gust of feeling, over which impressions came and went like summer clouds, could turn at a moment's notice from the hand-to-hand grapple of a deadly duel to the lightest and most delicate rapier practice of the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... aid of his insignia, for he stood head and shoulders above his companions and bore himself with an air of authority. He was unusually tall, at least six feet three, and very slim, very lithe; he was alert, keen; he was like the blade of a rapier. The leanness of his legs was accentuated by his stiff, starched riding-breeches and close-fitting pigskin puttees, while his face, apart from all else, would ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... sword-play of conversation. In fencing, all should be done, the masters tell us, with the fingers. Scott works not even with the wrist, but with the whole arm. The two-handed sword, the old claymore, are his weapons, not the rapier. This was plain enough in the word-combats of Queen Mary and her lady gaoler in Loch Leven. Much more conspicuous is the "swashing blow" in the repartee of "St. Ronan's." The insults lavished on Lady Binks ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... months' work Desmond was dismissed from drill, and had obtained such a proficiency with the rapier that he felt that he could now relax his work, and see something of the city, which he had been hitherto too busy to explore. He had seen the principal streets, in the company of his comrades, had admired the mansions of the nobles, the richness of ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... this various knowledge like a shining suit of chain-mail, to adorn and strengthen his gait, like Milton, instead of tripping and clumsily stumbling in it, as Ben Jonson sometimes did. He whips out an exquisitely pointed allusion that flashes like a Damascus rapier and strikes nimbly home, or he recounts some weird tradition, or enriches his line with some gorgeous illustration from hidden stores, or merely unrolls, as Milton loved to do, the vast perspective of romantic association by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... more disarming passe in the everlasting duel between a man and a woman than this appeal—whether it be made intentionally or not—the appeal to his honour as a gentleman. Up flies the glittering rapier from his hand, he is weaponless—and at her mercy. For every man, even more especially when he is not one, would ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... trade. Their battles with forest and red man were long past. They had leisure for diversions such as the chase, the breeding and racing of thoroughbred horses, the dance, high play with dice and card, cockfighting, the gallantry of love, and the skill of the rapier. Law and politics ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... debate with Darrow, Frances Taylor Patterson had gone a little uneasy lest Chesterton's arguments "might seem somewhat literary in comparison with the trained scientific mind and rapier tongue of the famous trial lawyer." She found however that both trained mind and rapier tongue were the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the phrase. Suspicion, keen-edged as a rapier, ran swiftly through him. His arms tightened. "Olga, tell me what you mean! Who is it? Not—not that ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... panting fiercer, the sweat poured down him, his throat was dry, and he could feel no more the fresh stirring of the air of the dawning. He would not stop to breathe, he had reached the point in his insensate fury when he could have flung himself upon the rapier's point and felt it cleave his breastbone and start through his back with the joy of hell, if he could have struck the other man deep but once. The thought made him start afresh; he fought like a thousand devils, his point leaping and flashing, and coming down with a crash; he stamped ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hurtled back into the arms of those behind, and as he fell he dropped his rapier, which rolled almost to Crispin's feet. The knight stooped, and when again he stood erect, confronting the rebels in that narrow passage, he held ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... to be charged with a swift, rapier-like note. The boy broke off in his speech. He looked ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... should light on the most violent attacks on Christophe. He knew the writer. He went to the cafe where he knew he would meet him, found him, struck him, fought a duel with him, and gave him a nasty scratch on the shoulder with his rapier. Next day, at breakfast, Christophe had a letter from a friend telling him of the affair. He was overcome. He left his breakfast and hurried to see Georges. Georges himself opened the door. Christophe rushed in like a whirlwind, seized him by the arms, and shook him angrily, and began ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... themselves, and city apprentices had got reckless, and the duels, no death following, ceased to be sublime. About fifty years ago, serious men took to fighting with rapiers, and the buckler fell away. Holles, in Sherwood, as we saw, fought with rapier, and he soon spoiled Markham. Rapier and dagger especially; that is a more silent duel, but a terribly serious one! Perhaps the reader will like to take a view of one such serious duel in those days, and therewith close ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... in a feint in tierce, was bearing so heavily on his opponent's rapier that his right foot slipped, and he stumbled badly. At once Marigny struck with the deadly quickness and certainty of a cobra. His weapon pierced Medenham's breast high up on the right side. The stroke was so true and furious that the Englishman, already unbalanced, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... he acts are well founded and justified by success; still we must require him to remember that he only travels on forbidden tracks, where the God of War may surprise him; that he ought always to keep his eye on the enemy, in order that he may not have to defend himself with a dress rapier if the enemy takes up ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... those who would never have dreamt of listening to a woman with covered head, though they might be deaf as the nether millstone to her entreaties or her tears. It was with the Revolution that the rapier went out, and ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... affected towards my suit? But oh, thou gull—thou dunderpate—thou losel knave, to lose one line moved by her sweet fingers. Get in; I'll not defile my rapier with beating of thee. Thanks to the lady thou hast just left; her condescension so affecteth my softer nature that I could not speak an angry word without weeping. March, rascal, and come not into my presence ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... man of commanding stature, with black hair and keen black eyes that held a cruel light in them. He was arrayed in a blue velvet jerkin with hose of the same material. A large beaver hat with a long feather in it lay on the table. A rapier depending from his belt completed his attire which was that of a soldier. Without heeding this fact something in his bearing caused the girl to ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... on the spot, however, impaled on a rapier as an unscrupulous entomologist would impale a beetle, could hardly be regarded as the fault of his opponent. The thrust was directed to the place where the centre of the body of the Frenchman should have been, BUT IT WAS NOT THERE. The sword passed only through ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... true that modern science has devised new and appalling weapons. The invention of a new weapon in war always arouses protest, but it does not usually, in the long run, make war more inhuman. There was a great outcry in Europe when the broadsword was superseded by the rapier, and a tall man of his hands could be spitted like a cat or a rabbit by any dexterous little fellow with a trained wrist. There was a wave of indignation, which was a hundred years in passing, when musketry first came into use, and a man-at-arms of great prowess could be killed ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... nothynge abasshed to cast aside this grey friers coate, and to take vpon mee to be a souldiour, or your capitaine. And euen with that woorde he caste of his vpper coate; and vnderneth he was a playne souldiour, arraied in a skarlet cloke, and a long rapier hangeyng by his side. And in this warlyke apparell, in the personage of a Capitan, he stode and preached halfe an houre. Being sente for of the Cardinals with whom he was familiar, hee was asked what was the pretence of that new example. He answered, that he did it for his wenches pleasure, ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... seventeenth, the mannered one of the eighteenth, and the careless one of the nineteenth. And all this quite exclusive of the minute qualities and individualities of the character represented. The voice must be modulated to the vogue of the time. The habitual action of a rapier-bearing age is different to that of a mail-clad one—nay, the armor of a period ruled in real life the poise and bearing of the body; and all this must be reproduced on the stage, unless the intelligence of the audience, be they ever so little skilled in ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. Denis was in the acme of embarrassment. He looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and, seeing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to do. There he sat, playing with the guard of his rapier, and wishing himself dead a thousand times over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in France. His eyes wandered round the apartment, but found nothing to arrest them. There were such wide spaces ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... distrustful of his father's stability in the matter. The old man's character was not yet fully known to him. He ran up to his room, dressed himself, took a valise, came downstairs softly and laid it on a counter in the shop, together with his rapier and cloak. ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... fate—which creates a certain sympathy; and she neglects the good old rule that your villain should always be allowed a certain run for his money—a temporary exercise of his villainy. Alvimar, though he does not feel the marquis's rapier till nearly the end of the first half, as it were, of the book, is "marked down" from the start, and never kills anything within those limits except a poor little tame wolf-cub which is going (very sensibly) to fly at him. He ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... come aboord, but that the rest should stay in their boates, which was granted: neuerthelesse they tooke small heede of these wordes; for on a suddaine they came foorth of the boate, entring the shippe, euery Spaniarde taking him to his Rapier which they brought in the boate, with other weapons, and a drumme wherewith to triumph ouer them. Thus did the Spaniards enter the shippe, plunging in fiercely vpon them, some planting themselues vnder the decke, some entring the Cabbens, and the multitude attending their pray. Then the Corrigidor ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... Joshua Pettigrue catch him in his long arms, and settle some bedding under his head, so that he lay breathing heavily and pattering forth prayers. The minister showed himself a man that day, for amid the fierce carbine fire he walked boldly up and down, with a drawn rapier in his left hand—for he was a left-handed man—and his Bible in the other. 'This is what you are dying for, dear brothers,' he cried continually, holding the brown volume up in the air; 'are ye not ready ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with a rapier is quite another thing," he went on. He smirked and made a face at the parakeet who did its best to smirk back. "That is a graceful and fine art. Refined, and not at all degrading ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... fingers through his long black hair. "They tell of my predecessor in office, the first President of this Club, who was a man of many wanderings and many sufferings and had seen many cities and knew the hearts of men. I, gentlemen, have had my Odyssey, and I have been to Warsaw, and," with a rapier flash of a glance at the gentleman who had accused him of leading bears, "I know the miserable hearts of men." He rapped on the table with his hammer. "Asticot, come ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Revolution" he received an ovation such as few men have ever been accorded. The great Socialist theorist plunged into a keen and forceful attack upon the theories of the Bolsheviki. He was frequently interrupted by angry cries and by impatient questionings, which he answered with rapier-like sentences. He was asked what a "democratic" government ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... little back she cometh, and on her hip that bejewelled Spanish rapier that had once been part of Black Bartlemy's treasure (as hath been told) and which (having my own stout cut-and-thrust) I had not troubled to bring away ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... will buy it now, because you say so; and there's another shilling, fellow; I scorn to be out-bidden. What, shall I walk with a cudgel, like Higginbottom, and may have a rapier for money. ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... medium for the display of a subject than praise, which is always rather bromidic. The amusing person catches foibles and exploits them, and it is easy to forget that wit flashes all too irresistibly at the expense of other people's feelings, and the brilliant tongue is all too often sharpened to rapier point. Admiration for the quickness of a spoken quip, somewhat mitigates its cruelty. The exuberance of the retailer of verbal gossip eliminates the implication of scandals but both quip and gossip become deadly poison when transferred ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... peculiar to the French cadets and younger sons of noble families in North America at the time, an accentuation of the French at home, and to some extent a survival of the spirit which Richelieu partially checked. Even in the forest he wore a slender rapier at his belt, and his hand rested now upon its ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... merely come with some one. The question was not flattering. His hand went up to his chin a little awkwardly. She noted how large yet how well-shaped it was, or, rather, she remembered afterwards. Then it dropped upon the hilt of the rapier he wore, and he answered with good self-possession, though a little hot spot showed on his cheek: "The governor must have other guests who are no men of mine; for he keeps an envoy from Count Frontenac long ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... once more; nay, no compulsion, he has paid forfeit, and deserves not only free dismissal but reward. Kneel down—kneel, and arise Sir Knight of the Calabash! What is thy name? And one of you lend me a rapier." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... peace, as in war, 'tis our young gallants' pride, To walk, each one i' the streets, with a rapier by his side, That none to do them injury may have pretence; Wretched Age, in ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... is it that her victim, such a past mistress in architecture, such an adept in socialistic polity, has so far learnt no corresponding trick to serve in her own defence? She is as powerful as her executioner; like the other, she carries a rapier, an even more formidable one and more painful, at least to my fingers. For centuries and centuries the Philanthus has been storing her away in her cellars; and the poor innocent meekly submits, without ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... struck a sturdy caird, As weel as poor gut-scraper; He taks the fiddler by the beard, And draws a roosty rapier— He swoor by a' was swearing worth, To speet him like a pliver, Unless he wad from that time forth Relinquish her ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the rate of eight dollars a day, or even of fifty dollars a lecture. The taunt must be an outbreak of jealousy against the renowned authors who have the audacity to be also orators. The sub-lieutenants of the press stick a too popular writer and speaker with an epithet in England, instead of with a rapier, as in France.—Poh! All England is one great menagerie, and, all at once, the jackal, who admires the gilded cage of the royal beast, must protest against the vulgarity of the talking-bird's and the nightingale's being willing to become a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... favourite weapons were the duelling pistol and the "florette," or rapier. The "pelado," or lower orders, preferred the "lingua de vaca," which means literally "cow's tongue," a nasty-looking knife of no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... with the same sky over our heads, and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode and mine. There was one old gentleman, whose character I never made out, with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, and wearing a rapier at his side; otherwise, with the exception of the military uniforms, there was little or no pretence of official costume. It being the first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had seen, my honest impression ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and Mr. George Esmond Warrington (that is, Egomet Ipse who write this page down), as he walked the old place, pacing the long corridors, the smooth dew-spangled terraces and cool darkling avenues, felt a while as if he was one of Mr. Walpole's cavaliers with ruff, rapier, buff-coat, and gorget, and as if an Old Pretender, or a Jesuit emissary in disguise, might appear from behind any tall tree-trunk round about the mansion, or antique carved cupboard within it. I had the strangest, saddest, pleasantest, old-world ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... remarked Colonel Bludyer, as he wiped his rapier on the grass. "If he ever gets over it, he won't forget that "plongeant" thrust in tierce. I never knew it fail, Thornton—never, with a man under thirty." So the Colonel put his coat on, and drove off to breakfast; while Sir Hugh ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... neglected England, but of late she has paid her the wrong kind of attention. Erasmus, the scholar-rapier, as Luther was the hammer, of the Reformation, visits England and writes: "Above all, speak no evil of England to them. They are proud of their country above all nations in the world, as they ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier |
