"Scaffold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... did not arise entirely from divergence of belief. Other sentiments—envy, ambition, and self-love—also engendered them. The rivalry of individuals aspiring to power led the chiefs of the various groups in succession to the scaffold. ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... law governing insanity has had comparatively few victims, but the fact remains that more than one irresponsible insane man has swung miserably from the scaffold. But "hard cases" do more than "make bad law," they make lawlessness. A statute systematically violated is worse than no statute at all, and exactly in so far as we secure a sort of justice by evading the law as it stands, we make a laughing-stock ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... the interests of art were swallowed up in the frightful turmoil which made Paris the center of attention for astonished and alarmed Europe. Cherubini's connection had been with the aristocracy, and now they were fleeing in a mad panic or mounting the scaffold. His livelihood became precarious, and he suffered severely during the first five years of anarchy. His seclusion was passed in studying music, the physical sciences, drawing, and botany; and his acquaintance was ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... turns to him with an evil smile and orders the gendarmes to take him away to his death. Tosca tries to follow him, but Scarpia detains her. Remaining alone with him, she offers him all her treasures and at last kneels to him imploring him to save her lover. But the villain only shows her the scaffold which is being erected on the square below, swearing that he will only save her lover if she will be his. Tosca turns shuddering from him. Spoletta now enters to announce that Angelotti being found and taken has killed himself; and that Mario ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... though so I might think it Aren't we the fools to fancy sometimes our human wills decide the course of fate, and the conclusions of circumstances? From the beginning of time, my Lord Marquis of Montrose was meant for the scaffold." ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... for justification, though he had the scroll of his accounts in his hands, but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. Socrates'[344] condemnation of himself to be maintained in all honor in the Prytaneum,[345] during his life, and Sir Thomas More's[346] playfulness at the scaffold, are of the same strain. In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Sea Voyage," Juletta tells the stout captain ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Day followed day, and year succeeded year, a long series of horribly anxious nights, violent feelings, mental perturbations, crafty and subtle schemes, a complete cycle of rascalities, an entire science of covering up tracks, and the perpetual shadow of justice, prison, and perhaps the scaffold. Bodlevski, with his obstinate, persistent, and concentrated character, reached the highest skill in card-sharping and the allied wiles. All games of "chance" were for him games of skill. At thirty he looked at least ten years older. The life he led, with its ceaseless ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... when courts are involved in politics. A long line of sinister precedents crowd unbidden upon the mind. The Court of King's Bench, when it held Hampden to be liable for the Ship Money, draped the scaffold for Charles I. The Parliament of Paris, when it denounced Turgot's edict touching the corvee, threw wide the gate by which the aristocracy of France passed to the guillotine. The ruling of the Superior Court of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in the case of the Writs of Assistance, presaged ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... Old Cause, 'Tis a stirring sound to hear, For it tells of rights and liberties, Our fathers bought so dear; It brings up the Jersey prison-ship, The spot where Warren fell, And the scaffold which echoes the dying words Of murdered ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... wig in fulness conforming to his dignity, without therefore coming to the conclusion that human wishes were vain; nor is Queen Antoinette's civilised hair-powder, as opposed to Queen Bertha's savagely loose hair, the cause of Antoinette's laying her head at last in scaffold dust, but Bertha in a ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... sovereign princes. It was believed indeed at the French Court that, in order to distinguish him from the other knights of the most illustrious of European orders, he had been decorated with that very George which Charles the First had, on the scaffold, put into the hands of Juxon, [164] Lauzun had been encouraged to hope that, if French forces were sent to Ireland, he should command them; and this ambitious hope Louvois was bent ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the country much blood, millions of money, and a record of disgrace; but it gave a Regiment of Massachusetts Yankees opportunity to whittle up for their home cabinets of curiosities a large pile of walnut timber which had formed John Brown's scaffold, and to make extensive inroads in prying with their bayonets from the walls of the jail in which he had been confined pieces of stone and mortar. Guards were put upon the Court House in which old John heard his doom with the dignity of a Cato, at an early date, or it would have been hewn to ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... attempt, to restore his master. After a valiant stand against an unequal force, near Kingston upon Thames, he was obliged to quit the field, but was soon after taken prisoner, and suffered death upon the scaffold. His corpse was sent to Kensington, and interred in the family vault there, March 10, 1649. In the July following, Lambert, then general of the army, fixed his headquarters at Holland House. It was soon afterwards restored to the Countess of Holland. When theatres ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... an impudent assumption. Brissot, in his early ambition, wished to pass himself off as a gentleman, and called himself Brissot de Warville, as Danton did D'Anton, and Robespierre de Robespierre; but when these worthies were endeavouring to send M. de Warville to the scaffold as an aristocrat, he invented this fable of his father's having some landed property at Ouarville en Beauce (not Beance), and that he was called, according to the custom of the country, from this place, where, it seems, he was put out to nurse. When the dread ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... a bear for instance, may have a slight wrapping of tow or excelsior on the leg bones to prevent their coming in contact with the skin and the whole skin laid to dry on a scaffold of poles or something similar. When nearly dry fold up with the legs inside in a square shaped package. This can be tied up with heavy cord or even sewed up in burlap to prevent damaging the skin in transit. Fish and reptiles are not a success ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... could carry, and travelled about ten miles, keeping close to the timber. When darkness came on they crept into a very dense growth of underbrush, where they passed the greater part of the night in erecting a scaffold upon which they cached their furs, traps, and other things which they found ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Ateneo with the statement that till he ceased to be anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish he would not be welcome. Padre Faura, the famous meteorologist, was his former instructor and Rizal was his favorite pupil; he had tearfully predicted that the young man would come to the scaffold at last unless he mended his ways. But Rizal, confident in the clearness of his own conscience, went out cheerfully, and when the porter tried to bring back the memory of his childhood piety by reminding ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... but a sovereign prince," cried Casanova, somewhat theatrically, as was his wont when strongly moved. "Had I but the power to commit men to prison, to send them to the scaffold. But I am nothing. A beggar, and a liar into the bargain. I importune the Supreme Council for a post, a crust of bread, a home! What a poor thing have I become! Are you not sickened ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... the weak were oppressed, and the mighty Ruled with an iron rod. Then it chanced in a nobleman's palace That a necklace of pearls was lost, and erelong a suspicion Fell on an orphan girl who lived as maid in the household. She, after form of trial condemned to die on the scaffold, Patiently met her doom at the foot of the statue of Justice. As to her Father in heaven her innocent spirit ascended, Lo! o'er the city a tempest rose; and the bolts of the thunder Smote the statue of bronze, and hurled in wrath from its left hand Down on the ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... grains of arsenic, or a drop of prussic acid, only that it is well known the doctor has the eyes of a hawk for poison. And, on the other hand, many and many a family is saved from the suspicion attaching to the sudden death of a member, and even many an innocent man from the scaffold, by the proof of natural ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... day before I left Rome I saw three robbers guillotined. The ceremony—including the masqued priests; the half-naked executioners; the bandaged criminals; the black Christ and his banner; the scaffold; the soldiery; the slow procession, and the quick rattle and heavy fall of the axe; the splash of the blood, and the ghastliness of the exposed heads—is altogether more impressive than the vulgar and ungentlemanly dirty 'new drop,' and dog-like agony of infliction upon the sufferers of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... noted in his way, As call'd upon to show his art, Whene'er Bathyllus did his part. He being at a certain fair, (I do not well remember where,) While they pull'd down the booth in haste, Not taking heed, his leg displaced, He from the scaffold fell so hard— (Would he his pipes had rather marr'd! Though they, poor fellow! were to him As dear almost as life and limb). Borne by the kind officious crowd, Home he's conducted, groaning loud. Some months elapsed before he found Himself ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... have invited the chiefs to see justice done. I am going to pitch them a speech myself from the scaffold—cautionary tales for children, don't you know—and then, if old Fee-Fo-Fum with the mallet don't get too excited and miss his stroke, ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... principality sufficient to satisfy his just desires for power. Nothing but his own sense of right and prudence restrained Colleoni upon the path which brought Francesco Sforza to a duchy by dishonourable dealings, and Carmagnola to the scaffold by questionable practice ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... more solemn than the thought of death, except its actual presence; but Theramenes was light-hearted when the hemlock bowl was presented to him, and drinking it off could not, as he threw out the dregs, resist exclaiming "To the health of the lovely Critias."[23] Sir Thomas More was jocose upon the scaffold. Baron Goerz, when being led to death, said to his cook—"It's all over now, my friend, you will never cook me a good supper again." The poet Kleist, who was killed in the battle of Kunersdorf, was seized with a violent fit of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... sir: Some idiot must have put a scaffold pole on it and cracked it right down the middle, and it's thick enough you'd think to stand hanythink.' Geoffrey was silent for quite a minute, and then said in a constrained voice and with much ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... to fancy the girl's evil face scowling at the unconscious Queen, before she leaves to pen those inflammatory pamphlets which are to prove the Sovereign's undoing and her own. For by some whim of fate Madame Roland was executed on the very scaffold to which her envenomed writings had driven ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... he could be, his neighbors were better inclined to believe that he had driven the horse into a gallop, intending to drag the girl for a short distance, as a punishment, and to rein up before he had done serious mischief. On this supposition he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to die on the scaffold. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... sewing-machines or making shirts at twenty cents apiece after the manner of New-York workwomen. But once indignation and excitement took possession of us all as we caught sight of a bare-footed, slight young girl toiling up a ladder and carrying mortar along a scaffold to men laying bricks on the second story of a new building. The girl had a complexion like a rose-leaf, her uncovered hair gleamed like gold in the sunshine, her head was exquisitely set on her shoulders. The curate sighed deeply, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... sanguinary red, was the executioner that was to sever this slender tie, and wrench the spirit from the body to whose guardianship God had committed it on earth. Silently the hideous cortege moved on, while the crowd fell back to let it pass, until the scaffold came to view. How joyously the sun's rays seemed to play around the glittering axe that was to end a career of secret crime! How eagerly the high-born dames bend forward to catch sight of the criminal, as, leaning on ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... likely his keeper in the Tower would ever forget his remark? "Assure yourself I do not dislike my cheer; but whenever I do, then spare not to thrust me out of your doors." Nor did his quaint humour desert him at the scaffold: "Master Lieutenant," said he, "I pray you see me safe up; for my coming down let me shift for myself." Even with his head on the block he could not resist a humorous remark, when putting aside his beard he said to the executioner, "Wait, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... its nest and laid three eggs at the junction of two scaffold poles where between fifty and sixty men are working on a new building at Northampton. The kind-hearted labourers were, we understand, willing to work quietly and slowly in order not to disturb the young mother, but were over-ridden by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... prophets in the intervals of labour, locking up the chapel-doors in order to elude the jealous curiosity of rivals, eating but little and scarcely sleeping, he accomplished in sixteen months the first part of his gigantic task.[317] From time to time Julius climbed the scaffold and inspected the painter's progress. Dreading lest death should come before the work were finished, he kept crying, "When will you make an end?" "When I can," answered the painter. "You seem to want," rejoined the petulant old man, "that I should have you thrown down from the scaffold." Then ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... July they passed through the channel of the Scaffold to Great Slave Lake, and, landing at Moose Deer Island, found thereon the rival forts, of course, within striking distance of each other, and in charge, as usual, of rival Scotsmen. At Great Slave Lake I must part company with ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... were on the house-tops and in windows and on every available spot from which a view of the gallows was to be had. The prisoners mounted the scaffold, being accompanied by three Vigilance Committee officers who acted as executioners and a Rev. Mr. Thomas. After the noose had been adjusted, Hetherington addressed the crowd, claiming to be innocent, and ready to meet his Maker. Brace, ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... GILBERT boldly on the scaffold took his stand, With a vizor on his face and with a hatchet in his hand, And all the people noticed that the Engine of the Law Was far less like a hatchet than a ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... But nothing would have induced him to abandon it, so long as he could possibly maintain himself there, no matter at what cost of discomfort, or even actual distress, for from it he had a capital view of the scaffold, and all its horribly fascinating details—the wheel upon which the criminal was to revolve, the coil of rope to bind him to it, and the heavy bar ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... 're the sons of sires that baffled Crown'd and mitred tyranny; They defied the field and scaffold For their ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of the saint inscribed on the calendar for that day, and fed and brought him up as his own son. The curate died in 1804, without leaving enough property to carry on the education he had begun. Ferdinand, thrown upon Paris, led a filibustering life whose chances might bring him to the scaffold, to fortune, the bar, the army, commerce, or domestic life. Obliged to live like a Figaro, he was first a commercial traveller, then a perfumer's clerk in Paris, where he turned up after traversing all France, having studied ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... they have sometimes a scaena or high stage, raised like a scaffold, or small spelts, reeds, or dried osiers covered with mats which gives a shadow and is a shelter ... where on a loft of hurdles they lay forth their corn and fish ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... in his own bed. But he had to be buried secretly in the dead of night, for, ten years after Eugene Aram had died on the scaffold, the hatred of the world survived for his accomplice. Rowland Lester did not live long after Madeline's death. But when Walter returned from a period of honourable service with the great Frederick of Prussia, it was with no merely ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... because you are a bad man you will become a great one; but to be bad, and at the same time unsuccessful, is a hard fate. It casts a little doubt upon a man's badness if he does not, at least, make a little money. It is a poor business accompanying badness on to a common scaffold, or to see it die in a wretched garret. That was one of my complaints with Mr. Seccombe's Twelve Bad Men. Most of them came to violent ends. They were ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... the war, the gentleman from Ohio did as much as I did in that direction, I shall be glad to recognize that much done. But the only victim of the gentleman's prowess that I know of was an innocent woman on the scaffold, one Mrs. Surratt. I can sustain the memory of Fort Fisher if he and his present associates can sustain him in shedding the blood of a woman tried by a military commission and convicted, in my judgment, without ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... gallows in our sense of the word, but usually a stake on a scaffold, to which the condemned to a death of torture was bound ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... great, that his study was continually thronged either with visitors who were persons of distinction, or with clients who came to him for advice; and in a short time he acquired a considerable fortune. Notwithstanding all these advantages, he passed his life miserably, and ended it on the scaffold. The following story afterwards got into circulation, and has been often triumphantly cited by succeeding astrologers as an irrefragable proof of the truth of their science. It was said that, long before he died, he uttered three remarkable prophecies—one ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... great voluntary concessions to his people; and they sent him to the scaffold. Charles the Tenth violated the fundamental laws of the state, established a despotism, and butchered his subjects for not submitting quietly to that despotism. He failed in his wicked attempt. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be the first step to the scaffold—for somebody," he said, with a meaning glance. "Ah—it's extraordinary what little, innocent-looking things help to put a bit of rope round a man's neck! So you took this, Mr. ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... would no longer look at me." Another day Bourienne could not help congratulating him on some noisy demonstration of popular favour. "Bah!" he answered, "they would rush as eagerly about me if I were on my way to the scaffold." ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... its lofty Gothic tower, was built by the emperor Otho in the tenth century. It seems at present to be undergoing repairs, for a large scaffold shut out the dome. The long hall was dim with incense smoke as we entered, and the organ sounded through the high arches with an effect that startled me. The windows glowed with the forms of kings and saints, and the dusty and mouldering shrines which ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... approached, he saw it, and a shudder ran through his frame. Turning to me, he said: 'I am to be buried there. One more request, colonel. Mark it; so that when this cruel conflict shall have ended, my friends may find it!' He then shook hands with me, and, with unfaltering steps, went to the scaffold." ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... as indeed he could not, but stopped four leagues below to mend rigging, fortify wounded masts, and stop shot-holes. Subercase had gone with a detachment to watch the retiring enemy; and Phips was repeatedly seen among his men, on a scaffold at the side of his ship, exercising his old trade of carpenter. This delay was turned to good use by an exchange of prisoners. Chief among those in the hands of the French was Captain Davis, late commander at Casco Bay; and there were also two young daughters of Lieutenant Clark, who had been ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... subjects. The Count de Provence, who afterward wore his murdered brother's crown, was the first to teach the French nation that odiouus epithet of "d'Autrichienne," with which they hooted the Queen of France to an ignominious death upon the scaffold. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Wild Margrave charged his official travelling companion with neglect, and had the unhappy Hofrath Meyer hanged without process for this crime. One of the gentlemen of his realm, for a pasquinade on the Margrave, was brought to the scaffold; he had, at various times, twenty-two of his soldiers shot with arrows and bullets or hanged for desertion, besides many whose penalties his clemency commuted to the loss of an ear or a nose; a Hungarian ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that sun-burnt plain there are the remains of five or six extinguished Delhis, that played their dramas of frustration before the Delhi of the Great Mogul. This present phase of human living—its symbol at Delhi is now, I suppose, a scaffold-bristling pile of neo-Georgian building—is the latest of the constructive synthetic efforts to make a newer and fuller life for mankind. Who dares call it the last? I question myself constantly whether this life ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... page after page, filled with coarse invective, with bitter denunciation, with injurious suspicion; sees with what terrible relish the sufferings of these deluded people are recorded; marks how the heroism which goes to the scaffold without a tremor, and looks undeserved death in the face without a fear, is travestied; shudders to hear the planters, after thousands have been slain, yet cry for more blood; and then he puts the paper down and says, "Here in this language is material enough out of which to create a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... consecrated element; another hanged some of his vassals, because they did not grind their corn at the seignorial mill, for "haute or basse justice" was then among the nobles' rights. Marguerite, a daughter of this ancient house, expiated, with her brother, their offences upon the scaffold at Paris. Every effort was made to spare their lives; but the King, or rather Queen Margot, was inexorable. The chateau of Tourlaville is beautifully situated; it is in the style of the Renaissance, with an angular tower, which ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... with Mr Archibald Dozendale, went there likewise, to keep the people in awe; for we feared the strangers might be jeered and insulted. The three were seated aloft on a high stage, prepared on purpose, with two mares and scaffold-deals, borrowed from Mr Trowel the mason. They sat long, and silent; but at last the spirit moved the woman, and she rose, and delivered a very sensible exposition of Christianity. I was really surprised to hear such ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... later the young Baggara drew bridle again in the middle of the opening, about which were several low buildings, and the place being without interest, save that there were several groups of fighting men about, and some slight scaffold-like suggestions of building being commenced, Frank's thoughts went back to the house they had passed, as he felt again that it must be the palace of some powerful chief among the conquerors, while the open space where they stood was the Soudanese idea ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... aborigines called upon them for increased exertion. They were wasting away with disease—they were dying on the scaffold—they were being shot down in mistake for native dogs, and their bleeding and ghastly heads had been exhibited on poles, as scare-crows ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... pedicle; pedestal; plinth, shank, leg, socle[obs3], zocle[obs3]; buttress, jamb, mullion, abutment; baluster, banister, stanchion; balustrade; headstone; upright; door post, jamb, door jamb. frame, framework; scaffold, skeleton, beam, rafter, girder, lintel, joist, travis[obs3], trave[obs3], corner stone, summer, transom; rung, round, step, sill; angle rafter, hip rafter; cantilever, modillion[obs3];; crown post, king post; vertebra. columella[obs3], backbone; keystone; axle, axletree; axis; arch, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Christ, who, through love for sinners, gave himself to be crucified—brought slaughter on the Albigenses and the Waldenses; filled France with desolation, under Domenico di Guzman; raised in Spain the funeral pile and the scaffold, devastating the fair kingdoms of Granada and Castile, through the assistance of those detestable monks, Raimond de Pennefort, Peter Arbues, and Cardinal Forquemorda. That, which, to its eternal infamy, registers in the annals of France the fatal 24th of August, and the 5th of November ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... the new urban growth made it indicative of all the other things that had happened just before my time, or were still, at a less dramatic pace, happening. I realised that building was the enemy. I began to understand why in every direction out of Bromstead one walked past scaffold-poles into litter, why fragments of broken brick and cinder mingled in every path, and the significance of the universal notice-boards, either white and new or a year old and torn and battered, promising sites, proffering ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the startling answer. "They must have been sawn or they would never have given way beneath so light a weight. And then he urged her—I saw him—pleaded with her, drew her by force of eye and hand to step upon the scaffold without, though there was no need for it, and she recoiled. And when her light foot was on it and her half-smiling, half-timid face looked back upon us, he leaped out beside her, when instantly came the sound of a great crack, and I heard his laugh and her cry go up together, and—and—everything ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... probe the next decade, to ask, "Where shall we be in ten years,—in fifty years?" The outlook is bounded by the next Sunday in the park or the theatre. The people throw themselves into the pleasures of the moment with the desperation of doomed men who hear the ring of the hammer on the scaffold. Ibsen, applying an old sailor's superstition to the European ship of state, tells how one night he stood on the deck and looked down on the throng of passengers, each the victim of some form of brooding melancholy or dark presentiment, and as he looked he seemed to hear ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... three short boards follow the timbers and are laid across them. Behind them appear a man's head and a pair of vigorous arms. One hand holds the nail, the other swings the hammer that strikes it until the boards are firmly nailed down. The "flying" scaffold is ready. Thus the builder calls it, for whom it may become a bridge to heaven, without his desiring it. Then from the scaffold the ladder is built and, if the tower roof is very high, ladder upon ladder. Nothing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... linger by his scaffold, though it be cheated of its last adornment, and though no eye behold its grinning outline but its own. For there are shadowy scaffolds, and invisible executioners, sitting at our own boards and eating of our own bread, discernible only in a glass. Our own ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... kings of France, which still subsists, is a remain of the eastern practice of investiture by a glove. A remarkable instance of this ceremony is recorded. The unfortunate Conradin was deprived of his crown and his life by the usurper Mainfroy. When having ascended the scaffold, the injured prince lamenting his hard fate, asserted his right to the crown, and, as a token of investiture, threw his glove among the crowd, intreating it might be conveyed to some of his relations, who would revenge his death,—it was taken up by a knight, and brought to Peter, king of Aragon, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... his prerogative nobly, but he took care not to break in upon the capital,—never abandoning for a moment any of the claims which he made under the fundamental laws, nor sparing to shed the blood of those who opposed him, often in the field, sometimes upon the scaffold. Because he knew how to make his virtues respected by the ungrateful, he has merited the praises of those whom, if they had lived in his time, he would have shut up in the Bastile, and brought to punishment along with the regicides whom he ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... lady was exposed to; she was obliged to sollicit Cromwel to pay her an allowance, as Queen Dowager of England, which, no doubt, she had a right to demand; but to demand it, nay worse, to be obliged to beg it of a man who shed her Husband's blood upon a scaffold, is an affliction, so excessively heightened, that few of the human race ever bore ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... at that moment, looking round upon the people, "Will no charitable body," cried he, "bring me a little water to quench my thirst?" Which immediately they did, and handed it up to him upon the scaffold. The vizier Saouy perceiving this delay, called out to the executioner from the king's closet window, where he had planted himself, "Strike, what dost thou stay for?" At these inhuman words the whole place echoed with loud imprecations against ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... bear patiently whatever he chose to inflict upon them. They could no more pretend to merit before him than before God. When they had done all they were still unprofitable servants. The highest praise due to the Royalist who shed his blood on the field of battle or on the scaffold for hereditary monarchy was simply that he was not a traitor." When such intimate acquaintance is shown with the senti- ments of the fallen king, one wonders who knew better his intentions and inclinations, Lord Macaulay, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... man died than how he lived. If a man who had lived a righteous, sober and godly life died while playing cards or in innocent laughter, with no opportunity for the ministrations of a priest, his chances for the next world were thought to be slim. On the other hand, a damnable scoundrel on the scaffold, with the clergyman's assurances assented to, was supposed to be jerked into heaven. This view of life and death was firmly held even by so sincere and profound a thinker as Hamlet: which explains his anguish at ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... harmony. Why give them an aspect of alarm? What do we seek? To win nations to the universal public. Then why inspire fright? Of what avail is intimidation? It is wrong to do ill in order to do good. You do not pull down the throne to leave the scaffold standing. Let us hurl away crowns, let us spare heads. The revolution is concord, not affright. Mild ideas are ill-served by men who do not know pity. Amnesty is for me the noblest word in human speech. I will shed no ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... his voyage with the most abject despondency and terror. Two or three days passed before he could make up his mind to ask for an interview with her; and he spent the time in making as much interest with Leicester, Hatton, and Sidney, as if he were about to sue for a reprieve from the scaffold. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... entirely engage our attention, and prevent that double sympathy, above-mentioned. Thus we find, that though every one, but especially women, are apt to contract a kindness for criminals, who go to the scaffold, and readily imagine them to be uncommonly handsome and wellshaped; yet one, who is present at the cruel execution of the rack, feels no such tender emotions; but is in a manner overcome with horror, and has no leisure to temper this uneasy sensation ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... last words on the scaffold, for being concerned in the murder of Pierce the gauger, were, that he got the first of his bad habits under Pat Mulligan and Norah—that he learned to steal by secreting at home, butter and meal to paste up the master's eyes to his bad conduct—and that his fondness ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... seemed so for some time. But I have been the victim of as bad a scoundrel as ever lived—I'm not going to be so hypocritical as to pretend that I'm sorry he's dead—I'm not! I only wish he'd met his proper fate—on the scaffold. I don't know what you may have heard, or gathered—my daughter herself, from what she tells me, has only the vaguest notions—but I wanted to tell you, Mr. Eldrick, and you, Mr. Collingwood—seeing that you're one a solicitor and the other a barrister, that Pratt invented a most abominable ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... mightier—fear. Because he was a coward, he had not ventured even the least caress, lest passion seize him and make him mad—forgetful of how that other man died so horribly. She had been spared because between him and her a scaffold loomed. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... or in small bands. They hunted all through the year, killing vast quantities of every kind of game. Most of it they got by fair still-hunting, but some by methods we do not now consider legitimate, such as calling up a doe by imitating the bleat of a fawn, and shooting deer from a scaffold when they came to the salt licks at night. Nevertheless, most of the hunters did not approve of "crusting" the game—that is, of running it down on snow-shoes in ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... king never lived. Nothing could be more royal than the way he distributed his gratitude for the victory on St. Lawrence's day. To Count Egmont, whose splendid courage and loyalty gained him the battle, he gave ignominy and death on the scaffold; and to exhibit a gratitude to a myth which he was too mean to feel to a man, he built to San Lorenzo that stupendous mass of granite which is to-day the visible demonstration of the might and the weakness ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... holes in the ground, in stone graves or cysts, in mounds, beneath or in houses, or in caves. Embalmment, to a limited extent, was also practised, the corpse being wrapped in garments and made up into a bundle before being placed in the earth, a cave, charnel-house, or in a box mounted on a scaffold. Surface-burial was in use in some districts, the corpse being placed in a pen, a hollow tree or log, or simply covered with loose earth, or bark, or rocks forming cairns. In several regions, at various times, cremation was the rule, or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... pages of these valuable volumes may be gone through, and the autographs of nearly all the Archbishops and Bishops of England for the last 200 years may be seen, including Juxon, Bishop of London, who attended Charles I. on the scaffold. A book containing photographs of the churches in the diocese reveals that Bishop Longley—the first Bishop of Ripon—was of a distinctly practical character. He started this ingenious index to the state of his churches. As soon as any alteration is made in a place ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... we sighed for thee, coyest of maidens— Long, long have we worshipped thee, queen of the brave! Steadily sought for thee, readily fought for thee, Purpled the scaffold ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... often comes into my thoughts, and I wish one could say the story is not true. He had his lord high constable executed, and he could execute him, right or wrong; but he had the innocent children of the constable, one seven and the other eight years old, placed under the scaffold so that the warm blood of their father spurted over them, and then he had them sent to the Bastille, and shut up in iron cages, where not even a coverlet was given them to protect them from the cold. And King Louis sent the executioner to them every week, ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... a scaffold erected, at the charge of the City, for the execution of noble offenders imprisoned in the Tower (after sentence ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... exile, or climbing the steps of a scaffold on Tyburn Hill. This must be our farewell. Do not remain a moment longer. May God help me and bring happiness to you!" said Hamilton, answering her question all ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... orders were sent to arrest him, and imprison him at Grenoble. He lay in prison fifteen months, and was then brought to Paris, and tried for his life. He made a noble defence; but it was of no avail. He was beheaded on the 29th of October, 1793. When on the scaffold, he seemed suddenly struck with the infamy of the treatment he had met with on every side. He stamped with his foot, and exclaimed, "This, then, is the reward of all that I have done for liberty!" He was only thirty-two years of age. His unwise ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... senses more obvious—never once did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end on every road pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that lurked but here and there until ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... this astounding universe. He was terrified out of all capacity for belief or disbelief in regard of this extraordinary affair, which began with police inspectors and Embassies and would end goodness knows where—on the scaffold for someone. He was terrified at the thought that he could not prove the use he made of his time ever since seven o'clock, for he had been skulking about Brett Street. He was terrified at this savage woman who had brought him in there, and would probably saddle him with complicity, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... sharply from where the boy still stood with his arms crossed upon his breast, fighting hard for the resignation that refused to come, while his heart now beat slowly and heavily, as if in the march that ended in the scaffold and ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... should success attend them, whether, in a few years, they may not celebrate the glorious era of the revolution of 1775, as we do that of 1608? Success crowned the generous efforts of our forefathers for freedom, else they had died on the scaffold as traitors and rebels; and the period of our history which does us most honour would have been deemed a rebellion against lawful authority—not a resistance sanctioned by all the laws of God and man, and the expulsion of a tyrant." There is much truth in these ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... bold enterprises of ambition? His only place of refuge is a throne. He who has won a queen must protect her with a sceptre. You must be mine—my very queen—you must extend your hand and raise me to the royalty of Poland, or see my blood flow ignominiously upon the scaffold." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... respect of mine own commodity, as even for a very love of Thee." The unfortunate Anne Boleyn, who during her imprisonment had repented and received the last sacraments from the hands of Father Thirlwall, begs on the scaffold that the people may pray for her. In her address to her ladies before leaving the Tower, she concludes it by begging them to forget her not after death. "In your prayers to the Lord Jesus forget not to pray for my soul." ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... can of the type made internationally popular by a certain oil trust, inspected it to see if the baling-wire handle would hold the weight of four gallons of gasoline, and sauntered to a shed under which a red-leaded iron drum lay on a low scaffold of poles. A brass faucet was screwed into the hole for a faucet. He turned it listlessly, watched the gasoline run in a sparkling stream the size of his finger, went off into a moon-dream until the oil can was threatening to run over, and then shut off the stream at its source. ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... in the audience-hall was a simple raised scaffold in the centre of the room, with a screen behind it, and a staircase of seven or eight steps leading up to it. Access to this sort of platform-island from the gate at which we entered was obtained by means ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... his demonstration, we are enabled to dissect out to their ultimate issues the minutest ramifications of intrigue. We join in the amusement of the popular lampoon; we visit the prison-house; we stand by the scaffold; we are present at the battle and the siege. We can scan the inmost characters of men and can view them in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and asked if it would not be mercy to kill it, and cruelty, damnable cruelty, to tear off a wing one day, and a limb the next, and so on, till nothing remained of its tortured frame but the quivering pulse of life. I spoke of men who die on the scaffold, or who drag on existence in jails and hulks, and whose hearts are not so hard, whose spirits are not so brutal, as those of others who come into our houses, who sit at our tables, with smiles on their lips and poison in ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... luck, locked in some royal prison, writing verses to his many friends. His was a strange career; at one time there was no man in England whose favor was more sought, yet at the end he died upon the scaffold charged with treason. Time proved him guiltless of the charge, and almost at once the English people began to realize how great a light ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... that the government were not acting in good faith, that secret, preparations were making to annihilate the authority of the states; to restore the edicts, to put strangers into high places, and to set up again the scaffold and the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of it! Had I been Sir Thomas, never word would I have spoken till the breath was clean gone out of him, and then, if man coveted vengeance, let him take it on the silent dust. But no sooner was it known to the Queen—to her, a woman and a mother!—than she gave command to have the scaffold run up with all speed, and that dying man drawn of an hurdle through the city that all men might behold, with trumpets going afore, and at last hanged of the gallows till he were dead. Oh, the pity of it! the ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... execution, and the apparatus there, to throw horrour on the scene without in reality giving the unhappy victim a more painful exit. The Dutch have a mode of execution which is well calculated to inspire terror, without putting the sufferer to extraordinary pain. The criminal is placed on a scaffold, opposite to the gigantick figure of a woman, with arms extended, filled with spikes, or long sharpened nails, and a dagger pointed from her breast, she is gradually moved towards him by machinery for the purpose, till he gets within her embrace, when ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... was paid to the dead, who were supposed to have gone on a journey to a spirit land. Every one had such a separate scaffold or grave, generally speaking, as Champlain saw among the Ottawas, but it was the strange custom of the Hurons to collect the bones of their dead every few years and immure them in great pits or ossuaries with weirdlike ceremonies very minutely described in the Relations. ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... ashamed, at a friend's house at Dag, the accomplishment of a promise so dearly purchased, she heard the beating of the alarm drum, and looked, from curiosity, through the window, when she saw her unfortunate parent ascending the scaffold! After having remained lifeless for half an hour, she recovered her senses an instant, when ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... ceased to lavish kindness on him, and to be, in every sense of the word, a good mistress to him. *This wretch, whom the comtesse du Barry loaded with her favours and benefits, conducted her to the scaffold.- EDITOR (i.e., author) There was one member of my establishment, however, whom I preferred to either Dorine or Zamor and this was Henriette, who was sincerely attached to me, and who, for that very ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... particulars of their mother's conduct. He was therefore constrained to silence, and had no argument to combat the tears of two innocent creatures at his feet exclaiming, 'Do not abandon our mother; she will break her heart! and ought injustice to take from us, poor orphans, whose natural protector the scaffold has already deprived us of, the support of one whom Providence ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... A scaffold high with spreading arms on yonder height we see, It waits to take its victim's life, exulting cruelly. While zephyr's blow, birds hover o'er a soul in dire distress, With troubled gaze breathes out a prayer. Will ...
— Poems - A Message of Hope • Mary Alice Walton
... the trial was conducted illegally in important particulars. Of the six pirates named above, as executed on June 30, Lambert was a Salem man, Peterson apparently a Swede, Roach Irish, Quelch and the other two English. Judge Sewall records that "When the Scaffold was let to sink, there was such a Screech of the Women that my wife heard it sitting in our Entry next the Orchard, and was much surprised at it; yet the wind was sou-west. Our house is a full mile from the place." In 1835 the ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... to tradition, was the Eastern tower or corner, and the place of Wishart's execution was nearly opposite, at the foot of what is called Castle Wynd. Spotiswood says, "A scaffold in the meantime erecting on the east part of the Castle towards the Abbey, with a great tree in the middest, in manner of a gibbet, into which the prisoner was to be tied.... The fore tower was hanged with tapestry, and rich cushions laid for case of the Cardinal ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... till they are at their full pitch; and I hope yon cardinal shall never have the grace to pray well, till he come to the scaffold. If they were racked now to know the confederacy: but your noblemen are privileged from the rack; and well may, for a little thing would pull some of them a-pieces afore they came to their arraignment. Religion, oh, how it is commeddled ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... in November, 1640, and began its work—brought Strafford to the scaffold, clapped Laud into the Tower, Archbishop though he was, and secured as best they could the permanency of Parliamentary institutions. None of these things specially concerned John Milton. But there also uprose the eternal Church question, 'What sort of Church are ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... is never a thunder-clap during the snowstorm. True, the ship has the bandage round her eyes; darkness is knotted about her; she is like one prepared to be led to the scaffold. As for the thunderbolt, which makes quick ending, it is not ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... after some time his left hand. Thereafter he was to be hanged up and cut down alive; his bowels to be taken out and his heart shown to the people by the hangman, and then to be burnt in a fire on the scaffold. Afterwards his head was to be cut off, and his body, divided into four quarters, to be sent respectively to Saint Andrews, Glasgow, Leith, ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... the chair, went round it, still running, and returned at the same speed to the shed. He no sooner reached there than he uttered a cry of triumph as he glanced at the watch banging from a post. "I have won," he said, and threw himself with a happy thrill upon the fatal scaffold. They surrounded him, and he read the liveliest curiosity in all their faces. Panting still from his mad rush, he asked for two words apart with the ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... pleasant memories, all these bright hopes, all these loving forms, though present in his heart, seemed dim and distant to him. He had nothing to hope for in the future on this side of the grave, nothing in the present but an ignominious death on the scaffold. Yet it was sweet to die for one's country; and, disgraceful as his end might be in its form, it was still in the service of the nation. He felt happy in the thought; and, if there was nothing more on earth to hope for, there was still a bright heaven beyond ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... thus made their confession, were ordered to prepare for death. A scaffold erected between the central gate of the palace, and that which is now the principal gate of the city guards, was hung with black to denote that the criminals were of noble blood. An immense crowd were assembled; and the viceroy, standing on the balcony of his palace, witnessed the execution ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... "Well! the speculator's scaffold is the Bourse! But only small dabblers in money succumb; the great ones are safe from danger. They are supported in their undertakings by such powerful and numerous interests that they cannot fail without ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... horror, welcoming Samson and his satellites as friends and saviors. Remember, too, that there was scarcely an exception to the rule of patient courage, calm self-sacrifice, and pride of birth that never belied itself. Dubarry might shriek on the scaffold, but ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... paragraph to the "Furies of the Guillotine," the terrible women who habitually occupied the front places among the spectators at all the executions, and who interrupted their knitting only to hurl insults at the victims who mounted the scaffold. These tricoteuses affected an exalted Revolutionary sentiment, they wore the red cap of liberty, and one day presented themselves at the Convention with an address in which they offered to mount guard ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... the peccant Officials being summoned out to Strehlen, it had been asked of them, "Do you know this Letter?" Upon which they fell on their knees, "ACH IHRO MAJESTAT!" unable to deny their handwriting; yet anxious to avoid death on the scaffold, as Friedrich said was usual under such behavior; and were sent home, after a few hours of arrest. [Orlich, i. 134; Helden-Geschichte, ii. 228.] Schwerin (as King's substitute till the King himself one ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... sure to be disclosed? Then if they could not fly from the testimony of His works, if they could not evade even their fellow-man, why did they not first turn to Him? Why, from the penitent child at his mother's knee to the murderer on the scaffold, did they only at ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... threatened by some secret society, supposed to have lurking-places in various parts of London, he having a year or two before been mainly instrumental in the breaking up of a Nihilist society in Russia, and in bringing to the scaffold its chief and most active member, a young Russian of noble birth. The second explosion, which had done less damage, and was happily unattended by any serious results beyond the partial wrecking of the house, was at the private residence of a well-known English Detective. ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... that quiet and distant place. The hideous "Fete of the Supreme Being" had been celebrated at Paris; the practice of our ancient religion was forbidden; its professors were most of them in concealment, or in exile, or had expiated on the scaffold their crime of Christianity. In our poor village my uncle's church was closed, and he, himself, an inmate in my brother's house, only owing his safety to his great popularity among his former flock, and the influence of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Atlantic, a leader was prepared for them, by God's providence, on the other. In the same year that Obadiah Holmes and his band established their church in Massachusetts, in opposition to the Puritan order, Charles I, the great English traitor, expiated his "high crimes and misdemeanors" on the scaffold, at the hands of a Puritan Parliament. Then followed the period of the Commonwealth under Cromwell, and then the Restoration, when "there arose up a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph." The Act of Uniformity, passed in 1662, under the sanction of Charles II, though ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... prove that his uncle had died of aconitine. He could not himself account for the facts—he was absolutely in my power. I did not wish him to be condemned, Maisie. I only hoped that he would leave the court discredited and ruined. I give you my word that my evidence would have saved him from the scaffold." ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... a pleasant spot for such work. The north transept, high up towards the vault of the roof, was still occupied by a wide scaffold which shut in the painters and shut out the curious, and ran the whole length of its three sides, being open towards the body of the church. When Esther came to inspect her field of labor, she found herself obliged ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... are forgetting your own ancestors. I venture that no woman of the House of Sayn talked thus when the Emperor Rudolph marched Count von Sayn to the scaffold. You would probably sing another song if asked to restore the millions amassed by Henry III. of Sayn and his successors; all accumulated by robbery as cruel as any that the Red ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... in hand and never gave it up until the last moment, going to the scaffold with a promise of pardon a few moments ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... cattle in obscene promiscuity, while the mutilated corpses were lying still green, piled up under the bog turf of Culloden, while so many of the bravest men of Scotland, who had supplicated the Young Pretender not to tempt them to a hopeless enterprise, were cheerfully mounting the scaffold "for so sweet a prince," Charles Edward was dancing at Versailles in his crimson silk dress and diamonds, with his black-eyed boast the eldest-born Princess of France. Nay, worse, if we remember how the man, for whose love and whose right so much ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... was safe; he must prevent Florentin from being unjustly condemned for a crime of which he was innocent. It was a great deal that he should be imprisoned, that his sister should be in despair, and his mother ill from chagrin; but if he should be sent to the scaffold or to the galleys, it would be too much. In itself the death of Caffie was a small thing; it became atrocious if it led to such ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... to be present at the private strangling of their fellow-creatures. It is true, however, that use hardens the heart and deadens the nerves. I remember how, on the first occasion of witnessing an execution, as I stood trembling at the foot of the scaffold on which the victim was about to appear, I noticed an old reporter, for whom I entertained a great personal respect, pacing up and down beside me, reading the New Testament. In the passion of horror and pity that filled my young ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... you tell me, now that I know the executioner's hand was necessary to my salvation, what should I have become had I died at Liege? Where should I have been now? And even if I had not been taken, and had lived another twenty years away from France, what would my death have been, since it needed the scaffold for my purification? Now I see all my wrong-doings, and the worst of all is the last—I mean my effrontery before the judges. But all is not yet lost, God be thanked; and as I have one last examination to go through, I desire to make a complete confession about my whole life. You, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... most of the nobles in the town on horseback, as he himself was. In his right hand he carried the King's royal standard, and by his left side rode the Mayor of the town. The Heralds that rode before went first upon the scaffold, which was there made for that purpose before the King's balcony, where he was wont to see the juego de toros. The scaffold was covered with carpets. On each side of the Duke stood the Heralds, and on his left hand stood the Mayor, and by the Heralds ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... crowd, and he must suffer it. And this was to be the end of life. A few weeks more and the end would come, and he, Paul Stepaside, who had such hopes of a brilliant future, would end his life on the scaffold. A hangman's cord would be around his neck, and he would drop into Eternity, reviled and spurned despite ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... Petersburg, and three of the ringleaders, Zotoff, Haussmann, and Bernstein, were duly hanged in the Yakutsk gaol. Zotoff, who had been badly wounded during the fight, had to be carried on his bed to the scaffold. The other exiles received long terms of imprisonment at the political prison at Akatui, where I saw and conversed with them in 1894.[21] The women were sent to Viluisk, but have since ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... and the fields had to be reaped frequently to save the precious lint from damage by the weather. Accordingly the pickers are said to have averaged no more than twenty-five pounds a day. The preparation for market required the greatest painstaking of all. First the seed cotton was dried on a scaffold; next it was whipped for the removal of trash and sand; then it was carefully sorted into grades by color and fineness; then it went to the roller gins, whence the lint was spread upon tables where women picked out every stained ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... denied knowledge of any of his friends. He carried his generosity so far as to behave with courteous dignity even to those who had betrayed him; he even tried to excuse the indifference of the princes whose selfish inertia had been his ruin. He remained great until he reached the scaffold; eleven faithful Chouans died with him, among the number being Louis Picot, Joyaut and Burban, whose names have appeared in ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... recollection of them. Alas! my heart breaks at the very thought, and my tears bedew the paper on which I am writing. Adieu, all that I love. Think of me, and do not forget that to die the victim of tyrants and the martyrs of liberty sheds lustre on the scaffold." ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... never I saw there before. And she told me to say to thee that she could not come to-day, but that she would make amends, and that thou hadst no cause to overworry, and I know not what she meant, but this much I do know, a brave man is a brave man whether it be the scaffold or the stocks, and—and—thou hast gotten ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... answer; therefore the slaves of formalism and superstition clamored for his blood, as the Jews had clamored for the blood of Christ. "He is a heretic," cried the Roman zealots. "It is high treason against the church to allow so horrible a heretic to live one hour longer. Let the scaffold be instantly erected for him!"(179) But Luther did not fall a prey to their fury. God had a work for him to do, and angels of heaven were sent to protect him. Many, however, who had received from Luther the precious light, were made the objects of Satan's wrath, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... of Louis XIV. nicely done up in spices, but, to the owner's horror and astonishment, Dean Buckland popped the kingly morsel into his mouth, and swallowed it. We told about the black-letter prayer-book of King Charles the Martyr, used by him upon the scaffold, taking which into our hands, it opened of itself at the Communion Service; and there, on the left-hand page, appeared a spot about as large as a sixpence, of a yellowish or brownish hue: a drop of the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the people might witness the scene, he took his prisoners to Brussels and decided to behead them in the public square. In the evening Egmont received the notice that his head would be chopped off the next day. A scaffold was erected in the public square. That evening he wrote a letter that is ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Sixteen times she was brought out and shut up again, and worried, and entrapped, and argued with, until she was heart-sick of the dreary business. On the last occasion of this kind she was brought into a burial-place at Rouen, dismally decorated with a scaffold, and a stake and faggots, and the executioner, and a pulpit with a friar therein, and an awful sermon ready. It is very affecting to know that even at that pass the poor girl honoured the mean vermin of a King, who had so used her for his ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... lad; I'll put what we call a supposititious case to you. You hate those two fellows who have robbed you, for I suppose that is what you meant; well, suppose you knew that they were at work all day on a high scaffold like that one opposite to us, what would ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... had been pardoned once for their part in the rising of the previous year; some were implicated in plain murder; all were guilty; but the chill deliberate formalities of the gallows, the sufferings of the wretched men, their bearing on the scaffold, the vain efforts to obtain reprieve, produced a strong revulsion of popular feeling in their favour. By the common law of nations they were traitors; but they are still named ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... the guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the victim was a man high in public estimation. It was not only a crime, it had been a tragic folly. I think I was glad to know it; I think I was glad to have my better impulses thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors of the scaffold. Jekyll was now my city of refuge; let but Hyde peep out an instant, and the hands of all men would be raised to ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... out of his wits by ghosts, for, unlike Coleridge, he believed in them although he thought he had seen many. Whether truth came from the scaffold or the throne, the seance or the sky, it did not alter the truth, and did not prejudice or overbear his judgment. He shed his early materialism (which temporarily took possession of him as it did of many others as a result of the shock ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Ayesha that in England "blasting" was not an amusement that could be indulged in with impunity, and that any such attempt would meet with the consideration of the law and probably end upon a scaffold. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... lack of commissions after that. "Nathan Hale" stands in City Hall Park, New York City, the very embodiment of that devoted young patriot. The artist has shown him at the supreme moment when, facing the scaffold, he uttered the memorable words which still thrill the American heart, and expression and sentiment were never more perfectly in accord. He struck the same high note with his famous fountain at Chicago Exposition, where hundreds of thousands ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... British peerage, which they have now enjoyed for five hundred years, to the strong hand and unblenching heart with which they have always welcomed the assaults of their most powerful enemies! Of the first ten lords of Skipton castle, four died in the field and one upon the scaffold! The "black-faced Clifford," who sullied the glory which he acquired by his gallantry at the battle of Sandal, by murdering his youthful prisoner the Earl of Rutland, in cold blood, at the termination of it, has gained a passport ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... from him. A dreadful waking nightmare pursued him. It was the complete wrecking of a strong mentality, the shattering of an iron nerve under a sledge-hammer blow that had been timed to the moment. He might walk to the scaffold with a step that was outwardly firm. But it would be merely the physical effort of a man in whom ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... sent on his cousin Cuthbert to reconnoitre and see whether the people would be ready to rise, but Cuthbert found the Scots sunk in despair. All who had taken up arms had perished in the field or on the scaffold. The country swarmed with the English, and further resistance seemed hopeless. Cuthbert had arranged to light a beacon on a point at Turnberry visible at Lamlash Bay in Arran, where the king, with his two hundred men and eighty-three boats, awaited the sight ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... marriage, without mentioning with whom. This friend's misfortunes had been somewhat similar to her own, which fact had been one cause of their intimacy; her friend's sister, a nun of the Abbey of Montmartre, having perished on the scaffold at the hands of the same Comite de Salut Public which had numbered Mademoiselle V—'s affianced among its members. The writer had felt her position much again of late, since the renewal of the war, she said; and the letter wound up with a fresh denunciation ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... quickly to his feet). They have gone—and in the morning I have got to die! To-morrow! And on the scaffold, as a thief! To-night I have begun—to-morrow, then, sees how I end! Here, here, I must not think of that. No, no; I will not. That is not for me. Five hours more! The time is very short. Show me, dear God, how I shall spend it well and like a man! For is not Morgan ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... per day, and taking home a couple of half-rouble pieces in his purse, and sewing the notes into his breeches, or stuffing them into his boots! In what manner came you by your end, Probka Stepan? Did you, for good wages, mount a scaffold around the cupola of the village church, and, climbing thence to the cross above, miss your footing on a beam, and fall headlong with none at hand but Uncle Michai—the good uncle who, scratching the back of his neck, and muttering, 'Ah, Vania, for once you have been too ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... miles may intervene; not but that the two worlds may be parted by a still, breathless ocean, a fathomless abyss of cold dead space; yet, swift as never light went, swift as never thought went, flies the just man's spirit across the profound. One moment the sick-room, the scaffold, the stake; the next, the paradisal glory. One moment the sob of parting anguish; the next the great deep swell of the angel's song. Never think, reader, that the dear ones you have seen die, had far to go to meet God after they parted from ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... crystal waters spanned By other marbles: founts may plash on stone, And fashionably-branched trees may stand As thieves upon a scaffold. Yet, how ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... which I had offered to him, which I have ever since kept, and which brought me and this short young man to Horncastle, and in eleven hours I drove that Punch one hundred and ten miles. I arrived at H . . . just in the nick of time. There was the ugly jail—the scaffold—and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I came for, I stood up in my gig, took off my hat, and shouted, 'God Almighty bless you, Jack!' ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... was in a state of drunkenness. However, he was convicted and brought here (Aug. 23), from Warwick, sitting on his coffin in an open cart, to be executed at the bottom of Great Charles Street. The scaffold was a rough platform about ten feet high, the gallows rising from the centre thereof, Matsell having to stand upon some steps while the rope was adjusted round his neck. During this operation he managed to kick his shoes off among the crowd, having sworn that he would never die with ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... and paid the full penalty of the law at Perth—hanging for sheep-stealing being in practice at that date. When on the scaffold he prophesied that "the water o' Almond runs ower mony a stane, but it'll ne'er run twa years withoot takin' ane." The prophecy has reference to the number of people drowned in the river, which is remarkable for the impetuosity ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... "West End" to inform the stags of Capel Court of the value of American mines. Benefactors are ever misjudged. Aristocracy and the many-antlered have since united to defame him; but Galileo in the dungeon, Pascal by his solitary lamp, More, Sidney, and Russell on the scaffold, will console him; and in the broad bosom of his native Ohio he has found the exception to the rule that prophets are not without honor but ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... said he; "this is not the little bottle of poison; however, I will give it to you, together with another one, when I have obtained what I ask. Nothing for nothing, however; and if I must go to the scaffold, I will do so ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... forever on the scaffold; Wrong forever on the throne; Yet that scaffold sways the future; And behind the dim unknown, Standeth God, within the shadow, Keeping watch above ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... female. To his eternal infamy let it be recorded, that pretending to have been deceived by the terms of capitulation, D'Aulney hanged the brave survivors of the garrison, and even had the baseness and cruelty to parade Madame de la Tour herself on the same scaffold, with the ignominious cord around her ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... thee see me safe up, but for my coming down I can shift for myself," were the last words of Sir Thomas More when ascending the scaffold. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens |
