"Shrift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of dead and damned Ritterdom. I got my share of honor and good service, too, in going to different courts and bringing back all that Prince Karl needed. To exercise myself in the art of war, I hunted the border thieves and gave them short enough shrift. In a year I had made such an assault as that of the inn at Erdberg an impossibility all along the marches ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... determined to make an enemy of me, Darrin, I shall do my best to see to it that you have short shrift in the service." ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... some monastery; but, by 190 chance, nothing of what is writ. Look, the unfolding star calls up the shepherd. Put not yourself into amazement how these things should be: all difficulties are but easy when they are known. Call your executioner, and off with Barnardine's head: I will give him a present shrift and 195 advise him for a better place. Yet you are amazed; but this shall absolutely resolve you. Come away; it is almost clear ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... serfs turn upon us. Well, they will rue it ere long; a short shrift and a long rope will ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... grace of mortal man," said the Scot; "it is in your Grace's pleasure to give or refuse me time for Christian shrift—if man denies it, may God grant me the absolution which I would otherwise ask of His church! But whether I die on the instant, or half an hour hence, I equally beseech your Grace for one moment's opportunity to speak that to ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... had him in grip afterwards. My verdict I gave in a look at the headman, and his confirmation of my unspoken thought was, "Yes; he's too quiet." Yet it was a long while before I could get him up sufficiently for recognition beyond doubt; that accomplished, it was short shrift. He was lifted into the boat by the tail, the triangles came out easily under the knife, and off went a well-mended fish of about 13 lb. That is to say, I call him a fish; the boatmen decline to ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... ... yes, Yankee ... well, when a fellow was both a Yank and a tramp he was given a short shrift in the South. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... aback!' said Robin; 'Why draw you me so near? It was never the use in our country One's shrift another should hear.' ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... windows had attracted Angelot. He crept through the lanes like a wolf in winter, searching for some lonely colt or sheep to devour. Furious and bewildered, worn out with his long watching, he almost resolved that young La Mariniere should have short shrift if he met him. This, it seemed now, was the only way to remove him out of the General's path. None of his relations knew exactly where he was that night. If he were found dead in a ditch, the hand that struck him would never be known. ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... ye hear it? Shoot the poor rogues d'ye say? Sink me, but I will so if Fortune be so kind. Yonder's short shrift and quick dispatch for me, shipmate, and then—the women! Think of my Lady Joan writhing in their clutches. Hark'ee to the lewd rogues—'tis women now—hark to 'em!" And here again their vile song burst forth with much the same obscenity as I had once heard sung by Abnegation Mings in a wood, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... life of Luther in his hand—a waver, a tremor—and the fagots would soon crackle: for the man who pleads guilty and refuses pardon there is short shrift. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... here, fair son," replied the old knight, "Father Robert of the Hospital! I will either leave thee, or keep thy secret as though it were thy shrift; but thou art sore spent, and mayst ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hate shall have their spate (For both of the twain are one) And lust and greed devour the seed That else had growth begun. Fiercely the flow of death shall go And short the good man's shrift! All hell's awake full toll to take, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... fugitive at Ziklag in striking and characteristic fashion. He first flames out in fierce wrath upon the lying Amalekite, who had hurried with the tidings and sought favour by falsely representing that he had killed the king on the field. A short shrift and a bloody end were his. And then the wrath melts into mourning. Forgetting the mad hatred and wild struggles of that poor soul, and his own wrongs, remembering only the friendship and nobleness of his earlier days, he casts over the mangled corpses of ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... workshop, indeed, seemed doomed to complete destruction, for the fire had obtained such firm hold that the engines seemed to make little impression upon it. From the shouts of the Germans it was clear that they were greatly enraged, and it was perfectly certain that the shrift of the authors of the fire, if they were caught, would ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... if to any man, Heaven's gates might open; yet had he perished without shrift or sacrament, and I could never bear to be absent when masses were said for his soul's redemption. Nay, and I was fain to go to churches and chapels, inasmuch as I was secure there from the speech of man. All that life could give or ask of me, I had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... admission; confiteor; shrift; exomologesis. Associated Words: shrive, shrift, confessional, shriven, shriver, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... he said, "have made a long shrift; but come, follow me through this passage, that I may dismiss thee by ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... the agitation that seized and shook that portion of the city. Men shed tears in public; bosses of lodging-houses, long inured to brutality,—and above all, brutality to sailors—shook their fists at heaven. If hands could have been laid on the captain of the Gleaner, his shrift would have been short. That night (so gossip reports) he was headed up in a barrel and smuggled across the bay. In two ships already he had braved the penitentiary and the gallows; and yet, by last accounts, he now commands another on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... first merely opposed the excesses of the Jacobins gradually drifted over to the royalists. The Convention now found itself attacked in the very city which had been the chosen abode of Liberty and Equality. Some thirty thousand of the Parisian National Guards were determined to give short shrift to this Assembly that clung so indecently to life; and as the armies were far away, the Parisian malcontents seemed masters of the situation. Without doubt they would have been but for their own precipitation and ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... I'd give them short shrift!" cried Moore. "But I mean to let them quite alone this bout, to give them rope enough, certain that in the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... "The which shrift thou shouldst little need, if thou hadst never failed in duty. But how shall our ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... very careful to prevent the dying dogs crying out, for the noise of fighting would probably have been followed by the rest attacking the down dog, and that was too close to me to be pleasant. A short shrift seemed to me better than a long one, and I envied the dead dogs whose troubles were over so quickly. Indeed, I came to balance in my mind whether, if once I passed into the open sea, it would not be better by ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... and thus easily guarded; besides which, it was always a difficult matter to avoid the pickets belonging to either party, who were very apt to suspect a man they found creeping about without any ostensible object, and anyone suspected of being a spy in those days had a short shrift and a long rope applied before he knew where he was. More from a spirit of enterprise than from any other reason, I determined to see what the land blockade was like, and while at Richmond, happening to meet another adventurous individual ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... neck for a pair of runaways who better deserve to be hung than I do. In with you both into this fishing-cobble of mine, and I will cover you with nets while I go for a mast and sail, and mind you lie as still as logs. The town is already full of soldiers looking for you, and it will be short shrift for us all ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Tibble. "But bone shall make me trow that shrift in words, without heart-sorrow for sin, and the Latin heard with no thought of Him that bore the guilt, can set the sinner free. 'Tis none other that the Dean sets forth, ay, and the book that I have here. I thank my God," he stood ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... all: wherefore to hym in especiall aboue all others I am most holde; for thy nowe in his dayes olde, thow shalt hym tell this message, that he vppon his latter age sett an ende of all his werke, as he whiche is myne owne clerke do make his testament of Love, as thow hast done thy shrift ab[o]ue, so that my Courte yt may ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... was more; he owed allegiance to the Church, and claimed the Church's protection also. Accordingly, whenever a cleric got into trouble, and there was only too good cause to believe that if he were brought to his trial he would have a short shrift and no favour, scant justice and the inevitable gallows within twenty-four hours at the longest, he proclaimed himself a cleric, and demanded the protection of the Church, and was forthwith handed over to the custody of the ordinary ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... yet infinite toleration for the simpleton, and could on occasion suffer fools with a gladness quite unshared by her much gentler daughter or her husband. But the snob, the sycophant, and, above all, the humbug met with short shrift at her hands, and the insincere person hated her heartily. She spoke her mind with the utmost freedom on every possible occasion, and as she had plenty of brains and considerable shrewdness her remarks were ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... narrated took place on the 15th of August, and as Harley's time to fulfil his contract with Messrs. Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick was growing very short—two weeks is short shrift for an author with a book to write for waiting presses, even with a willing and helpful cast of characters—so I resolved not to intrude upon him until he himself should summon me. I knew myself, from bitter experience, how unwelcome ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... back, said Robin; Why draw you me so near? It was never the use in our country, One's shrift another should hear. ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... and gutted the house. The woman herself had fled at the first alarm, and made her way eventually to Paris.[41] Had she been brought before a modern court it may be doubted whether she would have been committed to a penitentiary or to a lunatic asylum. At the hands of the mob, however, her shrift would presumably ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... mentioned complaint that he is a mere "pastimer"; that he has no literary quality; that he deserves at best to take his chance with the novelists from Sue to Gaboriau who have been or will be dismissed with rather short shrift elsewhere. Let us, as best seems to suit history, treat these in order, though with very ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... short rope and a shorter shrift, Bigot! You have warrant enough if your Court friends are worth ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... type, with insinuating manners and a quiet, deferential air that did not seem to know what it came to buy or cared what it purchased so long as it could engage Mavis in a few moments' conversation. She soon got to know this type at a glance, and gave it short shrift. Others at "Dawes'" were not so coy. Many of the customers she got to know by sight, owing to their repeated visits. One of these she disliked from the first; later experience of her only intensified this impression. She was a ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... for extended privileges. At last, against the raids of the petty nobles, whom the Emperor could not control, the cities leagued together, took the matter in hand, attacked the fortresses, levelled them and gave to the inmates short shrift, a halter and a tree. In Italy the towns proceeded in a less summary manner. Surrounded as they were on all sides by a serried rank of castles, where the nobles held undisputed sway over their serfs and controlled the arteries of trade, the cities were compelled to ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... sure that all the armored men were slain—that some few may not have escaped and be lurking there. It would be short shrift for us if we fell into their ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... one of the cowards. But his career had been confused and tumultuous. He would have been glad of a little leisure and quiet for unravelling some of the knots. He understood his enemies and events too well to be surprised that his shrift was to be short. Before his appearance at the King's Bench, Bacon had drawn the warrant for execution, and James had signed it. Naunton wrote to Carleton, the general depositary of confidential gossip, on October 28, that the warrant for execution had ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... captive to his company, who demanded that he should be slain with the sword. "A short shrift for the mad dog," they clamoured, "who knows neither mercy nor pity. This is the source of the war. This is the shedder of blood. Smite the head from his body, and the victory is in your hands." Eldof made answer that Hengist should have the law, ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... weeping out of sympathy, crept to Iris's side and gently stroked her hair. Like her mother, she could only guess that the English lady's friends were captured, perhaps dead. Even her limited experience of life's vicissitudes had taught her what short shrift was given to those who defied authority. The Republic of Brazil does not permit its criminals to be executed, but it shows no mercy to rebels. Manoela, of course, believed that the Englishmen were helping the imprisoned Dom Corria to regain power. She ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... glanced in his direction; and each time Vanheimert congratulated himself the more heartily on the ready pretence to which he was committed. Let them but dream that he knew them, and Vanheimert gave himself as short a shrift as he would have granted in their place. But they did not dream it, they were off their guard, and rather at his mercy than he at theirs. He might prove the immediate instrument of their capture—why not? The thought put Vanheimert in a glow; on the blanket ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... that my mother and I were in communication I would have been given short shrift in ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... was a good woman, to whom the ill-angel oft-times appeared in the form of a good angel, and said that he was come to bring her to heaven. Wherefore, she was right glad and joyful. But nevertheless, she told it to her Shrift-father, and he, as a wise man and wary, gave her this counsel. When he comes, he said, bid him that he shew thee our Lady, S. Mary. When he has done so, say Ave Maria. She did so. The fiend said: "Thou hast no need ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... the hound," he said to one of his retainers, "and see if the brute recognizes him; if so, put him in charge of him for the future. And see you Scot, that you attempt no tricks, for if you try to escape I will hang you without shrift." ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... court martial was immediately held. The hapless pilot at first denied all knowledge of the letter, but at length compelled to confess his guilt, with a short shrift he was next morning hanged ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... is naught but ashes, Now, and the weepers go. Lone on the ghat they leave me, lone, With but the River's flow. Kali, I ask not jewels Nor justice, beauty nor shrift, But for the lowest woman's right, A child—tho ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... improvised masks. There was no mere bluff and bluster in that steady gaze. They were ready to shoot and shoot to kill. Their lives were already forfeit to the law, anyway, and in that rough country they would get "a short shrift and a long rope" if their plans went astray. They might as well be hung for murder as robbery, and, while they did not mean to kill unless driven to it, they were perfectly ready to do so at the first hint ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... man than he, his predecessor for example, might have dismissed the preposterous question as an impertinence and given the questioner short shrift. But Sir Robert ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... other woman had asked me such a question there would have been short shrift with her. Charmion herself had never before attempted such personalities; but now, when she deemed it necessary, she spoke without a flicker of hesitation, her grey eyes staring full into mine. It would have seemed ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... various kind-hearted and respectable citizens of California and Nevada, when, if Mark Twain were before them as members of a vigilance committee for any mild crime, such as mule-stealing or arson, it is to be feared his shrift would have been short. What a dramatic picture the idea conjures up, to be sure! Mark, before these honest men, infuriated by his practical jokes, trying to show them what an innocent creature he was when it came to mules, or how the only policy of fire insurance he held ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... as we moved on again, "you are not an over-prudent companion. Suppose one of those fellows had plucked at my cloak? I fancy both the Cardinal and his servant would have received but short shrift." ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... and improvements, in part the result of training in the newest ways and methods, in part the outcome of her own ideas and fancies. Reforms in the kitchen region, if those deaf old ears could have been induced to give them even a hearing, would have met with short shrift and scornful rejection, and the kitchen region spread over the zone of dairy and market business and half the work of the household. Emma, with the latest science of dead-poultry dressing at her finger-tips, sat by, an unheeded watcher, while old Martha trussed the chickens for the market-stall ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... presently if he had received his Maker, and the King told me Yes, and shrift too, and anointing—all the night before when he had come to himself for a while and called for a priest. He had spoken my name, too, at that time and they had told him that one was gone to bring me and at that he ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... you—now," he cried. "But see you play the game to-night. You get your free run, only if I get the man I'm after. The rest of the gang don't count a lot, nor the liquor. It's the boss of the gang I need. If you've lied to me you'll get short shrift." ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... and being master. But it was not there the difficulty lay. If he had not made a will before he came, a will that doubtless set the property of the family for ever beyond James's reach, the thing had been simple and Colonel John's shrift had been short. But now, to rid the earth of him was to place the power in the hands of an unknown person, a stranger, an alien, for whom the ties of family and honour would have no stringency. True, the law was weak in Kerry. A writ was one thing, and ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... the entrance of his creditors passed in the thought: 'So that's how it struck him! Short shrift I should get ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... actually occurred on the day of your start, it supplied me with absoutely no subject for writing. But as when we are together we are never at a loss for something to say, so ought our letters at times to digress into loose chat. Well then, to begin, the liberty of the Tenedians has received short shrift, no one speaking for them except myself, Bibulus, Calidius, and Favonius. A complimentary reference to you was made by the legates from Magnesia and Sipylum, they saying that you were the man who alone had resisted ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... venture no closer," he explained. "At such times their deviltry knows no bounds. They would make short shrift of anyone who would venture ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... wounded in this heartless fashion! Surely they might have somehow made shift to carry off their injured comrades with them, for they must be fully aware that if the unfortunate wretches fall into the hands of the authorities they will meet with short shrift. Well, we seem to have punished them rather more severely than I had thought; I should not be very greatly surprised if I find a few more poor beggars in the same plight before I have ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... said Benson, spooning up pea soup with his brand new tin spoon. "This increases your sentence to the extent of a shorter shrift." ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... heard outside the command "Halt!" to a squad of soldiers. The doors opened and Javert reappeared, this time in the full uniform of an officer. For the moment I thought he had come with a firing squad and they were going to make short shrift of me. The grim humor of disposing of my case thus "directly" came home to me. But merely flicking the ashes from his cigarette, he glanced round the room without offering the slightest recognition, and then disappeared. How he made his change from civilian clothes so quickly ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... shovel, a day sooner or later. He maun budge some time. Faugh! how I hate your whining—your cat-a-whisker'd faces, purring and mewling, while parson Pudsay says grace over the cold carrion; he cares not if it waur hash'd and stew'd i' purgatory, so that he gets the shrift-money. Out upon't, Ralph, out upon it! this mattock should delve a' the graves i' the parish, if I could get a tester more i' ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Sergeant Newton, a fellow quite as brave in spirit, and strong in body as himself. Here he was again well received by his brother, who entertained the guests kindly for several days. Meanwhile, a small party of Americans were brought into Ebenezer as captives, over whom hung the danger of "short shrift and sudden cord". They were on their way to Savannah for trial. They had taken arms with the British, as hundreds more had done, when the country was deemed reconquered; but, on the approach of the American army, had rejoined their countrymen, and were now once more at the mercy of the power ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... drawing hither to the Oberland, To what an entertainment ye do not understand: Hei! 't were better for shrift to call, For in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... light language of an idle court, They murmured at their master's long delay, And held his lengthened orisons in sport:- "What! will Don Roderick here till morning stay, To wear in shrift and prayer the night away? And are his hours in such dull penance past, For fair Florinda's plundered charms to pay?" Then to the east their weary eyes they cast, And wished the lingering dawn ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... was desperate, perhaps the Indians more so, for they must have realized that they would be given short shrift if any harm now came to Rosemary and Floyd. The soldiers and cowboys would not hesitate to take swift and sure vengeance. So the Indians must fight to the bitter end, selling their lives as dearly ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... the spots of vices unclean, That on me no sin may be seen; I come with Knowledge for my redemption, Redempt with heart and full contrition, For I am commanded a pilgrimage to take, And great accounts before God to make. Now I pray you, Shrift, mother of salvation, Help hither my good ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... savages; for those brutes of Hungarians, not understanding his words, and thinking that he had uttered something terrible, such as a threat that he would rob their King of his life and throne, wished to give him short shrift and crucify him by mob-law. But the good Bishop drew him out of all embarrassment, and, appraising the merit of the excellent master at its true value, and putting a good complexion on the affair, restored ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... and is ever on the alert. Many of the plume hunters are desperate men, and he never knows what moment he may need to grasp his rifle to defend his life in the shadows of the Big Cypress, where alligators and vultures would make short shrift ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... for this gift, And if thou come unto my shrift, I'll make thee call those fellows fools That on their foes bestow ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... of an Irishman, Charles Oliver, of Castle Oliver (now Cloghnafoy), Co. Limerick, and a peasant girl on his estate. This is possible enough, for the period was one when squires exercised "seigneurial rights," and when colleens were complacent. If they were not, they had very short shrift. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... is that the apparent sportsmen are snigglers, not anglers. They drive the top part of their rods deep into the water, so as to rake the bottom, and then bring the hook out with a jerk. Every now and then ... one of the persecuted fishes ... is hauled out with short shrift."—Daily News.] ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... the Libel gun, I had still to be on my guard against more obscure and personal weapons; I am an ex-convict, and any lenity of treatment which I had hitherto enjoyed is not to be looked for in the future. If I were sent back to prison, my shrift was likely to be short; and I could only hope, in that event, to have been able to say enough to afford my entertainers ample provocation for giving me, as my ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... from that of the West End poulterer who sold only Surrey fowl, or, curiously enough, as he really does, Scotch salmon. So, too, with the theatres and music-halls; the lower riverside population demand, if not necessarily a short shrift, a cheap fare, and so he gets his two and three performances a night at a price ranging from three pence to two shillings for what in the west brings from one ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... and spoil, rage down as a ravening flood, To slay and to flay of their shining apparel their brethren whom shipwreck spares; Such faith and such mercy, such love and such manhood, such hands and such hearts are theirs. Short shrift to her foes gives England, but shorter doth Ireland to friends; and worse Fare they that came with a blessing on treason than they that come with a curse. Hacked, harried, and mangled of axes and skenes, three thousand naked and dead Bear witness of Catholic Ireland, what sons of what sires at ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... . .But, ere I make my shrift, You must be once again that brother-friend With whom I used to play by the lake-side!. ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... but the argument wasn't much of a stimulant. To be sure, he couldn't use violence, nor would he try; but if he found me here he would "have it out" with me, and he would tell things to Lady Turnour which would induce her to send me about my business with short shrift. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... loving support engendered in the group, and with the stirring of compassion within them, they began to see each other in a new light. We are inclined to the view, after hearing such testimonies, that in deploying our therapeutic armament we have given short shrift to the power of love not only to cast out fear, but also to ...
— Marriage Enrichment Retreats - Story of a Quaker Project • David Mace
... English, French and German makes, were found in various parts of the field, partly buried in the soil. When the guns were discovered the farmer threw up his hands, wildly gesticulating and vehemently protesting that he knew nothing whatever as to how they came there. His was a short shrift. He was tried on the spot, tied to the pump of his own ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... by Russell were but too fully borne out. There was short shrift in those days for Irishmen accused of treason, and the verdict of guilty, which he looked forward to with so much resignation, was delivered before the last rays of the sun which rose on the morning ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... waiting for the grey dawn. They were not, however, to escape unscathed. Ropata at once sent his men in chase. Hungry and thirsty, the fugitives straggled loosely, and were cut down by scores or brought back. Short shrift was theirs. The Government had decided that Poverty Bay must be revenged, and the prisoners were forthwith shot, and their bodies stripped and tossed over a cliff. From first to last at Ngatapa the loss to the Hau Haus was 136 killed outright, ours ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... ay, ye sneaking rascals,' said he, 'ye left me wi' yere tails down low enough, and as fast as your legs could lilt ye off, when I was forefoughten wi''——Here he looked round, with a face so dismal and disturbed that I verily think I should not forget it if I waur at my last shrift. Taking this opportunity, as I may say, I ventured a word or so. The old man gave me another of those terrible looks before he spoke—'Eh, me!' said he, 'my days are but few now, I reckon. I've seen the'——He ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... soon in danger. Short shrift is given to the horse-thief. The State authorities are powerless in face of the duplicity of these native residents. They feel they have been enslaved by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The roads became unsafe. Travellers are subject to a sudden volley from ambush. The fatal lasso is one trick; ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... be a short shrift and a long rope for that Evan when I catch him," he said. "He comes here every year, and I suppose that the goods I have had from him at times have been plunder. I would that you had ended him last night. Now he has got ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... around the necks of the three men, who at the end of the allotted time were given short shrift and were soon hanging between heaven and earth. While their bodies were swaying in the breeze, Slade's wife suddenly appeared mounted on a fine horse, with a cocked pistol in each hand, determined to attempt a rescue. On observing that it was too late, she quailed before the determined ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... is a pathological brilliance of good cheer in the works of Stevenson and other tubercular artists. The white plague is a powerful mental stimulant. It is a double-distilled extract of baseless optimism. But this optimism, like that resulting from other stimulants, is dearly bought. Its shrift is too short. And let nobody forget that for each variety of pathological optimism and brilliance and beauty there are ninety and nine corresponding sorts of pathological pessimism and dullness and ugliness induced by ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... terror, and we find many instances in Scripture and elsewhere of the utter disorganisation which ensues. The whole conquest hung in the balance. A little more and the army would be a mob; and the mob would break into twos and threes, which would get short shrift from the Amorites. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... shrift he got—given straight into my hand! I swore to kill him when I heard it; an' I have—pitched him over the bridge and broken his blasted neck. I'd burn in ragin' hell through ten lifetimes to do it again. But that's done once for all. And you can tell your ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the other, chuckling with amusement. "If he gets the notion in his head that we are legion he won't be so apt to blaze away at us, knowing it would mean a short shrift for him. He may prefer to play the poor French peasant part, and try to pull the wool ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... wide, or doubled marvelously well on his pursuers, for I am told that not a trace of him nor of his confederate, the little fiddler, did our men find. It's well for them, as Sir Henry was much enraged and their shrift would have been short, I fear, ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... your skill and your firmness in the task of leading or driving us. And if in the course of your duty you encounter any genuine rascal endeavouring to grind the faces of the poor or to find his own profit in the misery of his fellow-men we look to you to give him short shrift. ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... is declared to have been used by a band of pirates as the first national sand bank, and, as these rascals were caught and swung off with short shrift, they do say that the plunder is still to be had—by the man who finds it. But the hotel-keepers and three-card-monte men are not waiting for that discovery ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... were then perpetrated could possibly continue for a week under existing conditions. A Press which makes us familiar with all sorts of grievances, and an inquiring Parliamentarian or two, would provide a short shrift and a long rope for the perpetrator of any such bare-faced robbery as I suffered under when I first joined the Fourth Royal Irish Dragoon Guards. The motive of my enlistment had no remotest connection with the bounty offered. I joined the Army simply out of that green-sickness of the ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... together in the Manchester prisons, with chains round their limbs, might not be the liberators of Colonel Kelly—the slayers of Brett might not be amongst them; but they were Irishmen, at any rate, and so they would answer the purpose. Short shrift was the cry. The ordinary forms of law, the maxims of the Constitution, the rules of judicial procedure, the proprieties of social order and civilization, might be outraged and discarded, but speedy vengeance should, ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... no answering, Gymbert. You never were known as a truth teller. This is your own affair, or Quendritha's, for Offa has seen no man to give any such order to. Nor dare you go near him on your own account, or short would be your shrift. Get hence, and take your lies back to her who sent you. Mayhap you have told that queen that you have slain Sighard the thane. If so, another lie or two will make ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... said that his six comrades had been killed by Arabs. Shortly afterward we ran into a cavalry patrol, but the men escaped over some very broken ground before we could satisfactorily come to terms with them. It was lucky for the deserter that we found him before they did, for his shrift would have been short. We got back to camp at half past eight, having covered ninety-two miles in ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... abacke," sayd Robin; "Why draw you mee so neere? Itt was never the use in our countrye, Ones shrift another shold heere." ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... and a slight nervous darkness beneath them, which added to their charm. She rose, smiling, and said: "I fear I am hardly entitled to this visit, for I am beyond convalescence, and Justine is not in need of shrift ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... shrift you'll get for your convenient scruples; Conducted thither where the wet stream winds You shall receive as elementary pupils An ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... charge, then hearken to what end Ye drive me.—If in this place men there be Who know and speak not, lo, I make decree That, while in Thebes I bear the diadem, No man shall greet, no man shall shelter them, Nor give them water in their thirst, nor share In sacrifice nor shrift nor dying prayer, But thrust them from our doors, the thing they hide Being this land's curse. Thus hath the God replied This day to me from Delphi, and my sword I draw thus for the dead ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... of Peter's-pence, And number'd bead, and shrift, Bluff Harry broke into the spence, [1] ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... sound of shouted orders and soldiers' oaths soon told him that he was in great danger. For these were English troops, and if they caught him in his Mac-Ivor tartan, would assuredly give him short shrift and a ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... lamp: and thus he soliloquized: "What a time that fellow is! Yes, I can be free to-morrow if I will. I wonder what the deuce Gambier had to do in Monmouthshire. If he has been playing with my sister's reputation, he shall have short shrift. That fellow Braintop sees her now—my little Emilia! my bird! She won't have changed her dress till she has dined. If she changes it before she goes out—by Jove, if she wears it to-night before all those people, that'll mean 'Good-bye' to me: 'Addio, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... days were apprenticed, all learned their business. One of the latter day hall room performers would have received short shrift in a company of those days, when every performer was an all-round athlete; in fact, in individual superiority, the circus actor of that day outclassed those of the present. The riders were very much superior as ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... about done, and that it was time to draw the net. My salary was enormous, and already amounted to a competence, and I knew that if I remained in Russia, sooner or later somebody would find me out; and then there would be short shrift for me, between the nihilists on one hand, and the jealous nobility on the other, for the latter saw in me nothing but an interloper ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... unsportsmanlike and irritating habits they are usually called "snipers." But, unlike snipers, they are not entitled to be treated as prisoners of war (their habits partake too much of espionage), and when captured they receive a short shrift from an impassive man with a hot iron in ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... in La Revue (Paris), "Carnegie and the German Peace," would seem to indicate that France is not yet looking toward peace. The article is by Jean Finot himself, the well-known editor and publisher of La Revue, and it gives the pacifists short shrift indeed. The American peace propaganda, M. Finot characterizes as "the attempt at corruption," and he holds ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... floor of the deep and with short shrift set her mark upon a man; he might escape to the land, like Baker Jorgensen, who went no more to sea when once the warning had come to him, or, like Boatman Jensen, he might rise in his sleep and walk straight over the vessel's side. Down below, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and twigs that the trees had been too lazy to shed; short shrift for them on the first spring-cleaning night. Down they came, helter-skelter, and no notice taken of the tree's groaning, or its crackling cries ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... And he was artist enough to see how from that little starting episode the whole business had sprung—given, of course, the entrance of the wilful force called love. But a father, especially when he has been thoroughly alarmed, gives the artist and philosopher in him short shrift. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... with whatever these thieves and vagabonds may have said to our hot cousin of Burgundy and his wise counsellors? I pray you, tell my kind cousin, if he loves such companions, he had best keep them in his own estates; for here they are like to meet short shrift and a ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... conscience owns the debt I owe, Unto de Argentine and Lorn The name of traitor I return, Bid them defiance, stern and high, And give them in their throats the lie! These brief words spoke, I speak no more, Do as thou wilt; my shrift is o'er." ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... he chose the bravest of the brave for that night's work, for, when the drawbridge was drawn slowly up that evening, it was ten men, and three of them unarmed, against a regiment; and short and terrible would have been the shrift accorded to them had an inkling of suspicion arisen, or had the slightest blunder, or precipitation, exposed the ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... intervention of Knox, who seems to have been the universal referee. Knox gladly granted his prayer for an interview, which was brought him by a citizen of Edinburgh, with whom the riotous Earl had dealings. No doubt the Reformer expected a new convert; and indeed Bothwell had his preliminary shrift to make, and confessed his repentance of his previous action against the Congregation, which he said was done "by the entysements of the Queen Regent." But the Earl's object was not entirely of this ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... sahiba! Listen! Escape with me! These Rangars will not believe without proof that thou hast saved their lives by bargaining. They will show thee short shrift indeed when my loss is discovered. Come now and I will make thee Maharanee in ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... in scorn of Peter's pence, And numbered bead and shrift, Bluff Harry broke into the spence, And turned the cowls ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... it up in a piece of paper and put it in her pocket. Any one who knew her would have seen by her face that she meant to give that ring short shrift. Then she said timidly, "You are not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... time, or to know why we refuse to do it, if it is something we will not do. Ethelred the Unready died helpless a thousand years ago. The unready are still with us, but the strenuous century will grant them but short shrift. ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... start I would fain be shriven by thee, for I have grievously sinned, and to whom can I more fitly make my shrift? so that he who has ministered to the body may in turn ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... as English naval officers always receive a brave and distressed merchant seaman. The mutineers were handed over to the British captain for conveyance to Manila for trial. The frigate arrived at Manila on January 19th, and there the Chilenos had short shrift, for within three days they were brought to trial and ...
— The South Seaman - An Incident In The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... quoth Martin, now fairly blubbering, "that, fair and young as you are, your shrift should be as short ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... truly coupled unto Him, when we draw near Him by hope and soothfast love. And right as after hope cometh love, so after Levi was Judah born, the fourth son of Leah. Leah in his birth cried and said: "Now shall I shrive to our Lord."[46] And therefore in the story is Judah cleped "Shrift."[47] Also man's soul in this degree of love offereth it clearly to God, and saith thus: "Now shall I shrive to our Lord." For before this feeling of love in a man's soul, all that he doth is done more for dread than for love; but in this state a man's soul ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various
... abode For many a week, unknown, among the nuns; Nor with them mixed, nor told her name, nor sought, Wrapt in her grief, for housel or for shrift, But communed only with the little maid, Who pleased her with a babbling heedlessness Which often lured her from herself; but now, This night, a rumour wildly blown about Came, that Sir Modred had usurped the realm, And leagued him with the heathen, while the King Was waging war ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... bitterly at odds. At every step we lifted him he thought to wend. But now, methinks, it is the soul that suffereth. Ever for the priest he crieth, and Sir Oliver, I wot not why, still cometh not. 'Twill be a long shrift; but poor Appleyard and poor Selden, they ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to some horrid slum, "I cannot help it, I have only a life-interest in it," as if, forsooth, he could have more; did he wish to carry his interests beyond the grave? I would give life-interest in rotten house property short shrift by burning the festering places. But such places are not burned, though sometimes they are closed by the order of the local authorities. But oftener still they are purchased by local authorities at great public cost, or by philanthropic ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... around in the starlight, but saw that there was no gate or other opening in the walls. He began to lose hope again; once the Dark Master had burst into the great hall he would scatter men over the whole castle, and their shrift would be short. At this point the walls were some thirty feet high, and pointing out to the sea stood four of the bastards, with ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... fine, straight, clear-eyed boys, white enough to "pass." He brought them to America and put Alexander in the celebrated Cheshire School, in Connecticut. Here he often visited him, but one last time, fell dead. He left no will, and his relations made short shrift of these sons. They gathered in the property, apprenticed grandfather to a shoemaker; then ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... I was in a terrible taking, for Stuart had a gredge agin me for somepin I'd done. I'll tell ye about that another day. 'T warn't me was to blame. But if he onct caught sight of me, it would be short shrift at ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... country of the Falterona, near the source of the Arno, was recognised by a couple of countrymen, who were frequenters of the markets in Florence. They seized him and took him to the city gate, where they sold him for fifty gold florins. His shrift was short, for his purchasers, adherents of the Medici, hacked off his head in the street, and carried it upon a pole to the Ponte Vecchio! Buried at Santa Croce, in the chapel of the Pazzi, his mutilated body was not left long in its grave. It was pulled up, denuded of the ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... and would almost certainly be recognized, by Catholics from the same neighbourhood. Of course you understand that, if suspicion should fall upon you of being a messenger from this place, you will have but a short shrift." ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... of frequent and almost continual recurrence. It was, there, long ago, in times of trouble and danger, that the De Lacys of those evil days used to sit in feudal judgment upon captive adversaries, and, as tradition alleged, often gave them no more time for shrift and prayer, than it needed to mount to the battlement of the turret over-head, from which they were forthwith hung by the necks, for a caveat and admonition to all evil disposed persons viewing the same from ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... mass, that will not be suffered where the Parliament of England has power." A great deal has happened since Cromwell's time, and the mass is no longer the symbol of intolerance, if only because the Church of Rome has no power to persecute. Cromwell would have had a short shrift if he had fallen into the hands of mass-goers. To tolerate intolerance is a Christian duty, and therefore possible for an individual. Whether it was possible for the Lord General in 1650 is a question hardly suited for popular treatment on a public platform. All that he did ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... father and he hastened his preparations. If the world below once got a hint of what was going on behind those rough logs there would be short shrift for the men who were stalking ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... himself? In his earlier wars against the foreign foes of his country, Monluc was indeed a model of military prowess; the civil wars added cruelty to his courage; after a fashion he was religious, and a short shrift and a cord were good enough for heretics and adversaries of his King. An unlettered soldier, Monluc, by virtue of his energy of character and directness of speech, became a most impressive and spirited narrator. His Memoirs close with a sigh for stern and ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the people, to reflect upon their happy lives, it may be to ask himself what justification they had when the children were wanting bread and the great hosts of the destitute lay encamped beyond the pale. Such philosophy, to be sure, had but a short shrift on such a day. The intoxication of the scene quickly ran hot in his veins and he surrendered to it willingly. These were hours to live, precious every one of them—and who would not worship the gold which brought them, who would not turn to it as to ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... my example. The light and the warmth of the studio impressed him favourably; he laid down his little bag, rubbed his hands together, and produced a smile of satisfaction; but it was such a smile as a totally ruined man would perhaps force on his lips, or a man condemned to a short shrift by his doctor. I begged him to make himself at home and said that I would go at once and hunt up the woman of the house who would make him up a bed on the big couch there. He hardly listened to what I ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Leave the tsarevich with me. (All withdraw.) I am dying; Let us embrace. Farewell, my son; this hour Thou wilt begin to reign.—O God, my God! This hour I shall appear before Thy presence— And have no time to purge my soul with shrift. But yet, my son, I feel thou art dearer to me Than is my soul's salvation—be it so! A subject was I born; it seemed ordained That I should die a subject in obscurity. Yet I attained to sovereignty; but how? Ask not. Enough that thou art innocent. ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... days? For instance, they might escape somehow, the Providence in which she believed might intervene, or the Zulus might come to seek her, if they only knew where she was gone. Oh! why had she not brought a guard of them with her to Ramah? At least they would never have insulted her, and Ishmael's shrift would have ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... thigh oats hoax shrewd threat fight boat oath shrift throng light oak coach shrike throve flight foal float shrunk thrust fright goat poach thrill throat tight soap ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... were yet miles away, down to the west'ard—near Whitehead and with the cruel stretch of rocks under her lee quarter. Even with plenty of sea-room she could not have lasted long, and here with these ledges to catch her she looked to be in for a short shrift. We had a good chance to get a look at her as we bore down. Everything was gone from her deck, even the house and rail. There was not as much loose wood on deck as would make a tooth-pick. Afterwards we learned that two seas hove ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... proverbial healer of all wounds, would wash the sense of guilt from his soul, and then he could come back and speak to Josephine concerning this new freedom of hers. Then he remembered that some say that for the wound of guilt Time no healing art. Could he find, then, other shrift? He did not know. He longed for it sorely, because he longed to feel fit to return to Josephine. But, after all, what had he done of which he was ashamed? What was his guilt? Had he felt any emotion that it was not natural ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... they were engaged in torturing them with a refinement of cruelty. One of our leaders collected a few marines and some volunteers, marched out and surrounded the temple and captured everybody red-handed. The Boxers were given short shrift—those that had their insignia on; but in the sorting-out process it was impossible to tell everybody right at first sight. Christians and Boxers were all of them gory with the blood which had flown from the torturing and ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... of the wave, And, as she stooped his brow to lave - "Is it the hand of Clare," he said, "Or injured Constance, bathes my head?" Then, as remembrance rose - "Speak not to me of shrift or prayer! I must redress her woes. Short space, few words, are mine to spare; Forgive and listen, gentle Clare!" "Alas!" she said, "the while, Oh, think of your immortal weal! In vain for Constance is your zeal; She—died at Holy Isle." Lord Marmion started from the ground, As light ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... No shrift the gloomy savage brooks, As scowling on the priest he looks; Cowesass—cowesass—tawkich wessasseen! Let my father look on Bornazeen- My father's heart is the heart of a squaw, But mine is so hard that ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... far into the night, relieved, by the number of the troops and the plentiful supply of dead horses in the bush, from the ever-present fear of the lion that, in other days, would lift them at night, yelling, from their dying fires. One wonders that their spirits are so high, for they would get short shrift and little mercy from German raiding parties behind our advance. For the porter is fan-game, and is as liable to destruction as any other means of transport. Nor would the Germans hesitate a moment ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... sword. He drew it now, held the blade across his knee, and with one effort of all his strength broke the steel in twain, then threw the pieces from him, and turned his sunken eyes upon the Admiral. "I beg the shortest shrift that you may give," he said. "It was I who, when they tormented me, told them all. Hang me now, John ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... you are wishing me dead, and yourself free to run away from your daily tasks in this quiet house, to listen to the lying tongue of some soft-spoken scoundrel, as foolish women will; but the longer I live the better for you, till your mother's debt is paid, or my executors will give her a short shrift and ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... the duke's commands to me were absolute. Therefore, my lord, address you to your shrift, With all good speed you may. Summon your courage, And be yourself; for you must die ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... Is it not enough that thou art let into this high hall to pick up scraps, but thou must listen to our speech and join in our conversation? If thou shouldst bend that bow we will make short shrift of thee, I promise. We will put thee on a ship and send thee over to King Echetus, who will cut thee to pieces and give thy ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... agents among the Cherokees, arranging for an Indian rising. The party of returning church-goers were accustomed to the quick and summary justice of lynch law. With stern gravity they organized themselves into a court. The prisoner was adjudged guilty, and was given but a short shrift; for the horsemen hung him to a sycamore tree before they returned to the road where they had ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... fall into my hands. I would give them as short a shrift as ever a Highland cateran got from a Glasgow judge. These continued alarms may mean nothing or they may be an indication that the Hillmen are assembling and have ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... true they do not love me, Tayoga. I wounded one of them last year, shortly before Ticonderoga, as you know, and I fancy that I'd receive short shrift from either if ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... others were pelados of the town, who had borne part in the affair of the day. Their judges had made quick work, and equally quick had been the ceremony of execution. Lazos had been reeved over the limbs of the pecan, and with these all six had been jerked up without shrift or prayer! ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... him!" cried McKay. "We will hand him over to the provost-marshal, who will give him a short shrift." ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... would not be safe so long as Shorty and Doble were ranging the hills. Both of them were "bad men," in the usual Western acceptance of the term, and an accomplice who betrayed them would meet short shrift at their hands. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... a worthless life," I said; "and but for it I should have had short shrift and the gallows ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... really disturbed about it. They have cabled their Foreign Office and received an official denial of the rumour; but official denials carry no weight nowadays. Out of ten Frenchmen in Syria, five believe that Lawrence is with Feisul and if they can catch him he will get short shrift. But, oh, Jimgrim—oh, ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... to witness the agitation that seized and shook that portion of the city. Men shed tears in public; bosses of lodging-houses, long inured to brutality, and above all, brutality to sailors, shook their fists at heaven: if hands could have been laid on the captain of the Gleaner, his shrift would have been short. That night (so gossip reports) he was headed up in a barrel and smuggled across the bay: in two ships already he had braved the penitentiary and the gallows; and yet, by last accounts, he now commands ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... icy calm the Colonel retorted, "If you summon your bodyguard, Maharajah, you are a dead man. That would be rebellion; and with rebels we make short shrift." ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... bells of the villages pealed out the tidings of the victory, and the people poured forth in pursuit of the fleeing foe, giving short shrift to the unhappy fugitives who fell into their hands. Eleven thousand of Tilly's men had fallen and more than five thousand, including the wounded, were held as prisoners. On the other side the Saxons had lost about two thousand, but of the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... he, "if they got hands on me, it would be a short shrift and a lang tow for Alan! But I have the King of France's commission in my pocket, which would ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wretched females who frequented the miners' camps. More sinned against than sinning, was his humane judgment of these unhappy outcasts, and when he could, he helped them. Many a besotted creature had him to thank when the end came and short shrift little better then that accorded a dead dog awaited her—that at least she got a decent burial. The boys knew his attitude on the woman question, and it was a tribute to the regard in which they held him that, in his hearing at least, ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... attempted this theme, would have made no attempt after subtlety of character painting and still less after correctness of historic color. He would have given small shrift to Olaf Skaktavl, the psychological outlaw. But he would have drawn Inger, the Mother of her People, in majestic strokes, and we should have had a great simplicity, a noble outline with none of the detail ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... without desire; 'Tis long since thou hast been either to shrift or mass. Dost thou ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Montgomery's foot is on my heels. They've raised the whole of Penrith over the affair, and if I'm taken, soul of my body, 'twill be a short shrift they'll give me. The King will serve me as poor Wrycraft was served two days ago at Kendal. Mother of Mercy!" he broke off, as his ear caught the clatter of feet and the murmur of voices from without. "Have you a hole ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... text for that paraphrase of the Revelation of which we spoke a moment ago. And he knew its notes—well he knew them— knew that they were from republican Geneva, and that kingly pretensions had short shrift with them. James told the conference that these notes were "very partial, untrue, seditious, savoring too much of traitorous and dangerous conceits," supporting his opinion by two instances which seemed disrespectful to royalty. One of these instances ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... sluice, and at about three o'clock the last boom was shut behind them. There was no retreat possible for them now. The seventy were to take the strong castle and city of Breda or to lay down their lives, every man of them. No quarter and short shrift—such was their certain destiny, should that half-crippled, half-frozen little band not succeed in their task ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
