"Tocsin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the first chapter of the 'Spirit of Whiggism'-a little book which I hope may be easily read and easily remembered. The Whig party have always adopted popular cries. In one age it is Liberty, in another reform; at one period they sound the tocsin against popery, in another they ally themselves with papists. They have many cries, and various modes of conduct; but they have only one object—the establishment of an oligarchy in this free and equal ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... make together a dismal chord of discord; and now for a second all seem to have conspired to hold their peace. Indeed, there are not many uproars in this world more dismal than that of the Sabbath bells in Edinburgh: a harsh ecclesiastical tocsin; the outcry of incongruous orthodoxies, calling on every separate conventicler to put up a protest, each in his own synagogue, against "right-hand extremes and left-hand defections." And surely there are few worse extremes than this extremity of zeal; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Drawing-room comedy, pathetic pastoral, fantastic adventure, slum idyll and medieval romance, it was all one to Rankin. An infallible instinct told him which genre should be chosen at any given moment; a secret tocsin sounded far-off the hour of his success. And still the spirit of Rankin held itself aloof; and underneath his many disguises he remained a junior journalist. But latterly (since his marriage with a rich City merchant's daughter) an insidious seriousness had overtaken him; he began first to tolerate, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... her agitation, he saw her evince an emotion surpassing his own, and admitting and giving way to fears beyond any he would openly avow, he grew impatient and disappointed, and preferring rather to hear the tocsin of alarm sounded from his own heart than from the lips of another, he suddenly, and much to the surprise of the affectionate girl, discontinued all allusion to the subject. But Henry's anxiety was not the less poignant from being confined within ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... and mad anger. Anxious to profit by it, "she gave orders on the instant for the signal, which was not to have been given until an hour before daybreak," says De Thou, "and, instead of the bell at the Palace of Justice, the tocsin was sounded by the bell of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... hammer, went to the door of his hut, where hung part of a suit of armour, that served at the same time as a sign of his profession and as a tocsin. He smote the hanging iron with his sledge until the clangorous reverberation sounded through the valley, and presently there came hurrying to him eight of his stalwart sons, who had been occupied in ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... of the enterprise were left to the Duke of Guise, and a more efficient and fitting agent could not have been found. He had ordered that the tocsin, the signal for the massacre, should be tolled at two o'clock in the morning. Catharine and Charles, in one of the apartments of the palace of the Louvre, were impatiently awaiting the lingering flight of the hours ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... do for himself," added Eskew, "is deliverin' the Daily Tocsin on a second-hand Star bicycle and gamblin' with niggers and riff-raff! None of the nice young folks invite him ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... mettled steed's. This was the game of games he knew and loved, And every fibre of his soul was knit To see what passed. Then,—in a sun-white land, Where a great sea poured out through narrow gates To meet a greater,—came the clang of arms, And drew the nations like a tocsin peal, Till all the sun-white sands ran red, and earth Sweat blood, and writhed in fiery ashes, and Grew sick with all the reek and stench of war, And heaven drew back behind the battle-clouds. And ever, through the clamour of the strife, I heard the ceaseless wailing of ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... doubt about it, that was the rattle of musketry at a distance! And now they heard also the loud booming of artillery, and the ringing of the tocsin at Brunecken ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... particularly menacing. Night always comes "black and bad," and fills human hearts with shadows. When it falls, the very branches of the trees "contract, filled with terror." Under the influence of the disturbing sounds of the tocsin, the high linden-trees "suddenly begin to talk, only to become quiet again immediately and lapse into a sullen silence." The tocsin itself is animated. "Its distinct tones spread with rapid intensity. Like a herald of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... remember the tocsin of St. Germain l'Auxerrois?" said Henri, bitterly. "It seems to me that a husband whom they try to murder on the night of his marriage might think less of his dowry ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... that might have done for Long Island Sound, where somebody said she'd just come from, but which didn't seem to fit in here. Her passengers were mostly fishermen—crews of vessels not in the race. There was also a big powerful iron sea-tug, the Tocsin, that promised to make better weather of it than any of ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... Mere Francois, and Madame Pele, and one of the Napoleonic prisoners (not M. le Major), and several other people we had known, including a servant of our own, Therese, the devoted Therese, to whom we were all devoted in return. That malodorous tocsin, which I have compared to the big bell of Notre Dame, had warned, and warned, and warned ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... reaction has secured too firm a hold here for that. But the neighbouring towns, especially the small ones and the villages, have long been worked by certain secret societies, and belong to the advanced Republican party. If a Coup d'Etat should burst forth, the tocsin will be heard throughout the entire country, from the forests of the Seille to the plateau ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... entrance: but their companions had, in the meantime, broken the bar of the gate, and lowered the drawbridge. Romegoux and his people made their exit in good order through this door, to the sound of the tocsin, the drums and the cries of alarm of the garrison and citizens, who, awaked from their slumbers, were hurrying hither and thither in the utmost confusion. The victorious party paused only at the end of the faubourg, to allow the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... Egyptian trouble had cropped up again and the Carleton papers, in particular, were already sounding the tocsin. Carleton's argument was that we ought to fall upon France and crush her, before she could develop her supposed submarine menace. His flaming posters were at every corner. Every obscure French newspaper was being ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... is very strong and general throughout the whole of this vast country, and it is only necessary to sound the tocsin to bring to its maintenance a phalanx equal to uphold its standard against the assaults of any enemies. The impossibility of the Northwestern States consenting that the mouth of the Mississippi should be held ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... States, within the States, it will be but another exercise of that power, to declare that all shall be free. Are we then to see again Athenian and Lacedaemonian confederacies? To wage another Peloponnesian war to settle the ascendancy between them? Or is this the tocsin of merely a servile war? That remains to be seen: but not, I hope, by you or me. Surely, they will parley awhile, and give us time to get out of the way. What a Bedlamite is man? But let us turn from our own uneasiness to the miseries of our southern friends. Bolivar and Morillo, it seems, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... thee tribute then— Swollen corpses, gashed and gory, Heads and limbs of slaughter'd men? Father Euxine! be thou joyful! I am running red once more— Not with heathen blood, as early, But with gallant Christian gore! For the old times are returning, And the Cross is broken down, And I hear the tocsin sounding In the village and the town; And the glare of burning cities Soon shall light me on my way— Ha! my heart is big and jocund With the draught I drank to-day. Ha! I feel my strength awakened, And my brethren shout to me; ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... "what end can this tocsin have except to arouse all Europe and put it in movement! They must be made to understand this, and we must stick to it; ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... I can hear the sound now as I heard it that calm evening when we were anchored off Gravesend. The "cling-clang, cling-clang!" of our tocsin, tolling and telling the hour, being echoed by the "pong-pang, pong-pang!" of the merchantman lying near us, and that again answered a second or so later by the "ting-ting, ting-ting!" of the other ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... startled. In our eyes, Looked forth the light of great surprise. Then as a deep-toned tocsin tolls, A voice spoke ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Take Monsieur Chateaupers with you. You will cause the tocsin to be sounded. You will crush the populace. You will seize the witch. 'Tis said. And I mean the business of the execution to be done by you. You will render me an account of it. Come, Olivier, I shall not go to ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... would Dr. Whitaker have thought of the following explosion, in which Webster sounds the tocsin with a vehemence and vigour which no Macbriar or Kettledrumle of the period could have surpassed. The extract is from his Judgment ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Meanwhile the old insurrectionary methods of the nights of June and of August in '92, of May and of June in '93, were again followed. The beating of the rappel and the generale was heard in all the sections; the tocsin sounded its dreadful note, reminding all who should hear it that insurrection is the most sacred and the most indispensable of duties. Hanriot, the commandant of the forces, had been arrested in the evening, but he was speedily released by the agents of the Commune. The Council ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... not excessively deadly kind of mitrailleuse or Gatling gun, we should imagine; the Fort also contained a smith's forge, carpenter's tools, machinery for a windmill, and a handmill to grind corn, a brass bell—probably to sound the tocsin, or alarm, at the approach of the marauding savages of Stadacona, the array of muskets—(thirteen complete)—is not formidable. Who was the maker of his ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... poor commandant, beside himself with terror, cried, "Boys, the fleet is on fire;" and immediately had the alarm beaten. The frightful news spread like lightning; and in less than half an hour more than sixty thousand men appeared upon the wharves, the tocsin was sounded in all the churches, the forts fired alarm guns, while drums and trumpets sounded along the streets, the whole ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Rucker, come home to get ready for supper," came in a loud, jovial voice that carried across the street like the tocsin of a bass drum. The Rucker home sat in a clump of sugar maples just opposite the Briars, and was square, solid and unadorned of vine or flower. A row of bright tin buckets hung along the picket fence that separated the yard from the store enclosure, and rain-barrels sat under the two front ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... going after the two brothers, they were sore displeased, but they could do nothing,' says the chronicler; 'for the citizens who were in the plot straightway fell to sounding the tocsin, and gathering about the castle in great numbers, with arms and with sticks, were ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... of our ingenuity. He pays his dues; he will not pay the additional penny or two wanted of him, that we may be a step or two ahead of the day we live in, unless he is frightened. But scarcely anything less than the wild alarum of a tocsin will frighten him. Consequently the tocsin has to be sounded; and the effect is woeful past measure: his hugging of his army, his kneeling on the shore to his navy, his implorations of his yeomanry and his hedges, are sad to note. His bursts of pot-valiancy (the male side of the maiden ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... practical and beneficent activity. For there was an immense task to accomplish. The tide of immigration had set in, and ship after ship came laden with hunted human beings flying from their fellow-men, while all the time, like a tocsin, rang the terrible story of cruelty and persecution,—horrors that the pen refuses to dwell upon. By the hundreds and thousands they flocked upon our shores,—helpless, innocent victims of injustice and oppression, panic-stricken in the midst of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... of the Dorade, the opposition vessel, was sounding its tocsin to summon passengers on board, while ours was altogether mute. Presently, through the grey mist of the morning, we observed parties flocking down to the place of embarkation, who, somewhat to our surprise, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... and troubled look betrayed that he foresaw the disaster that was imminent, when, just as we reached the Postplatz, near the fountain erected from Semper's design, the clang of bells from the neighbouring tower of St. Ann's Church suddenly sounded the tocsin of revolt. With a terrified cry, 'Good God, it has begun!' my companion vanished from my side. He wrote to me—afterwards to say that he was living as a fugitive in Berne, but I never saw his ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the journalistic tocsin, the forebodings of Dr. Surtaine and his associates as to the effects of publicity bade fair to be justified. Undeniably there was danger of the disease scattering, through the medium of runaways from the stricken ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... partly a reminiscence of romanticism; and in Ibsen as in Balzac the romanticist is forever wrestling with the realist. There is in Ibsen's writing an echo of that note of revolt, which rings thruout all the romanticist clamor, a tocsin of anarchy, and which justified the remark of Thiers that the Romanticists of 1830 were the forerunners of the Communists of 1871. And the Communists were only putting into practise what Ibsen was preaching ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... and their daggers are consecrated by attendant priests. Nevers alone refuses to take part in the butchery. When they all have left, Raoul comes out of his hiding-place, and, in spite of the prayers and protestations of Valentine, leaps from the window at the sound of the fatal tocsin, and hastens to join his friends. In the last act, Raoul first warns Henry of Navarre and the Huguenot nobles, assembled at the Hotel de Sens, of the massacre, and then joins the melee in the streets. Valentine ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... military preparation were required by circumstances (les evenements) and did not mean war. Then over this bill the maire posted a notice that in case of a real mobilization (une mobilisation serieuse) they would ring the tocsin. At eleven o'clock the tocsin rang, oh, la la, monsieur, what a fracas! All the bells in the town, Saint-Martin, Saint-Laurent, the hotel de ville. Immediately all our troops went away. We did not want to see them go. 'We shall be back again,' they said. They liked Pont-a-Mousson. Such good ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... immediately his father in the nominal sway of Russia. The new sovereign promised fealty to the Tartars, and feared no rival while sustained by their swords. His oppression becoming intolerable, the tocsin was sounded in the streets of Novgorod, and the whole populace rose in insurrection. The movement was successful. The favorites and advisers of Yaroslaf were put to death, and the prince himself was exiled. There is something quite refreshing in the energetic spirit with ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... our occasional pitched battles with those hated Burgundian boys of the village of Maxey, and had been whipped, and were arriving on our side of the river after dark, bruised and weary, when we heard the bell ringing the tocsin. We ran all the way, and when we got to the square we found it crowded with the excited villagers, and weirdly lighted by smoking and ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... our wedding day; Joyous hour, we give thee greeting! Whither, whither art thou fleeting? Fickle moment, prithee stay! What though mortal joys be hollow? Pleasures come, if sorrows follow: Though the tocsin sound, ere long, Ding dong! Ding dong! Yet until the shadows fall Over one and over all, Sing a merry ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... most memorable days of the French Revolution. It was the day on which the French monarchy received its death-blow, and was accompanied by fighting and bloodshed which filled Paris with terror. In the morning before daybreak the tocsin had sounded, and not long after the mob of Paris, headed by the Marseillais, "Six hundred men not afraid to die," who had been summoned there by Barbaroux, were marching upon the Tuileries. The king, or rather the queen, had at last determined to make a stand and to defend ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... prisons, should be accused, and brought to trial and punishment. It required peculiar boldness, at that hour, to accuse Robespierre and Danton of crime. Though thousands in France were horror-stricken at these outrages, the mob, who now ruled Paris, would rally instantaneously at the sound of the tocsin for the protection ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... they set their cannon in its way. There is no gable now, nor wall That does not suffer, night and day, As shot and shell in crushing torrents fall. The stricken tocsin quivers through the tower; The triple nave, the apse, the lonely choir Are circled, hour by hour, With thundering bands of fire And Death is ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... came back from the chase, he pulled the silken string and rung the little bell; but ring as he would it was all lost time; he might sound the tocsin, and ring till he was tired, for the fairy gave no heed. So he went straight to the chamber, and not having patience to call the chamberlain and ask for the key, he gave the lock a kick, burst open the door, went in, opened the window, and seeing the myrtle stript of its ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... the Last Violinist of his Kind The Ever Unpractical Feminine The Comedian A Tale of a Political Difference The Rule of the Regent Echoes of a Serenade A Voice in a Garden The Room in the Cupola The Tocsin The Firm of Gray and Vanrevel When June Came "Those Endearing Young Charms" The Price of Silence The Uniform The ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... the morning of the 10th of August delegates from the sections met at the Hotel de Ville and assumed control of the city. This body was joined by Danton, Marat and Hebert, among others, and of these Danton more than anyone else represented the driving power. Orders were given for ringing the tocsin. All Paris knew the movement was coming, ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... even for Marie's soaring spirit; but she scarcely had time to picture herself ranging the sky when Dumas was back again, sorrowfully confessing failure. Aeroplanes likewise had heard the tocsin; they had sterner business than wafting lovers through the sky; they were carrying explosives and messages in the service of France. Dumas looked almost as disappointed as the wilted little figure ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... before daybreak. But the king had spoken in a moment of passion and agitation. An hour's reflection might change his mind. There was no time to be lost. The queen gave the signal at once, and out on the air of that dreadful night rang the terrible tocsin peal from the tower of the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, the alarm call for which the white-crossed ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... pilgrimage to London, to make up all by penance and petition. In the mean time the lengthy and drowsy writer of the pieces signed Camillas held himself in reserve to vindicate every thing; and to sound in America the tocsin of terror upon the inexhaustible resources of England. Her resources, says he, are greater than those of all the other powers. This man is so intoxicated with fear and finance, that he knows not the difference between plus and minus—between ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... The tocsin was rung in the Place d'Armes about 11.30 p.m. followed by heavy gunfire from our now more numerous defences. Almost simultaneously bomb explosions could be heard. We hastily wrapped up what patients ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... separate payments for any articles that he wrote. The Song of the Shirt, which it would be futile to praise or even to characterize, came out, anonymously of course, in the Christmas number of Punch for 1843: it ran like wildfire, and rang like a tocsin, through the land. Immediately afterwards, in January 1844, Hood's connection with the New Monthly closed, and he started a publication of his own, Hood's Magazine, which was a considerable success: more than half the first number was the actual handiwork of the editor. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... to draw breath. Coming as it had the very moment that the door had closed noiselessly behind her, the double stroke had sounded to her like a knell: or, perhaps more like the prelude to the wild alarum of a tocsin, first striking her heart still with terror, then urging it into ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... perhaps, to find out up to what point they could count on the populace, the government arranged for the rumour to be spread throughout all the communes of France, that the "Brigands" led by the migrs, were coming to destroy all the new institutions. The tocsin was rung by all the churches; everyone armed themselves with whatever they could lay hands upon; a National Guard was organised; the country turned into an armed camp while it waited for these imaginary "Brigands" who, in every commune, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... they would prefer, if they could afford it, to be doing nothing at all. But, from the time when he became a Christian, Paul knew that he had a definite work to do; and the call he had received to it never ceased to ring like a tocsin in his soul. "Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel;" this was the impulse which drove him on. He felt that he had a world of new truths to utter and that the salvation of mankind depended on their utterance. He knew ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... The people were as a body declared attainted of treason, their hotel-de-ville was razed to the ground, their written privileges were seized and reduced to ashes. The bells that had sounded out the tocsin, at the outbreak of the insurrection, were for the most part broken in pieces and melted. One miserable man was hung to the clapper of the same bell that he had rung to call the people to arms. Others for the like crime were broken on the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... whisking away flies, and mopping the moisture from their faces until the sound of "Eis! meine Herrschaften!" "Bier! meine Herrschaften!" roused them from their lethargy. Ices and beer and cherries and peaches successively filled up the weary hours until "the tocsin of the soul, the dinner bell," carried joy to their hearts. I can never forget the rapturous look of anticipation and satisfaction which those stolid middle-class Teutonic countenances wore when "Mittagsessen" was announced. They shook off their normal and habitual torpidity, and cheerfully ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... has failed to rule the world rightly, God will step in, and will cause famines, and plagues, and pestilence—even poverty itself—with His own Right Arm. But the cure was effected, and the country was on its road to a fair amount of prosperity, when the tocsin was sounded in America, and Home ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... prayed to them, besought them, and promised to pay as soon as he could, twofold, threefold, tenfold, a hundredfold, the debt which they had acquired. They excused themselves politely for being unable to postpone the little transaction. The Bishop threatened to sound the tocsin, to rouse against them the people who would kill them like dogs for profaning, violating, and stealing the miraculous images and holy relics. They smilingly pointed to the sheriff's officers, who were guarding them. They were protected by King Berln, for they lent ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... "what do you think of that? Does it not sound like the first note of the tocsin by which the people are to be called upon to ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... still to hold the strings, And, for your ungodly gains, Life to bind with golden chains;— Man! you're mightily mistaken! From such dreams you'd best awaken To the sense of what is coming, When you hear the low, dull booming Of the far-off tocsin drums. —Such a day of vast upsettings, Dire outcastings and downsettings!— You have held the reins too long,— Have you ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... time, and departed on the morrow with the bitter words, "Adieu, O city, where everything is permitted but to be a good man!" Ten years later he burnt the Bull of the Pope in the public square of Wittemberg, and all Europe rang with the tocsin of the Reformation. I never passed that venerable monastery without thinking of the austere German monk and his glorious work; and the old well-known motto of the Reformation which had been his battle-cry in many a good fight of faith received new power and meaning from the associations ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... tail against everything. To be brief, everywhere was the shrew-mouse received with honour by the pots, which kept a respectful silence, except two golden tankards, which knocked against each other like the bells of a church ringing a tocsin, at which he was much pleased, and thanked them, right and left, by a nod of the head, while promenading in the rays of the sun, which were illuminating his domain. Therein so splendidly did the brown colour of his hair ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... kept as neat and clean as if in a drawing-room. Materials are abundant; but naturally there is little bustle and activity when compared to that which exists in a British yard. Their small navy can hardly find them enough work to keep their "hands in;" but doubtless the first knell of the accursed tocsin of war, while it gave them enough to do, would soon fill their dockyards with able and willing hands to do it. Commodore Ringold's surveying expedition, consisting of a corvette, schooner, steamer, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Presently the tocsin call of "Clara!" sounded to the world the state of Miss Leeson's purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... a notice was issued from one of the newspapers calling an open-air meeting in the Champ de Mars. Towards evening the excitement increased, and the fire-bells jangled a tocsin to call the people into the streets. The Champ de Mars soon filled with a tumultuous mob, roaring its approbation of wild speeches which denounced the 'tyranny' of the governor-general and the Reformers. A cry arose, 'To the Parliament House!' and the mob streamed westward, wrecking ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... my ears to listen, then I entered the room again and paced to and fro, or dropped into an arm-chair and dozed. But my slumber was agitated by feverish dreams. I dreamed that I could hear the murmur of angry crowds, and the report of distant firing; the tocsin was clanging from the church towers. I awoke. It was ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... various quarters sounds that warned of approaching danger reached his ears. On one hand, although at a considerable distance, the clang of a cavalry trumpet was audible; on the other, church and convent bells rang out a tocsin of alarm. The sounds were taken up by other bells; in their rear, in front, on all sides. The Mochuelo rode along the flank of the little column, which in dead silence, and with rapid steps, followed El Tuerto, who, with Paco ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... disciples outside. To these the magistrate came out, while the Master was still resting within.—"Sirs," said he, "never grieve for your Teacher's fall from office. His work is but now to begin. These many years the empire has been in perilous case; but now Heaven has raised up Confucius, its tocsin to call the people to awakenment."—A ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of hearing a tocsin sounded, augurs a strife from which you will come victorious. For a woman, this is a warning of separation from her husband ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... curfew, tocsin, gong. Associated Words: campanology, campanologist, peal, ring, knell, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... got out a Bat and Ball number that covered the subject historically, beginning with the vampire bat and ending with the Patriarchs' ball—illustrated with interior views of the Van Plushvelt country seat. Ministers, educators and sociologists everywhere hailed the event as the tocsin call that proclaimed ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... or, if she ever trembled, it was at the want of firmness in others. She had made up her mind for the worst long before. She often said to me, in those revolutionary nights when we sat listening for the sound of the cannon or the tocsin from Paris—'France is an abyss, in which the throne must sink. But sovereigns may be undone—they must not be disgraced.' The world never possessed a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... a bowstring twanged to the fore and a young girl stumbled across Jack Battle's feet with a scream that rings, and rings, and rings in memory like the tocsin of a horrible dream. She was wounded in the shoulder. Getting to her knees she threw her arms round Jack with such a terrified look of helpless pleading in her great eyes ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... old town was terrific; Great Tom was booming sullenly over the uproar; the bell of Saint Mary's was clanging with alarm; St. Giles's tocsin chimed furiously; howls, curses, flights of brickbats, stones shivering windows, groans of wounded men, cries of frightened females, cheers of either contending party as it charged the enemy from Carfax to Trumpington Street, proclaimed ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... space she heard Matilda toss about, draw long, tremulous breaths; then from the couch of that elderly virgin sounded the incontrovertible tocsin of deep sleep. But for Mrs. De Peyster there ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... his head in a paroxysm of silent despair. Her words rung like a tocsin of the bright romance conjured up by the avowal of their love. It seemed to him, in that instant, they had no separate existence as distinguished from the great stream of human life—the turbulent river that flowed unceasingly from an eternity of the past to an eternity of the future. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... the President of the Section sitting in the next court, the citoyen Dumas, has been arrested on the bench, but that the case goes on. Drums can be heard beating the alarm, and the tocsin peals ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... heart no Christmas Peace can fall. The chimes shall be a tocsin, and the red Glow of the Yule-wood embers shall recall A myriad ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... my hair rise on my head as these questions rang like a tocsin through my brain, and I think, at that moment, I had a foretaste of the chief ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... ringing the tocsin, which was to call together the people of the village. They also very generally knew who was coming among them on that day, and the purpose for which they were corning; and at the first sound of the bell, all such as intended to shew themselves, came crowding on to the ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... the empty house was only broken by the habitually subdued voices of the children at their play, when suddenly the harsh stroke of a distant bell came through the open window. But it was no Sabbath bell, and Mr. Breeze knew it. It was the tocsin of the Vigilance Committee, summoning the members to assemble at their quarters for a capture, a trial, or an execution of some wrongdoer. To him it was equally a summons to the office—to distasteful news ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... became uneasy; went out on his house-top alone, and looked in that direction too; glanced down from behind his chimneys at the darkening faces by the fountain below, and sent word to the sacristan who kept the keys of the church, that there might be need to ring the tocsin by-and-bye. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... not yet twenty-eight," and trying to respond to the call for seven different kinds of taxes; and, also in the foreground, "a perfumed Seigneur," taking part of the children's dinner. The scene changes; the great individual actors in the Revolution enter: the tocsin clangs; the stage is reddened with human blood and wreathed in flames. We feel that we are actually witnessing that ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote; And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin's throat." ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... the ninth of August the tocsin was sounded in every quarter, and the generale was beat. Early the next morning the Tuilleries were attacked by the populace, and the king and his family, attended by the Swiss guard, fled for protection ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Kentucky.... The advocates of abolition—the phrenzied fanatics of the North, neither sleep nor slumber. Their footsteps are even now to be seen wherever mischief can be perpetrated—and it may be that while the people of Kentucky are reposing in the confidence of fancied security, the tocsin of rebellion may resound through the land—the firebrand of the incendiary may wrap their dwellings in flames—their towns and cities may become heaps of ashes before their eyes and their minds drawn off from all thoughts of reforming the government to consider the means necessary ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... understand your optics as well. You like to see other folks; taking the bitters is another thing. The tea-bell is a tocsin." ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... order: a ferocious and cruel multitude, headed by chosen assassins, are attacking the prisons, forcing the houses of the noblesse and priests, and, after a horrid mockery of judicial condemnation, execute them on the spot. The tocsin is rung, alarm guns are fired, the streets resound with fearful shrieks, and an undefinable sensation of terror seizes on one's heart. I feel that I have committed an imprudence in venturing to Paris; but the barriers are now shut, and I must abide ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... 30. Hebert is set at liberty. The French from Landau make an effort to deliver Mayence. A bold sally is made from Mayence. Prince Louis, son of Prince Ferdinand, makes a vigorous resistance. The jacobins are victorious in Paris. 100,000 citizens are under arms all night. The tocsin (alarm bell) is ringing all day. The forty-eight sections of Paris demand an act of accusation against twenty members; among whom are, Pethion, Brissot, Barbaroux, Chambon, Gorsas, Guadet, Lanjuinais, Verniaud, &c. Six ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... pulled the bell-rope; again the solemn tocsin awoke the echoes of the inn; and ere they had died away, a light glimmered in the carriage entrance, and a powerful voice was heard upraised ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came hoarsely forth on to the night air, clang, clang, clang, burst out the tocsin of the alarm bell, silencing the music in the ballroom and sending an electric thrill through every listener within the precincts of the castle; but ere the great bell had sent forth a score of vibrating notes which came quivering through the darkness and ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... and death. On the 25th of July, the Marseillais arrived in Paris, and augmented the strength and confidence of the insurgents. Popular commotions increased, and the clubs became unmanageable. On the 10th of August, the tocsin sounded, the generale beat in every quarter of Paris, and that famous insurrection took place which overturned the throne. The Hotel de Ville was seized by the insurgents, the Tuileries was stormed, and the Swiss guards were massacred. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... tocsin from my tower, and fire the culverin; Bid each retainer arm with speed; call every vassal in. Up with my banner on the wall,—the banquet board prepare,— Throw wide the portal of my hall, and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... there came another sound to arouse the town. From the belfry of the little church a bell suddenly gave tongue upon a frantic, hurried note that spoke unmistakably of alarm. Ding-ding-ding-ding it went, a tocsin summoning the assistance of all true sons of ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... tocsin was sounded: the two villages joined forces, and with weapons in their hands marched along the road from Beaucaire to Nimes. At the bridge of Quart the villagers of Redressan and Marguerite joined them. Thus reinforced, they were ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... people had repaired to the Hotel de Ville, and requested that the tocsin might be sounded, the districts assembled, and the citizens armed. Some electors assembled at the Hotel de Ville, and took the authority into their own hands. They rendered great service to their fellow-citizens and the cause of liberty by their courage, prudence, ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... to admit that Mr. Crampton's conduct was "notoriously at war with the rights of neutrality and national honor." This was not altogether pleasant to some of the old Nestors of the Senate, who wanted once more to sound the war tocsin. General Cass, who had had a bad fall on the outside steps of the Department of the Interior, was "eager for the fray;" the valiant Clayton, of Delaware, saw an opportunity to wipe out the stigma cast upon his treaty; and although the patriarchal Butler (owner of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... are permitted to partake of such ticks and insects as inhabit the hide of their host. Whenever danger, or, in other words, whenever a hunter tries to approach their own particular rhino from any direction, windward, leeward, or any other way, the ever alert and watchful rhino birds sound a tocsin of warning. The rhino pricks up his ears and begins to show signs of taking notice. He doesn't know where or what the danger may be, but he knows the C.Q.D. code of danger signals as delivered to him from the outposts on his back and hastens to get busy in an effort to locate the foe. As a general ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... Firm at his dangerous post he stood; Each call for needful rest repelled, With dying hand the rudder held, Till in his fall with fateful sway, The steerage of the realm gave way! Then, while on Britain's thousand plains One unpolluted church remains, Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around The bloody tocsin's maddening sound, But still, upon the hallowed day, Convoke the swains to praise and pray; While faith and civil peace are dear, Grace this cold marble with a tear,— He, who ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... the Tertasse and the other inner gates would be of little avail, if the main body of the enemy were once in possession of the ramparts. The course that at first sight seemed the most obvious—to enter the town, give the alarm at the town hall, and set the tocsin ringing—he rejected; for while the town was arming, the three hundred who had entered might seize the Porte Neuve, and so secure the entrance ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... Europe. "France conceived the idea that she had a Divine mission, as the great apostle of liberty, to propagate republicanism through all the kingdoms of Europe. In her madness of intoxication she undertook the work, threw down the gauntlet, and the fierce tocsin of war sounded from nation to nation, until the continent was converted ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... the world but a joke, King Auberon decrees that the dull and respectable London boroughs shall be given city guards in resplendent armour, each borough to have its own coat of arms, its city walls, tocsin, and the like. The idea is taken seriously by the second hero, Adam Wayne of Notting Hill, an enthusiast utterly lacking any sense of humour, who goes to war with the other boroughs of London to protect a small street which they have designed to pull down in the interests of commercial ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Rochow declared themselves ready to place garrison and fortress entirely under his direction; Colonel von Goldacker, commandant of Brandenburg, had betaken himself to his post, and only awaited the count's word to sound the tocsin of war. In Koenigsberg the Court Marshal von Waldow was most energetically massing the friends of Schwarzenberg, and his brother, Sebastian von Waldow, traveled from place to place, to gain friends and partisans for Count John Adolphus, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... the world, she was always, and always would be, the Tocsin to him. Gone! A hand unclenched and passed heavily across his eyes and flirted the hair back from his forehead. She had taken her place in her own world again; her fortune had been restored to her, its management placed in the hands of a trust company; ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... of fifty or sixty feet. During the war times they make use of these fires as signals from band to band, and each fire has a conventional meaning. Like the phares that flashed the alarm from hill-top to hill-top or the tocsin that sang from belfry to belfry in the Basse Bretagne, in the days of the rising of the Vendee, so those beacons would communicate as swiftly the tidings that one band or tribe had to convey to another. Again, speaking of the ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... and Child. But softly you shall frame the fence, and softly carve the door, And softly plane the table—as to spread it for the poor, And all your thoughts be soft and white as the wood of the white tree. But if they tear the Charter, Jet the tocsin speak for me! Let the wooden sign above your shop be prouder to be scarred Than the lion-shield of Lancelot that hung at ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... his countenance, the twinkling of his eye, all pointed so clearly to Clarke as to direct the attention of every one present to the Governor. This was followed by a sermon half made up of the irregularities of Clarke's life. This was the tocsin to the church, and it came down in force with the opposition to the Governor elect. It was, too, the slogan of the Crawford party to rally for a ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... is hurriedly pulling his gas helmet over his head, while Lieutenant Waddell beats a frenzied tocsin upon the instrument provided for the purpose—to wit, an empty eighteen-pounder shell, which, suspended from a bayonet stuck into the parados (or back wall) of the trench, makes a most efficient alarm-gong. The sound is repeated ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... and ready to assist any subversionary movement, yea, even with coin of the realm, on the one condition that he should be allowed to insert articles of his own composition in the new organ which it was proposed to establish. There was no difficulty in conceding this trifle, and the 'Tocsin' was the result. The name was a suggestion of the oil merchant himself, and no bad name if Socialists at large could be supposed capable of understanding it; but the oil merchant was too important a man to be thwarted, and the argument by which he supported his choice was incontestable. ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... the mountain, crossed the track of his pursuers, and directed himself upon St. Andre de Lanceze. The whole country was by this time in a state of alarm; and the cure of the place, being on the outlook, mounted the clock-tower and rang the tocsin. But his parishioners having joined the insurgents, the cure was pursued, captured in the belfry, and thrown from its highest window. The insurgents then proceeded to gut the church, pull down the crosses, ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... altar. Raising his reverend hand, with a gesture he awed into silence All that clamorous throng; and thus he spake to his people; Deep were his tones and solemn; in accents measured and mournful Spake he, as, after the tocsin's alarum, distinctly the clock strikes. "What is this that ye do, my children? what madness has seized you? Forty years of my life have I labored among you, and taught you, Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one another! Is this the fruit of my toils, of my vigils and ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... tables are spread; a bell rings—that "tocsin of the soul," as Byron has sarcastically but truthfully termed the dinner-bell; and all the passengers rush in from every quarter of the ship, and seat themselves with an air of expectation till the covers are raised. Grievous disappointments are often disclosed by the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... that M. de Bouille, warned by one of the officers whom he had stationed on the road, would march all night to their assistance; and they attributed his delay to the necessity of collecting a sufficient force to overpower the numerous troops of national guards whom the sound of the tocsin had summoned to Varennes. But at each instant they expected to see him appear, and the least movement of the populace, the slightest clash of arms in the streets, seemed to announce his arrival; the courier despatched to Paris by the authorities ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... songs were chanted, And war's stirring tocsin pealed, By those songs thy heart was haunted, And thy spirit, proud, undaunted, Clamored wildly — wildly panted: "Mother! let my wish be granted; I will ne'er be mocked and taunted That I fear to meet our vaunted Foemen ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... smile on his enterprise. Though he failed to take Vitry from the allied garrison, yet near St. Dizier he fell on a Prussian convoy, captured 800 men and 400 wagons filled with stores. Everywhere he ordered the tocsin to proclaim a levee en masse, and sent messengers to warn his Lorraine garrisons to cut their way to his side. His light troops spread up the valley of the Marne towards Chaumont, capturing stores and couriers; and he seized this opportunity, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... just putting out my light when the telephone rang a furious tocsin in the next room. I flounced out of bed more asleep than awake; in another minute I should have been past ringing up. It was one o'clock in the morning, and I had been dining with Swigger Morrison ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... come running. Some one had even gone to the church, and now, from the distance, rang the tocsin note of the old bell. There was a long flare of crimson on the sky, which made remote people speculate as to the ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... shop keepers as well as the women of the farms have by far the best of it in time of war. The former are always their husband's partners, controlling the money, consulted at ever step. When the tocsin rings and the men disappear they simply go on. Their task may be doubled and they may be forced to employ girls instead of men, but there is no ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... winding reaches of the Boyne. Everywhere there were strength, and numbers, and resolution; where were they now in the supreme hour of the country's agony? A thousand times it had been sworn by tens of thousands of Irishmen, that the tocsin of battle would find them clustered round the good old flag to conquer or die beneath its shadow. And now, the hour had come, the flag of insurrection so often invoked was raised; but the patriot that raised it was left defenceless: he at least ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... was received, at once the tocsin was rung, and when all the citizens were gathered together, a protest was read, stating that the Bishop had taken possession of his see without showing the papal bulls or the royal decree authorizing him to do so, and declaring ...
— Las Casas - 'The Apostle of the Indies' • Alice J. Knight
... Capponi answered: 'We will ring our bells.' Beautiful as a dream is Florence; but her somber streets, overshadowed by gigantic belfries and masked by grim brown palace-fronts, contained a menace that the French king could not face. Let Capponi sound the tocsin, and each house would become a fortress, the streets would be barricaded with iron chains, every quarter would pour forth men by hundreds well versed in the arts of civic warfare. Charles gave way, covering with a bad joke ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... came to an open clash in the impeachment of the King's most devoted minister, Wentworth, Earl Strafford, by Pym, the great leader in the House of Commons, ending in Strafford's execution; the Grand Remonstrance, which sounded in no uncertain tones the tocsin of the coming revolution; and finally the King's impeachment of Pym, Hampden, Holles, Hazelrigg and Strode, one of the many ill-advised moves of this Monarch which at once ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... fellows. You may hide from your responsibilities, but the burden of them will lie heavy upon your conscience, the poison will penetrate sometimes into your most jealously guarded paradise. We are of the people's party, you and I, Mannering, and I tell you that the tocsin has sounded. ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... introduced it in the form of a treatise, and surely "in an evil hour" was this treatise published—although its amiable author must be acquitted of "malice prepense." His History of England[52] seems to have sounded the tocsin for a general rummage after, and slaughter of, old prints: venerable philosophers and veteran heroes, who had long reposed in unmolested dignity within the magnificent folio volumes which recorded their ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... who was not hit, drew his sabre and rushed in the direction of the vehicle. He was stopped by four armed men, who fired at him; his eagerness saved him, for he ran toward one of the three passengers to tell him to make for Chesnay and ring the tocsin. But two brigands followed him, and one of them, taking aim, sent a ball through his left shoulder, which broke his ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... was the change which had already swept over the landscape of American thought and purpose since the despised Birney, in 1844, received only a few thousand votes in the whole United States. Now the Rail-splitter had come! The tocsin of war sounded. The Union was rent. War with its flames of fire and streams of blood devastated the Republic. But the bow of promise was set on the dark background of the receding storm. American slavery was swept into oblivion, and the end ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... freedom for woman and the ennobling of the race was first seen by Wyoming, on the crest of our continent, and the clarion note was sounded forth, "Equality before the law." For a quarter of a century she was the lone watcher on the heights to sound the tocsin of freedom. At last Colorado, from her splendid snow-covered peaks, answered back in grand accord, "Equality before the law." Then on Utah's brow shone the sun, and she, too, exultantly joined in the trio, "Equality before ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... She did not hear the tocsin this time; she felt it on her spine—the drums of fear. If they ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... may appear to the reader, to us it was the tocsin of danger. Before the lofty crags above us had ceased to reverberate the echoes, every man ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... by a gunshot, sharp, insistent, a tocsin of death in that sylvan solitude. A host of rooks arose from some tall elms near the house; a couple of cock pheasants flew with startled chuckling out of the wood on the right; the white tails of rabbits previously unseen revealed their ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... my Cripples," he said. "They have been wished on to a Group of Philanthropists in New England. Sound the glad Tocsin. I have a Million ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... now rest the destiny of France. How strange is the alteration which has occurred within so short a space of time! Five days ago, Charles the Tenth reigned in the Tuileries; at present, on Lafayette and Laffitte it depends whether he ever enters his palace again! The tocsin is now sounding! How strangely, how awfully it strikes on the ear! All ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... impossible; no sane man, still less a timid man, could conceive and execute a plot at the mercy of countless circumstances, not to be foreseen. Suppose the Master slain, and Gowrie a free man in the street. He had only to sound the tocsin, summon his devoted townsmen, surround the house, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... the peculiar merit of not being a tocsin song, like the 'Marseillaise.' Indeed, there is not a restful, soothing, or even humane sentiment in all that stormy shout. It is the scream of oppressed humanity against its oppressor, presaging a more than quid pro quo; and it fitly prefigured the sight of ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... all of a sudden the sound I had been waiting for added to the weird horror of the situation, an alarm bugle, winding out its tale, clear and true to the farthest byways and the most remote shanties, followed by our tocsin, the deep-toned Roman Catholic Church bell, which was the signal that a general attack was in progress. We caught dim glimpses of the town guard going to their appointed places in the most orderly manner, and I remember thinking that where there was no ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... feels that the tocsin of alarm, or the anti-slavery trump, must sound a louder note before they can hear it, one would think they must be very hard of hearing,-yea, that they belong to that class, of whom it may be truly said, 'they have stopped their ears that they ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... town at the same time, I ordered the suspension of the attack at nightfall, limiting myself to holding the ground conquered. In spite of that, the combat continued late into the night. On the 1st of April, in the earliest morning light, the tocsin was heard ringing with more fury than ever, and the insurgents reopened fire with an entirely new desperation. Considering the gravity of our losses, as well as the obstinacy and fury of the enemy, it was necessary to adopt a most rigorous measure. I ordered that no prisoners ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... defend the higher pretentions of the Negro without apology or equivocation. The old form of appeal has become insipid and uninspiring; the ear has become dull to its dinging. The old blade has become blunt and needs a new sharpness of point and keenness of edge. Where now is heard the tocsin call whose key-note a generation ago resounded from the highlands of Kentucky and Tennessee to the plains of the Carolinas calling the black youths, whose hopes ran high within their bosoms, to rise ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... fought for France with a sword (or gun) I should have been at her service from the first of August, 1914, when I heard her tocsin ring, saw her sons march away to fight and die on battlefields as familiar to me as ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... personal or racial, unconsciously turns on the world the most hateful of its hundred faces. English reverence, Irish mysticism, American idealism, looked up and saw on the face of Moses a certain smile. It was that smile of the Cynic Triumphant, which has been the tocsin for many a cruel riot in Russian villages ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... the Marseillaise ring out through the open windows to the dormant or drunken denizens of Lysander Grove. The Reincarnation is patiently turning the wheel of the printing machine, and rolling out fresh Tocsins, thinking, no doubt, of that tocsin which, at no distant date, shall ring out from a loftier sphere to rouse the deluded inhabitants of this globe to a different millennium from that dreamed of by Anarchists. But, whatever his thoughts, he grinds away with much Christian endurance and fortitude. ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... slim newcomer over again, and as he looked there rang inside him some tocsin of warning. Thursday sat crouched in the saddle, wary as a rattlesnake ready to strike. A sawed-off shotgun lay under his leg within reach of his hand, the butt of a six-gun was even closer to those smooth, girlish fingers. In the immobility of his figure and the ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... him. He eyed me a long time—squirrel time—making little, spasmodic movements on the flat stone above his den. At a motion of my arm he darted into his hole with an exultant chip. He was soon out with empty pockets, and he then proceeded to sound his little tocsin of distrust or alarm so that all the sylvan folk might hear. As I made no sign, he soon ceased and ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... restlessness and petulance in the long series of revolts which filled his reign with wearisome monotony from the moment when he first rode out to claim his duchy of Normandy, and along its southern frontier peasant and churl turned out at the sound of the tocsin, and with fork and flail drove the hated "Guirribecs" back over the border. Five years after his marriage, in 1133, his first child was born at Le Mans. Englishmen saw in the grandson of "good Queen Maud" the direct descendant of the old English ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... much pleased by your remarks on the storm in the Travailleurs. There was another very odd storm, as it struck me on a hasty reading in '93, where there is mention of a beautiful summer evening and yet the wind is so high that you can't hear the tocsin. You do justice also and more than justice to Hugo's tenderness about children. That, I think, points to one great ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Charleston, made a descent upon the city, and, rendered furious by long oppression, proceeded to fire it and massacre the inhabitants. No language can convey an accurate idea of the consternation of the white inhabitants, as it was described to me. The tocsin was sounded, the citizens assembled, armed cap-a-pie, and after much hard fighting, the rebellion was crushed, and large numbers of the insurgents were slain or arrested. Then came the bloody hand of what was impiously ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... them mem'ries he don't hear Texas where he rings in his theeries, 'up on the roof my grandfather has a big bell, an' the rope is brought down an' fetched through a auger hole in the side of the house, so he can lay in bed if he feels like it, an' ring this yere tocsin of his while so minded. An' you can bet he shorely rings her! Many a time an' oft as a child about my mother's knees, the sound of that ringin' comes floatin' to us where my father has his ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... poor inoffensive agent of police, who was bound to a plank, thrown into the canal, and then stoned to death. And forty-eight hours later, during the night of the 26th of February, Maurice, awakened by the beating of the long roll and the sound of the tocsin, beheld bands of men and women streaming along the Boulevard des Batignolles and dragging cannon after them. He descended to the street, and laying hold of the rope of a gun along with some twenty others, was ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... les coeurs, toutes les pensees, Qu'anime le meme dessin Ne font plus qu'un faisceau superbe Dieu prend pour lier cette gerbe La vieille corde du tocsin. ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield |
