"Arson" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... belonging to the Sardinian, the other to the Bavarian Minister—were attacked, plundered, set fire to, and almost entirely destroyed. The military were sent for; they arrived too late to prevent the arson, but thirteen of the malefactors were seized and committed to Newgate, and for the night the mob was dispersed. It was not a bad day's work for the rioters. Parliament had been insulted, the Government and the very ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... who escaped from Cayenne," suggested the doctor, "or like a man who is wanted by the police of three countries for crimes ranging from arson to wilful murder." ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... at anything, and it occurs to me that in all likelihood they have sought refuge in this cavern, where they fancy they can continue to defy the law with impunity, after a long series of crimes—robbery, murder, arson, and excesses of all descriptions committed together. In this case Back Cup is nothing but a lair of pirates, the Count d'Artigas is the leader of the band and Serko ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... however, not the case. There is no reason to suppose that Mr Kay did not mean well. But there is no doubt that he was extremely fussy. And fussiness—with the possible exceptions of homicidal mania and a taste for arson—is quite the worst characteristic it is possible for a house-master ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... considerable branch of the revenue. The old Frisian laws consisted almost entirely of a discriminating tariff upon crimes. Nearly all the misdeeds which man is prone to commit, were punished by a money-bote only. Murder, larceny, arson, rape—all offences against the person were commuted for a definite price. There were a few exceptions, such as parricide, which was followed by loss of inheritance; sacrilege and the murder of a master by a slave, which were punished with death. It is a natural inference that, as the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... August term. The Government thought that they could not, without impropriety, put off taking any steps against these persons till November. They were, therefore, arrested last week; all except one, who was committed for arson, were at once bailed by the magistrates; and he too was bailed the day after his committal by one of the ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Canada became more than ever an armed camp of determined patriots. The general sentiment was expressed by the Toronto Globe, which said: "If German agents see a way to injure Canada, they will stop at nothing to compass their ends. Arson to them is a commonplace and murder an incident in the day's work. The destruction of the Parliament Building may have been the result of an accident, but the general belief at Ottawa is that it was the work of ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... habits and character predispose them to crime, as long as there are social inequalities and wants that provoke to criminal acts, and as long as there are attractive or easy victims, so long will thieving and arson, ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... in the heavens. Now and then in clear nights I have counted the reflections of as many as five. Contempt of judges and laws—that's what it is! And that has taken such hold of these scoundrels that arson has become a kind of diversion.—But they had better go slow. Just a little patience, ladies and gentlemen! We know the tracks! We are on the right scent! And the people in question will have a terrible ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... there is a felon, though a discharged soldier, and wounded in our battles. A white man in Kentucky may keep a gun; if a black man buys a gun he forfeits it, and pays a fine of five dollars if presuming to keep in his possession a musket which he has carried through the war. Arson of public buildings, if committed by a white man, is punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term of from seven to twenty-one years; if committed by a black man, the punishment is death. Arson of a warehouse, etc., when committed by a white man, is punished ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... yes. And mad as hell. But he'll get along. It's too bad. We've pinched him three times on suspicion of arson, but we couldn't make it stick. Something ought to happen to make that guy stop playin' with ...
— The Ambulance Made Two Trips • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... put the Old Nick back into me! This young criminal was evidently a suburban burglar and a kleptomaniac. What was a little playful arson ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... from milder courses of crime by the persecutions of the police, found in Dick a devoted friend. It never occurred to the boy that the excuses given were anything but adequate and satisfactory justification for pillage and arson ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... chamur— what you would call a currier—on his hinder parts and drove him and a number of pigs over into Jelbo's village. Jelbo says he can bring evidence to prove that the wizard directing these proceedings, who is a Sansi, has been guilty of theft, arson, cattle-killing, perjury and murder, but would prefer to have him punished for bewitching ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... I saw those girls blushin' and bowin' behind their father, I didn't care to have my crimes made out any blacker'n necessary and I tried to give Jim the high-sign to let me off easy—just make it forgery or arson—but he was lookin' at the ladies, and evidently believin' in the strength of a good impression, he said: "Well, yes! He's young but they never was a old man with half his crimes. He's wanted for a good many things in different places, but I went ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... Trial.—On Tuesday Stephen Merrill Clark, a lad about 15 years of age, was indicted for the crime of ARSON alleged to have been committed in Newburyport, was arraigned the same day, and pleaded not guilty. The day for his trial is not yet fixed.—The Court assigned him Leverett Saltonstall and John G. King, Esquires, for his ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... education of the police did not seem to appeal to Tom. In his heart he rather sympathized with Constable Cobb. He saw the policeman's point of view. It is all very well to talk, but when you are stationed in a sleepy village where no one ever murders, or robs, or commits arson, or even gets drunk and disorderly in the street, a puppy without a collar is simply a godsend. A man must look ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Steel is a soulless corporation if there ever was one. They have the shrewdest lawyers in the country, and they get away legally with things that are flagrantly illegal, such as freezing out competitors, stealing patents, and the like. Report has it that they do not stop at arson, treason, or murder to attain their ends, but as Prescott said, they never leave ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... having been accused of arson, of which offence he was generally believed guilty, but acquitted on a point of insufficiency of evidence to sustain the indictment, was tried before Lord Norbury. The young gentleman met the judge next at the Lord-Lieutenant's levee in the Castle. Instead of avoiding the Chief Justice, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... arrested a number of Negroes but ran the risk of having the jail broken open by their sympathizing fellowmen. After a reign of terror for half a week, order was restored and twenty of the accused were convicted of arson. ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... the temple by Eleazar.[514] John and Simon were stronger than Eleazar in numbers and equipment, but he had the advantage of a strong position. Their relations mainly consisted of fighting, treachery, and arson: a large quantity of corn was burnt. Eventually, under pretext of offering a sacrifice, John sent a party of men to massacre Eleazar and his troops, and by this means gained possession of the temple.[515] Thus ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... proclamation requiring polluted persons to keep away from sacred ceremonies. Actions for homicide and wounding are heard, if the homicide or wounding be willful, in the Areopagus; so also in cases of killing by poison, and of arson. These are the only cases heard by that Council. Cases of unintentional homicide, or of intent to kill, or of killing a slave or a resident alien or a foreigner, are heard by the court of Palladium. When the homicide is acknowledged, ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... produce an unprovoked murder, an inexplicable arson, neither led up to nor followed by the ordinary human history of such acts, and therefore as arbitrary as the deeds of idiots or the insane. A villainous hate, an alleged love, a violent death, are flashed at us, without being in ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... firmly, "I shall count myself a feudatory of the Holy See. Until then I render account to none but God and my conscience." And he pushed on, preceded by a black banner of death, scattering in true Hungarian fashion murder, rape, pillage, and arson through the smiling countryside, exacting upon the whole land a terrible vengeance for the ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Underneath the linden boughs; Murder, bigamy, and theft; Travellers of goods bereft; Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,— Every thing but honest toil, Are the deeds that best define ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... number many members in nearly every city in Europe and this country, though originating in Bombay, India, of Thugs and Burners. These are vowed to take every opportunity to do injury to the cause not only of religion, but of public and private virtue and order; by arson, assassination, and other crimes. Through the vigilance of well-organized police, they have, so far, been prevented from effecting very much mischief; but they constitute one of the worst of all the dangers of our ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne
... M. Arson, engineer to the Paris Gas Company, published in 1867, in the Mmoires de la Socit des Ingnieurs Civils de France, the results of some experiments on the loss of pressure in gas when passing through pipes. He ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... In the progress towards any of which consummations, do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough; breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of furniture, if not arson itself? ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... troops stationed in Kansas to make forged ballots good by real bullets; lovers of fair play, we have seen a cowardly rabble from the Slave States protected by Federal bayonets while they committed robbery, arson, and Sepoy atrocities against women, and the Democratic party forced to swallow this nauseous mixture of force, fraud, and Executive usurpation, under the name of Popular Sovereignty. We have seen Freedom pronounced sectional ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... get out of this pronto," Grief whispered to Peter Gee a few minutes later, "or we'll be a pair of boiled owls. Also, I am to be tried for arson, or heresy, or leprosy, or something, in a few minutes, and ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... are undergoing sentence by military courts and have been imprisoned six months, except those who are under sentence for the crimes of murder, arson, or rape, and excepting those who are under sentence at the Tortugas, be discharged from imprisonment and the residue of their sentence remitted. Those who belong to the military service and their term unexpired will be returned ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... murders in Amritsar were not due to any private quarrel between the murderers and their victims. The offence grave, though it was, was purely political and committed under excitement. More than full reparation has been taken for the murders and arson. In the circumstances commonsense dictates reduction of the death sentences. The popular belief favours the view that the condemned men are innocent and have not had a fair trial. The execution has ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... constitute the new leaders: for in every mob it is the boldest and least scrupulous who march ahead and set the example in destruction. The example is contagious: the beginning was the craving for bread, the end is murder and arson; the savagery which is unchained adding its unlimited violence to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... severely wounded. Several died of the injuries received. The prison directors had a called meeting and investigated the riot. The blame fell upon convict Johnson. A criminal charge was preferred against him in the courts, for arson. He was convicted and served an additional sentence of twelve years. This, added to his former sentence, makes twenty-four years of imprisonment for this desperado. When he was taken out of the penitentiary to stand trial for setting fire to the prison, he was heavily loaded with ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... for the murder, treason, and arson of John Brown? I have never known of his acts being approved or palliated by any other person than a Republican. Thousands of them have done it and are now doing it. In charging this dark catalogue of crime against this organization, I would not be unjust. I have no doubt that thousands of persons ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... success, we should not discipline ourselves, which is the German lesson, so much as we should riot in the moral license of the German creed. Americans would worship at the altar of that queer "old German god," who apparently encourages rape, murder, arson, and tyranny in his followers. For in young America, with every social tradition in it seething blood, there is already an insidious tendency to accept this new-old religion of triumphant force. American "Big Business" can understand the Kaiser's philosophy, can reverence ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the evening he did not light his lamp, and at night he could not sleep, but kept thinking that he might be arrested, put into fetters, and thrown into prison. He did not know of any harm he had done, and could be certain that he would never be guilty of murder, arson, or theft in the future either; but was it not easy to commit a crime by accident, unconsciously, and was not false witness always possible, and, indeed, miscarriage of justice? It was not without good reason that the agelong experience of the simple people teaches that beggary and prison are ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Quaker, a Presbyterian, which they punished with lash, with the gallows, and with exile. I do not refer to their inclusion of lawyers among keepers of disorderly houses, and people of ill-fame. I refer to what every people, savage or civilized, has forbidden by law: murder, arson, adultery, infanticide, drunkenness, theft, rape, sodomy, and bestiality. The standard of sexual morality among the unmarried youth was lower in Puritan England than it is today ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... "the United States and Her Britannic Majesty shall, upon mutual requisitions ... deliver up to justice all persons ... charged with murder, or assault with intent to commit murder, or piracy or arson or robbery or forgery or the utterance of forged paper...." Power was given to judges and other magistrates to issue warrants of arrest, to hear evidence and if "the evidence be deemed sufficient ... it shall be the duty of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... fight for office. When his high political courage, in consenting to a bill very obnoxious to the opposition, forced them into violence, he kept his temper and his head, and the opposition leaders learned, not from punishment, but from quiet contempt, to express dissent in modes other than those of arson and sticks and stones. For seven years, by methods so restrained as to be hardly perceptible even in his private letters to Grey, he guided the first experimental cabinets into smooth water, and when he resigned, he left behind him politicians ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... to an ideal farm high up on the shore of Leman. In a very few pages M. Rod, as usual, kills the wife after subjecting her to exceptional tortures at the births of her children, and then settles down comfortably to tell us the ruin of the husband, who ends by arson of his own lost home and drowning in his own lost pond. The interval is all blunder, misfortune, and folly—the chief causa malorum being a senseless interference with the "servitude" rights of neighbours, whom he does not like, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... remorseful cogitation as she rode up to the store and drew bridle, where in their shirt-sleeves the prominent citizens were gathered. She began to speak immediately. She did not mince matters; she enumerated them by name, dwelt coldly upon the law governing arson, and told them exactly ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... who had followed Sir Hugh back to Dangerfield on that fearful night, might have elucidated the mystery; but he had been kidnapped, and sent to the plantations. After many years he returned to England, and on his deathbed left a written statement, implicating Sir Hugh in the double crime of arson and murder. But long ere this the culprit had appeared before a tribunal which admits of no prevarication, and the pretty boy with the golden curls had become lord of Dangerfield Hall. The long corridor had been but partially ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... a good frind iv mine wants to make me a prisint f'r Christmas, he goes to a harness shop an' buys a box iv see-gars with excelsior fillin's an' burlap wrappers, an', if I smoked wan an' lived, I'd be arristed f'r arson. I got a pair iv suspinders wanst fr'm a lady,—niver mind her name,—an' I wurruked hard that day; an' th' decorations moved back into me, an' I had to take thim out with pumice stone. I didn't lose th' taste iv th' paint ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... on the 20th for the trial of Mary Pawson, a settler's wife at the river, for the crime of arson. On the trial there was strong evidence of malice in the prisoner against the wife of the owner of the house; but not any that led directly to convict her of having set the house on fire. She was therefore acquitted; but the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... confederate aforementioned, named Captain von Papen, the German military attache, as the director of the plot. The accused were also said to have had the cooperation of the German Consul General at San Francisco. The indictments charged them, inter alia, with using the mails to incite arson, murder, and assassination. Among the evidence the Government unearthed was a letter referring to "P," which, the Federal officials said, meant Captain von Papen. The letter, which related to a price to be paid for ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... found to my surprise that the guilt of the old man, though based wholly on circumstantial evidence, was established more clearly than that of his son—not indeed, as to the murders, but as to the arson, which served just as well to convict on. The handkerchief, which Joel had not been able to resist the temptation to steal, and the splinter of light-wood in his pocket, which fitted exactly into that found ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... desirous, enamoured. An nasgaidh; for nothing, gratis. An t['o]ir; in pursuit. Araon; together. As an aghaidh; out of the face, to the face, outright. As a ch['e]ile; loosened, disjointed. Car air char; rolling, tumbling over and over. Cia mar; as how, how. C' arson; on account of what, why, wherefore. C' ionnas; what manner, how. Cha, cho; not. Comhla[80], mar chomhla, } Cuideachd; } together, in company. C'uime, for what, why. Do dheoin, a dheoin; spontaneously, ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... gracious, smiling. Wherever he appeared, cheer upon cheer rent the air from these crowds of drunken blasphemers; and in one place the carriage in which he sat was actually lifted from the ground, and carried some rods, by hands yet red with deeds of arson and murder; while from all sides voices cried out, "Will ye stop the draft, Gov'nur?" "Bully boy!" "Ye're the man for us!" "Hooray for Gov'nur Saymoor!" Thus, through the midst of this admiring and applauding crowd, this high officer of the law, sworn to maintain ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... "Wonder what I'm booked for?" Idiotically, he recalled being summoned before a traffic court, years back. "Guess I don't get off with vagrancy; it'll probably be everything from speeding to mayhem, with maybe arson ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... prompted by paroxysms of rage to commit murderous attacks on his fellow-creatures. His exaggerated sexual propensities incite him to rape, and his childish delight at the sight of flames, to arson. ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... Afterwards the fellow vows vengeance on the city if his election is stopped. Marcellinus's resolution having been exposed for public perusal (he had read it from a written copy, and it embraced our entire case—the prosecution was to include his violent proceedings on the site of my house, his arson, his assault on me personally, and was to take place before the elections), he put up a notice that he intended to watch the sky during all comitial days.[411] Public speeches of Metellus disorderly, of Appius hot-headed, of Publius stark mad. The upshot, however, was ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... quartered. "Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine" and the barbarity of the French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire by the soldiers' pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the carelessness of enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Even if there was any arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had any reason to burn the houses—in any case a troublesome and dangerous thing to do), arson cannot be regarded as the cause, for the same thing would ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... armed; and, 4th, those who seize the property of any person who has done no wrong to the revolution, violate women and assassinate or inflict serious wounds on unarmed persons and commit robberies or arson. ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... but by the same token Saint-Pol might be a liar. He saw that he must by all means find Saint-Pol, and find him at once. He began to shout for Gaston. 'To horse, to horse, Gaston!' The court rang with his voice; to the clamour he made, which might betoken murder, arson, pillage, or the sin against the Holy Ghost, out came the vassals in a swarm. 'To horse, to horse, Bearnais! Where out of hell is Gaston of Bearn?' The devil of Anjou was ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... moral values to personal acts only, cannot, without definite effort, learn to attach them to collective acts. We can do it, in crude instances, when mere numbers are in question and the offence is a plain one. If a number of men in a visible moving group commit murder or arson before our eyes, we had as lief hang a dozen as one: but when it comes to tracing complicity and responsibility in the deaths of a few screaming tenants of firetrap tenements, a death unnecessary perhaps, but for the bursting ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... official documents, records, etc., giving an account of events that had been taking place in southern and western Russia during a period of nine months, between April and December of 1880. We do not need to recall the sickening details. The headings will suffice: outrage, murder, arson, and pillage, and the result,—100,000 Jewish families made homeless and destitute, and nearly $100,000,000 worth of property destroyed. Nor need we recall the generous outburst of sympathy and indignation from America. "It is not that it is the oppression ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... starting from his chair. "Set fire to a barn! Why th' idea! Th' sheriff will git after you, sure pop. That's arson, man!" ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... shall not include such persons committing crimes since May 1, 1902, in any province of the archipelago in which at the time civil government was established, nor shall it include such persons as have been heretofore finally convicted of the crimes of murder, rape, arson, or robbery, by any military or civil tribunal organized under the authority of Spain or of the United States of America, but special application may be made to the proper authority for pardon by any person belonging to the exempted classes and such clemency as is consistent with humanity and ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... our fire—the fire the Kaiser lighted. It was arson caused our fire—it was a firebug started it, no spontaneous combustion, as some wad ha' us think. And we called the firemen—the braw laddies frae all the world, who set to work and never stopped till the fire was oot. Noo they've gaed hame aboot their ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... Any person subject to military law who commits manslaughter, mayhem, arson, burglary, robbery, larceny, embezzlement, perjury, assault with intent to commit any felony, or assault with intent to do bodily harm, shall be punished ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... write to the papers to show that the 'flash-point' of the river is decidedly too low, or else such an unlooked-for catastrophe could never have occurred. Then you will get the Government to take the matter up, and to bring a charge of arson against the New Woman. And, finally, you will have notices put up all along the banks from Goring to Greenwich, 'Ladies are requested not to bring inflammatory articles near the river; the right of setting the Thames on fire is now—as formerly—reserved specially for men.' And then you will ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... favored by this Government, yet in view of the imminent peril which threatened the fugitives and solely from considerations of humanity they were afforded shelter by our naval commander, and when afterwards demanded under our treaty of extradition with Salvador for trial on charges of murder, arson, and robbery I directed that such of them as had not voluntarily left the ship be conveyed to one of our nearest ports where a hearing could be had before a judicial officer, in compliance with the terms of the treaty. On their arrival at San ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... exacting, but she is not partial. If it proves anything, it is that all religions have been made by men for men and through men. I do not contend for the superiority of other Bibles, I simply protest against the wrong in ours. One wrong cannot excuse another. That murder is worse than arson does not make a hero of the rascal who fires our homes. If Allah were more cruel than Jehovah, that would be no palliation of the awful crimes of the Old Testament. That slaves have better clothes than savages cannot make noble traffic ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... this was rebutted by the assertion that it had been used only to open a trunk, for the purpose of recovering a portrait and sundry gifts,—an act which by no means involved the further crime of murder. Whoever had committed the deed had attempted to hide it by arson, and had fired the bedding by a lighted candle, but a timely ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... atrocity, murder an' theft, For battery, arson and hate, >From breakin' the Sabbath to coveting cows, An' false affidavits an' perjurin' vows, I'm adept at whatever the law disallows, And the gallowsmen gape at the noose that I left, For I flit while ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... degree on the borderland of the observed and hence may be overlooked. To this class belong, for example, anger against the object, which serves as explanation of a group of so-called malicious damages, such as arson, etc. Everybody, even though not particularly lively, remembers instances in which he fell into great and inexplicable rage against an object when the latter set in his way some special difficulties or caused him pain; and he remembers how he created considerable ease ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... these solemn admonitions, a large proportion of the criminals tried at the ensuing September Assizes were colored people; and among them were two aggravated cases of rape and arson; the former wantonly perpetrated on a respectable farmer's wife, in this township, to whom the wretch was a perfect stranger; the latter recklessly committed at a merchant's store in the vicinity of Sandwich, for the mere purpose of opening a hole through which to convey ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... courted their favor. The judges, dependent for their offices not only on "the labor vote," but, to obtain it, on the approval of the press and the politicians, boldly set aside the laws against conspiracy and strained to the utmost tension those relating to riot, arson and murder. To such a pass did all this come that in the year 1931 an inn-keeper's denial of a half-holiday to an under-cook resulted in the peremptory closing of half the factories in the country, the stoppage of all railroad travel and movement of freight by land and water and a general paralysis ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... person who commits (1) Manslaughter, (2) Mayhem (cutting), (3) Arson, (4) Burglary, (5) Larceny, (6) Embezzlement, (7) Perjury, (8) Assault with intent to commit any felony. (9) Assault with intent to do bodily harm. shall be punished...." Definition of these crimes is left to ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... Territorial capital, Elise Layton, nee Lebrun, was held without bail because it couldn't be had, charged with obtaining money under false pretenses, bigamy as a side issue, and arson as a possible backstop. The sleep-walking theory, as advanced in favor of Mrs. Plume, had been reluctantly abandoned, it appearing that, however dazed and "doped" she may have been through the treatment of that deft-fingered, unscrupulous maid, she was sufficiently wide awake to know well whither ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... innocent in the ordinary sense of the word, as that woman was innocent of poisoning; as that peasant is innocent of the murder which he has not committed; as that mother and son are innocent of the arson which was committed by the owner himself, and for which they came ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... and such was the morbid stench escaping from it, that we were compelled to put our handkerchiefs to our faces. This floor is appropriated for such crimes as assault and battery; assault and battery, with intent to kill; refractory seamen; deserters; violating the statutes; suspicion of arson and murder; witnesses; all sorts of crimes, varying from the debtor to the positive murderer, burglar, and felon. We should have enumerated, among the rest, all stewards, (colored,) whether foreign or domestic, who are committed on that ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... compensated the individual owner, may yet be punished by the State. The owner, acting in his capacity as citizen, even when he has been compensated as an individual, may still hand him over to the State for punishment. The arson was a violation, not only of commutative, but of legal justice (c. v., s. ix., nn. 3, 6, pp. 103, 106), a disturbance of the public peace and social order, an outrage upon the majesty of the law. For this he may be punished ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... naivete, brutal simplicity of an utterly abandoned baby. Nothing mystical or beautiful about the Rat. He did not disguise from me in the least that there was no crime that he had not committed—murder, rape, arson, immorality of the most hideous, sacrilege, the basest betrayal of his best friends—he was not only savage and outlaw, he was deliberate anarchist and murderer. He had no redeeming point that I could anywhere discover. I did not in the least mind his entering my room when he pleased. I ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... whispered vows Underneath the linden boughs; Murder, bigamy, and theft; Travelers of goods bereft; Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,— Everything but honest toil, Are the deeds that best define Every Legend ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... deaths were skilfully exploited by the Extremists of both denominations, and a day of general mourning for the Delhi "martyrs" was appointed. The spark had been laid to the train, and Hindus and Mahomedans continued to "fraternise" in lawlessness, arson, and murder wherever the mob ran riot. Systematic attempts to destroy railways and telegraphs at the same moment in widely separated areas pointed to the existence of a carefully elaborated organisation. Public buildings as well as European ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... against men and things to the need of destroying them. Sometimes the individual turns upon himself the revolutionary frenzy that he cannot otherwise exercise. Russia is full of these madmen, who, not content with committing arson or throwing bombs at hazard into the crowd, finally mutilate themselves, like the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... dozen or fifteen miles off; and though in those days, when men were executed for horse-stealing, arson, and burglary, an assize seldom passed without a hanging, it was not likely that she could get access to the body of the criminal unaided. And the fear of her husband's anger made her reluctant to breathe a word of Trendle's suggestion to him ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... expose the central page. "Here it is, and with your permission I will read it to you. Listen to this, Mr. Holmes. The headlines are: 'Mysterious Affair at Lower Norwood. Disappearance of a Well Known Builder. Suspicion of Murder and Arson. A Clue to the Criminal.' That is the clue which they are already following, Mr. Holmes, and I know that it leads infallibly to me. I have been followed from London Bridge Station, and I am sure that they are ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... assured that there were reasons for his apprehensions appears in an epistle circulated as an open letter,[23] to various cities, wherein he makes a detailed statement of the plots against his life by one Jehan d'Arson and Baldwin, ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... later, Charley felt sure, the man would be captured and doubtless sent to prison for cheating the state. It made Charley feel bad to think that he did not have enough direct evidence to insure Lumley's conviction for arson as well. ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... This, let me assure you, is a fatal error, and a blunder which could only be committed by an outsider in political life. The days are long past since a scandal could smash an administration; and we are so strong now that arson or forgery could not hurt, and I don't think that infanticide ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... capital crimes was increased as a natural result of the growth of the slave population and their growing state of unrest after the incoming of the anti-slavery propaganda. By the close of the slavery era in Kentucky there were eleven offenses for which slaves should suffer death: (1) murder, (2) arson, (3) rape of a white woman, (4) robbery, (5) burglary, (6) conspiracy, (7) administering poison with intent to kill, (8) manslaughter, (9) attempting to commit rape on a white woman, (10) shooting at a white person with ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... by death; but as this offense is defined and made punishable by the laws of the United States, not all the states take cognizance of it. If committed in such states, it is tried in the courts of the United States. In New York, murder, treason, and arson in the first degree, are punishable by death. Few states make more than these crimes thus punishable. In two or three states, the penalty of death has been abolished, and imprisonment for ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... him with the fire but it was too probable a hypothesis to be lightly dismissed. What had he better do to cut that fellow's claws? There was hope, of course, that he had worked off his spleen in firing the tannery, and also that a wholesome fear of being caught and convicted of arson might cool his spirit! Unless ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... "Bootlegging, chicken-stealing, sneak-thieving, arson, and perjury. And they are ripe for any deviltry, without compulsion. All I need to do is to show them a piece of money ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Japanese punishments resemble those inflicted by the Chinese, and seem to be based on the Mosaic principle of 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' Arson, for instance, is punished at the stake; and a thief who endeavours to conceal the results of his robberies by burying them, has the disadvantages of that mode of concealment impressed upon him, by being himself embedded ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... six cars on this end of it. The other half is seventy miles back, and part of what we have here ought to have been left at the way stations. I can't make out, sir, whether it's burglary, or highway robbery or arson an' murder he's guilty of, or all of 'em; but I've telegraphed for instructions and I'll hold him a prisoner until the superintendent tells me what to do ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... to the doctor's house with sparks from his own electrical machine; thereby giving the man they called an incendiary and raiser of sedition against Church and King, an appropriately experimental illustration of the nature of arson and riot. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... Much like the three children who sang in the furnace. The disorders at Paris have not ceased to plague us; Don Pedro, I hope, is ere this on the Tagus; In Ireland no tithe can be raised by a parson; Mr. Smithers is just hanged for murder and arson; Dr. Thorpe has retired from the Lock, and 'tis said That poor little Wilks ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... study of literature and art and other elegant and uncompromising subjects, could hardly keep from speaking of this and that incident of the war. Whereupon a discreet, or rather an embarrassed silence, as if a pardoned convict had playfully referred to the arson or burglary, not to say worse, that had been the ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... Mardan, and distant, as the crow flies, some thirty-five to forty miles, lies the village of Paia, which for high crimes and misdemeanours, including murder, rapine, and arson, it was considered necessary to punish. Now punishment in the days of Cavignari not unusually meant waking up some fine morning to find that before breakfast it was either necessary to meet the Guides in a pitched battle, or to submit quietly to the demands of Government, and expiate the crimes committed. ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... exclusive cognizance of the Federal tribunals. It follows that if, in any State which denies to a colored person any one of all those rights, that person should commit a crime against the laws of a State—murder, arson, rape, or any other crime—all protection and punishment through the courts of the State are taken away, and he can only be tried and punished in the Federal courts. How is the criminal to be tried? If the offense is provided for and punished ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... often saved them the expense of war. What gift or place would a slave-holding cabinet, or a Southern Confederacy, have thought too dear to bestow upon Captain Walker, whose criminal acts were feeding the concealed roots of the Great Conspiracy, if his murder and arson ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... one of them, who wished to benefit the county with a modern bridge had offered Gamely pay to do this dreadful deed of arson seemed certain. But it seemed equally certain that the wretched boy had balked at this frightful enterprise, putting it off from day to day, until discovery and arrest for his other crime stared him in the face. He had waited till the very night before the day ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the Teuton is in evidence, on the other hand, there is less respect for property; so that offenses against the person, such as assault, murder, and rape, give place to embezzlements, burglary, and arson. It might just as well be argued that the Teuton shows a predilection for offenses against property; the native Celt an equal propensity for crimes against ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... United States and Her Britannic Majesty shall, upon mutual requisition by them, or their ministers, officers, or authorities, respectively made, deliver up to justice all persons who, being charged with the crime of murder, or assault with intent to commit murder, or piracy, or arson, or robbery, or forgery, or the utterance of forged paper, shall seek an asylum, or shall be found within the territories of the other; provided that this shall only be done upon such evidence of criminality ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... that any dissatisfied workman shall undertake to break the machine or spoil the product of the machines in order to render the conduct of industry unprofitable, if not actually impossible. It may range all the way from machine obstruction or destruction to dynamiting, train wrecking, and arson. It may be some petty form of malice, or it may extend to every act advocated by our old friends, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... awaiting, and it at once determined him. When he unlocked his door and went out to his household at eleven o'clock they told him that the runaway convict and brigand, Fedka, who was a terror to every one, who had pillaged churches and only lately been guilty of murder and arson, who was being pursued and could not be captured by our police, had been found at daybreak murdered, five miles from the town, at a turning off the high road, and that the whole town was talking of it already. He rushed ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... act, and would perhaps have puzzled the proprietors of the store even more than it would a stranger. For a stranger would have said at once this is burglary, or else arson; but those acquainted with the place would have known that neither of those crimes was very practicable. This enterprising sailor could not burn down this particular store without roasting himself the first thing; and indeed he could not burn it down at all; for the roof was ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... "compurgation" cease wholly till Queen Mary's reign. A powerful man, when accused, was then attended at his trial by hosts of armed backers. Men so unlike each other as Knox, Bothwell, and Lethington took advantage of this usage. All lords had their own Courts, but murder, rape, arson, and robbery could now only be tried in the royal Courts; these were "The Four ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... of the Traction Trust's two plots to murder Prosecutor Henry in San Francisco? I'm just mentioning a few cases from memory. Why, when a criminal trust faces only loss it will commit forgery, theft or arson. When it faces jail, it will commit murder just as determinedly. Self-defense, you know. As for the case of Mr. Dorr—" and he proceeded to detail the various attempts ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Josie. "He must be in fine fettle this morning, since his propaganda of murder and arson ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... recent strike of the Queensland shearers has afforded opportunity for a display of an equal faculty of logic and reasonableness. The shearers, at loggerheads with the squatters, proposed to arrange their differences by arson. They threatened openly to fire the grass upon those vast northern plains where fire is the thing most to be dreaded amongst many and terrible enemies. They not only threatened but they carried their threats into effect in many places; and but for the exceptional ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... Universel et Perpetuel; par le Commandeur P. J. Arson.[352] Publie par ses Enfans (Oeuvre posthume). ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... 'Every now and then,' he says, referring to the extreme of this type, 'I read a book with perfect comfort and much exhilaration, whose scenes the average Englishman would gasp in. Nothing happens; that is, nobody murders or debauches anybody else; there is no arson or pillage of any sort; there is not a ghost, or a ravening beast, or a hair-breadth escape, or a shipwreck, or a monster of self-sacrifice, or a lady five thousand years old in the whole story; "no promenade, no band of ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... first report of the Dean Forest Commission, 1839, f. 12., adverts to a similar practice among the coal and iron miners in that forest. It seems to be an instance of the Droit des arsins, or right of arson, formerly claimed and exercised to a considerable extent, and with great solemnity, in Picardy, Flanders, and other places; but I know of no instance in which this wild species of metallifodine justice has been claimed to apply to anything but the culprit's local habitation ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... one of the happy days when there is "nothing in the papers"—that is to say, nothing interesting, absorbing, soul harrowing, in the form of financial ruin, highway robbery, murder, arson, fire, or flood. Everything in the world at the present brief hour seemed going on well, consequently the papers were very dull, flat, stale and unprofitable, and were soon laid aside by the host and his guest, ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... principal" was, in the minds of most thrifty New England women, a sin only second to arson, theft, or murder; and, though the rule was occasionally carried too far for common sense,—as in this case, where two elderly women of sixty might reasonably have drawn something from their little hoard in time ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and perilous. And, after all, the burglary dodge was the only dodge, absolutely the only conceivable practical method of disposing of the portrait—except burning down the castle. And surely it was preferable to a conflagration, to arson! Moreover, in case of fire at the castle some blundering fool would be sure to cry; 'The portrait! The portrait must be saved!' And the portrait ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the guidance of a modern realist. They are the most unoccupied people, I think, who ever lived in literature. They are people in whose lives a slight fall of snow is an event. Louisa Musgrave's jump on the Cobb at Lyme Regis produces more commotion in the Jane Austen world than murder and arson do in an ordinary novel. Her people do not even seem, for the most part, to be interested in anything but their opinions of each other. They have few passions beyond match-making. They are unconcerned ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... for himself, if he is to obey and support them only as he may say he understands them, a revolution, I think, would take place in the administration of justice; and discussions about the law of treason, murder, and arson should be addressed, not to the judicial bench, but to those who might stand charged with such offences. The object of discussion should be, if we run out this notion to its natural extent, to enlighten the culprit himself how he ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... anybody here but a fellow named Baker," he said. "I deported him from the Ellice Islands for sedition, bigamy, selling gin to the natives, suspected arson and receiving stolen goods. If he called himself a Deputy Commissioner he was a rank impostor, and had no more authority to annex this island than ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... calcination; cracking, refining; incineration, cineration^; carbonization; cupellation [Chem]. ignition, inflammation, adustion^, flagration^; deflagration, conflagration; empyrosis^, incendiarism; arson; auto dafe [Fr.]. boiling &c v.; coction^, ebullition, estuation^, elixation^, decoction; ebullioscope^; geyser; distillation (vaporization) 336. furnace &c 386; blanket, flannel, fur; wadding &c (lining) 224; clothing &c 225. still; refinery; fractionating column, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... "Nero wretched! A man who committed robbery, arson and murder to his own violin accompaniment—only wretched! What next, I wonder? When modern philanthropy begins to apologize for Nero, modern philanthropy has arrived at a pretty pass indeed! We shall hear next that Bloody Queen Mary was as playful as a kitten; and if poor dear Henry the Eighth ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... who seemed to fight well, the cries, the shouts, the imprecations, the fact that half a dozen people, inmates and attendants, joined in the confusion as if by magic, all this was nothing to Jones, nor was the subsidiary fact that one of the inmates, a quiet mannered clergyman, with a taste for arson, had taken advantage of the confusion and was patiently and sedulously at work, firing the thatch of the summer house in six different places, with a long ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... arson, We can't recommend a wooden parson: But if the Church any such appoints, They'd better at least have iron joints. In parts, not much by Protestants haunted, A figure to look at's all that's wanted— A block in black, to ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... his Russians have voted for August; able, they, to disperse all manner of enthusiastic Polish Chivalry; which indeed, we observe, usually stands but one volley from the Russian musketry; and flies elsewhither, to burn and plunder its own domestic enemies. Far and wide, robbery and arson are prevalent in Poland; Stanislaus lying under covert; in Dantzig,—an imaginary King ever since the equinox, but well trusting that the French will give him a plumper vote. French War-fleet is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... ain't arson, that's flat," observed that functionary; "but we don't draw no such fine distinctions in our profession. If we did, the judges ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... highways, or other labor for public benefit, and the farming out thereof, where, and in such manner as may be provided by law; but no convict shall be farmed out who has been sentenced on a charge of murder, manslaughter, rape, attempt to commit rape, or arson: Provided, That no convict whose labor may be farmed out, shall be punished for any failure of duty as a laborer, except by a responsible officer of the State; but the convicts so farmed out shall be at all times under, the supervision and control, as to their government. and discipline, ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... [Footnote 6: The patriotic arson of our amiable allies cannot be sufficiently commended—nor subscribed for. Amongst other details omitted in the various [A] despatches of our eloquent ambassador, he did not state (being too much occupied with the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... a bill was passed which made a woman punishable for the crime of arson, even though the property set fire to might ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... one minute, they were at the side entrance to the Cafe Royal, which less than a minute earlier had been inconceivably distant and unattainable. Lucas dashed first into the restaurant. To keep ladies waiting in a public place was for him the very worst crime, surpassing in turpitude arson, embezzlement, and the murder of innocents. The ladies must have been waiting for a quarter of an hour, half an ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... of those who believe that the heart of the wilful and deliberate libeller is blacker than that of the highway robber, or of one who commits the crime of midnight arson. The man who plunders on the highway may have the semblance of an apology for what he does. An affectionate wife may demand subsistence; a circle of helpless children raise to him the supplicating hand for food. He may be driven ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... you," the Duke retorted, "that dinner is almost ready, and that Claire is the sort of housewife who would more readily condone fratricide or arson than ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Robert, I cannot take your hand, nor the hand of any man that is red with the blood of murder. This," said he, turning to the officers, "is Sir Robert Whitecraft; arrest him for murder and arson." ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... save arson could make a more legitimate call upon a body of citizen regulators than that of wife-beating and the abuse of small children. So it came about that after the wife had forgiven her indignities and returned to her ascendency of henpecking, which was a more chronic ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the Lass of seventeen who failed to get her Hooks on some roaming specimen of the Opposite Gender was in danger of being whispered about as an Old Maid. Celibacy was listed with Arson and Manslaughter. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... the understanding that you'd make up for it when you got back by hunting them every day of the week? Have you no love or sympathy for dumb animals? Why are you here? What are you flying from? Tell me your dread secret. Is it debt, arson, murder—or is some woman ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... could. Under any kind of Federation law at all, a man killed committing a felony—and bombing and arson ought to qualify for that—is simply bought and paid for; his blood is on nobody's head but his own. Of course, a small matter like legality was always the least ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... afterward made. A large number were dismissed at once because of a want of evidence against them; others were bound over to keep the peace; and a few were sent to Philadelphia for trial.[71] Two only were convicted of capital offences—one of arson, the other of robbing the mails—and these, because of palliating circumstances, were finally pardoned by the president. Most of the troops were speedily withdrawn from the disaffected counties and dismissed; but a body of twenty-five hundred, under General Morgan, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Sioux Indians, a writer says: "They regard most of the vices as virtues. Theft, arson, rape, and murder are among them regarded with distinction, and the young Indian from childhood is taught to regard killing as the highest of virtues." And a writer who had spent many years among the natives of the Pacific coast said that "whatever ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... never on a large scale; though I daresay, if the truth were spoken, a considerable amount of small matters might be raked up against me, as well as against another man; but then, I've never committed piracy, nor high treason, nor arson, nor any of them sort of things. As to smuggling, and the like of that, why, I'm a seafaring man, and I suppose all callings have their weak spots. I daresay your trade is not altogether without blemish, honorable and useful as it ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper |
