"Bonfire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the books one by one, as he was afraid that among the many there must be some innocent ones which did not deserve the penalty of death. But both the niece and the housekeeper made emphatic and vociferous remonstrances against such leniency and insisted that a bonfire be made in the courtyard for all of them. Now, the barber had a particular leaning toward poetry, and he thought that such volumes ought to escape the stake; but he was promptly overruled by the conclusions of the niece, ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Kimberley landed in the capacious premises of Cuthbert's Boot Store. Nobody was hit; but not many minutes had passed when dense volumes of smoke followed by flames issued through the windows—until at last the building had developed into a mighty bonfire. What everybody long feared had at length happened. The excitement was intense; hundreds of men, women, and children flocked to the burning pile. The Fire Brigade used the hose for what it was worth; ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... would have appeared, enough brands could have been collected to make a bonfire of ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... good slippery road, but the piles are allowed to remain till the following spring, when they are stirred up with long poles and ignited. The flames rapidly spread in all directions till they join together and form a gigantic bonfire, such as is never seen in more densely-populated countries. If the fire does its work properly, the whole of the space is covered with a layer of ashes; and when these have been slightly mixed with soil by means of a light plough, the seed ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... beach he built a bonfire out of the contents of the canoes, his blacks smashing, breaking, and looting everything they laid hands on. The canoes themselves, splintered and broken, filled with sand and coral- boulders, were towed out to ten fathoms of water ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... and old china, stores of immaculate linen, India paduasoy gowns and red Genoa robes, a choice collection of books richly bound in leather and many manuscript documents, the fruit of thirty years' labor in collecting—all broken and cut and cast about to make a rubbish heap and a bonfire. From the mire of the street there was afterwards picked up a manuscript history of Massachusetts which is preserved to this day, the soiled pages of which may still be seen in the Boston library. Mr. Hutchinson ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... that, if there is a mote or so to be removed from our premises, the courts and councils of the last few years have found beams enough in some other quarters to build a church that would hold all the good people in Boston and have sticks enough left to make a bonfire for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... no literary news here. Our poets are all going to the poorhouse (except Tennyson), and our prose writers are piling up their works for the next 5th of November, when there will be a great bonfire. It is deuced lucky that my immortal (ah! I am De Quinceying)—I mean my humble—performances were printed in America, so that they will escape. By the by, are they on foolscap? for I forgot to caution you ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... appeared to dismiss the whole affair. Willie swore with a curious and seemingly unnecessary bitterness, at frequent intervals, for the next hour or so. Macgregor remained in a semi-stunned condition of mind until the opportunity came for making a little private bonfire of the two letters; after which melancholy operation he straightway ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... and shouted: "It's over—it's over—it's over!" I could hear one shrill voice screaming wildly: "No more bombs—no more shells—no more misery." The deafening clamour from innumerable throats was topped by the piercing blasts of whistles and the howling of catcalls. A huge bonfire was lit in the camp and sheets of flame shot skyward. The brilliant stars of signal-rockets rose and fell in tall parabolae and lit up all the neighbourhood. The Sergeant-Major blew his whistle with the intention of restoring order. He was answered by a hullabaloo of derisive hoots and yells. ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... Holyoke, whom we gave the dinner to some time since, must have known many people that saw the great bonfire ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Ghoorka knife and his match-box, the Hunter went on to the Cave of Skulls. Luckily for the denizens of that ominous place, none of them were there to bar his entrance, for he was in a grim mood, so making a bonfire of some of the mats, he looked about. One calabash contained water, and this he carried back, together with something equally precious—a bunch of bananas that were black with smoke, yet fit to eat by any one who was very hungry or did not see them. The boy ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... Terryfication was, at least, an advertisement. To advertise himself, in the modern way, Stevenson was not competent. He never was interviewed as a Celebrity at Home, as far as I am aware. Indeed, he loved not society papers, and lit a bonfire and danced a dance around it in his garden, when some editor of a journal of that sort was committed to prison. His name is not mentioned, but Stevenson and I had against him a grudge of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is dead; fell on his own knife. It is just as well for him, for we should have tied him to a tree, and made a bonfire of him, if we ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... Parliament had this day dissolved themselves, and did pass very cheerfully through the Hall, and the Speaker without his mace. The whole Hall was joyful thereat, as well as themselves; and now they begin to talk loud of the king.' And the evening was closed, he further tells us, with a large bonfire in the Exchange, and people called out, 'God bless ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... very good to think of that. Ah! There's a bonfire: and here comes a torch. I must go and quench my fires. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... barn. I have a proposal to make; we are about to send in to you the son of the man in whose custody you are found. Either surrender to him your arms and then give yourselves up, or we'll set fire to the place. We mean to take you both, or to have a bonfire and a ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... in Ephesus were nevertheless successful. He made many converts and exercised an extraordinary influence,—among other things causing magicians voluntarily to burn their own costly books, as Savonarola afterward made a bonfire of vanities at Florence. His sojourn was cut short at length by the riot which was made by the various persons who were directly or indirectly supported by the revenues of the Temple,—a mongrel mob, brought to terms by the tact of the town clerk, who reminded ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... Beatrice drove to Invergeldie, followed by the Balmoral party of torchbearers. The two parties then united and returned in procession to the front of Balmoral Castle, where all were grouped round a large bonfire, which blazed and crackled merrily, the Queen's pipers playing the while. Refreshments were then served to all, and dancing was engaged in to the strains of the bagpipes. When the fun was at its height, there suddenly appeared from the rear of the castle a grotesque figure, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... consciousness of good intention made him as adamant before the indignant frowns of his uncle and aunt, "I always think bonfires is the nicest things about celebrations, an' Tod an' me have been carryin' sticks for two days to make a big bonfire in the back yard to-day. But then it rained, an' rainy sticks won't burn—I guess we found that out last Thanksgivin' Day. So we thought we'd make one in the cellar, 'cause the top is all tin, an' the bottom's all dirt, an' it can't rain in ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... their own advantage, part of which profit they use as capital for the production of more profit, with ever the same waste attached to it; and part as private riches or means for luxurious living, which again is sheer waste—is in fact to be looked on as a kind of bonfire on which rich men burn up the product of the labour they have fleeced from the workers beyond what they themselves can use. So I say that, in spite of our inventions, no worker works under the present system ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... drunken Mexican, whose whole carcass and immortal soul aren't worth ten pesos including hair, hide, and tallow, can start the bonfire with a lighted wad of cotton waste," was Wemple's contribution. "And if ever she starts, she'll gut the field ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... work before roof and rafters fell in and the worst of the danger was over. The men and boys from the village were eager enough to do any thing that now remained to be done, but a large share of this was confined to standing around and watching the "bonfire" burn down to a harmless heap of badly smelling ashes. As soon, however, as they were no more wanted on the roof, the two volunteer "firemen" came down, and Ham Morris's first word on reaching the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... from the garret till better could be found. One a mourning piece, with a very tall lady weeping on an urn in a grove of willows, and two small boys in knee breeches and funny little square tails to their coats, looking like cherubs in large frills. The other was as good as a bonfire, being an eruption of Vesuvius, and very lurid indeed, for the Bay of Naples was boiling like a pot, the red sky raining rocks, and a few distracted people lying flat upon the shore. The third was a really ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... perturbed Governor. Signs of what is thought to be near at hand are apt to be seen or fancied; and it was so in this case. Somebody had put a turpentine barrel in the skillet that hung at the top of the beacon-pole on Beacon Hill. Now it had been designed, for a long time, by such a mode of bonfire, to alarm the country, in case of invasion. This fact was put with another fact, namely, that the beacon had been newly repaired; and from the two facts was drawn the startling inference, that matters were ready ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... a bonfire of pine knots I entertained the men of the camp with stories of travel, ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... England, and many curious customs are connected with it. In Herefordshire the farmers and servants used to meet together in the evening and walk to a field of wheat. There they lighted twelve small fires and one large one[2], and forming a circle round the huge bonfire, they raised a shout, which was answered from all the neighbouring fields and villages. At home the busy housewife was preparing a hearty supper for the men. After supper they adjourned to the ox-stalls, ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... hunting in the woods began, the customs regulating it were established. The council teepee no longer existed. A hunting bonfire was kindled every morning at day-break, at which each brave must appear and report. The man who failed to do this before the party set out on the day's hunt was harassed by ridicule. As a rule, the hunters started before ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... negroes hung by the neck, and on the other gibbets for dynamiters and Molly Maguires, and between the two glowed a spectral picture of some black-robed tonsured men, with leering satanic masks, making a bonfire of the Bible in the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... part of Hertzog demanded prompt action on the part of Botha, who called upon his colleague either to suppress his particular brand of anathema or resign. Hertzog not only built a bigger bonfire of denunciation ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... called together all the children of the household, and lighting a big bonfire, threw all his European clothes into it one by one. The children danced round and round it, and the higher the flames shot up, the greater was their merriment. After that, Pramathanath gave up his sip of tea and bits of toast in Anglo-Indian houses, and once again sat inaccessible within the castle ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... colour of reality they once possessed. They express no creative purpose now, whatever they did in their inception, they point towards no constructive ideals. Essentially they are things for the museum or the bonfire, whatever momentary expediency may hold back the New Republican from an unqualified advocacy of such a destination. The old party fabrics are no more than dead rotting things, upon which a great tangle of personal jealousies, old grudges, thorny nicknames, prickly memories, family curses, Judas ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... followed almost immediately, then a hundred, and hundreds more, till all the thousand lay together, a burning heap, throwing up clouds of lurid smoke into the night, and illuminating the great buildings with a broad red glare. Greif stood still a moment, watching the bonfire, and then sheathed his rapier and turned away. To him it was a sorrowful sight, this ending of his last torchlight procession. He remembered how, as a young novice, he had stood in the same place, his heart full of a strange enjoyment, and he wished that he could ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... when every owner, black-trousered and in his shirt- sleeves, seemed to be burning the contents of his house in a bonfire in the gutter. Poor men burned things that seemed useful to the casual eye —mattresses, bolsters, all soiled, soiled again and polluted by four ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... evidently brewing in his mighty mind a trip across the Alps, a bonfire at Moscow, or a little skirmish at Waterloo perhaps, for he marched in silent majesty till suddenly a gentle snore disturbed the imperial reverie. He saw the sleeping soldier and glared upon him, saying in an ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... and sticks of wood while Harvey cleaned the fish. Then he applied a match to the bonfire, and it blazed up and crackled noisily. He next placed the butter and fish in the frying-pan and set it ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... the bishop sang Te Deum; and, amid the firing of cannon, the image of the Virgin was carried to each church and chapel in the place by a procession, in which priests, people, and troops all took part. The day closed with a grand bonfire ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... my war party I joined the Sioux camp on the Rosebud River. We camped first at Lame Deer. When I arrived at the Sioux camp at Lame Deer we were near the Cheyenne camp, and the Cheyennes had built a big bonfire. They were singing and dancing around the fire. I was told that there were some Cheyennes that had reached camp that day or the day before from the Black Hills, and they brought the news that the soldiers were coming. The reason for the campfire and ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... and Magog, put down the civic banquets, break up and melt down the weighty and many-linked chains of solid gold round the neck of my lord mayor and the sheriffs, strip off the aldermen's gowns, make a bonfire of the gilded carriages, wring, if you will, the necks of both swans and cygnets. It is all vanity and vexation. Man is an intellectual animal: he wants none of these gewgaws. Alas! Wisdom may cry aloud in the streets, but no one will heed her words if she speaks beyond his comprehension. ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... with 'terre.' The wild diversity of his incidents shows a trend towards the romantic, which, doubtless, under happier influences, would have led him much further along the primrose path which ended in the bonfire of 1830. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... evvybody from fur and nigh, and dey allus come 'cause dey knowed he was gwine to give 'em a good old time. De way dey rolled dem logs was a sight, and de more good corn liquor Marster passed 'round, de faster dem logs rolled. Come night-time, Marster had a big bonfire built up and sot lots of pitchpine torches 'round so as dere would be plenty of light for 'em to see how to eat dat fine supper what had done been sot out for 'em. Atter supper, dey danced nigh all de rest of de night. Mammy used to tell us 'bout de frolics next day, 'cause us chillun ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... very period when the firm resistance of the court of France had guided the conduct of two courts, America had fallen herself into such a state of weakness, that she was on the very brink of ruin. The 2nd of May, the army made a bonfire, and M. de Lafayette, ornamented with a white scarf, proceeded to the spot, accompanied by all the French. Since the arrival of the conciliatory bills, he had never ceased writing against the commission, and against every commissioner. The advances of these men were ill-received ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... presented me with a whole collection of children's books, which he had read and carefully preserved, and now commended to my use. There were at least a round dozen, and, having finished reading them, it occurred to me that to make a bonfire of them would be an additional pleasure to be derived from them; and so I added to the intellectual recreation they afforded me the more sensational excitement of what I called "a blaze;" a proceeding of which the dangerous ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... transports of joy. Days pass. The news spreads, and burghers come in from all sides to deliver up their arms to the Captain. He soon has no fewer than twelve hundred rifles, of which he makes a glorious bonfire, thus disarming at one stroke a number of Boers fifty times greater than his own force. There is no sign of the overwhelming forces of the British, but their early arrival is daily predicted, and the delay explained away. Meanwhile, the twenty-one live in clover, eating and ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... introduces with the words "fruges lustramus et agros," puts into perfect verse a prayer for the welfare of the crops and flocks, and looks forward to a time when (if the prayer succeeds) the land shall be full of corn, and the peasant shall heap wood upon a bonfire—perhaps one of the midsummer fires that still survive in the Abruzzi. Virgil's lines are no less picturesque;[168] and though he does not mention the pagus, he is clearly thinking of a lustratio in which more than one familia ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... family—was to march in a body upon the little "Temple," and, armed with stones, proceed with shouts of merriment to smash out every spear of the crimson and orange and blue glass in the windows. They then demolished the rustic furniture and made of that a noble bonfire. Mrs. Carroll had indeed wondered, between fits of laughter, in her sweet drawl, if they ought to destroy the furniture, as it could not be said, strictly speaking, to belong to them to destroy, but she was promptly vetoed by all ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... on swift wings; only the pangs of hunger persuaded the girls and boys to leave their fun. They gathered in front of the picturesque old cabin about a great bonfire over which two of the older boys were grilling beefsteak for sandwiches. And from a huge steaming kettle came a delicious ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... done, well done! And we have lighted them a bonfire that will take a fortnight to put out again. And, to get rid of the fire, they must ruin the city with water. Do you know, Schufterle, how many ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... And now the bonfire burned brighter, lighting up the scene—the shambling stores around the jail on the public square, the better citizens making appeals in vain for law and order, the shouting, fool-hardy mob, waiting for Richard Travis ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... quickly. He had thrust out his neck as he had a trick of doing; and so brought his face abruptly into the light of the bonfire from below, like a face in the footlights. His long chin and high cheek-bones were lit up infernally from underneath; so that he looked like a fiend staring down into the flaming pit. I had an unmeaning sense of being tempted in a wilderness; and even as I paused a burst of red sparks ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... since my friend bade me good-night. Big Pete was up before me, of course, and when I opened my eyes I found him cooking breakfast and making tea in a tin cup over those economical fires he so loved to build even when we were in the park where there was fuel enough for a roaring bonfire. It's queer how difficult it is to make water boil ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... revolt against this curious spiritual Caesarism until the son of a Saxon miner named Luther married out of monkdom, burnt the Pope's commands on a bonfire, and plunged all Europe first into a peasants' war, followed by a dividing of Europe between a Protestant union and a Catholic league, and then a thirty years' war, which destroyed two thirds of the population of what is now Germany. After three hundred years of disunion and hatreds, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... scolded her so about it that at last Miss Willy went off with Mill's 'Essay on Liberty,' and mother burned all of Mrs. Southworth's that she had in the house. Oliver has been so nice to mother that I believe she would make a bonfire of her furniture if he asked her ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... all over!' rejoined the hangman. 'This is the sort of chap for my division, Muster Gashford. Down with him, sir. Put him on the roll. I'd stand godfather to him, if he was to be christened in a bonfire, made of the ruins of the Bank ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... daren't even repeat it to you; it was too, too horrible. He lived in a hut by himself among the deepest forest, and human victims used to be brought—well, there, it's too loathsome! Why, see; there's a great light on the island now; a big bonfire or something; don't you make it out? You can tell it by the red glare in the sky overhead." He paused a moment; then he added more slowly, "I shouldn't be surprised if at this very moment, while we're standing here in such perfect security ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... hours opened up a new world to Sam. With the fumes of liquor rising in his brain, he rode for two hours on a train, tramped in the darkness along dusty roads and, building a bonfire in a woods, danced in the light of it upon the grass, holding the hands of Prince and the little man with the wrinkled face. Solemnly he stood upon a stump at the edge of a wheatfield and recited Poe's "Helen," taking on the ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... of the gay laughter and banter that marked the pleasure-rides of former years. Then the biggest brother, only his eyes showing from his head-wrappings, sprang to his seat behind the horses and sent the team briskly forward with the storm toward the huge bonfire of cottonwood logs that had been lighted close to the school-house on the farther ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Is this religion Catholic to kill What even brute beasts abhor to do, your own! To cut in sunder wedlock's sacred knot Tied by heaven's fingers! To make Spain a bonfire To quench which must a second deluge rain In showers of blood, no water. If you do this There is an arm armipotent that can fling you Into a base grave, and your palaces With lightening strike, and of their ruins make A tomb for you, unpitied and abhorred, Bear witness all you lamps celestial ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... What are you? but this place is too cold for Hell. Ile Deuill-Porter it no further: I had thought to haue let in some of all Professions, that goe the Primrose way to th' euerlasting Bonfire. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... time I ever saw cattle too tired to eat," said Joel, as the corral gates were being roped shut. "Something must be done. Rest seems as needful as food. This is worse than any storm yet. Half of them are lying down already. We must build a bonfire to-night. Wolves are ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... first night when its streets shone resplendent under the glare of electric lights. There was a public bonfire near the mill, speeches were made, and afterward Mr. Merrick served a free supper to the villagers, in the hall over Sam Cotting's General Store, where the girls assisted in waiting upon the guests, and everybody ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... those things they use. And think of the make-up!—curly moustaches and earrings! And we could have jabbered spoof Italian. But then old Robin here, who I must say has a headpiece on him, pointed out that the scenery and props would be much too expensive. We should want a cart with a bonfire in it and a sort of witches' cauldron on top, and all kinds of sticky stuff; so we gave up that scheme. We did not feel inclined to mess with gas-pipes or electric wires either, in case we burst ourselves up; so we finally ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... goblets made out of their skulls. They poisoned your fountains, put mines under your soldiers' prisons; organized bands whose leaders were concealed in your homes; and commissions ordered the torch and yellow fever to be carried to your cities and to your women and children. They planned one universal bonfire of the North from Lake Ontario ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... Dean Johnson, of New York University's school of commerce, if we all set fire to our Liberty Bonds. We can't go along with the Dean so far, but we have a hundred shares of copper stock that we will contribute to a community bonfire. ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... a bonfire. Somebody's shed is burning up; and though it looks nice it isn't any fun for them. We ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... met the General's eyes. The Saint-Ferdinand was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men told off to sink the Spanish brig had found a cargo of rum on board; and as the Othello was already amply supplied, had lighted a floating bowl of punch on the high seas, by way of a joke; a pleasantry pardonable ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... was built, not far from a pyramid erected in honor of Marius, a little temple dedicated to Victory. Thither, every year, in the month of May, the population used to come and celebrate a festival and light a bonfire, answered by other bonfires on the neighboring heights. When Gaul became Christian, neither monument nor festival perished; a saint took the place of the goddess, and the temple of Victory became the church of St. Victoire. There are still ruins of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... "But in th' las' few weeks it's had so manny things to think iv. Th' enthusyasm iv this counthry, Hinnissy, always makes me think iv a bonfire on an ice-floe. It burns bright so long as ye feed it, an' it looks good, but it don't take ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... that be?" I exclaimed, indignantly. "The Doctor will never allow us to have our bonfire, ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... until he had felled and tied together twenty-four couples of big timber. He thrust these under one arm and under the other he tucked a bundle of rushes for his bed, and with that one load he rushed up a house, well thatched and snug, and with the timber that remained over he made a bonfire on ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... small bonfire on the stone floor against a piece of one wall that was still standing, and now they sent a deputation to know if the girls would bring their guitars over and have a little music. The boys, of course, had no idea that the girls had not slept for ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... accumulated, and here do the flames enkindle. The conflagration seems to have already begun, for the chimneys roar and a ruddy light gleams through the windows; but "No," say the people above, "those below would take care not to set the house on fire, for they live in it as we do. It is only a straw bonfire and a burning chimney, and a little water will extinguish it; and, besides, these little accidents clear the chimney and burn out ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is, Kitty?' Alice began. 'You'd have guessed if you'd been up in the window with me—only Dinah was making you tidy, so you couldn't. I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire—and it wants plenty of sticks, Kitty! Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had to leave off. Never mind, Kitty, we'll go and see the bonfire to-morrow.' Here Alice wound two or three turns of the worsted round the kitten's neck, just to ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... well: no need of praise Or bonfire from the windy hill To light to softer paths and ways The world-worn man we ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... See my friend Bernard's cracker to the reviewers in No. 12, a perfect fifth of November bit of firework, I can assure you, good people. But it won't go off with me without a brand from the bonfire in return. ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... were covered with inscriptions of mingled insult and glory. Over the mantel-piece had been charcoaled "Rascal"; over the pier-table, "Abolitionist." We did not fare as badly as several others who rejoiced in the spoiling of their goods. Mr. Tappan, in Rose Street, saw a bonfire made of all he had in the world that could make a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... stories and songs around the bonfire till late in the evening. The city guests enjoyed it all because to them it was so great a novelty. For the hostess it was a much easier way to introduce her guests to her friends than a more formal ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... Indians well. He waited patiently for the proper chance to introduce himself. It came the first evening. Joe and Old Mary always built a little bonfire back of their shack and sat around it, as they had done in previous days when outdoor cooking was their custom. In fact they had never outgrown the habit of preparing a meal ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... scarce commodity upon me in their hospitality, and kept up a bonfire all night. They mounted their wiry ponies and performed feats of horsemanship, in one of which all the animals threw themselves on their hind legs in a circle when a man in the centre clapped his hands; and they crowded my ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... Scroggs—about as queer a thing for him to do as it would be for the Pope to take a young lady to the theatre. But we didn't ask any questions. We cheered him off on the midnight train, and the next night, when he won and we got the news, we turned out and built a bonfire of everything that wasn't nailed down. And when the police got done chasing us they had nineteen of the brightest and best sons of Siwash bottled up ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... some of that poor man's fellow-workmen have set their hearts, it is said, upon making a bonfire in one of Dane's mills,to stop his making some people more comfortable than others, I suppose; and the bonfire may ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Wittenberg decided to have a bonfire of its own. A printed bill was issued calling upon all students and other devout Christians to assemble at nine o'clock on the morning of December Tenth, Fifteen Hundred Twenty, outside the Elster gate, and witness ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... approximately the time of the vernal equinox, ten days before the full moon of the Hindoo month Phalgun. The day of the bonfire does not always fall on the 16th of March. It is not considered lucky to begin harvest till the Holi has been burnt. Mr. Crooke holds that 'on the whole, there seems to be some reason to believe that the intention to promote the fertility of men, animals, and crops, supplies the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... come too early, and the Pythia did not at first appear. But the square before the temple was full of people, and a wild, though picturesque, scene it was. An enormous bonfire blazed in the centre, and round it crowded the naked savages like so many black gnomes, adding whole branches of trees sacred to the seven sister-goddesses. Slowly and evenly they all jumped from one leg ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... will be hardly complete without a box of those matches with which Brother Stryker wanted to kindle a bonfire which was to consume the body of the heretical Briggs. But speaking of that novel of mine ('Monk and Knight') reminds me that I wrote a poem on the railway the other day, and I will read it now if there be no objection." (Cries of 'Read it,' 'Go ahead.') ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... from Ma'amselle, who would not have refused her had she asked to build a bonfire on the drawing-room carpet, Patty took her friends ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... Homer, whose Iliad turns on Helen of Troy; you must condemn Milton's Paradise Lost. Eve and her serpent seem to me a pretty little case of symbolical adultery; you must suppress the Psalms of David, inspired by the highly adulterous love affairs of that Louis XIV. of Judah; you must make a bonfire of Mithridate, le Tartuffe, l'Ecole des Femmes, Phedre, Andromaque, le Mariage de Figaro, Dante's Inferno, Petrarch's Sonnets, all the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the romances of the Middle Ages, the History of France, and ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the demonstration, and the only hostile cries I heard were against Protopopoff and the police. We moved back into the street behind the Fontanka, and here I saw a wonderful sight. Some one had lighted a large bonfire in the middle of the street and the flames tossed higher and higher into the air, bringing down the stars in flights of gold, flinging up the snow until it seemed to radiate in lines and circles of white light high over the very roofs of the houses. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... and formost he was stript, then on a sharpe yron stake fastened in the ground, had he his fundament pitcht, which stake ran vp along into his bodie like a spit, vnder his arme-hoales two of like sort, a great bonfire they made round about him, wherewith his flesh rosted not burnd: and euer as with the heate his skinne blistered, the fire was drawne aside, and they basted him with a mixture of Aqua fortis, allam water, and Mercury sublimatum, which smarted to the very soule of him, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... like to linger on the ice until long after the shades of night have settled down and time for supper is perilously near. With a jolly bonfire blazing on the bank, and the skaters going and coming all the while, the prospect is so alluring that it is indeed difficult for any lad to break away. And the father who has not forgotten his own shortcomings ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... they are not so bad as that, and they don't have tails, either. They are not good-looking men for all that, and they look specially ugly when they are gathering firewood to make a bonfire of you." ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... Edith, "for it is farther away, but father and mother have promised to come and meet me at Canterbury. I shall reach Canterbury about six o'clock in the evening. We have ten miles to drive then, so I don't suppose I shall be home till half-past seven. The boys are going to make a bonfire; there is to be no end of fun—there always is when I come home for the ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... arguments weak, have found it necessary to overstate them. We have got angry, and caught up the first weapon which came to hand, and have only cut our own fingers. We have very nearly burnt the Church of England over our heads, in our hurry to make a bonfire of the Pope. We have been too proud to make ourselves acquainted with the very tenets which we exposed, and have made a merit of reading no Popish books but such as we were sure would give us a handle for attack, and not even ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... from Aberdare were back here the same night, and marched straight for the Court of Requests, where they made poor Coffin, the clerk, give up every scrap of book or paper he had about the Court's business, and they made a bonfire of them in the middle of the street. Then they came over here, and swore we should all turn out and ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... cafes, headquarters; and shops, departmental offices. The square was the central automobile station, and cars under repair or adjustment were in every corner. Beneath the church paling a camp of waggoners had a large bonfire and were cooking a whole sheep on a spit. Austrian prisoners with white, drawn faces were wandering about, staring with half unseeing eyes; a Serbian soldier was chewing a hard biscuit, and a prisoner crept up to him begging ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... the propagation of gossip by the press, and printing of private letters during the writer's lifetime, were things he hated. Once, indeed, he very superfluously gave himself a dangerous cold, by dancing before a bonfire in his garden at the news of a 'society' editor having been committed to prison; and the only approach to a difference he ever had with one of his lifelong friends arose from the publication, without permission, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... entertained the thronging spectators for some time, with the ingenious fireworks, a vast bonfire being prepared, just over against the inner temple gate, his holiness, after some compliments and reluctancies, was decently toppled from all his grandeur, into the impartial flames; the crafty devil ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... eleventh loud and long-continued cannonading was heard from the distance, and the sky became suffused with a crimson glow. The villages southwest of the city were burning. Every house, every barn that sunk into ashes, burying the property of honest men, was a bonfire to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... said I. "How about that rabbit smothered in onions we had yesterday for dinner, and the 'tidy little sum' you told me you and mother had in the Savings Bank? Besides that, we've bought the freehold of our little house at Bonfire Corner, I know, father, and there's the bird-shop ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... the kitchen kettle to boil when Fred and I wanted to make "hot grog" with raspberry-vinegar and nutmeg at his father's house; I have waited for a bonfire to burn up, when we wanted to roast potatoes; I have waited for it to leave off raining when my mother would not let us go out for fear of catching colds; but I never knew time pass so slowly as when Fred and I were stowaways on board the ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... honorable old Goodwin! what a pity that either disunion or enmity should subsist between us. No; the families must be once more cordial and affectionate, as they ought to be. Bravo, Harry! your return is prophetic of peace and good feeling; and, confound me, but you shall have a bonfire this night for your generosity that will shame the sun. The tar-barrels shall blaze, and the beer-barrels shall run to celebrate your appearance amongst us. Come, Charley, let us go to Rathfillan, and get the townsfolk to prepare for the fete: we must have fiddlers and pipers, and plenty ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... under silent, star-sown depths of sky. Green Gables had a very festal appearance as they drove up the lane. There was a light in every window, the glow breaking out through the darkness like flame-red blossoms swung against the dark background of the Haunted Wood. And in the yard was a brave bonfire with two gay little figures dancing around it, one of which gave an unearthly yell as the buggy ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with the axes, one with the adze and one with the hatchet. When night came the log had already assumed the shape of a rude boat, turned bottom up, and Sam was more than satisfied with the progress made. His comrades were enthusiastic, however, and insisted upon building a bonfire and working for an hour or two by its light, after supper. They could not work at shaping it by such a light, but they turned it over and hewed the side which was to be dug out, down to a level with its ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... dense a fleet of aircraft patrolled the battle area as to make it impossible for the enemy aircraft to approach the lines. Thus the enemy was made blind. On the night of 'W' we got orders to move forward. Before leaving the billet we made a large bonfire with boxes from the C.Q.M.'s stores. On this we burned all our letters, and round it we had the last sing-song the old 'Seventeenth' ever had. We then believed it 'Y' night, not 'W' night. The night before ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... girls that gathered around a big out-door campfire—it was really a bonfire—in the snow of mid-winter on the evening of the opening of this story. Most of them were rich men's daughters, but there were no snobs among them. They were girls of vigor and vim, intelligence and imagination, practical and ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... Vee, as we watches the bonfire. "So that's over. And it's rather a relief to find out that I haven't got to be a lady artist, after all. What is more, I am positive I couldn't write a book. I'm afraid, Torchy, that I am a most every-day sort ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... father showed every sign of joy on hearing this news; saying that nothing would exceed his pleasure if all his children died, and that, when the grave should receive the last, he would, as a demonstration of joy, make a bonfire of all that he possessed. And on the present occasion, as a further sign of his hatred, he refused to pay the slightest sum towards the funeral expenses ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton |
