"Coffin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bridegroom could have been more cheerful. He was dressed in his old blue campaign uniform and was as bold and manly as ever. He expressed joy that Cromartie had been pardoned, inspected with interest the inscription on his coffin, and smilingly called the block his pillow of rest. 'Pon honour, the intrepid man then rehearsed the execution with his headsman, kneeling down at the block to show how he would give the signal for the blow. He then got up again, made a tender smiling ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... QUEETIE, O my heart is consumed In the coffin under ground, O how I feel for her, She and I could never part, She was my own heart within me, She had more than common love, And ...
— A Complete Edition of the Works of Nancy Luce • Nancy Luce
... for his stops, the attempt to make up a cotillon set was left to the heroic Brooks. Yet he barely escaped disaster when, in posing the couples, he incautiously begged them to look a little less as if they were waiting for the coffin to be borne down the aisle between them, and was rewarded by a burst of tears from Mrs. Johnson, who had lost a child two years before, and who had to be led away, while her place in the set was taken by another. Yet the cotillon passed off; a Spanish dance succeeded; ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... gates, shall any honor so distinguished, so emblematical of purity and all perfections, be conferred upon you as this which I now bestow. It is yours; yours to wear throughout an honorable life, and at your death to be deposited upon the coffin which shall inclose your lifeless remains, and with them laid beneath the ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... "Everything is good as it comes from the hand of the author of nature; everything degenerated in the hand of man." In another place he breaks out: "Man is born, lives, and dies in a state of slavery. At his birth he is stitched into swaddling clothes, at his death he is nailed in his coffin; and as long as he preserves the human form he is held captive ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... By sacred Mahomet, the friend of God, Whose holy Alcoran remains with us, Whose glorious body, when he left the world, Clos'd in a coffin mounted up the air, And hung on stately Mecca's temple-roof, I swear to keep this truce inviolable! Of whose conditions [25] and our solemn oaths, Sign'd with our hands, each shall retain a scroll, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... family. A more ghastly procession than the funeral one cannot imagine. Instead of a company of grave men, carrying with decorous sorrow to its final resting-place the body of their departed brother, you meet what you take to be a procession of ghouls. The coffin, borne shoulder-high, comes along the street, followed by a long line of figures, enveloped from head to foot in black serge gowns, with holes for the eyes. They march along, carrying large black crosses and tallow candles, and using their voices in something which is betwixt a chant and a howl. ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... look on me: Ladies farewel; as soon as I am dead, Come all and watch one night about my Hearse; Bring each a mournful story and a tear To offer at it when I go to earth: With flattering Ivie clasp my Coffin round, Write on my brow my fortune, let my Bier Be born by Virgins that shall sing by course The truth of ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... engaged. The leader was quite famous through that section of country and had played at such affairs for years. Everybody for miles around knew Daddy Whitehead and the fiddle from which he could extract the most enticing music boys and girls had ever danced to; while his assistants, Mose Coffin and Abe Skinner were fairly good with the violoncello and oboe, making a good combination capable of playing up-to-date dances, as well as others known to the fathers and mothers of ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... the cripple, as he stood by the wasted form shrouded in grave-clothes, and looked upon it for the last time ere the coffin-lid closed over it. "What would I have been except ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... explanation alone is altogether inadequate and unworthy. There was in Dickens this other kind of energy, horrible, uncanny, barbaric, capable in another age of coarseness, greedy for the emblems of established ugliness, the coffin, the gibbet, the bones, the bloody knife. Dickens liked these things and he was all the more of a man for liking them; especially he was all the more of a boy. We can all recall with pleasure the fact that Miss Petowker (afterwards Mrs. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... meaning of the Maori word tapu is 'sacred'; tabut is a Malay word, and is rendered 'the Ark of the Covenant of God'; taboot is a Hindoo word signifying 'a bier,' 'a coffin,' or 'the Ark of the Covenant'; ta is the Sanscrit word 'to mark,' ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... know. You all did love him once, not without cause; What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason.—Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... absolutely prove on the face of my plans that I cannot in any way benefit beyond the satisfaction I shall derive from putting another spike in the "System's" coffin. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Bath Herald states the following singular circumstance:—'Having occasion last week to inspect a grave in one of the parishes of this city, in which two or three members of a family had been buried some years since, and which lay in very wet ground, I observed that the upper part of the coffin was rotted away, and had left the head and bones of the skull exposed to view. On inquiring of the grave-digger how it came to pass that I did not observe the usual sockets of the eyes in the skull, he replied that what ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... of Nevers is one of the most ancient in France. About one hundred years since, in digging a vault, a body was discovered enveloped in a long robe; some very old coins were found in the coffin, and the habit in which the body was wrapped was of itself of the most ancient fashion. According to the French antiquaries, this was the body of one of the ancient dukes of Nevers. There are many other antiquities in the town, but ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... alabaster boxes of affection and break them. They keep silent about their love when words would mean so much, would give such cheer, encouragement, and hope, and then, when the friend lies in the coffin, their lips are unsealed, and speak out their glowing tribute on ears that heed ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... she ascended, and happily obtained a place where she had a full view of all that was passing below. On a plain catafalque, covered with black velvet, in front of the sanctuary and altar, rested a coffin. It was made of pine, and painted white. A few white lilies and evergreens were scattered among the lights which burned around it; and May knew that some young virgin had gone to her espousals in the kingdom of the LAMB. Half of the coffin-lid was turned ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... opens on the infinite The one whom you will love and who will love you will harm you The past is the only human reality—Everything that is, is past There are many grand and strong things which you do not feel They are the coffin saying: 'I am the cradle' To be beautiful, must a woman have that thin form Trying to make Therese admire what she did not know Unfortunate creature who is the plaything of life What will be the use of having tormented ourselves in this world Women do not always confess it, ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... funeral must not present themselves before the hour appointed, when the corpse is generally exposed for the last gaze of the friends. It is customary for the family to pay their last visit to the coffin just before that hour, and all intrusion is ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... lovable, troublesome children, creature distress at giving up the creature comforts of the luxurious home, the revulsion of her unfettered mind and her restless young body at the prospect of exchanging liberty and occupation for the half-death of an idle cell—a kind of coffin residence—fear of being executed as a spy, and fear of being released to drag herself through life with the ball and chain of guilt forever rolling and ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Scarboro', and was much impressed with him. A few days later we went to the funeral of a child in the same neighborhood. No one who was there could ever forget it. The minister had made his long prayer when a man suddenly entered the room, came towards the coffin, and placed his hand on the child's forehead. The room, in an instant, was as still as the death that had called us together. The stranger was tall and of commanding presence; his eyes pierced our very hearts, and his marvellous voice penetrated to depths ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Trail Honest Ned Hunt of the White Elephant Iron Heart Lena Wingo, the Mohawk Lost in the Forbidden Land Lucky Ned Mountain Star On the Trail of the Moose Plucky Dick Queen of the Clouds Righting the Wrong River and Jungle River Fugitives Secret of Coffin Island Shod with Silence Teddy and Towser Through Forest and Fire Two Boys in Wyoming Unlucky Tib Upside Down Up the ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... monument, but had been unable to disguise her amusement before the tomb of Mrs. Colvile, whom the sculptor had represented as a somewhat impatient lady, refusing to await the day of resurrection, but pushing through her coffin and starting for Heaven in her grave-clothes. Pausing in front of the Dacre monument, Joan wondered if the actor of that name, who had committed suicide in Australia, and whose London address she remembered had been Dacre House just round the ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... Lazare, formerly the ancient Convent of the Lazarists, or Priests of the Mission, now a prison for female offenders. It was once a place of much importance, the remains of the kings and queens of France were carried to the convent of St. Lazare, prior to being conveyed to St. Denis, the coffin being placed between the two gates of the building on a tomb of state, with all the prelates of the kingdom surrounding it, chanting the service of the dead, and sprinkling it with holy water. It is now appropriated to the imprisonment of ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... a guard of infantry, the body lay in state; and thither, in their thousands, from the President to the maimed soldier, from the generals of the Valley army to wondering children, borne in their mothers' arms, the people came to look their last upon the illustrious dead. The open coffin, placed before the Speaker's chair, was draped in the Confederate standard; the State colours were furled along, the galleries; and the expression on the face, firm and resolute, as if the spirit of battle still lingered in the lifeless clay, was that of a great conqueror, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the stones of which are seldom more than about 2 ft. high by 6 ins. wide, are on narrow strips of roadside waste. (The coffin is commonly square, and the body is placed in it in the kneeling position so often assumed in life.) Here, as elsewhere, there seemed to be rice fields in every spot where rice fields could possibly ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... which it is to serve as pediment. Nay farther, as had ever been among his prayers, he enjoys, he sinner, a glimpse of the glorious Martyr's very Body in the process; having solemnly opened the Loculus, Chest or sacred Coffin, for that purpose. It is the culminating moment of Abbot Samson's life. Bozzy Jocelin himself rises into a kind of Psalmist solemnity on this occasion; the laziest monk 'weeps' warm tears, as ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... to earth of such a poet's clay! It is as though archangels, flying, had carried the marble chest and set it down here on the hillside, to be a sign and sanctuary for after-men. A simple rectilinear coffin, of smooth Verona mandorlato, raised on four thick columns, and closed by a heavy cippus-cover. Without emblems, allegories, or lamenting genii, this tomb of the great poet, the great awakener of Europe from mental lethargy, encircled ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... years of age. "That was the first sensation of grief," Dick said, "I ever knew. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping beside it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin, and calling papa; on which my mother caught me in her arms, and told me in a flood of tears papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again. And this," said Dick kindly, "has made me pity ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not treated the Duke of Kent over-amicably, and a proof of this is the fact that the Regent, from the year 1819, forbade the Duke his house and presence—which was probably another nail in the Duke's coffin. Many of these things are quite unknown to Victoria, or forgotten by her. Still it is only fair not to forget the people who were her friends before 1837; after that date there was a violent outbreak of affection among people who in the year 1836 would still not go near Victoria. October ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... near the old yew tree; and the grass has overgrown them. A third is close by; and the dark earth at each side has just been thrown up. The bearers come; with a heavy pace they move along; the coffin heaveth up and down, as they ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... sign was given to her bearers, whilst journeying through the marshes near Vejle, to drop her down into the bog. This was done, and a stake driven through her body. To-day in the church at Vejle a body lies enclosed in a glass coffin, with a stake lying beside it, the teeth and long black hair being in excellent preservation. This body was found in 1821, when the marshes near Vejle were being drained for cultivation. The stake was found through it, thus giving colour to the tradition. Poor Queen! lost in the eleventh ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... the eighteenth century, Bruhier, in his "Dissertations sur l'Incertitude de la Mort et l'Abus des Enterrements," records seventy-two cases of mistaken pronouncement of death, fifty-three of revival in the coffin before burial, and fifty-four of burial alive. A locally famous and thoroughly attested case in this country is that of the Rev. William Tennent, pastor in Freehold, New Jersey, in the eighteenth century, who lay apparently dead for three days, reviving from trance just ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... One day, when my little girl was playing in the street, he said to me, 'Have a care of Maruschka, smith!' and three days later the child was dead. The evening before Red Betty was murdered he saw her in a vision lying in a coffin in front of her door. He told it to the sexton, whom he met in the fields; and next morning they found Betty dead. And there are many more things that I could tell you, but what's the use; when a man won't believe ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... infer from this that Baha-'ullah's rival was the guardian of the relics of the Bāb. This does not appear to have any warrant of testimony. But, according to Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel himself, there was a time when he had in his hands the destiny of the bodies. He says that when the coffin (there was but one) came into his hands, he thought it unsafe to attempt a separation or discrimination of the bodies, so that they remained together ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... of pathos and humour made one realize more vividly than ever how "all the world's akin." A young mother had died who could have been saved if her folk had realized the danger in time and sent for the doctor. She was lying in a rude board coffin in the bare kitchen. As space was at a premium the casket had been placed on the top of the long box which serves as a residence for the family rooster and chickens. They kept popping their heads, with their round, quick eyes out through the slats, and emitting startled crows and clucks ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... (though he hardly knew why) by what he saw, Mat hastened on to the cottage. Just as he arrived at the garden paling, the door opened, and from the inside of the dwelling there protruded slowly into the open air a coffin carried on four men's shoulders, and covered with a magnificent black ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Temple, the coffin itself was as a shoal in the Ravi River, splitting the stream into two branches, one on either side of the Dead; and the watchers of the Dead, who were soldiers, stood about It, moving no more than the still flame of the candles. Their heads were bowed; their ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... of women has 'em laid by. Same's some fool-men has a coffin built an' kep' handy. As for me, I'm goin' to worry 'bout things only up till the day o' my death, an' not a minute beyond. But, I was tellin' of Verplanck Sturtevant, an' must finish the job. Squire, he had always given the cold shoulder to Jim, an' despised ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... pillow on which Lucille died, were found two unanswered letters, proposals of marriage, one from Leo and one from Captain Hall. The broken hearted mother took charge of these letters, and before the metallic coffin was sealed, the unanswered letters were placed in Lucille's white hand, over the heart that could ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... wine he drank, the less inclination did he feel to keep up his hardy outdoor habits of riding and shooting; and, consequently, the more moody and plethoric he became. At length he nearly quarrelled with Dr. Rollinson because the latter told him plainly that the bottle would be his coffin; and a few days later he did quarrel, and very violently too, with the Honorable Richard Pennroyal. This gentleman, it seems, had ridden over to Malmaison and stayed to dinner; and at dessert ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... gracious Silence, hail! Would'st thou have laughed, had I come coffin'd home That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear, Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... sign to her book." Their acting was so complete that the bystanders seem to have thought that they heard the words of Easty, as well as the responses of the girls; and that they saw the "winding-sheet, coffin," and "the book." In the general consternation, Marshal Herrick was sent for. What he saw, heard, thought, and did, appears ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... was the clock. Not its face—that was old-timey enough with its sun, moon and stars in blue and gold, and the name of the Liverpool maker engraved on its enamel; nor its hands, fiddle-shaped and stiff, nor its case, which always reminded me of a coffin set up on end awaiting burial—but its strike. Whatever divergences the Exeter allowed itself in its youth, or whatever latitude or longitude it had given its depositors, and that, we may be sure, was precious little so long as that Board of Directors was ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... as tomb. It is like a little room. In it the coffin is not covered up with earth as it is in the grave, but is placed upon a stand. We call such places vaults, and you can see many of them in any cemetery or burying ground. Sometimes they are cut in the side of elevated ground with their entrance level with the road, and sometimes they ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... of the funeral I was summoned to Guttorm's tent to help to put him into his coffin, which had been made for him after the pattern of the coffins used in that part of the country. When I entered I found the nephew standing by the side of the coffin, and the old Sea-king himself sitting on the ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... The Reverend Mr. Coffin of New England, who is now here soliciting donations for a college in Greene county, in Tennessee, tells me that when he first determined to engage in this enterprise, he wrote a paper recommendatory of the enterprise, which he meant to get signed by clergymen, and a similar ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... ravages of time upon his cheeks by the aid of rouge. Yet he deceives nobody, and having grown stout and wheezy is eventually carried off by a common cold in an odour of pastilles. He will be buried in a wicker-work coffin covered with lilies, and a rival Dilettante having written a limp and limping sonnet to his memory, will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various
... whither I rode in one of the carriages nearest the hearse, my attention was called to a peasant woman. She was old and very tall. She was laughing sacrilegiously as she saw them taking out the coffin. Then she placed herself in front of the pall-bearers in a triumphant attitude and pointed out to them with a very small fan the passage-way they were to take to reach the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... grunt, whether of approval or otherwise she did not know, but not a word was said. She glanced once at Nap, but his face was sphinx-like, utterly unresponsive. He stared straight ahead, with eyes that never varied, at the coffin that was being borne upon men's shoulders to its quiet resting-place in the village churchyard, and throughout the journey ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... the dead. The whole population was out, entirely covering the beach, and as the procession marched up to the Chapel with cross and prayer, and tapers burning, and laid the bark box beneath a pall made in the form of a coffin, the sons and daughters of the forest wept. After the funeral service was ended, the coffin was placed in a vault in the middle of the church, where the Catholic historian says, "Marquette reposes as the guardian angel of ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... not due to a defect of taste, and to the prevalence of a religious idea which decided but enforced these changes. The object of decoration was not merely the delight of the eye. Applied to a piece of furniture, a coffin, a house, a temple, decoration possessed a certain magic property, of which the power and nature were determined by each being or action represented, by each word inscribed or spoken, at the moment of consecration. Every subject was, ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... first to find out that the delicate, oval face, with its profuse brown hair, its mild hazel eyes, and smiling mouth, was "jest like a pictur'." So Tom and Mary duly fell in love, got married,—nobody objecting,—went West, and eight months afterward Mary came home with a coffin. Tom had fallen from a ladder, been taken up and brought home dead, and she had travelled back five hundred miles to bury him in Deerfield, beside his father and mother; for he was their ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... concluded she broke out breathlessly, "Oh, yes! Oh, yes! David, he wore them very same clo'es, an' he took me to that very same show that very same night!" There was in her face a look almost of awe, as if a sight of her long-buried past youth had been shown to her from a coffin. ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... which had evidently lain for many hours, the nurses fearing to go near and see if the man was dead. With her own hands she bound up the face, and emboldened by her coolness, the burial party were induced to coffin the body and remove it from the house. Here was a field for self-forgetfulness and heroic devotion to a holy cause; and here the light of woman's sympathy shone brightly when all else was fear and gloom. Patients dying ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... exclaimed, "Let us go now, Gudrid; I no longer see the band!" The overseer had vanished from her sight, whereas it had seemed to her before that he stood with a whip in his hand and made as if he would scourge the flock. So they went in, and ere the morning came she was dead, and a coffin was made ready for the corpse; and that same day the men planned to row out to fish, and Thorstein accompanied them to the landing-place, and in the twilight he went down to see their catch. Thorstein, Eric's son, then sent word to his namesake that he should come to ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... crank axle. The general adoption of cabs on the foot-plate for the men is another improvement of late introduction, although at first not universally appreciated by those for whose comfort it was designed—"I felt as if I was in my coffin," said an old driver when asked how he liked the new shelter. Mild steel fire-boxes, which have been employed in America, are not in favor here, copper being universally used; they have been tried on the Caledonian, Great Southern and Western, North London, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... there came a middle-aged man, with a dull eye, and a broad forehead, and timidly approached the lonely mourner. He walked on tip-toe and his figure stooped heavily. For a long while he stood gazing at the dead body, then he knelt down at the foot of the coffin, and began to sob violently. At last he arose, took two steps toward the young man, paused again, and departed silently as he had come. It ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... scarlet, and green, and orange, and every gay colour, were mingled with cloth of gold and fair embroidery; instead of this, crept on the gloomy pageant of superstition, in cowl and sackcloth; with cross and coffin, and frightful symbols of human suffering. In place of the frank, hardy knight, open and brave, with his lady's favour in his casque, and amorous motto on his shield, looking, by gallant deeds, to win the smile ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... undertaker and a master-builder, vociferating at each other for interference 433 with their respective trades, and so far attracting the attention of the bookseller from the work of the author, that he wished, from the bottom of his heart, "that one would build a coffin to bury the other:" while the salesmen laughed so loud at the observations of the controversialists, as almost to make them wish the subject dead without the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... turn back to Canton. We pass the shops of the coffin-makers. We linger. But "No stop," says our guide; "better coffins soon." "Soon" is what the guide-books call the "City of the Dead." A number of little chapels; and laid in each a great lacquered coffin in which the dead man lives. I say "lives" advisedly, for there is set ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... served. Trumpets and drums were lost on the horizon but their sounds were still magnified by the fresh echoes of the coming morn. The corpse was despoiled of its jewels and then deposited in that poor coffin which looked so like a packing-box. The two nuns took with timidity the gems which the dead woman had given them for their works of charity. Then the lid was fastened down, shutting away forever the one who a few moments before was a woman of sumptuous charm upon ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... himself in a well fought field, or left his body on the breach of a disputed fortress, she will remember the companion of her journey, as one who did all in his power to avert the snares and misfortunes which beset it, and perhaps will honour his memory with a tear, his coffin ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... my coffin be ordered, and pray for my soul. I have just now signed my own death-sentence. See, there it lies. I have signed the decree abolishing the order of the Jesuits! I must therefore die, Lorenzo. It is all over and past with our shady place ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... more. With the passionate and impulsive nature of a Greek fanatic, he burst forward through the crowd, towards the steps which led to the choir, and above which, in front of the altar, stood the corpse of Ammonius, enclosed in a coffin of glass, beneath a gorgeous canopy; and never stopping till he found himself in front of Cyril's pulpit, he threw himself upon his face upon the pavement, spread out his arms in the form of a cross, and lay silent and motionless before the ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... I replied. "So narrow was it that they had my coffin all ready built for me. I have managed to weather upon Yellow Jack this time, however, thank God; and now, if I could only get to sea again, I believe I should soon pull round and ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin. For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain that Dr. Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations. But reason it out for yourself and see if we arrive at any common center. Don't work ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... And to that land again whereof he spake Unto our ancestors, will bring you back. And Joseph also made his brethren swear, That they would not inter his body there. And thus he ended his life's pilgrimage, Being an hundred and ten years of age; And was embalm'd, and in a coffin laid, In Egypt, till he could be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... those boards ? He told her they were his own; she asked again, for what use he had them ? He replied, for a bed; she again said, I intend them for what use you please, she saw a dead corps lying upon them, and that they would be a coffin: which struck the honest man to the heart, fearing the death of his wife. But when the old woman went off, he calls presently for a carpenter to make the bed, which was accordingly done; but shortly after ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... and the galley-slaves in the outriggers at either side lay dead in rows under the overwhelming shower from above. From stem to rudder every foot of her was furred with arrows. It was but a floating coffin piled with dead and dying men, which wallowed in the waves behind them as the Basilisk lurched onward and left her in ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for me—coming, like all compensation, a long while after the loss—in the spectacle of a funeral procession on the Grand Canal, which had a singular and imposing solemnity only possible to the place. It was the funeral of an Austrian general, whose coffin, mounted on a sable catafalco, was borne upon the middle boat of three that moved abreast. The barges on either side bristled with the bayonets of soldiery, but the dead man was alone in his boat, except for one strange figure that ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... of this bay, around the west point, we saw at once the neck from which this point of land takes its name of Deadman's Head. It is shaped like a coffin or the mound of earth which peasants form over a grave, one end a little higher than the other, and going up sharp on either side; but it is on the top somewhat jagged. It is on the east side of the point, three ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... bundled neck and crop out o' the first-floor windy o' the house in Holborn by Frank Willders. She's a quare owld woman that. She's got two houses, no less; wan over the coachmaker's shop—the shop bein' her property—an' wan in Russell Square. They say she's rich enough to line her coffin with goold an inch thick. Spakin' o' that, Molly my dear, a quare thing happened to me the other night. It's ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... down back of the orchard under the big elm where the children had always had their swing. And they lined and covered her grave with big, fragrant water-lilies. As they lowered the poor little home-made coffin into the grave the mockingbirds began to sing and they sang all that dewy, moonlight night. Then little Mandy's wedding to Judge Carter's son Jim was described. She wore a "cream-colored poplin with a red rose throwed up in it," and the lace that was on Grandma's wedding dress. There ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... into the world. You have seen what the atonement, and regeneration, and sanctification, and providence, and grace, have done for it, and with what accumulated love the Father of Spirits, and Redeemer, and Sanctifier, must regard it. And now do we suppose that the shroud, and coffin, and the funeral, and the narrow house, and the darkness, and the solitude and corruption, and the whole dreary and terrible train of death and the grave, are symbols of its reception into heaven, the proper pageantry ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... Or lie as in training for shroud and coffin. A nurse in the corridor scolds and wrangles. ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... feet of women. Marry you! To marry is to commit two souls to the prison of one body; to put two pigs into one poke; two legs into one boot, two arms into one sleeve, two heads into one hat, two necks into one noose, two corpses into one coffin, and this into a wet grave, for marriage is a perennial spring of tears. Marry! Why should I bind myself with a vow that I must break, not being by nature continent and loving? Marry you! Yes, when I hate you. Have I a sinistrous look to meditate such mischief? Do I seem old enough ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Credulity. Life is short, opportunities of knowledge rare; our senses are fallacious, our reasonings uncertain, mankind therefore struggles with perpetual error from the cradle to the coffin. He is necessitated to correct experiment by analogy, and analogy by experiment; and not always to rest satisfied in the belief of facts even with this two-fold testimony, till future opportunities, or the observations of others, concur in ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... valley was barren to look upon as a naked, single rock. There were peaks of various heights and colors, yellow, blue firery red and nearly black. It looked as if it might sometime have been the center of a mammoth furnace. I believe this range is known as the Coffin's Mountains. It would be difficult to find earth enough in the whole of it to cover ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... his eye—the fear of death that swallowed up all other thoughts, and gnawed without cessation at his heart and brain. He had marked the wandering look, seeking for hope, and finding, turn where it would, despair. He had seen the remorseful, pitiful, desolate creature, riding, with his coffin by his side, to the gibbet. He knew that, to the last, he had been an unyielding, obdurate man; that in the savage terror of his condition he had hardened, rather than relented, to his wife and child; and that the last words which had passed his white lips were ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... which were six or seven feet high; and, altogether, they shone like a galaxy of stars. In the middle of the nave, moreover, there was another galaxy of wax candles burning around an immense pall of black velvet, embroidered with silver, which seemed to cover, not only a coffin, but a sarcophagus, or something still more huge. The organ was rumbling forth a deep, lugubrious bass, accompanied with heavy chanting of priests, out of which sometimes rose the clear, young voices of choristers, like light flashing out of the gloom. The church, between ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... omens presses on me. For one thing, I'm sooperstitious about makin' of onyoosal arrangements to protect my play. I never yet tries to cinch a play, an' never notes anybody else try, but we- all quits loser. It ain't no use. Every gent, from his cradle to his coffin, has got to take a gambler's chance. Life is like stud-poker; an' Destiny's got an ace buried every time. It either out-lucks you or out-plays you whenever it's so inclined; an' it seems allers so inclined, Destiny does, jest ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... and I'll not leave thee; tho' she shou'd Chat until her Tongue be weary. I'll find another way to make her quiet; or she shall have but very small Allowance: She tells me, Grief will kill her very shortly: I wish it wou'd, I shou'dn't grutch the Charges of giving her a Coffin and a Grave. ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... to the grave by many of her relatives and friends, the royal carriages forming part of the funeral procession. The coffin was adorned with garlands of laurel and cypress and palm branches, sent by the Crown-Princess from Herrnhausen; and the service was conducted in that same garrison-church in which, nearly a century before, she had been christened, and afterwards confirmed. And, as ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... handkerchief over his eyes, and dropped the other as a signal for his executioners, who fired a volley so decisive, that five balls passed through his body, and he dropped down dead in an instant. The time in which this tragedy was acted, from his walking out of the cabin to his being deposited in the coffin, did ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... soon threw away their arms and begged for quarter, and many of them were taken prisoners by the Iranians. Gushtasp now approached the dead body of Zarir, and lamenting deeply over his unhappy fate, placed him in a coffin, and built over him a lofty monument, around which lights were ever afterwards kept burning, night and day; and he also taught the people the worship of fire, and was anxious to establish everywhere ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... off de Luynes, and the valets who played cards on his coffin were hardly more indecent in their callousness than de Luynes' enemies. The Cardinal's Hat arrived with many gracious compliments to the Bishop of Lucon, who then gave up his diocese. Soon he rustled in flame-coloured ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... that he abused his official position to improve his income. The worst accusation against him was that of conniving in trade with the French and Indians under pretence of exchanging prisoners. Six prominent men of the colony—Borland, Vetch, Lawson, Rous, Phillips, and Coffin, only three of whom were of New England origin—were brought to trial before the Assembly for trading at Port Royal; and it was said that Dudley, though he had no direct share in the business, found means to make profit from it. All ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... impressive, while the whole of the First division was being formed in two parallel lines facing each other, and about eighty paces apart. The service over, a regiment of heavy artillery came to act as escort. The remains, inclosed in a rude coffin, wrapped in the flag under which he had so often fought, were placed in an ambulance, and the funeral cortege began its slow march through the long lines of sunbrowned veterans who stood on either side. First ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... Grenvilles of Stow; or it might be with her first husband, Sir John Basset, at Umberleigh. Only it may be asserted without fear of contradiction, that it was not with the royal lord whom she had so bitterly lamented, and whose coffin lay, with many another as illustrious as his own, in the old Norman Chapel of the Tower. No stranger admixture can there be on earth, than among those coffins crowding that Norman Chapel,—from traitors of the blackest dye, up to ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue more transient than that of wine. The delirium which it created had effervesced away. Yes! they were old again. With a shuddering impulse, that showed her a woman still, the widow clasped her skinny hands before her face, and wished that the coffin lid were over it, since it could no ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... saw upon the coffin of the good god, your divine father, Meneptah, as it was prepared for him during his life in the embalmer's shop ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... Winchester, McBean, O'Leary, and Clinch attended his funeral, quite as a matter of course. They had proved themselves worthy to be there; but many others insisted on being of the party. Some came to get a last look of so celebrated an adventurer, even in his coffin; others to say they had been present; and not a few to catch a glimpse of the girl whose romantic but innocent passion had got to be the subject of much discourse in the ships. The result was such a procession, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... son who had passed away. When the Viceroy died she wanted to go and kotow at his funeral, and all his family except the eldest son were anxious to have her do so, and thus be recognized as one of the family. But this son objected, and though Lady Li knocked her head on the coffin until it bled he would not yield, lest she ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... by magic. One by one the cases were loaded. The men were working feverishly by the light of battle lanterns—big lamps with reflectors so placed as to throw the light exactly where it was needed and nowhere else. They were taking aboard the Arroyo dozens of coffin-like wooden cases, and bags and boxes, smaller and even heavier. Silently ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... the west, lay the large pine coffin lid, while to the south of it, turned bottom up, was the coffin with fresh chips beside it hewn out that morning in further excavation. Children played around the coffin and people lounged on its upturned bottom. Near the front of the house a pot of water was always hot over ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... poor widow went into the church, to see if the blood yet flowed from the mouth of her dear murdered husband. But what sees she?—the corpse is lying on its face in the coffin in place of on its back. She calls the dairy-mother in, trembling with horror, and they turn him between them. Then they go forth, but return in a little while again, and see, the corpse is again ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... upstairs to prepare the remains of the deceased lady for the coffin. The room in which she lay was locked, the door leading into Mr. Macallan's room being secured, as well as the door leading into the corridor. The keys had been taken away by Mr. Gale. Two of the men-servants were posted outside the bedroom to keep watch. ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... don't always know your own opinion. First you think you'll do a thing because it is nice; and then you think you won't do it because it is wrong; and in the end you drop between two stools, like Mahomet's coffin." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... pipe opened the door: mademoiselle saw nothing but a coffin, the lid of which extended only to the neck, leaving Germinie's face uncovered, with the eyes open, and the hair erect upon ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... grown man when his mother died and was buried with the elaborate ceremonies which her husband's wealth permitted. There was a coffin, a niche in which to put it, chanting of the service and special prayers. All these involved extra cost, and the items noted in the margin of her funeral record make a total which in those days was a considerable sum. Domingo outlived Mrs. Lam-co by but a few years, ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... of us was eager to lend his assistance. Within five minutes Priest was galloping up the north bank of the river to intercept the wagon at the ferry, a well-filled purse in his pocket with which to secure a coffin at Fort Laramie. Flood and Campbell selected a burial place, and with our wagon spade a grave was being dug on a near-by grassy mound, where ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... was halted before the enclosure; and rejecting the offers of assistance with the same air of simple self-reliance he had displayed throughout, Tennessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin on his back, and deposited it, unaided, within the shallow grave. He then nailed down the board which served as a lid, and, mounting the little mound of earth beside it, took off his hat, and slowly mopped his face with his handkerchief. This ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... over something that seemed like the coffin of a little child. Then he rushed directly at the window open-mouthed. Sister Ursula went upwards and onwards, none the less swiftly because she heard a muffled oath, the crash of broken glass, and the tinkling of the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... this morning with Commissioner Coffin. The only letter I have been so fortunate as to receive is one from Mr. Le M. dated the day Captain Capel arrived. What would I not give for one of as late date from you! Another is soon expected, this packet having had nearly three ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... bury him; and while they were digging a grave near the block house, I made a rude coffin of some boards we had saved for another purpose. It was the saddest job I had ever done, and my tears fell continually on the work. I carried the box into the house, and my companions laid the silent old man in it. I took my last ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... were children of an unpleasant age. Captain Semmes captured the Ariel once, and it is to be deeply regretted that that thrifty buccaneer hadn't made mince-meat of her, because she is a miserable tub at best, and hasn't much more right to be afloat than a second- hand coffin has. I do not know her proprietor, Mr. C. Vanderbilt. But I know of several excellent mill privileges in the State of Maine, and not one of them is so thoroughly "Dam'd" as he was all the way ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... cried Mr Jones with a laugh; "all in good time. Well, as I was saying, the cargo ain't worth much; it don't extend down to the keel, Billy, by no means; and as for the sloop—she's not worth a rope's-end. She's as rotten as an old coffin. It's all I've been able to do to make her old timbers hold together for ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... musician and his barbiton together, in the same coffin. That famous Steiner—primeval Titan of the great Tyrolese race—often hast thou sought to scale the heavens, and therefore must thou, like the meaner children of men, descend to the dismal Hades! Harder fate for thee than thy mortal master. For THY soul ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... up with as much pity and affection as if she were our nearest and dearest relative, and carried her home and placed her on Mrs Reichardt's bed; and then I laid some planks together, in the shape of what Mrs Reichardt called a coffin—and I dug her a deep ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... not much, but enough to make me happy. I write it from memory—every word as it lies where any moment I could read it—shut in a golden coffin whose lid I dare ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... and dews on his bed, Summer covered with roses his shelterless head, And as Autumn embalmed his bodiless form, Winter wove his snow shroud in his Jacquard of storm; For his coffin-plate, charged with a common device, Frost figured his arms on a tablet of ice, While a ray from the sun in the interim came, And daguerreotyped neatly his age, death, and name. Then the shadowing months at call Stood up to bear the pall, And three hundred ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... of the Convention went to absurd lengths. In the popular passion for equality, every one was to be called "Citizen" rather than "Monsieur." The official record of the expense of Marie Antoinette's funeral was the simple entry, "Five francs for a coffin for the widow of Citizen Capet." Ornate clothing disappeared with titles of nobility, and the silk stockings and knee breeches (culottes), which had distinguished the privileged classes and the gentlemen, were ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... singers came the two-horsed catafalque, that Tamara had hired; black, with white plumes, and seven torch-bearers along with it. They also brought a white, glazed brocade coffin; and a pedestal for it, stretched over with black calico. Without hurrying, with habitually deft movements, they put away the deceased into the coffin; covered her face with gauze; curtained off the corpse with cloth of gold, and lit the candles—one ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... church below the arches, and another, exactly similar, above them. In a shrine, 18th cent., behind the high altar are the bones of St. Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1243 at a village in the neighbourhood. The original shrine, aplain wooden coffin, is upstairs in the cloister. The view of the interior of the building is spoilt by an ugly screen, rendered necessary to shut off the sanctuary from the rest of the church to make it more comfortable for the villagers, whose parish church ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... Sanderson's burning solicitude to fix the crime flickered out in the face of opposition, and in the end he bowed his head to the inevitable "open verdict." Then the floodgates of inkland were opened, and the deluge pattered for nine days on the deaf coffin where the poor idealist mouldered. The tongues of the Press were loosened, and the leader-writers revelled in recapitulating the circumstances of "The Big Bow Mystery," though they could contribute nothing but adjectives ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... An inexplicable noise sounded from beyond the door. It seemed as if some people were bringing a bulky piece of furniture upstairs and knocking against the walls as they did so. Suddenly I understood, as I heard Marguerite begin to sob; it was the coffin. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... most devoted attendants at our funerals were Monsieur and Madame Moidrey and their beautiful daughter Annette, a girl of sixteen years. In rain and shine they came, always with flowers most beautiful to place upon coffin and grave. ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... king to me, after the ladies in waiting had withdrawn, "how do you account for this cross being here in my hand, considering it was put into the coffin? You think the vault may have been pillaged? That, I believe, is out of the question. The object of a carnival freak, which could have been perpetrated just as easily in any other dress, is far too slight to make such a horrible ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... were removed from Winchester to Lisford Church, where Percival Dunbar was buried in a vault beneath the chancel. The murdered man's coffin was placed beside that of his father, and a simple marble tablet recording the untimely death of Henry Dunbar, cruelly and treacherously assassinated in a grove near Winchester, was erected by order of Lady Jocelyn, who was abroad with her husband when the story of her father's ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... departed, and, perhaps, suffering soul, in the fine music of the choir, even should the choir be composed of the best singers in the country? What consolation does the poor suffering soul find in the superb coffin, in the splendid funeral? What pleasure does the soul derive from the costly marble monument, from all the honors that are so freely lavished on the body? All this may satisfy, or at least seem to satisfy, the living, but it is of no ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... Ninety-one, when his burial occurred. A little company of friends assembled, but no funeral-dirge was played for him, save the blast blown through the naked branches of the trees, as they hurried the plain pine coffin to its final resting-place. At the gate of the cemetery the few friends turned back and left the lifeless clay to the old gravedigger, who never guessed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... schools, half a dozen have been built, the finest in this or any other land,—great, light, and airy structures, with playgrounds on the roof; and all over the city the like are going up. The briefest of our laws, every word of which is like the blow of a hammer driving the nails home in the coffin of the bad old days, says that never one shall ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... open fireplace. The ell is used as a kitchen, dining-room and storehouse combined. On the edge of the porch, almost within reach of the well sweep, a bench holds two tin wash basins; a cake of laundry soap reposes in the former coffin of a family of sardines and a roller towel, sterilized and dried by air and sunlight, hangs ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... rest for ever. As she stood beside the grave—the grave whose earth had not had time to harden since it received her father—she seemed still to hear that feeble, querulous voice, with its perpetual iteration of her own name; the casting of clay upon the coffin made a sound not half so real. Returning home, she went up to the bedroom with the same hurried step with which she had been wont to enter after her brief absences. The bed was vacant; the blind made the air dim; she saw ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... serpent kisses, that slaver my cheeks, that suck my blood, my honor! Oh, misery! oh, poverty! Oh, how great are they who can stand erect and carry high their heads! I had better have let myself die of hunger, there, on my wretched pallet, three and a half years ago! A coffin is a softer bed to lie in than the life I lead! It is eighteen months that I have fed on bourgeois! and now, at the moment of attaining an honest, fortunate life, a magnificent future, at the moment when I was about to ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Danny Deever, they are marchin' of 'im round, They 'ave 'alted Danny Deever by 'is coffin on the ground; An' 'e'll swing in 'arf a minute for a sneakin' shootin' hound— O they're hangin' Danny Deever in ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... window was designed by our countryman, Benjamin West. The altar-piece was painted by West. Here is the tomb of Edward IV., 1483. He lies under a slab of black marble. In 1789, some workmen discovered his lead coffin, and it was opened, and the skeleton was in good preservation, and measured seven feet in length. Horace Walpole obtained a lock of his hair at this time. Here are the graves of Henry VI., and of Henry VIII. and his queen, Jane Seymour. ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... ascend it, but only for a brief time. You fight your last battle; you lose! You are captured and taken to a lonely island somewhere far to the south, there to be imprisoned until your death. Afterward I see your body returned to the city that was once your capital. It now lies in a heavy stone coffin. It is in a European city. I can almost hear the name, but not plainly. I cannot get the name under which you ruled. I look into the abyss and the cries of your victims drown it. Horror ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... the coffin of my little son the other day, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as a part of his duty, the words, "If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... mind,' he said almost cheerfully, the good food having soothed his troubled mind, 'I would like to take a last look at my brother. I hope they have not screwed down the coffin?' ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... breath, he backed out and closed the door. Going to the barn, he found a cow standing at an empty manger, and some hens and pigs frozen in the hay. Looking about for some boards to make a coffin, he came upon a long box in which a reaper had been packed, and this he proceeded to nail together firmly, and to line with pieces of an old stove-pipe at such places as he thought the mice would ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... Spare your words. I know the seasons of our human grief, And can predict them without almanac. A few sobs o'er the body, and a few Over the coffin; then a sigh or two, Whose windy passage dries the hanging tear; Perchance, some wandering memories, some regrets; Then a vast influx of consoling thoughts— Based on the trials of the sadder days Which the dead missed; and then a ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... our village parlors, sometimes in the guest-chambers, when there had been many deaths in the family, hung the framed coffin-plates and faded funeral wreaths of departed dear ones. Now and then there was a wreath of wool flowers, a triumph of domestic art, which encircled the coffin-plate instead of the original funeral garland. Mrs. Jameson set herself to work to abolish this grimly pathetic New England ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the fourth floor. It was very quiet, and most of the offices were deserted. He found a pale young typewriter, a slave of the machine, in a room rather larger than an alderman's coffin, and obtained threepence in coppers for the widow and family of the late lamented William John Elphinston. He passed along a dim passage, and came to one of the larger apartments fronting the main street. It was evidently one of a suite. On the door was a brass plate bearing ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... going back for a period of upwards of two hundred years. With respect to the essential points of religion, they are quite careless and ignorant; if they believe in a future state they dread it not, and if they manifest when dying any anxiety, it is not for the soul, but the body: a handsome coffin, and a grave in a quiet country churchyard, are invariably the objects of their last thoughts; and it is probable that, in their observance of the rite of baptism, they are principally influenced by a desire to enjoy the privilege of burial in consecrated ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... to menace the good town of Chesterfield with destruction. Here an incident occurred, on the opening of a vault, which it is needless to relate, but which supplied me with a hint for the commencement of my romance, as well as for the ballad entitled "The Coffin." Upon this hint I immediately acted; and the earlier chapters of the book, together with the description of the ancestral mansion of the Rookwoods, were completed ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... recollection Sarah has of her mother is seeing her as she lay in her coffin, as she was very young when her mother died. She remembers asking her sisters why they didn't ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... Walker was screwing tight the door of the engine-room, in order to safeguard the fireman in attendance on the donkey-boiler. Now that the screw-driving was actually in operation, it very unpleasantly reminded Courtenay of the fastening of a coffin lid. Neither Walker nor the man inside could guess the gruesome notion which held the captain in its chilly grip for an instant; indeed, the engineer looked up with ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... public life. It was not long after that he showed signs of illness, and I went to live with, and wait upon him. I had often to recite my poems for him, and one he frequently asked for was "The pauper's box;" he assured me that he would leave me enough to keep me from being buried in a pauper's coffin:— ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... he could inflict by the rigid clutch of his dead hand, he inevitably mingled his consciousness with that livid stagnant presence, and so far as he was preoccupied with a future life, it was with one of gratification inside his coffin. Thus old Featherstone was imaginative, after ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... ape?' he says. 'What d'ye mane be comin' back, whin th' landlord ain't heerd fr'm ye f'r a year?' he says. Well, O'Grady's ghost was that surprised he cud hardly speak. 'Ye ought to have betther manners thin insultin' th' dead,' he says. 'Ye ought to have betther manners thin to be lavin' ye'er coffin at this hour iv th' night, an' breakin' in on dacint people,' says Flaherty. 'What good does it do to have rayqueem masses f'r th' raypose iv th' like iv you,' he says, 'that doesn't know his place?' he says. "I'm masther iv this house,' says th' ghost. 'Not on ye'er life,' says Flaherty. ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... practically pro-slavery attitude, and thus stung into redoubled earnestness and zeal the men who had recently been driven out of it on account of their "abolitionism." On the day following this speech, which was the Sabbath, he was escorted to the yearly meeting by Elijah Coffin, its clerk, seated in a very conspicuous place, honored by every mark of the most obsequious deference, and thus made the instrument of widening the breach already formed in the society, while feeding the anti-slavery fires which he was ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... divine, which, on his death-bed laid, To thee, O Craggs! the expiring sage conveyed, Great, but ill-omened, monument of fame, Nor he survived to give, nor thou to claim. Swift after him thy social spirit flies, And close to his, how soon! thy coffin lies. Blest pair! whose union future bards shall tell In future tongues: each other's boast! farewell! Farewell! whom, joined in fame, in friendship tried, No chance could ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... next day things were worse. No one could be found to supply a coffin for the murdered man.[17] When the police called upon the priests to exert their influence and enforce some semblance at least of Christian and Catholic decency upon the people confided to their charge, the priests not only refused to do their duty, but floutingly referred the police to ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... broke in the one-eyed butler: "our minister is a good minister, an' speaks roundabout as such: but the short is, that my master is dead, an' in his coffin." ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... foe alike showed itself in the mourning over his death, which took place a few days ago. His wound, a short time before, had shown improvement, but the heart was no longer equal to the terrible strain. Those of his comrades who were not confined to bed rallied round his coffin yesterday, which had been put upon a bier in the hospital garden ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... thought of going below. It was better to see and know the worst than to be shut up in a coffin where one could not stretch out a hand to help one's self. Once Captain Hamilton Miggs clawed his way along the rail to ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... place in the streets of St. Louis an imposing military funeral. As the cortege paused for a moment, I stood at the side of the gun-carriage which bore the coffin wrapped in the flag, and paid my tribute to this good man and great citizen who had played ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... grinding death-knell. It seemed to come out of the ugly grave itself, and enjoyment was dead. On his way homeward sadly, an hour later, he enters by chance the open door of a village church, half buried in the tangle of its churchyard. The rude coffin is lying there of a labourer who had but a hovel to live in. The enemy dogged one's footsteps! The young Carl seemed to be flying, not from death ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... Mr. Coffin graduated from Fisk University in 1885, and has held important positions as a teacher ever since graduating. He has also bought about $250 worth of books on one of the special courses of study established by the Illinois Wesleyan University, and so ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... shapes her backs like the top of a coffin, or sometimes they remind me more of a kite; and Sallie Ann Hodd's—she makes 'em square; and old Mrs. Tucker's—you can always tell hers by the way the armholes draw; she makes the minister's wife's. But they'd every one of 'em done their level ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... had a secret inspiration. He hastily summoned to his mind Kabel's charities and the mean clothes and gray hair of the women who formed his congregation at the early-service, Lazarus with his dogs, and his own long coffin, and also the beheading of various people, Werther's Sorrows, a small battlefield, and himself—how pitifully here in the days of his youth he was struggling and tormenting himself over the clause of the will—just three more jerks of the pump-handle and he would have his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke |
