"Bonfire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... met on the moors for a similar feast, but the turf table was round, and the oatcake divided into bits, one of which was blackened with charcoal. These being drawn from a bonnet, the holder of the black bit was held devoted to Baal, and had to leap three times over the bonfire. ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... first glance it seemed as if the wheelwright was amusing himself by making a round bonfire of scraps, whose blue reek rose in the country air, and was driven every now and then by the wind over the boys, who coughed and sneezed and grumbled, but did not attempt to move, for there was, to them, an interesting feat about to be performed by the wheelwright—to ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... 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
... night fell, the temple made a bonfire that illuminated the scenes of pillage going on all around. The big idols of loathly aspect had been thrown down, broken to pieces, and despoiled of their jewels and the heavy plates of gold that encumbered them. Our soldiers had swarmed out of the building, past a tank to the houses ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... do become brutes. It is the real punishment of brutal and selfish habits. There the figure stands; a picture of a man in the rank of English life with which Bunyan was most familiar, travelling along the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire, as the way to Emmanuel's Land was through the Slough of Despond and the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Pleasures are to be found among the primroses, such pleasures as a brute can be gratified by. Yet the reader ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... of the boys to Putnam Hall was the signal for a regular jollification, and my readers can rest assured that all of the cadets made the most of it. Captain Putnam ordered an extra dinner for them, and in the evening a huge bonfire was started on the campus, and, as the boys gathered around Dick, Tom, and Sam they sang "For he's a jolly good fellow!" until they were hoarse. It was a celebration never to be forgotten. "Just the right sort for a home coming," ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield
... once a vast bonfire of wood kindled on a grassy hill-top; it was curiously affecting to see the great trunks melt into flame, and the red cataract pouring so softly, so unapproachably into the air. It is so with the minds of men; the material is all there, compressed, welded, inflammable; and if the ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... can assure your mightiness," wrote the State's Ambassador, Caron, "that no promulgation was ever received in London with more coolness—yes, with more sadness.... The people were admonished to make bonfires, but you may be very sure not a bonfire was to be seen."—Motley, "United Netherlands," iv, 223, 224. For payments made by the city chamberlain to heralds on the occasion of proclamation of the peace, see Repertory 26, pt. ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... with fire!" The rioters, with an unanimous shout, called for combustibles, and as all their wishes seemed to be instantly supplied, they were soon in possession of two or three empty tar-barrels. A huge red glaring bonfire speedily arose close to the door of the prison, sending up a tall column of smoke and flame against its antique turrets and strongly-grated windows, and illuminating the ferocious and wild gestures ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... was the circulation of anti-slavery documents through the Southern mails. In 1835 a mob in Charleston broke open the post-office, and made a bonfire of all such matter they could find. The social leaders and the clergy of the city applauded. The postmaster-general under Jackson, Amos Kendall, wrote to the local postmaster who had connived at the act: "I cannot sanction and will not ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... suddenly the Capitol on the throne of its imperial hill loomed a grand constellation in the heavens! Another look, and it seemed a huge bonfire against the background of the dark skies. Every window in its labyrinths of marble, from the massive base to its crowning statue of Freedom, gleamed and flashed with light—more than ten thousand jets poured their rays through its windows, besides the innumerable lights ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... 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 of Rome, etc., etc. Excepting Bossuet's ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... further from the thought of those participating in the pantomime than standing still. The hornets, stirred to activity by Bess's incautious stamping close to their quarters, were rising like sparks from a bonfire. Bess was making a spectacular though not altogether successful effort to stand on her head, while the agility displayed by Peggy and Priscilla would have gratified their teacher of gymnastics in the high school, had she been present ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... expected to do?" says she. "I've got no Hetty Green grip on my bankbook. There's a whole binful of the 'Drowsy Drop' dollars, and I'm willing to throw 'em on the bonfire just as liberal as the next one, only I want a place around the ring. There's no fun in playing a lone hand, is there? I've been trying to find out what's ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... not long in doubt. The first sight that presented itself as they came trooping up the slope in front of the log hut, was an ox roasting whole before a gigantic bonfire. Tables were being extemporised on the broad level plot in front of the gate. Other fires there were, of smaller dimensions, on which sundry steaming pots were placed, and various joints of wild horse, bear, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... without the slightest expectation that it would be fulfilled; and the man—who would have plunged into a blazing bonfire if he had been so ordered—advanced, and, to the unutterable astonishment of himself, the king, and in fact the whole concourse of natives, raised the gigantic structure to his shoulders and held it there ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... grounds, and finding our 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, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... find the guard who had come in with the prisoners, and I dissolved court and went out shooting. After dinner, as we sat round a great bonfire before the mess, for the nights were cold, Saw Ka and his brother came to me, and they sat down beside the fire and ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... believed what he heard about this ancestor—in whom, perhaps, one may see a hint of the giant Porthos. In the Revolution and in the wars his father won the name of Monsieur de l'Humanite, because he made a bonfire of a guillotine; and of Horatius Cocles, because he held a pass as bravely as the Roman "in the brave days ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... clearly sitting on a gate beyond the park, in a fold just below the crest, that hid the Beacon Hill bonfire and its crowd, and I was looking at and admiring the sunset. The golden earth and sky seemed like a little bubble that floated in the globe of human futility. . . . Then in the twilight I walked along an unknown, bat-haunted road ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... old shrub growing to a height of eight to ten feet. Its flowers appear before its leaves are out, and are of such a rich, shining yellow that they light up the garden like a bonfire. The flowers are bell-shaped, hence the popular name ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... cartoons, and out of these sprang into the vague upper gloom—on the one side, lamp-posts from which 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 ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... a bonfire in some lot and given an exhibition," suggested Bert, "We'll do that, after we ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... Hazel's whole day was occupied in stripping a tree that stood on the high western promontory of the bay, and building up the materials of a bonfire a few yards from it, that, if any whaler should stray that way, they might not be at a loss for means to ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... make a cup of coffee for our sentinel, and have a little chat with him, chaperoned by the great bonfire. Don't think you can stop me, for you can't. Heavens, what a noise that dynamite does make! We shall have to shout. It will be more ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... us a four days' trip to Iloilo. The sea was perfectly smooth and the nights brilliant moonlight. We ran from town to town wherever a military detachment was stationed, and the inspector went ashore and inspected. This rite usually culminated in a huge bonfire on the beach, in which old stoves, chairs, harnesses, bath towels, and typewriters were indiscriminately heaped. I remarked once with civilian density that this seemed a most extravagant custom. If the army did not want these things ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... out of their skulls. They poisoned your fountains, put mines under your soldiers' prisons, organized bands whose leaders were concealed in your homes, and whose commissions ordered the torch to be carried to your cities, and the yellow-fever to your wives and children. They planned one universal bonfire of the North, from Lake Ontario to the Missouri. They murdered, by systems of starvation and exposure, sixty thousand of your sons as brave and heroic as ever martyrs were. They destroyed, in the four years of horrid war, another army so large that it would reach almost around the globe ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... 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, who reasoned ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the mountain, Make gold and silver and diamonds every day; You see the angels, sliding down the moonbeams, Bring white dreams like sheaves of lilies fair; You see the imps, scarce seen against the moonbeams, Rise from the bonfire's ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... travels, my brother John 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 sinfulness was severely ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... referred to another place. The rump became a perpetual whetstone for the loyal wits,[49] till at length its former admirers, the rabble themselves, in town and country, vied with each other in "burning rumps" of beef, which were hung by chains on a gallows with a bonfire underneath, and proved how the people, like children, come at length to make a plaything of that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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
... tragedy, was from the pen of Arrigo Boito, himself a musician of no ordinary accomplishment. The action of the opera opens in Cyprus, amidst the fury of a tempest. Othello arrives fresh from a victory over the Turks, and is greeted enthusiastically by the people, who light a bonfire in his honour. Then follows the drinking scene. Cassio, plied by Iago, becomes intoxicated and fights with Montano. The duel is interrupted by the entrance of Othello, who degrades Cassio from his captaincy, and dismisses the people to their homes. The act ends with ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... "I have an idea. Do you see that bonfire? It is nearly out. If you will gather some sticks and build it up again, I will run back to your house, and get some coffee and a kettle. I think a cup of coffee would refresh ...
— The Wreck • Anonymous
... began to drift towards that end of the building where stood smoking, in huge pots like fish-kettles, some hot and scented mixtures of old ale or wine. Above all these, upon a sort of black framework on the roof of the house, roared in its iron basket a gigantic bonfire, which lit up the land for miles. It flung the homely effect of firelight over the face of vast forests of grey or brown, and it seemed to fill with warmth even the emptiness of upper night. Yet this ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... the University. In Mr Stevenson's time, a torchlight procession had all the joys of 'forbidden fruit' to the merry lads who braved the police and the professors for the pleasure of marching through the streets to the final bonfire on the Calton Hill, from the scrimmage round which they emerged with clothes well oiled and singed, and faces and hands as black as much besmearing could make them; while anxious friends at home trembled lest a night in the police ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... to the front of the hotel. By now it was burning like a bonfire; already, short as had been the time since the overturning of the lamp, the entire ground floor with the exception of one wing was a roaring welter of flames, while the fire had leaped up the main staircase and set its signals in the windows ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Schwalbe. "Just what we want to fall in with. All being well, there will be no necessity to visit either Port Treherne or St. Mena's Island. Ach! When we have taken what we require we will set fire to the ship, and the English will have a splendid view of a maritime bonfire." ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... rocks. The 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... remember that there was an old officer of the Peninsula who lived no great way from us, the same who danced round the bonfire with his sister and the two maids. He had gone up to London on some business about his pension and his wound money, and the chance of having some work given him, so that he did not come back until late in the autumn. One of the ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hear any glass smash. Likely I missed it," and he chuckled fiendishly. Lablache sat gazing moodily at the building. Then the half-breed's voice roused him. "Hello, wot's that?" He was pointing at the house. "Why, some galoot's lightin' a bonfire! Say, that's dangerous Lablache. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... saltpetre, mingled with the warehouses of cheese-agents, ham-factors, provision merchants, tarpaulin-dealers, oil and colour merchants, etcetera. In fact, the entire region seems laid out with a view to the raising of a bonfire or a pyrotechnic display on the ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... conversing with Arthur Stanhope, where the page, who was soon followed by De Valette, had left them, till a message from his lady requested their presence in her apartment. The scene without, was threatening to become one of noisy revel. Many of the soldiers had gathered around a huge bonfire, amusing themselves with a variety of games; and, at a little distance, a few females, their wives and daughters, were collected on a plat of grass, and dancing with the young men, to the sound of a violin. The shrill fife, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... 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 ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... But, for all that, she felt proud that Uncle should speak of her in this way to Donald. Probably he was going to mention fire, and remind them of the invariable rule that they must not, on any account, carry matches into the barn, or light a bonfire anywhere without express permission. Meanwhile, Donald watched his uncle's face, ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... given by the most judicious friend; for at that time, from causes to which we may hereafter advert, nothing could be more disadvantageous to a young lady than to be known as a novel-writer. Frances yielded, relinquished her favorite pursuit, and made a bonfire ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... same word was employed, or the same idea differently treated. But OTHELLO had beaten him. "That noble gentleman and that noble lady - h'm - too painful for me." The same night the hoardings were covered with posters, "Burlesque of OTHELLO," and the contrast blazed up in my mind like a bonfire. An unforgettable look it gave me into that kind man's soul. His acquaintance was indeed a liberal and pious education. All the humanities were taught in that bare dining-room beside his gouty footstool. ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 for a rising in the town, and for giving the concerted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... any of them; they have every one of them done mischief; better fling them out of the window into the court and make a pile of them and set fire to them; or else carry them into the yard, and there a bonfire can be made without the smoke giving any annoyance." The housekeeper said the same, so eager were they both for the slaughter of those innocents, but the curate would not agree to it without first reading ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... than six funerals simultaneously in Garbyang, and a collective war-dance of as many as three hundred men. It went on during a whole day and the greater part of the following night, torches and a big bonfire burning. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... not even ready to wear a wreath round his head for them. I myself, to take a corpus vile, am very certain that I would not read the works of Comte through for any consideration whatever. But I can easily imagine myself with the greatest enthusiasm lighting a bonfire on Darwin Day. ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... vanishing amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in among the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up. "That is an ignis fatuus," was my first thought; and I expected it would soon vanish. It burnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding nor advancing. "Is it, then, a bonfire just kindled?" I questioned. I watched to see whether it would spread: but no; as it did not diminish, so it did not enlarge. "It may be a candle in a house," I then conjectured; "but if so, I can never reach it. It is much too far away: and were it within a yard ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... head foremost upon poisonous hatchels formed of terrible, barbed darts, thereon to struggle by their brains; then shortly, they threw them together, layer on layer, upon the summit of one of the burning crags, there to blaze like a bonfire. Thence they were snatched away up the ravines amidst the eternal ice and snow; {73a} then plunged again into an enormous flood of seething brimstone to be parched, stifled, and choked by the direful stench; thence to a quagmire of vermin, to embrace hellish reptiles far more noxious ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... great victory for the freshmen—and Frank Merriwell, and that night a great bonfire blazed on the campus and the students made merry. They blew horns, sang, cheered and had ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... well: no need of praise Or bonfire from the windy hill To light to softer paths and ways The world-worn man ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... day's experience had been, the climax came after camp was made, supper served and cleared away, when a big bonfire was lighted and all sat about it talking over the happenings of the day, singing and putting on stunts. In the tourists' minds the guide and the grizzly were classed together; both were wild, strange and somewhat of ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... the top of a building in the near distance. Almost everybody was running in the opposite direction, attracted by the Telegraph Hill fire that flamed vermilion and gold against the grey sky, looking from its elevation like a mammoth bonfire, or like a hundred sunsets massed in one ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... awoke at two o'clock in the afternoon his brain felt like the ashes of a bonfire and his spirits were a leaden weight. He knew what was to be expected of reaction, however, and after his punch bag and showers he felt better. He'd see her today and force some sort ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... or so and I can buy out old Behnke and own the place. Soon's I do I'm going to come home in the speediest boat in the barn, and I'm going to bust up those curtain frames into kindling wood, over my knee, and pile 'em in the backyard and make a bonfire out ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... fireplace and huge oak table. If the noise was excessive, the sixth form intervened; and I remember being very gently caned, in the company of the present Dean of St. Paul's, for making a small bonfire of old blotting-paper, which filled ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... building these figures out of papier-mache, and each group tries to keep its design secret until the fiesta takes place. The best falla wins a prize, and at the end of the three-day celebration, all the fallas except the prize-winner are burned in a big bonfire while the people dance around it and fireworks are ...
— Getting to know Spain • Dee Day
... he came upon them where they had camped by the roadside. It was a road quite off the line of travel and they were a hundred feet back among a clump of pine trees, their horses tied to the fence-rail. A bonfire sent up a pungent smoke half veiling the figures. But the car had come roaring up the hill, and they were all looking his way. Two of the horses had plunged a little at the sudden noise, and Ted ran forward. Richard ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... their minds to follow it too. "For the sundown," writes Shakib, "was more appealing to us than the sunrise, ay, more beautiful. The one was so near, the other so far away. Yes, we beheld the Hesperian light that day, and praised Allah. It was the New World's bonfire of hospitality: the sun called to us, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... South were greatly alarmed by the vigorous efforts of the Abolitionists of the North. It was about the time that the Charleston Post-office was plundered by a mob of several thousand people, and all the anti-slavery publications there found were made a bonfire of in the street; and where "the clergy of all denominations attended in a body, lending their sanction to the proceedings, and adding by their presence to the impressive character of the scene." On that occasion the clergy of the city of Richmond ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... in her school-room, and dinner from our table: some of the grown-up schoolboys and Polly. We had Mr. and Mrs. Koch, Mr. and Mrs. Owen, Mr. Zehnder, and Mrs. Crookshank at our table. Papa counted that ninety-seven people were fed on the mission premises on Christmas Day. After dinner we had a bonfire in the hollow below our hill, between the house and the church. Quantities of dry bamboo had been collected there, which threw up columns of sparks, and lit up all the under leaves of the trees, making the dark ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... you have a guy in this town? I had a famous one last year, and such a bonfire as you never saw, for we burnt down a haystack. I should like to have a guy this year; do ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... lit a huge bonfire, and then added to it a second one which, crackling, hissing, and emitting coils of bluish-tinted smoke, had fallen to vying with its fellow in lacing the foam of the rivulet with muslin-like patterns in red. As the mass of dark figures surged between the two flares an hilarious voice shouted ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... off-saddle the horses, while others ply the tired heroes with refreshments. The town is in 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 ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... that the books and other contents of his desk were burned in the school yard at recess, to the singing of a dirge. But, even for the purpose of making a bonfire of his books the students would not touch the articles with their hands. They coaxed the janitor to find a pair of tongs, and with this implement Phin's books and papers were ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... break down with hatchet and hammer," they tore the hangings from the shrines, they found the sacred cups, and filling them with sacramental wine, drank with gusts of ribald laughter. In the centre of the choir they built a bonfire, and fed it with pictures, carvings, and oaken benches, so that it blazed and roared furiously. On to it—for this mob did not come to steal but to work vengeance—they threw utensils of gold and silver, the priceless jewelled offerings of generations, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... daily fools unbar the narrow soul, All wise and gen'rous o'er the nightly bowl. The haunted wood receives its motley host, (By trav'ller shun'd) tho' neither fag nor ghost; And there the crackling bonfire blazes red, While merry vagrants feast beneath the shed. From sleepless beds unquiet spirits rise, And cunning wags put on their borrow'd guise: Whilst silly maidens mutter o'er their boon, And crop their fairy weeds beneath the moon: And harmless plotters slyly take the ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... painfully white, except where two spots of color blazed in each cheek. As her sisters stooped obediently to pull up their heather, Betty bent and wrenched hers from the ground by which it was surrounded, which ground was already dry and hard. "Let's make a bonfire," she said. "I sometimes think," she added, "that in each little bell of heather there lives the wee-est of all the fairies; and perhaps, if we burn this poor, dear thing, the little, wee fairies may go back to ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... been routed by a woman was a terrible humiliation to the valiant Sons of the Vikings. They were silent and moody during the evening, and sat staring into the big bonfire on the saeter green with stern and melancholy features. They had suffered defeat in battle, and it behooved them to avenge it. About nine o'clock they retired into their bunks in the log cabin, but no sooner was Brumle-Knute's rhythmic snoring perceived than Wolf-in-the-Temple ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... One of Johnnie Wilt's original ideas | |for entertaining his twin sister | |Charlotte is to build a big bonfire on | |the floor of their playroom. | | | | Johnnie, who is 4 years old, carried his | |plan into execution at the Wilt home, 2474 | |Lake View avenue, for the first time | |yesterday afternoon, with results that | |made a lasting impression upon his mind | |and the finishings ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... metamorphosis in Virgil of the ships into mermaids is not more absurd than an army of twelve or thirteen thousand of the flower of our troops and nobility performing the office of link-boys, making a bonfire, and running away! The French have said well, "les Anglois viennent nous casser des vitres avec des guin'ees."(900) We have lost six men, they five, and about a hundred vessels, from a fifty-gun ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... 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
... unusually small. Bad luck of this sort could only be the work of some evil influence, and to break the spell a sheep's heart had to be procured, into which many pins were stuck. The heart was then burnt in a bonfire on the beach, in the presence of the fishermen, who danced ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... worm, the priming-wire, and twelve flints in their pockets. These were the bold minute-men of New Jersey, and Frederick Frelinghuysen was their gallant Dutch captain, who stood ready to march, in case an alarm bonfire burned on Sourland Mountain, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... before was repeated, only with greater intensity, and even in the sunlight I could see that the various hues his fiery breathings took on were gorgeous beyond description. A bonfire built of red, pink, green, and yellow lights, backed up by driftwood in a fearful state ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... cure for the habit is a violent measure which few indeed are brave enough to adopt. Make a bonfire of the offensive garments, dear lady; then stay away from the remnant counters, and after a while you will ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... the amusements held sway till about half-past four, when even the quality tired of their croquet; the day, though bright, was cold, and a bonfire on the rocks was greatly patronized by the very old and very young, while distant preparations for tea were viewed, at first with stealthy, half-reluctant admiration, and then with open restlessness. The patriarchs—toothless ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... learn nothing concerning him is that, soon after 1832, when the Reform Bill did away with Troy's Mayor and Corporation, as well as with its two Members of Parliament, someone made a bonfire of all the Borough records. O Alexandria! And the man said at the time that he ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... an evening, should you travel down that highway, you may see the leaping light of a bonfire by which a group of young people are toasting marshmallows on the summit of the knoll where Ed Schiefflin ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... was trumpery which had begun to accumulate in his father's day. Among the rest was a dried tapeworm. And now, after lying half a century in his garret and other dust holes, these things were not burned; instead of a bonfire, or purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, or increasing of them. The neighbors eagerly collected to view them, bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and dust holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they will start again. ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... 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. "Bear this ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... a year's deliberation, Luther was condemned as the teacher of forty-one heresies; and in January, after he had made a bonfire of the Papal Bull and of the Canon Law, he was excommunicated. According to imperial constitutions three centuries old, the next step was that the civil magistrate, as the favourite phrase was, would send the culprit through the transitory flames of ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... give him out of the tree he has just prostrated. It is really pleasant to think of it. There will be the great fire-place, with a huge block for a back-log; then a pile will be built against it large enough for a bonfire—and then such a crackling and streaming! why the dark night just around there will be all in a blush with it. And the little window will glow like a red star to the people of the village; and then within, there will be the immense antlers over the door, belonging to a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... "I am going to build a bonfire this evening, to burn up this rubbish, so you may have a ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... ladder of success, where he is a glowing example and guide to other men. [The suggestion which a reader with a sense of humor may get is, that a man starts out as a traveler, suddenly becomes a hod-carrier, and is then transformed into a bonfire ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... on our country forever. What triumph would it not be for Spain and Portugal! The like of this would never more be tried!" Then he gave every man his former rank and dismissed them. Moone, meeting Will Harvest that night by the light of a bonfire, was the only man who dared venture a comment. "We was spoilin' for a lickin'," he said, "and we got it. I do hope and trust we'll keep out o' mischief till Frankie gets us home to Plymouth, Hol'." Will grinned back cheerfully, and there ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... throngs of the townsfolk, men, women, and children, many of whom were bearing torches and lanthorns, all flocking in the same direction. Following them we found ourselves in the market-place, where crowds of apprentice lads were piling up faggots for a bonfire, while others were broaching two or three great puncheons of ale. The cause of this sudden outbreak of rejoicing was, we learned, that news had just come in that Albemarle's Devonshire militia had partly deserted and partly been defeated ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... threw pearls into her drink, in mere waste; which was reckoned foolish of her. But here had the Modern Aristocracy of men brought the divinest of its Arts, heavenly Music itself; and, piling all the upholsteries and ingenuities that other human art could do, had lighted them into a bonfire to illuminate an hour's flirtation of Singedelomme, Mahogany, and these improper persons! Never in Nature had I seen such waste before. O Colletti, you whose inborn melody, once of kindred as I judged ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... and principles had been thoroughly mastered, the huge bonfire of text-books in grammar and rhetoric might be regarded a fitting celebration of the students' victory over the difficulties of "English undefiled." But too often these rules are merely memorized by the student for the purpose of recitation, and are not engrafted upon his everyday ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... light that he came straight for me, and I felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist. He gave a whoop of dismay, staggered a little way, and fell down. I lit another piece of camphor, and went on gathering my bonfire. Presently I noticed how dry was some of the foliage above me, for since my arrival on the Time Machine, a matter of a week, no rain had fallen. So, instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began leaping ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... "Too big for a bonfire!" she said. "I'll go out and see, Margaret. What a pity the boys should miss it! I'll come back and ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... time in the morning—"got our anchors early," as our "carter" put it. The animation of the dogs, the lovely snow-covered country, the bright winter's sun pouring down, and doubly brilliant by reflection from the dazzling snow, the huge bonfire in the woods where we "cooked the kettle," all make one understand the call which the gipsy answers. Of course there is another side to the story, when one is caught out in bitter weather in a ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... the trees of the campus, paper lanterns like oranges aglow were swaying in the evening breeze. In front of Hallowell the flame of a bonfire shot to the top of the tallest elms, and gathered in a circle round it the glee club sang, and cheer succeeded cheer-cheers for the heroes of the cinder track, for the heroes of the diamond and the gridiron, cheers for the men who had flunked especially ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... 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 a pious and religious ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... we can get a couple of hundred yards into this thick wood the fire would not be seen through it," Vincent said; "of course I do not mean to make a great bonfire which would light ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... September 11th, 1700, but his father removed to Jedburgh shortly afterwards, and there the future poet gained his first impression of rural scenes. He began to rhyme in boyhood, but, unlike most young poets, had the good sense to make an annual bonfire of his youthful effusions. At the early age of fifteen he was sent to the university at Edinburgh, his father, who was a Presbyterian minister, wishing that his son should follow the same vocation. But Thomson was not destined to 'wag his ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... loose papers from blowing around and starting an incipient blaze in some cherished shrubbery or in the grass itself. I once lost a fine row of small pine trees in such a manner. They would have provided an ample screen from the main highway, had I exercised a little care with my miniature bonfire. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... earlier Garrick wrote to a friend:—'I did not hear till last night that your friends have generously contributed to your and their own happiness. No one can more rejoice at this circumstance than I do; and as I hope we shall have a bonfire upon the occasion, I beg that you will light it with the inclosed.' The inclosed was a bond for L280. Garrick Corres. ii. 297. Murphy says:—'Dr. Johnson often said that, when he saw a worthy family in distress, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... 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 ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... A fire was visible on a height near the town. The town boys were making merry. They had lit a bonfire, and were throwing the brands into the air; as they rose swiftly, the burning brands appeared like skyrockets against the blue sky. And these beautiful flights of fire in the darkness ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... the sentries—"Number one—all is well;" "Number two—all is well." By this sound I was able to locate them, and knew they were at their proper posts. On going round sentries about midnight, I was pleased to find that they were both alert, and that, as it was a cold night, each guard had built a bonfire, silhouetted in the cheerful blaze of which stood the sentry—a clear-cut monument to all round that here was a British sentry fully on the qui-vive. After impressing them with their orders, the extent of their "beat," and the direction of their "front," etc., I turned in. The fires they ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... a depth of almost sable colour; all was propitious for his work. Then suddenly, the air being to all seeming quite still, the grey-green leaves began to shake and quiver, until each olive tree was like a silver bonfire, tremulous with a thousand waves of white flame flowing and following along the branches. It was a revelation and swift effluence of life, perplexing and full of charm. The brush was laid down, the moment of inspiration gone, before the capricious leaves ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... in spite of the morning's rain, they all burned bravely. The fire had taken a firm hold already on the outhouse, which blazed higher and higher every moment; the back door was in the center of a red-hot bonfire; the eaves we could see, as we looked upward, were already smoldering, for the roof overhung, and was supported by considerable beams of wood. At the same time, hot, pungent, and choking volumes of smoke began to fill the house. There was ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Several persons illuminated their houses in token of their joy. On the following day, when Mr. Aislabie was conveyed to the Tower, the mob assembled on Tower-hill with the intention of hooting and pelting him. Not succeeding in this, they kindled a large bonfire, and danced around it in the exuberance of their delight. Several bonfires were made in other places; London presented the appearance of a holiday, and people congratulated one another as if they had just escaped from some great calamity. The rage upon the acquittal ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... at the Reist house and rode slowly towards his own quarters. Already the streets were lined with people awaiting the return of the King and the troops. Torches were waved hither and thither. In the open space in front of the palace a huge bonfire had been lit. Everywhere was the pleasant murmur of cheerful voices. Further down the street they were singing in a low rhythmical chant the National Anthem. Now the King was in sight, and a roar of voices welcomed him. The front of the palace blazed out in a fire of illuminations, ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... But the mob would wait for no justification. They insisted that, as they were not sure he was the right man, they would compromise the matter by hanging him instead of burning. Not to be outdone, they took the body down and made a huge bonfire out of it. ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... was fired. A great blaze of flame leaped from its muzzle, and the Independence shook with the concussion. But the bonfire seemed to spring into the air. It literally went up in a great shower of timber and coals, like fireworks, and when it sank darkness blotted out the space where ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... hurried east, and a quarter mile distant halted, and began hastily building a huge bonfire ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... smoke attack, which was to be provided by burning on the parapet of the front line trenches large quantities of damp straw, which had been carried up with much labour, and a good deal of very frank comment. Much to the relief of those intimately concerned with this bonfire, the wind on the day of the attack was unfavourable, and the straw at least did not end in smoke. The demonstration provided some amusement to our Grenadiers, who, with the assistance of a "Gamage" catapult, and two West Spring Throwers succeeded, to their immense delight in bursting the ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... quad, sir," he said. "The young gentlemen 'as a bonfire on, and they're a larking with the snow. Orful A they're ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... 26th of August, 1765, a bonfire was kindled in King Street. It flamed high upward, and threw a ruddy light over the front of the Town House, on which was displayed a carved representation of the royal arms. The gilded vane of the cupola glittered in the ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 turned ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... crawling painfully. His consciousness was dying out like an extinguishing bonfire, growing icy like the corpse of a man who had just died, whose heart is still warm but whose hands and feet had already become stiffened with cold. His dying reason flared up as red as blood again and said that ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... had been chosen on account of its being the day of her accession and of Queen Mary's death. She was set about with gilded laurel-wreaths, and bore a gilded sceptre; and beneath her, like some sacrificial fire, blazed a great bonfire, roaring up to heaven with its sparks and smoke. Half a dozen masked fellows, in fantastic dresses, tended the bonfire and replenished the flambeaux that burned about the effigy. Indeed it was strangely like some pagan religious spectacle—the ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... young Audubon that his drawings for many years fell so far short of his ideal, that on each of his birthdays he regularly made a bonfire of all he had produced during the previous year. He cared for nothing else, however, and after his return to America, his home became a museum of birds' eggs and stuffed birds. He took long tramps through the wilderness, with no companions save dog and gun, all the ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... rate,' quoth Philip, 'we'll have the best bonfire that ever was seen in the country! Lucy, you'll coax my father to give us ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had not previously been familiar, proved to be a quaint little channel of old brick houses, leading into the bonfire of the summer sunset. There was nothing to distinguish number 1316 from its neighbors. He rang the bell, and there ensued a rapid clicking in the lock, indicating that the latch had been released by some one within. He pushed the ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... memory of that courageous and brilliant pathfinder. When they do so, two memorable scenes in the life of their heroine will probably be represented in bas-relief upon the pedestal. The one will portray Miss Burney, hopeless of ever inducing a biased public to read a woman's work, making a bonfire of the manuscripts to which she had devoted such patient care. The other will illustrate the famous scene when Miss Burney danced a jig to Daddy Crisp round the great mulberry-tree at Chessington. It was, her diary tells us, the uncontrollable outcome ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... was, I don't believe J. Bayard knew just how big a bonfire he was touchin' off. I know I thought he was nutty when he wants me to O.K. his plan for buyin' a hundred shares ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... however, that in an instant they emerged from the cloud into the moonlight again. Once a high-soaring eagle flew right against the invisible Perseus. The bravest sights were the meteors that gleamed suddenly out as if a bonfire had been kindled in the sky and made the moonshine pale for as much as a hundred miles ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... Holi festival marks 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 ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... this fighting Mr. Smooth would not have the least objection to taking a hand, provided always that there was some coin to be made at it. However, before entering upon the fighting business, Mr. Smooth would especially stipulate that all Austrian notes and Prussian protocols be used up in a bonfire, Austria be turned adrift as an inconsistent huckster without principles, the diplomatic donkeys be driven into the Danube, and all constitutional governments bound by arbitrary yokes set free. In that ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... shakes hands with his "good brother." By the pope's side we find the devil busily engaged in sealing up the Bible. Behind him stands the Temple of Mammon, surrounded by a crowd of reverend worshippers. Two fiends standing by the side of "Old Thirty-nine" make preparations for a bonfire, to which sundry bundles labelled, "Articles of Faith," "Athanasian Creed," "Catechism," "Liturgies," "Nicene Creed," and so on, will contribute materials. Out of a building in the rear, inscribed, "National School for Thirty-niners only," issues a procession of ecclesiastics and beadles carrying ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... exceptions. They cannot even do this without a bull. During the late Irish rebellion, there was a banker to whom they had a peculiar dislike, and on whom they had vowed vengeance: accordingly they got possession of as many of his bank-notes as they could, and made a bonfire of them! This might have been called a feu de joie, perhaps, but certainly not un feu d'artifice; for nothing could show less art than burning a banker's notes in order to destroy his credit. How much better ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... of the Kokko fires, no one in Finland seems very certain. The custom must be a very ancient one, though it is continued universally in that little-known country to the present day. As a rule, the bonfire is lit on the top of a hill, or in places where there is water at the water's edge, preferably on a small island, or sometimes on a raft which, when ignited, is floated out over the surface ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... often to the highest hill in the center of the island, where he would spend long periods, examining the sea from horizon to horizon with his strong glasses, searching vainly for a sail. He thought once of keeping a mighty bonfire burning every night, but he reconsidered it when he reflected on the character of the ship ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with the footsteps. Peter followed him cautiously, and thus they entered the court of the high priest almost simultaneously and mingled in the crowd of the priests who were warming themselves at the bonfires. Judas warmed his bony hands morosely at the bonfire and heard Peter saying ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... own admirable rule, that "an author is not to write all he can, but only all he ought."[26] In his worst images, however, there is often a vividness that half excuses them. But it is a grotesque vividness, as from the flare of a bonfire. They do not flash into sudden lustre, as in the great poets, where the imaginations of poet and reader leap toward each other ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... proposed we should git up a mass meetin'. The meetin' was largely attended. We held it in the open air round a roarin' bonfire. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... that 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
... on the 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 but refused ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... "The contributions 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.') "The poem, humble as it is, was suggested ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... reaching Keneh, the town forty miles north of Luxor, my men held a grand fantasia on the bank. There was no wind, and we found a lot of old maize stalks; so there was a bonfire, and no end of drumming, singing and dancing. Even Omar relaxed his dignity so far as to dance the dance of the Alexandria young men; and very funny it all was. I laughed consumedly; especially at the modest airs and graces of ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... 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 pretty scene of children dancing ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... Progress," which, by the way, was probably, like Ronsard's poems, the work of an amateur. But these were other times, when an author did not expect to make money, and thought himself lucky if, after a slashing personal review by the Inquisition, his fragments were not burned at the stake in a bonfire ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... did turn over all the parson's things and made a bonfire of all his popish books. The little ones be dancing ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... singing the hymn, "Onward, Christian soldiers." They were followed by the company, and made a complete tour of the grounds. In the evening tea and coffee were served to the assembled guests, and the day's entertainment concluded with a display of fireworks and a bonfire on one of ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... diminish our advantages, your absolute triumph was acknowledged: You conquered at the Hague, as entirely as at London; and the return of a shattered fleet, without an admiral, left not the most impudent among them the least pretence for a false bonfire, or a dissembled day of public thanksgiving. All our achievements against them afterwards, though we sometimes conquered, and were never overcome, were but a copy of that victory, and they still fell short of their original: somewhat of fortune was ever wanting, to fill up the title of ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... naughty that, in gratitude, I gave him five minutes with a matchbox. Matches, which he drops on the floor when lighted, are the greatest treat you can give David; indeed, I think his private heaven is a place with a roaring bonfire. ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... in their time-worn khaki clothing. At one side of the camp was the tent of the mess sergeant, equipped like a portable species of corner grocery. Near by, Paddy apparently was in his element, presiding over his camp-kitchen, a vast bonfire encircled with a dozen iron pots. At the farther edge of the camp Weldon was umpiring a game of football between his own squadron and a company of the Derbys. Owing to the athletic zeal of the hour, it was big-side, and Weldon was too busy in keeping ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... shining spars made a wavering path over the weed-strewn water, and up this path the dinghy moved amid its own flashing fires. It formed a queer spectacle, a glowworm creeping up on a bonfire. ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... body became fiercely conscious. Prickling thrills, not due to bonfire heat, shot over it. Shame sent the blood in mantling blushes to her cheeks, although she tried to stop it. Why should she blush at sight of him? True, she had been there in the water, bare as any new-born babe, when he had reached ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... intimacy with John Earl of Bute; and with a practical pun on his name the mob in some of the riots which were common in the first years of his reign showed their belief in the lie by fastening a jack-boot and a petticoat together and feeding a bonfire ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... Bill to a blasted sycamore, and then, while he cut poles from the willow bushes that grew along the bank, Custer built a huge bonfire, by the light of which they presently ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... and stretching himself to his full height, said: "Prove to me, gentlemen, that your Bible sanctions the slavery of woman—the complete subjugation of one-half the race to the other—and I should feel that the best work I could do for humanity would be to make a grand bonfire of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a bonfire. Somebody's shed is burning up; and though it looks nice it isn't any fun for them. We ought to ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... no mad celebration that night, as on the occasion of the victory over Marshall. The town authorities had forbidden a single bonfire to be started in the streets of the town. That burning of the Adkins home must serve as a lesson, through which they should profit. Instead, a banquet was arranged for an a succeeding evening, by some of the friends and admirers of the football team, which all ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... gone to his cabin he found four of the inmates lying drunk on the floor, the fires expiring, and Guyon Vidocq in a delirium of intoxication pulling everything to pieces— table, benches, etcetera—to pile them in the corner, and, then, as he said, light a real Christmas bonfire. John Bar immediately saw the danger that the poor creatures on the floor were in, and whilst he tried to get fires going in the stove and chimney-place as quickly as possible, he also exerted his influence to soothe Guyon Vidocq and make him cease his crazy work. But the ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... dust of conflict, the vote-storms of great campaigns, have robbed long since of any 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, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... in the University of California, one night I went to the circus. After the show and the concert I lingered on to watch the working of the transportation machinery of a great circus. The circus was leaving that night. By a bonfire I came upon a bunch of small boys. There were about twenty of them, and as they talked with one another I learned that they were going to run away with the circus. Now the circus-men didn't want to be bothered with this mess of urchins, and ...
— The Road • Jack London
... concentrated in this little village. Private houses had suddenly become ministries; 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 for ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... rare blaze they will make!" continued Carne, as the sunlight glanced along the russet thatch, and the blue smoke arose from the earliest chimney. "Every cottage there shall be a bonfire, because it has cast off allegiance to me. The whole race of Darling will be at my mercy—the pompous old Admiral, who refused to call on me till his idiot of a son persuaded him—that wretched ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... forgiven for regarding the destroyers of her household gods with some asperity, contents herself, in writing to Mrs. Barbauld, with the sarcasm that the Birmingham people "will scarcely find so many respectable characters, a second time, to make a bonfire of." ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley |
