"Scaffold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rais'd to serve their insatiable avarice, and prodigious disloyalty. For so it pleased God to chastise their implacable persecution of an excellent Prince, with a slavery under such a Tyrant, as not being contented to butcher even some upon the Scaffold, sold divers of them for slaves, and others he exild into cruell banishment, without pretence of Law, or the least commiseration; that those who before had no mercy on others, might find none themselves; ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... piece of self-deception: not the whole of the Dutchman, not one-tenth of it, grows out of Senta's ballad; Senta's ballad is not an oak-trunk with all the solos, duets, choruses and the rest growing out as branches with leaves grow from a trunk—it is a scaffold-pole upon which these things are tacked in an almost unparalleled fervour of imagination. That Wagner recognized this is plainly seen in the prose remarks he penned, in very cold blood, in his after years, when he looked at ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... his trial he was attainted and condemned to death. Great efforts were made to obtain a mitigation of the sentence, but the government was obdurate, and Derwentwater was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 24th of February 1716, declaring on the scaffold his devotion to the Roman Catholic religion and to King James III. The earl was very popular among his tenantry and in the neighbourhood of his residence, Dilston Hall. His gallant bearing and his sad fate have been celebrated in song and story, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... the aborigines called upon them for increased exertion. They were wasting away with disease—they were dying on the scaffold—they were being shot down in mistake for native dogs, and their bleeding and ghastly heads had been exhibited on poles, as ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... all they had done, and shutting out the ceiling from every one but himself, worked alone. Often for days he would not leave the building, for fear some one would meddle with the work. He drew up food by a string and slept on the scaffold without changing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... man—what misery, what horror, might not be lying in wait in the dreadful future! If he failed in the act of vengeance, that violent death of which he had written so heedlessly might overtake him from another hand. If he succeeded, the law might discover his crime, and the infamy of expiation on the scaffold might be his dreadful end. She turned, shuddering, from the contemplation of those hideous possibilities, and took refuge in the hope of his safe, his guiltless return. Even if his visions of success, even if his purposes of reform (how hopeless at his age!) were actually ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... act imposed the death penalty on anyone who called the king a "heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper." The great majority of the English people seem to have accepted this new legislation without much objection; those who refused to do so perished on the scaffold. The most eminent victim was Sir Thomas More, [19] formerly Henry's Lord Chancellor and distinguished for eloquence and profound learning. His execution sent a ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... long shelf to a clump of juniper. Then there was an easy chimney; then a piece of good hand-and-foot climbing; and last, another ledge which led by an easy gradient to the top. I figured all this out as I have heard a condemned man will count the windows of the houses on his way to the scaffold. ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... saint inscribed on the calendar for that day, and fed and brought him up as his own son. The curate died in 1804, without leaving enough property to carry on the education he had begun. Ferdinand, thrown upon Paris, led a filibustering life whose chances might bring him to the scaffold, to fortune, the bar, the army, commerce, or domestic life. Obliged to live like a Figaro, he was first a commercial traveller, then a perfumer's clerk in Paris, where he turned up after traversing all France, having studied the world ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... tale with much affection and feeling. He witnessed the gentlemanly manners and equanimity of this heroic soldier, while in his house, under the most trying circumstances, and from its threshold to the fatal spot. In his room the prisoner could hear the sound of the axe employed in erecting the scaffold; and on one occasion, in the presence of a friend, when these sounds, terrible to all but himself, were more than usually distinct, he is said to have observed, with great composure, "that every sound he heard from that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... and Gorsas were journalist deputies in the first year of the French Republic. Gorsas was the first of the deputies who died on the scaffold. Carlyle thus refers to them, and to the "hundred other names forgotten now," in his 'French Revolution' (vol. iii. book i. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... prisoners were released through some favor of the authorities, but Brisbau and his men were imprisoned. In the hands of the king's officers their lives were in great jeopardy, but they finally escaped the scaffold. ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... perilous trial. The ordinary occupations of life were abandoned; the plough was staid in the unfinished furrow; wives gave up their husbands, and mothers gave up their sons, to the battles of a civil war. Death might come, in honor, on the field; it might come, in disgrace, on the scaffold. For either and for both they were prepared. The sentiment of Quincy was full in their hearts. "Blandishments," said that distinguished son of genius and patriotism, "will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a halter intimidate; ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... far, therefore, it was necessary that Jacques Rollet should die; so the affair took its course; and early one morning the guillotine was erected in the court-yard of the jail, three criminals ascended the scaffold, and three heads fell into the basket, which were presently afterward, with the trunks that had been attached to them, buried in ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... withheld by my respect for a sacred event, I might recall that a priest has felt it to be his duty to disavow in public a sublime speech which will remain the noblest that has ever been pronounced on a scaffold: "Son of Saint Louis, rise to heaven!" When I learned not long ago its real author, I was overcome by the destruction of my illusion, but before long I was consoled by a thought that does honor to humanity in my eyes. I feel that France has consecrated this speech, because she felt the ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... revolutionary rage had penetrated even to that quiet and distant place. The hideous "Fete of the Supreme Being" had been celebrated at Paris; the practice of our ancient religion was forbidden; its professors were most of them in concealment, or in exile, or had expiated on the scaffold their crime of Christianity. In our poor village my uncle's church was closed, and he, himself, an inmate in my brother's house, only owing his safety to his great popularity among his former flock, and the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ceased, and still no one came out to descend the stairs. Appalled by the silence, they broke open the door, and discovered Fletcher hanging by the neck from a coat-hook; a chair, overturned, had served as the scaffold from which he had stepped into eternity. They took him down, but life was already gone. A paper lay on his hat, with these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... for trial. This, however, did not satisfy the crowd, who clamored for instant punishment, and finally succeeded in forcing the doors of the jail and overcoming the officers. The prisoner was hurried forth, amid the shouts and execrations of the multitude, a scaffold was erected, and at nine o'clock the same evening he was hung, with the ceremonies usually observed. An attempt at lynching was made in San Francisco about the same time. Two ruffians, having attempted to rob and murder a merchant ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... fame in this great Babylon. If they had seen me three times at the spectacle, they would no longer look at me." Another day Bourienne could not help congratulating him on some noisy demonstration of popular favour. "Bah!" he answered, "they would rush as eagerly about me if I were on my way to the scaffold." ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... ploughshare through hundreds of families, until the wife sat in rags, and the daughters were disgraced, and the sons grew up to the same infamous practices, or took a short cut to destruction across the murderer's scaffold. Home has lost all charms for the gambler. How tame are the children's caresses and a wife's devotion to the gambler! How drearily the fire burns on the domestic hearth! There must be louder laughter, and something to win and something to lose; an excitement to drive the heart faster and ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... had been managed with great skill; for no sooner had I extinguished the fire of my camp, and laid me down to rest, in full security, as I thought, than I felt myself seized by an indistinguishable number of hands, and was immediately pinioned, as if about to be led to the scaffold for execution. To have attempted to be refractory would have proved useless and dangerous to my life; and I suffered myself to be removed from my camp to theirs, a few miles distant, without uttering even a word of complaint. You are aware, I dare say, that to act in this manner was ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... hopes rose high. Dreams visited his slumber, not of the sable-decked scaffold in the Tower-yard, but of canopies of state, obsequious courtiers, pomp, splendor, the smile of the once more gracious queen, and a light beaming from the magic gem, which ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... upon but with an eye of condemnation. He was certain that in the breasts of hundreds a spark, yea, a burning flame, of pity shone for him,—that he met not his death uncared for,—that many a tear would flow in pity for him, and that he would wend his way to the scaffold comforted by the consciousness of his innocence, and consoled by ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... at the Mandan village were made of two limbs growing nearly parallel and severed below the junction, as shown in the figure, and set with the forked end upon the ground, and the ends against the scaffold. Depressions were sunk in the rails to receive the rounds, which were secured by rawhide strings. They were usually from ten to twelve feet long, and one or two at ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... month, and the next no work and terror of starvation, but steady work and plenty of leisure every month; not cheap market wares, that is to say, adulterated wares, with scarcely any GOOD in them, mere scaffold-poles for building up profits; no labour would be spent on such things as these, which people would cease to want when they ceased to be slaves. Not these, but such goods as best fulfilled the real uses of the consumers, ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... ever see folks shear sheep, Child? Well, it was a sight in dem days. Marster would tie a sheep on de scaffold, what he had done built for dat job, and den he would have me set on de sheep's head whilst he cut off de wool. He sont it to de factory to have it carded into bats and us chillun spun de thread at home and mammy and Mistess wove it ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... button-hole is employed at the present time by our patent-ridden compatriots. The shirt, for instance, which was formerly such a simple-minded and straightforward garment, knowing no guile, has become, in the hands of the inventors, a mere pretence, a frail scaffold, on which an elaborate superstructure ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... Antoinette's turn to ascend the scaffold, which she did October 16, 1793. Her daughter, Marie Theresa, was then left alone with her aunt, the ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... to eat Tucuma, another kind of palm fruit. The tree, as it grows in clusters beside the palm-thatched huts, is a noble ornament, being, when full grown, from fifty to sixty feet in height and often as straight as a scaffold-pole. A bunch of fruit when ripe is a load for a strong man, and each tree bears several of them. The Pupunha grows wild nowhere on the Amazons. It is one of those few vegetable productions (including ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... were very kind. Somebody—an uncle, I think—left me a packet of sandwiches and a little something in a flask, in case, as he said, I should feel peckish on the scaffold. ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... his greatest suspense and fear as to the event, he remembered the festival given in his honour, by Perdita; in his honour then, when misery and death were affixing indelible disgrace to his name, honour to him whose crimes deserved a scaffold; this was the worst mockery. Still Perdita would expect him; he wrote a few incoherent words on a scrap of paper, testifying that he was well, and bade the woman of the house take it to the palace, and deliver it into the hands of the wife of ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... evinced much penitence, both in prison and on the scaffold. It is remarkable that Fawkes, the most desperate of the whole number, appeared to be the most penitent at the time of his execution. They all declared their adherence to the church of Rome, dying, ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... instead of permitting their malignity to intimidate his age or alarm his affection, he told the officer (who kept guard in his chambers) that if his grandson were to lose his head for fidelity to Poland, he should behold him with as proud an eye mounting the scaffold as entering the streets of Warsaw with her freedom in his hand. "The only difference would be," continued Sobieski, "that as the first cannot happen until all virtue be dead in this land, I should regard his last gasp as the expiring sigh of that virtue which, by him, had ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... temper. Rarely did he come to a lesson without bringing me some message from his mother and little present in his hand—a few flowers, a spring chicken, some nice fruit, a partridge. This queer rustic scaffold for my books and work, Harry constructed it himself, and I would not exchange it for the most elegant and ingenious of whatnots. I could do nothing for him but listen to his long thoughts and aspirations: that was when you were ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... in casting his vote for death, and all the accused, with the one exception of an old gardener, were sent to the scaffold. ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... was he carried to the Greve, where was builded a very substantial scaffold of strong timber, whereupon he was to be tormented to death. By the executioners, he was bound to an engine of wood and iron, made like to a St. Andrew's Cross; and then the hand, with the knife chained to it, wherewith he slew the king, ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... among other authorities which window of the Banquetting House the doomed king passed through upon the scaffold to the block; but the custodian had no doubts. He would not allow a choice of windows, and as to a space broken through the wall, he had never heard of it. But we were so well satisfied with his window as to shrink involuntarily from it, and from the scene without whose eternal substance showed ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... Chichester's illustrious sons is Archbishop Juxon, who stood by the side of Charles I. on the scaffold and bade farewell to him in the words "You are exchanging from a temporal to an eternal crown—a ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... spoken till the breath was clean gone out of him, and then, if man coveted vengeance, let him take it on the silent dust. But no sooner was it known to the Queen—to her, a woman and a mother!—than she gave command to have the scaffold run up with all speed, and that dying man drawn of an hurdle through the city that all men might behold, with trumpets going afore, and at last hanged of the gallows till he were dead. Oh, the pity of it! the ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... Ruled with an iron rod. Then it chanced in a nobleman's palace That a necklace of pearls was lost, and erelong a suspicion Fell on an orphan girl who lived as maid in the household. She, after form of trial condemned to die on the scaffold, Patiently met her doom at the foot of the statue of Justice. As to her Father in heaven her innocent spirit ascended, Lo! o'er the city a tempest rose; and the bolts of the thunder Smote the statue of bronze, and hurled in wrath from its left hand Down on the pavement below the clattering ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... human affairs, but I see—I see clearly through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to see the time this declaration shall be made good. We may die; die colonists; die slaves; die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold. Be it so: be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while I do live, let me have a country, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... undertook to punish all the wretches who kill their wives that it would have too much to do. After all, one kick more or less: what does it matter in the end? And this poor creature, in her desire to save her husband from the scaffold, declared she had fallen ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the rebellion had passed, Canada had overthrown a system of government by oligarchy. She had ousted special interests forever from her legislative halls. In a blood and sweat of agony, on the scaffold, in the chain gang, penniless, naked, hungry and in exile, her patriots had fought the dragon of privilege, cast out the accursed thing and founded national life on the eternal rocks of justice to ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... start in two hours for Bourg." On November 30th he continues: "You will perhaps have heard that after two months of unheard-of efforts to save him from his punishment Peytel went two days ago to the scaffold, like a Christian, said the priest; I say, like ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... time, too, "Sam Patch" made his last and fatal leap from a scaffold twenty five feet above the falls of Genesee, which are ninety-six feet in height. From thence he plunged into the foaming river to rise no more in life. The following spring the body of the foolish man was found and buried, after having lain several ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... the yak, and then cutting its flesh into strips—the erection of the scaffold-poles, and stringing up of the meat, occupied all hands for the space of several hours, so that when the job was finished ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... throwing herself at the feet of the judges, said: 'There remain to me of all my family only my brothers! Mother, father, sister—you have butchered all; and now you are going to condemn my brothers. Oh! in mercy ordain that I may ascend the scaffold with them!' Her prayer was refused, and she threw herself ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... more in a bunch. But now, do you know what they just done with ole Mr. White Calf? Why, they taken him out along with 'em a ways, till they thought we was fur enough away from 'em, an' then they probably got a lot of poles tied up, or else found a tree, an' they planted him on top of a scaffold, like jerked beef, an' left him there fer to dry a-plenty, with all his war clothes on and his gun along with him. Else, if they couldn't git no good place like that, they likely taken him up on to ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... frivolous idlers who at that time formed "good society," not only in Paris, but even in provincial towns, of which Boulogne was not the least gay. Perhaps he knows already that she quickly followed her husband to the scaffold. Her sister (I believe the only one) married a Parisian gentleman named Aublay, and died at a great age about ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... middle of the nineteenth century, was incredible! There was something terribly real, however, in the galling tightness of the rope that confined his arms, in the troop of stern horsemen that rode on each side of him, and in the cart with ropes, and the material for a scaffold, which was driven in front towards the square of the town. There was no sign of pity in the people or of mercy in ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... bluff, a tremendous storm of wind and rain came on. It was an awful scene. The sky seemed as black as midnight, except when the vivid sheets of lightning glared and shot across it; and the peals of thunder were loud and long. Lovelace knelt upon the scaffold, and the chaplain prayed with him. I think if there was anything could change a man's heart, it must have been the thought of dying at such a time, when God himself seemed wrathful at ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... in a bag of blood, Perpetua smiling on the lions in the amphitheatre, Martha cumbered with much service, Pocahontas under the shadow of the woods, Saint Theresa in the convent, Madame Roland on the scaffold, Mother Agnes at Port Royal, exiled De Stael wielding her pen as a sceptre, and Mrs. Fry ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... interests of art were swallowed up in the frightful turmoil which made Paris the center of attention for astonished and alarmed Europe. Cherubini's connection had been with the aristocracy, and now they were fleeing in a mad panic or mounting the scaffold. His livelihood became precarious, and he suffered severely during the first five years of anarchy. His seclusion was passed in studying music, the physical sciences, drawing, and botany; and his acquaintance was wisely confined to a few musicians ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... inbreathed Paris into my soul. When on the broad, handsome Place de la Concorde, I saw at the same time, with my bodily eyes, the beautifully impressive obelisk, and in my mind's eye the scaffold on which the royal pair met with their death in the Revolution; when in the Latin quarter I went upstairs to the house in which Charlotte Corday murdered Marat, or when, in the highest storey of the Louvre, I gazed at the little gray coat from Marengo and the three-cornered ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... the last cannon? No! emphatically, no! With Napoleon he might have cried, 'It is finished,' but then with the same calm brow yet bursting heart, he would have resigned his sword to his conquerors; and if the scaffold were his fate, met it with quiet dignity; or if the dungeon, there calmly await the Almighty's time when he might again raise his right arm for his country; still as great in the prison or on the scaffold, as when he was at the head of conquering armies. Napoleon's intellectual character ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... stealthily up them. It was Otter, and he held a knife in his hand. Now the dwarf vanished through the gates into the little guard-house at the top of the embankment. Another minute, and ropes began to creak. Then the tall drawbridge, standing upright like a scaffold against the sky, was seen to bend itself forward. Down it came very softly, and the slave-camp was open to them. Again the black shape appeared, this ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... during those two days; Halse, I remember, was first set to "shake down" the wheat off a high scaffold, for Dennett to feed into the beater; while Addison and I got away the straw. I deemed it great fun at first, to see the horses travel up the lags of the horse-power incline, and hear the machine in action; but I soon found ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... they have sometimes a scaena or high stage, raised like a scaffold, or small spelts, reeds, or dried osiers covered with mats which gives a shadow and is a shelter ... where on a loft of hurdles they lay forth their corn and fish ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... right. He afterward explained himself by saying that he cared not who made the laws of a people, so long as he furnished their ballots. Columbus was cruelly put to death by order of Richard III. of England, and as he walked to the scaffold he exclaimed to the throng that stood around him, "The world moves." The drums struck up to drown his words. Smiling at this little by-play, he adjusted his crimson mantle about him and laid his head upon the block. He then drank off ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... to wit, the education of the people and the maintenance of the poor, the Lord of Marney Abbey became a warm adherent of "civil and religious liberty,"—the cause for which Hampden had died in the field, and Russell on the scaffold,—and joined the other whig lords, and great lay impropriators, in calling over the Prince of Orange and a Dutch army, to vindicate those popular principles which, somehow or other, the people would never support. Profiting by this last pregnant ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... delivered Greece from the Persian invader, expelled the Tarquins from Rome, emancipated Switzerland and Holland, restored the Prince to his throne, and brought Charles to the scaffold. And the sword redeemed the pledge of the Congress of '76 when they plighted to each other "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." And yet, what would the redemption of that pledge have availed towards ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of bamboo, through which a hole had been bored, and a brass ornamental termination (of an Elizabethan pattern) formed the head of the pipe.—Why may not this have been the pipe of that Bishop of London who had risen into Elizabeth's favour by attending Mary on the scaffold at Fotheringay, and who, having fallen into disgrace in consequence of a second marriage at an advanced period of his life, sought, we are told, in the retirement of his house at Fulham, "to lose his sorrow in a mist of smoke,"—and actually died ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... terror. Two or three days passed before he could make up his mind to ask for an interview with her; and he spent the time in making as much interest with Leicester, Hatton, and Sidney, as if he were about to sue for a reprieve from the scaffold. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... appearing publicly in connection with a murder trial. Many important witnesses in such cases have to be practically forced into giving their evidence. They feel there is defilement even in the shadow of the scaffold.' ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... the day on which the swinging takes place, another act of great cruelty is practised. Devotees throw themselves from, the top of a high wall, or a scaffold of twenty or thirty feet in height, upon a bed of iron spikes, or on bags of straw with knives in them. Many are often mangled and torn. ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... and director of a wooden bridge or of a causeway—administering a buffet to this one, a shove to another; praising that one, or calling this other a lazy fellow; giving a bunch of cigars to the one who stays an hour longer to work, or carries most bricks up to the scaffold; promising to kill a cow for the food of next day; and making them offers, often without any intention of fulfilling them, only with the object of encouraging them, and deceiving them like children. [106] But whoever knows the country can do no less than confess ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... falling, for what was called heresy; and now those who had inflicted death on others were called upon to bear the same witness to their own sincerity. England became the theatre of a war between two armies of martyrs, to be waged, not upon the open field, in open action, but on the stake and on the scaffold, with the nobler weapons of passive endurance. Each party were ready to give their blood; each party were ready to shed the blood of their antagonists; and the sword was to single out its victims in the rival ranks, not as in peace among those whose crimes ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... steadfastly believe,' they need to remember that religious truth which does not mould and transform character and conduct is a king dethroned; and for dethroned kings there is a short step between the throne from which they have descended and the scaffold on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... last the door rattled and all was quiet. Yes. And so they hanged them. Throttled them both with a rope. A watchman, another one, saw it done, and told me that Lozinsky did not resist, but Rozovsky struggled for a long time, so that they had to pull him up on to the scaffold and to force his head into the noose. Yes. This watchman was a stupid fellow. He said: 'They told me, sir, that it would be frightful, but it was not at all frightful. After they were hanged they ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... possible, and reeled like an ox but partially stunned by the butcher's hammer. Suddenly a desperate resolution could be read in his eyes, the resolution of the condemned criminal, who, knowing that he cannot escape the scaffold, ascends it with a ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... while he trembled, and turned burning hot at the idea of speedy death, he fell to counting the iron spikes before him, and wondering how the head of one had been broken off, and whether they would mend it, or leave it as it was. Then, he thought of all the horrors of the gallows and the scaffold—and stopped to watch a man sprinkling the floor to cool it—and then went ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... hardwood handle, usually of guava wood, and is retained in place by a couple of plaits of rattan. The edge of the ax is only 6 or 7 centimeters long and yet it is surprising what the average Manbo man can accomplish with this insignificant-looking implement. Mounted upon his frail scaffold he attacks the mighty trees of his forest home and with unerring blow brings them down ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... which he died, as it is to the truth of history. I know no justification; at any distance of time, for calumniating a historical character: surely truth belongs to the dead, and to the unfortunate; and they who have died upon a scaffold have generally had faults enough of their own, without attributing to them those which the very incurring of the perils which conducted them to their violent death render, of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... a looking at fate for a lesson in deportment on life's scaffold. If we find the lesson painful, how shall we face ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... on my own. Another story and I have done;—the Newgate Calendar makes mention of a notorious housebreaker, who closed his career of outrage and violence by the murder of a whole family, whose house he robbed; on the scaffold he entreated permission to speak a few words to the crowd beneath, and thus addressed them:—"My friends, it is quite true I murdered this family; in cold blood I did it—one by one they fell beneath my hand, while I rifled their coffers, and took forth their effects; but ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... I employed a mixture of milk of lime and salt (about three parts of stone lime to one part of salt), for a court or light well. To save the trouble and expense of a scaffold to work on, I had it applied with a hand fire engine (garden syringe?) to the opposite walls. The results were most satisfactory. For four years the weather has had no effect upon it, and I have obtained a good and cheap means of lighting the court ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... care of yourself, my son," hiccoughed the priest as he crossed himself. The captain gave a light laugh, sipped his coffee, and went on as if a dungeon, scaffold, and noose were the last ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... after Whitsuntide and the 24th day of May, early in the morning, Maitre Jean Beaupere visited Jeanne in her prison and warned her that she would be shortly taken to the scaffold to hear ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... of a princess, the learning of a clerk, the life of a saint, and the death of a malefactor for her parents' offences." These parents worried her into accepting the crown—they played for high stakes and lost—and her father and father-in-law, her husband and herself, all perished on the scaffold. We are told that this unfortunate lady still haunts Bradgate House, and on the last night of the dying year a phantom carriage, drawn by four gray horses, glides around the ruins with her headless body. The old oaks have a gnarled and stunted appearance, tradition ascribing it to the ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... advanced, and before the youthful loyalty of feeling which guided Louis XIV., Colbert's favor would disappear at once; the latter trembled, therefore, lest so daring a blow might overthrow his whole scaffold; in point of fact, the opportunity was so admirably suited to be taken advantage of, that a skillful, practiced player like Aramis would not have let it slip. "Sire," said Fouquet, with an easy, unconcerned air, "since you have had the kindness to ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the death of Frederick II., the war of the popes against his successors lasted for seventeen years. After the defeat of Manfred (1266), Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufens, died on the scaffold at Naples. Charles of Anjou lost Sicily through the rebellion of the Sicilian Vespers (1282); and dominion in that island, separated from Naples, passed to the house of Aragon. The papal states, after the election of Rudolph of Hapsburg, became a distinct sovereignty of the pontiffs. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... are coming with us to join Monmouth. What would your father say? This is no holiday jaunt, but one that may have a sad and stern ending. At the best, victory can only come through much bloodshed and danger. At the worst, we are as like to wind up upon a scaffold as not.' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for thee, coyest of maidens— Long, long have we worshipped thee, queen of the brave! Steadily sought for thee, readily fought for thee, Purpled the scaffold and glutted the grave! ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... the bounty of nature and the favour of Jehovah. The patriarchal feeling lingers about his hearth. A man, however fallen, who loves his home is not wholly lost. The trumpet of Sinai still sounds in the Hebrew ear, and a Jew is never seen upon the scaffold, unless it be at an auto ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... accounts in his hands, but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. Socrates'[344] condemnation of himself to be maintained in all honor in the Prytaneum,[345] during his life, and Sir Thomas More's[346] playfulness at the scaffold, are of the same strain. In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Sea Voyage," Juletta tells the stout captain and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the name of a certain river in the north whose narrow estuary is inhospitable and dangerous, and whose docks are like a nightmare of dreariness and misery. Their dismal shores are studded thickly with scaffold-like, enormous timber structures, whose lofty heads are veiled periodically by the infernal gritty night of a cloud of coal-dust. The most important ingredient for getting the world's work along is distributed ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... made of paper, and a glue made by boiling fish skin. Some dived under the sea for red coral, which they hauled up by means of straw ropes, in great sprigs as thick as the branches of a tree. They quickly ran up a scaffold, and while some of the scarlet-headed plasterers smeared the walls, others below passed up the tempered mortar on long shell shovels, to the hand mortar-boards. Even at work they had casks and cups of sake at hand, while children ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... could only be obtained against 200 persons, and even these were supported by forged and corrupt evidence.[499] Sir Phelim O'Neill was the only person convicted in Ulster, and he was offered his life again and again, and even on the very steps of the scaffold, if he would consent ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... good souls from Union City showed how exemplary had been the life of their brother since he came among them, and the lawyer whom these good people employed pointed out the shame and disgrace that would be suffered by a worthy family if one bearing the name of Darcy should die upon the scaffold. It is strange that in such cases the lawyers on the other side do not show that the shame and disgrace come with the commission of the crime, and that honest punishment endured for the same is the one means left the criminal to atone for the injury he has done the ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... when the sea was calm they slung a scaffold over the bow and painted a big red cross on either side of the white ship. Everyone aboard wore the Red Cross emblem on an arm band, even the sailors being so decorated. Uncle John was very proud of the insignia and loved ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... Jamaica journals, column after column, page after page, filled with coarse invective, with bitter denunciation, with injurious suspicion; sees with what terrible relish the sufferings of these deluded people are recorded; marks how the heroism which goes to the scaffold without a tremor, and looks undeserved death in the face without a fear, is travestied; shudders to hear the planters, after thousands have been slain, yet cry for more blood; and then he puts the paper down and says, "Here in this language is material enough out of which to create ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... away! Wednesday evening my Zurich people tried to dispel this grey solitude with their torches; it was very pretty and solemn, and nothing like it had happened to me in my life before. They had built an orchestra in front of my house in the Zeltweg, and at first I thought they were erecting a scaffold for me. They played and sang, we exchanged speeches, and I was cheered by an innumerable multitude. I almost wish you had heard the speech of the evening; it was very naive and sincere; I was celebrated as a perfect saviour. The next morning ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the Park, the King[5] went up the stairs leading to the long gallery, and so into the Cabinet Chamber of the Palace of Whitehall. Being delayed here in consequence of the scaffold not being ready, he offered up several prayers, and entered into religious discourse with the Bishop. About twelve he ate some bread, and drank a glass of claret, declining to dine after he had received ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... kingdom, will lower their heads in the dust: for they are threatened with no sword and no struggle; no peer of their own is he who speaks, but the king; it is by him they are accused, by the law they shall be condemned, and shall suffer on the scaffold." ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Hebrew prophets in the intervals of labour, locking up the chapel-doors in order to elude the jealous curiosity of rivals, eating but little and scarcely sleeping, he accomplished in sixteen months the first part of his gigantic task.[317] From time to time Julius climbed the scaffold and inspected the painter's progress. Dreading lest death should come before the work were finished, he kept crying, "When will you make an end?" "When I can," answered the painter. "You seem to want," rejoined the petulant old man, "that I should have ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... from the world, who think his misdeeds, as they call them, sufficiently at last punished with a halter, which at once puts an end to his pain and infamy; whereas the other is not only hated in power, but detested and contemned at the scaffold; and future ages vent their malice on his fame, while the other sleeps quiet and forgotten. Besides, let us a little consider the secret quiet of their consciences: how easy is the reflection of having taken a few shillings or pounds from a stranger, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... the midst of plenty. On the 11th of the present instant my fisherman returned, having been absent not quite four weeks, and with but four nets, yet I had nearly 6000 tulibees (this is a small species of whitefish) on my scaffold. My house, in the meantime, was going forward, though rather tardily, with but one man. In two days more I hope to quit my bark lodge for my log and mud-walled cottage, though it has neither chair nor three-legged stool, table nor bedstead. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... repairs carried out on the west front at the end of the nineteenth century we touch on a matter which gave rise to no little controversy. The insecure state of the west front had been known for years. In the early part of 1896, a scaffold was raised in order to enable Mr Pearson, the architect of the cathedral, to make a complete examination of the front, special causes for alarm having lately been detected. At first it was believed that underpinning the central ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... and at the same time unsuccessful, is a hard fate. It casts a little doubt upon a man's badness if he does not, at least, make a little money. It is a poor business accompanying badness on to a common scaffold, or to see it die in a wretched garret. That was one of my complaints with Mr. Seccombe's Twelve Bad Men. Most of them came to violent ends. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... He was falsely accused of treason and thrown into prison, where he remained during twelve years. There he wrote his History of the World. After a short period of liberty, Raleigh was beheaded. As he stood on the scaffold he asked for the ax, and said, "This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... of those famous men who have perished on the scaffold their behaviour during the interval between their condemnation and their execution has always been the subject of curiosity ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... inferior lords, and exonerating them from the exactions of those haughty Palatines. Recalled to England in 1540, he, too, in turn, fell a victim to the sanguinary spirit of King Henry, and perished on the scaffold. ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... in his ears, and ran on, crying Life, life, eternal life.' He felt utter dependence upon Divine guidance, leading him to most earnest prayer, and an implicit obedience to Holy Writ, which followed him all through the remainder of his pilgrimage. 'The Bible' he calls 'the scaffold, or stage, that God has builded for hope to play his part upon in this world.'[74] Hence the Word was precious in his eyes; and with so immense a loss, or so magnificent a gain, the throne of grace was all his hope, that he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... statement that till he ceased to be anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish he would not be welcome. Padre Faura, the famous meteorologist, was his former instructor and Rizal was his favorite pupil; he had tearfully predicted that the young man would come to the scaffold at last unless he mended his ways. But Rizal, confident in the clearness of his own conscience, went out cheerfully, and when the porter tried to bring back the memory of his childhood piety by reminding him ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... of the Revolution did not arise entirely from divergence of belief. Other sentiments—envy, ambition, and self-love—also engendered them. The rivalry of individuals aspiring to power led the chiefs of the various groups in succession to the scaffold. ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... inclination, for she was naturally tender-hearted: and, as for myself, although I abhorred such kind of spectacles, yet my curiosity tempted me to see something that I thought must be extraordinary. The malefactor was fixed in a chair upon a scaffold erected for that purpose, and his head cut off at one blow, with a sword of about forty feet long. The veins and arteries spouted up such a prodigious quantity of blood, and so high in the air, that the great jet d'eau at Versailles was not ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... fool to deny it. I pretended to Crewe that I hadn't met him before. Yes, it was I, and I glory in it. You think you're going to pinch me, now, and put me where I belong—on the scaffold maybe. But you can never wipe that memory out of your mind, that you had a son who died in the gutter, that you're a childless old man who has no ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... death of Norfolk and that of Northumberland, who followed him to the scaffold, the dread of revolt within the realm which had so long hung over England passed quietly away. The failure of the two attempts not only showed the weakness and disunion of the party of discontent and reaction, but it revealed the weakness of all party feeling before the rise of a national ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... the scaffold was set up at the west end of Saint Paul's Cathedral, and four of the traitors were brought forth to die. They were the four least guilty of the group—Sir Everard Digby, Robert Winter, John ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... sacrificed without an opportunity of being heard, and his name go down sullied and dishonored to posterity. When he beheld the officer enter with the guard, he thought it was to conduct him to the scaffold. "Villejo," said he, mournfully, "whither are you taking me?" "To the ship, your Excellency, to embark," replied the other. "To embark!" repeated the admiral, earnestly; "Villejo! do you speak the truth?" "By the life of your Excellency," replied the honest officer, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... lightning came and went. If I did not cry out, it was because fear had me by the throat; and if I did not fall, it was more by Heaven's mercy than my own strength. It was not only that the flash shone in on every side through breaches in the wall, so that I seemed to be clambering aloft upon an open scaffold, but the same passing brightness showed me the steps were of unequal length, and that one of my feet rested that moment within two inches ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mending and the thunder showr arose, one standing in the church-yard observed a black cloud to come sayling along towards the steeple, and called to the workman as he was on the scaffold; and wisht him to beware of it and to make hast. But before he went off the clowd came to him, and with a terrible crack threw down the steeple, sc. about the middle, where he was at worke. Immediately they lookt up ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... from passion with no other voluptuousness in life than a refined appetite. The master laughed at the thought of the simplicity of those priests who in the afternoon, after the choir, formed a group around Cotoner's scaffold, following the movements of his hands with wondering eyes; at the respect of the attendants and other servants of the episcopal palace, hanging on Don Jose's words, astonished to find such modesty in an artist who was a friend of cardinals and ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that he ever did." I could say it of some things in "Charles I."—of the way he gave up his sword to Cromwell, of the way he came into the room in the last act and shut the door behind him. It was not a man coming on to a stage to meet some one. It was a king going to the scaffold, quietly, unobtrusively, and courageously. However often I played that scene with him, I knew that when he first came on he was not aware of my presence nor of any earthly presence: he seemed to ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... offering any opposition, and that their candidate would be returned on the same day, without going to the poll, that the high bailiff had not taken the usual precaution of erecting a hustings, a temporary scaffold being thought quite sufficient. Nay, so thoroughly convinced of this was the Rump, that they actually ordered the CAR, and got it prepared for chairing their candidate, Mr. Hobhouse, and every necessary preparation was made for this ceremony being performed on the first ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... the rope round her neck, and the cap on her head ready to be drawn over the face, she uttered a long and fervent prayer, expressed with great volubility and propriety of diction, every word of which could be distinctly heard by us as we circled the scaffold. She could not have rounded her periods more gracefully or articulated them more perfectly, if she had rehearsed her part beforehand! Though most of the spectators were more or less inured to scenes of horror, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... ignorant, and much surprised at being brought to bed, thinking that her unusual size was a serious malady, she did penance for it as a venial sin, as she had no pleasure in this wicked business, according to the statement of the wicked man, who said upon the scaffold where he was executed, that the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... had laid out his apparatus about the mouth of the tube with all the care of a surgeon preparing for a hasty operation, and Paul and Colonel Howell had taken their position on the scaffold far below, ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler |
