"Scaffold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... luxuriously on his back among the fragrant summer weeds, he caught sight of something in the branches of an oak tree. He sat up and stared. It looked like a rude platform. After a moment, he divined that it was the remnant of a scaffold from which some early settler of Tennessee had been wont to fire upon the deer or the buffalo at the "lick," below. Such relics, some of them a century old, are to be seen to this day in sequestered nooks of the Cumberland Mountains. Rufe had heard of these old scaffolds, ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... lived. If a man who had lived a righteous, sober and godly life died while playing cards or in innocent laughter, with no opportunity for the ministrations of a priest, his chances for the next world were thought to be slim. On the other hand, a damnable scoundrel on the scaffold, with the clergyman's assurances assented to, was supposed to be jerked into heaven. This view of life and death was firmly held even by so sincere and profound a thinker as Hamlet: which explains his anguish at the fate ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... the young man had never worked, so it was very hard for him, but she also worked and, little by little, they bought the things needed in the tiny home on the hill, and they were very happy. Then, one day, a scaffold fell and they brought the young husband to the little wife all bruised and bleeding, and that very night a tiny girl came to the home to live. The neighbors helped all they could, but in a few days the father of the ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston
... Munzer died on the scaffold, and the Anabaptists marched to punishment, denying and cursing the Saxon who did violence to their faith. Everything was perishing—painting, sculpture, poesy, letters. The Reformation imitated Nero, and sang its triumphs amid ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... 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 ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... light, is positive and composed, and knows no discouragement. The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat ... the enemy triumphs ... the prison, the handcuffs, the iron necklace and anklet, the scaffold, garrote and leadballs do their work ... the cause is asleep ... the strong throats are choked with their own blood ... the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass each other ... and is liberty gone out of that place? No never. When liberty goes it is not the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... curious chance, or rather the instinct of self-preservation, led me to hide the fragment of the blade in a corner of my cell, as if it might still be of use. They tended me; none of my wounds were serious. At two-and-twenty one can recover from anything. I was to lose my head on the scaffold. I shammed illness to gain time. It seemed to me that the canal lay just outside my cell. I thought to make my escape by boring a hole through the wall and swimming for my life. I based my hopes ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... brother fetched loose in Minnesota, Iowa, and Dakota, and massacred seven hundred men, women, and children. The outbreak was under the management of Little Crow, and was confined to the Sioux Nation. Thirty-nine of these Indians were hanged on the same scaffold at Mankato, Minnesota, as a result of this ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... eagerly looking up at my house. At sight of me she flourished a paper with a movement that brought me straight down, the movement with which, in melodramas, handkerchiefs and reprieves are flourished at the foot of the scaffold. ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... Retrospective measures are deprecated; but ministers must bear to hear them from the representatives of an abused people. He even trusted that they would hear them at the tribunal of justice, and expiate them on the public scaffold! He would not say they were actually in the pay of France, for he could not prove the fact; but he would venture to say, that they had worked for the aggrandisement of the Grand Monarque more faithfully and successfully than any ministers ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of God's world outside this little church of ours. That in which the Altar is any humble spot pressed by the knees of the Unfortunate. That in which the priest is whoso doeth a good, unselfish deed, even if in the shadow of the scaffold. That in which the anthem of visible charity for an erring brother sinks into the listening soul an echo of an unseen Father's pity and forgiveness, and the choral service is the music of kind words to all who ever found but unkind ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... the idea of taking away the life of a fellow-being, might soon have his conscience so seared by the repetition of crime, that the agonies of his murdered victims might become music to his soul, and the drippings of the scaffold afford blood to swim in. History is ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... the Marriage was celebrated with all the intended Magnificence, and on their return from the Mosque, the Prince and Princess repair'd to a stately Scaffold, adorn'd with inventive Luxury, whence they might behold a Tournament, the Prize of which was a Sword richly embellish'd with Diamonds, to be given by the Princess to him that should overcome; the whole Court were there, endeavouring to outshine each other in ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... commences the final weaving of the cocoon. The grub surrounds itself with a wall of silk, first pure white, then tinted reddish-brown by means of an adhesive varnish. Through its loose-meshed stuff, it seizes one by one the droppings hanging from the scaffold and inlays them firmly in the tissue. The same mode of work is employed by the Bembex-, Stizus-and Tachytes-wasps and other inlayers, who strengthen the inadequate woof of their cocoons with grains of sand; only, in their cotton-wool purses, the Anthidium's grubs ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... many proud, brave faces of these delicate women, walking in high-heeled shoes, all too frail for the hard-dusty roadways. They belonged to the same race and breed as those ladies who defied death with fine disdain upon the scaffold of the guillotine in the ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... the camp, Smoke came upon what was evidently Snass's fire. Though temporary in every detail, it was solidly constructed and was on a large scale. A great heap of bales of skins and outfit was piled on a scaffold out of reach of the dogs. A large canvas fly, almost half-tent, sheltered the sleeping- and living-quarters. To one side was a silk tent—the sort favored by explorers and wealthy big-game hunters. Smoke had never seen such a tent, and stepped closer. As he stood looking, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... 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 and made up his mind ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... completely covered with earth. They are eagerly obtaining from the Government such comforts of civilization as they can—reapers, cooking-stoves, baking-powder, and the like. And yet this people display some of the grossest elements of savagery. Polygamy is common. The disgusting scaffold burials still go on, and the air in the neighborhood of the village is sometimes foul from the adjacent cemetery. Buffalo heads and poles with red streamers, as offerings or invocations to spirits, surmount many of the lodges and bear witness to the heathenism ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... Adelantado was at the head of a strong force when summoned to San Domingo, he returned unattended, and was treated as his brother had been. Columbus had expected to have suffered on the scaffold, and was greatly relieved when he found himself conducted on board a caravel commanded by a worthy captain—Alonzo de Villejo—who told him that he had orders to carry ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... make your dying speech from the scaffold you're going to say something original and funny. You can't ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... numbers, and led by a female. To his eternal infamy let it be recorded, that pretending to have been deceived by the terms of capitulation, D'Aulney hanged the brave survivors of the garrison, and even had the baseness and cruelty to parade Madame de la Tour herself on the same scaffold, with the ignominious cord around her neck, as a ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... says, slowly. "It was not in the book of chance that you should triumph over or outwit me. The bullet you designed for me has completed the work you began five years ago. Go, to live a convict, or die on the scaffold, and when you think upon the failure of your villainous schemes, remember that this retribution has been wrought by a woman's hand! Officers, ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... coming! he is coming!— Like a bridegroom from his room, Came the hero, from his prison To the scaffold and the doom. There was glory on his forehead,— There was lustre in his eye, And he never walked to battle More proudly than to'die. There was colour in his visage, Though the cheeks of all were wan, And they marvelled as he passed them, That ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... thousand men were under arms. Paris presented a gloomy aspect. The citizens present at the execution manifested neither applause nor regret; all were silent. On reaching the place of execution, Louis alighted from the carriage. He ascended the scaffold with a firm step, knelt to receive the benediction of the priest, who is recorded to have said, "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!" With some repugnance he submitted to the binding of his hands, and walked hastily to the left of the scaffold; "I die innocent," said he; "I forgive ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... pardon! Don't let us be hasty, I say; and let us consider, For an assassination there must be a motive, and an all-powerful motive; for, aside from the scaffold which he risks, no man is capable of killing another man solely for the purpose of shedding his blood. Now, in this case, I look in vain for any reason, which could have induced the man to commit a murder. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... there was scarcely a soul who had heard the evidence before the coroner and the magistrate who did not believe that both the suspected men were guilty and that both—when Burchill had been caught—would ere long stand in the Old Bailey dock and eventually hear themselves sentenced to the scaffold. ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... gathered into the hands of one man (Northumberland). "And this man, forsooth, was one whose father[157] the King's father had beheaded; one who had plunged into confusion all the affairs of the realm; seeing that he had brought to the scaffold, one after the other, the two maternal uncles of the King. Wherefore he was driven on both by his evil disposition and by his dread of the future to conspire against his sovereign's life. Now in such a season as this, when all men held their tongues for fear (for he brought to trial whomsoever ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... 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 on ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... at once!" said the old negress. "They now applaud your husband and recognize his services. But he has powerful enemies, and one day they will threaten his life, and will lead him to the scaffold and murder him!" ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... his wife, and unable to resist the overwhelming proofs against him, the man at length made a similar confession; and six weeks after, the unhappy criminals died on the scaffold, in accordance with the sentence of the Parliament ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... said Jennings satirically. "She loves you so deeply that she would see you on the scaffold rather than let you marry Miss Saxon. That is why Mrs. Octagon went the other night to see her. Mrs. Herne ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... will be,—and Grahame's fate was not in the crook of my finger, though so I might think it Aren't we the fools to fancy sometimes our human wills decide the course of fate, and the conclusions of circumstances? From the beginning of time, my Lord Marquis of Montrose was meant for the scaffold." ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... "The scaffold for his execution," says Burigni, "was erected in the Court of the Castle at the Hague, facing the Prince of Orange's apartments. He made a short speech to the people, which is yet preserved in the Mercure Francoise. 'Burghers!' ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... flee—and you are ten against one! Where are you going? To your own homes. Fools! you will find the gendarmes there only awaiting your coming to conduct you to the scaffold. Is it not better to die with your weapons in your hands? Come—right about. Follow me! We may still conquer. Reinforcements are at hand; two ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... assassinated his two elder sons and debauched his daughter Beatrice. Beatrice and her two surviving brothers, with Lucretia (their mother), conspired against Francesco and accomplished his death, but all except the youngest brother perished on the scaffold, September 11, 1501. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... his neck and kissed him. They were then prepared for execution. They walked to the gallows with entire composure and firmness of step. Rev. J. Richardson walked alongside of Lount, and Rev. J. Beatty alongside of Mathews. They ascended the scaffold and knelt down on the drop. The ropes were adjusted while they were on their knees. Mr. Richardson engaged in prayer; and when he came to that part of the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Jean, one of the two large branches by which the river pours its waters into the Great Slave Lake; the flooded delta at the mouth of the river is intersected by several smaller channels through one of which, called the Channel of the Scaffold, we pursued our voyage on the following morning and by eight A.M. reached the establishment of the North-West Company on Moose-Deer Island. We found letters from Mr. Wentzel, dated Fort Providence, a station on the north side of the lake, which communicated to us that ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... could not bring themselves to believe that the queen had behaved so abominably. 'As I may be saved before God,' he says, 'I could not believe it, afore I heard them speak at their death. But on the scaffold, in a manner all confessed, unless Norris; and as to him, what he said amounted to nothing.' The truth is, there occurred in the cases of these gentlemen a dreadful struggle. The dilemma for them was perhaps ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... prevailed on to be of the company, very much against her 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 on 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 fountain at Versailles was not equal for the time it lasted; and the head, when ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... 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
... says Margaret in an agony. She makes wild signs to him, pointing towards the closed doors as she does so. A nice girl, we all know, would rather die than put her ear to a keyhole, even if by doing so she could save her neck from the scaffold; but the very best of girls might by chance be leaning against a door through the chinks of which sounds might enter from the room beyond it. "She'll ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... them again upon the gallows, and though they charged him with savage threats not to follow them with his eyes, he turned round and continued to warn them of the consequences of a life like theirs. In a few months' time they were captured, and it did actually fall to his lot to attend them to the scaffold. ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... him, that he feared he should be 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
... a scaffold the will of Duke Theseus, decreeing the weapons with which the tourney should be fought, and the rules of the combat. Then with trumpets and music, Theseus and Hippolyta and Emilia in a noble procession took their places; and from the west gate under the temple of Mars ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... arrest of a Dutch farmer who had maltreated his slave. It was suppressed, and five of the participants were hanged. This punishment was unduly severe and exceedingly injudicious. A brave race can forget the victims of the field of battle, but never those of the scaffold. The making of political martyrs is the last insanity of statesmanship. It is true that both the man who arrested and the judge who condemned the prisoners were Dutch, and that the British Governor interfered on the side of mercy; but all this was forgotten afterwards in the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I rose and got to the Abbey, where I followed Sir J. Denham, the Surveyor, with some company that he was leading in. And with much ado, by the favour of Mr. Cooper, his man, did get up into a great scaffold across the North end of the Abbey, where with a great deal of patience I sat from past 4 till 11 before the King came in. And a great pleasure it was to see the Abbey raised in the middle, all covered with red, and a throne (that is a chair) and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... hideous instrument of torture was raised a scaffold hung with black cloth, and strewed with saw-dust, for the convenience of the executioners, about three feet lower than the wheel which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... circle of statues, its pavilions and balustrades; beautiful now, and peaceful, but peopled with ghastly memories—for it was here the Revolution set up its guillotine, and it was here that some four thousand men and women, high and low, looked their last upon this earth, mounted the scaffold and passed under the knife. Surely, if any spot on earth be haunted, it ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... the time of hunting, they expose his body on a very high scaffold, and it remains there till the departure of the troop, who carry it with them to the village. There are some nations who practice the same with regard to all their dead. The bodies of those who die in war are burnt, and their ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... was to be struck off, and after some time his left hand. Thereafter he was to be hanged up and cut down alive; his bowels to be taken out and his heart shown to the people by the hangman, and then to be burnt in a fire on the scaffold. Afterwards his head was to be cut off, and his body, divided into four quarters, to be sent respectively to Saint Andrews, Glasgow, ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... waste; not overwork and weariness for the worker one 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, would labour be set to make; for profit being ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... the criminals' bench with a gendarme seated between them. They were found guilty by the unanimous verdict of a weeping jury. No one among those who had the barbarous courage to witness their conveyance to the scaffold can mention them to-day without a shudder. Religion had won for them a repentance for their crime, but could not induce them to abjure their love. The scaffold was their nuptial bed, and there they slept together in the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... disclosed? Then if they could not fly from the testimony of His works, if they could not evade even their fellow-man, why did they not first turn to Him? Why, from the penitent child at his mother's knee to the murderer on the scaffold, did they only at ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... had been taken to York to be hanged; she was brought out on the scaffold, and the hangman said, "Now, lass, thou must hang by the neck till thou be'st ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... forsake us. We soon were in 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 ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the stage in the "Tempest." We can not blame Shakespeare for making use of cutthroats and villains in developing his plots, but we might have been spared the jokes which the jailors of Posthumus perpetrate when they come to lead him to the scaffold, and the ludicrous English of the clown who supplies Cleopatra with an asp. The apothecary who is in such wretched plight that he sells poison to Romeo in spite of a Draconian law, gives us another unflattering picture of a tradesman; and when ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... which stood waiting, and Gorgias gazed after him thoughtfully. The hyacinthine purple cloak which Dion wore that day had not vanished from his sight when a loud crashing, rattling, and roaring arose behind him. A hastily erected scaffold, which was to support the pulleys for raising the statues, had collapsed. The damage could be easily repaired, but the accident aroused a troubled feeling in the architect's mind. He was a child of his time, a period when duty commanded the prudent man to heed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... their feet, they did not see them transformed in their hands to frightful caricatures. These men are not pillars of clubs, nor brawlers in the sections, nor the inquisitors of a committee, nor hired informers, nor providers for the scaffold. Apart from the sabbath revolutionaire, brought back to earth by their danger, and having understood the inequality of talents and the need for discipline, they do the work of men; they suffer, they fast, they face bullets, they are conscious of their generosity and their sacrifices; they ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to give way on the smallest point, and issued a proclamation, to be read at Edinburgh, declaring all who opposed him to be traitors. In answer the malcontents raised a scaffold beside the cross, and on it stood Warriston, with a reply written by the nobles representing the people, which was received with shouts of applause. Montrose sat at Warriston's side, his legs dangling from ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... done for months before, from the eaves of every house, from the tall black scaffold on which the great bell hung, and from the still taller erection that had been put up as an outlook for "the ship" in summer. At the present time it commanded a bleak view of the frozen sea. Snow covered every housetop, and hung in ponderous masses from their edges, as ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... with the lark—Oh, no doubt —you'll get up with the hangman one of these days. But you ought to be ashamed to be jawing here like this, in a red blanket, on a forty-foot scaffold on top of the Alps. And no end of people down here to boot; this isn't any place for an ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... me, said to be the one used by Lady Jane Grey when on the scaffold. Nothing makes me more conscious that I am on foreign soil than the constant recurrence of associations connected with the executioner's block. We hung the Quakers and we burned the witches, but ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... however, enter into the details of his capture, imprisonment, trial and execution; for Tom Flatt was executed for the murder of Nancy, his wife; and on the scaffold he, as thousands of others in similar circumstances have done, blamed his wife's murder, his own sad fate, and his children's orphanage, to ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... smile once or twice; but the poor soul's spirit was crushed, and doubtless the whole scene was to her like an evil dream—the poor broken-down body could not discriminate what words she was forced to repeat. A troubled, horrible dream must that have seemed to the hapless maiden, standing on that scaffold, with all the shouting mob about, and all her deadly enemies at hand. She made her mark on the parchment—a little cross—and ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... herbs, and so to bed Sir W. Pen did it like a base raskall, and so I shall remember Slight answer, at which I did give him two boxes on the ears They were not occupiers, but occupied (women) Trumpets were brought under the scaffold that he not be heard Up and took physique, but such as to go abroad with Will put Madam Castlemaine's nose out of joynt With my whip did whip him till I was ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... and the presumption is that he was 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 the cup of hemlock ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... Gouges, Louise Lecombe and others paralleled these "Rights of Man" with 17 articles on the "Rights of Woman," which, on the 28th Brumaire (November 20, 1793) they defended before the Commune of Paris upon the principle: "If woman has the right to mount the scaffold, she must also have the right to mount the tribune." Their demands remained unheeded. When, subsequently, upon the march of monarchic Europe against the Republic, the Convention declared the "Fatherland ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... scaffold with twenty of my best men, who, at a signal from me, will rush forward directly Peppino is brought for execution, and, by the assistance of their stilettos, drive back the guard, and ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... patient!" continued the druggist. "Do you want to see me in the prisoner's dock with criminals, in a court of justice? To see me dragged to the scaffold? Don't you know what care I take in managing things, although I am so thoroughly used to it? Often I am horrified myself when I think of my responsibility; for the Government persecutes us, and ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... robbery of Cicely Harflete, the daughter of the one and the wife of the other. He bound himself to do those things which she should tell him. He bound himself neither in the confessional nor, should it come to that, on the bed of torture or the scaffold to breathe a word of all their counsel. He prayed that if he did so his soul might pay the price in everlasting torment, and of all these things he took Heaven to be ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... public hanging of a pastor would put a stop to all further ministrations among the Huguenots. But the sight of the bodies of their brethren hung on the nearest trees, and the heads of their pastors rolling on the scaffold, did not deter them from continuing to hold religious meetings in solitary places, more especially in Languedoc, Viverais, and the provinces in the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... Boyle were denounced by the clergy, and Lavoisier was sent to the scaffold by the Parisian mob. Priestley had his home, his library, instruments, and papers containing the results of long years of scientific research burned by a Birmingham mob that had been instigated by Anglican clergymen. He was driven into exile, and the mob would have murdered him if ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Guiteau, Garfield's assassin, is an example of the extremity to which this craving for notoriety may go in a pathological case. The newspapers bounded his mental horizon; and in the poor wretch's prayer on the scaffold, one of the most heartfelt expressions was: "The newspaper press of this land has a big bill to settle with ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Braccio itself, though of course it was much smaller. Then she scrawled on the walls again, trying to explain to him, in childishly futile sketches, her ideas of decoration, and he would come down from his scaffold and do his best with a few broad lines to show her what she had really imagined, till she clapped her small, dusty hands with delight and was ultimately carried off by her governess to be made presentable for her daily drive in the Villa Borghese ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... disillusionment were immense. There was a moment of excitement on the benches, the tumult of a vote taken on the spot, which the Nabob saw vaguely through the glass doors, as the condemned man looks down from the scaffold on the howling crowd. Then, after that terrible pause which precedes a supreme moment, the president made, amid deep ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Duer, interrupted the course of an elaborate argument for the constitutional rights of the Southern rebels by a melodramatic exclamation, that, if we hanged the traitors of the country in the order of their guilt, "the next man who marched upon the scaffold after Jefferson ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... admit, the dearest wish that my soul cherishes,' I should nevertheless still refuse to give him the paper which is worth more to him than life, and should say to him, 'You have the authority to send me to the scaffold, but I can cause you pain, and I intend to do so!'" And with these words Kohlhaas, with death staring him in the face, called a trooper to him and told him to take a nice bit of food which had been left in the dish. All the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... knowledge. He set out at once, and upon his way again passed the glade, taking care not to go too near the dead oak, nor to look towards the suspended hawk. He saw a night-jar like a ghost wheeling to and fro not far from the scaffold, and anxious to get from the ill-omened spot, flew yet more swiftly. Round the wood he went, and along the hedges, so occupied with his thoughts that he did not notice how the sky was covered with clouds, and once or twice narrowly escaping a branch blown off ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... many she wanted, whether she didn't think he had brought up sufficient, but just accumulating bricks in a senseless fashion, bringing up every brick he could find. And then suppose, when evening came, and looking round, they found they had some twenty cart-loads of bricks lying unused upon the scaffold, they were to commence flinging them down into Waterloo Place. They would get themselves into trouble; somebody would be sure to speak to them about it. Yet that is precisely what those birds do, and nobody says a word to them. ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... recklessness and abandon, Miranda is indeed a powerful study. Always guilty, she is always excused, or if punished but sparingly and little, whilst the friar languishes in a foul dungeon, the page-boy is hanged, her husband stands upon the public scaffold. And then in the end, 'very penitent for her life past', she is received with open arms by Tarquin's old father, who looks upon her as a very angel, and retiring to the tranquility of a country-house she passes her days in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... execution, and the apparatus there, to throw horrour on the scene without in reality giving the unhappy victim a more painful exit. The Dutch have a mode of execution which is well calculated to inspire terror, without putting the sufferer to extraordinary pain. The criminal is placed on a scaffold, opposite to the gigantick figure of a woman, with arms extended, filled with spikes, or long sharpened nails, and a dagger pointed from her breast, she is gradually moved towards him by machinery for the purpose, till he gets ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... enterprise seemed in the even evening sunlight, what vulgar magnificence and crudity and utter absurdity! It was as idiotic as the pyramids. I sat down on the stile, staring at it as though I had never seen that forest of scaffold poles, that waste of walls and bricks and plaster and shaped stones, that wilderness of broken soil and wheeling tracks and dumps before. It struck me suddenly as the compactest image and sample of all that passes for Progress, of all the advertisement-inflated spending, the aimless ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... day the brother said to the humpback that he was going away to visit the habitations of men, and procure a wife. He travelled alone a long time. At length he came to a deserted camp, where he saw a corpse on a scaffold. He took it down and found it was the body of a beautiful young woman. "She shall ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... a pitch-fork, turned off his head-piece, when he was cut down and made prisoner, exclaiming, "Cruel countryman, to use me thus, while my face was to mine enemy." He suffered the doom of a traitor at Edinburgh, and maintained on the scaffold, with inflexible firmness, the principles in which he had lived. He could never believe, he said, that the many of human kind came into the world bridled and saddled, and the few with whips and spurs to ride them. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... the unlawful traffic. The 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.
... buildings. Various measures were introduced dealing with ministerial responsibility, poor-law administration and other matters, such as the abolition of the excise on meat and of barbarous punishments on the scaffold. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... these. To a good many he pleaded guilty—half in contempt as it would seem—and threw himself upon the mercy of the king. No mercy however followed. Like many another "well-meaning English official" of the period, his life ended upon the scaffold. ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... one of stern religious fanaticism against gallant reckless Cavalier loyalty—of the middle classes against the aristocracy and their servitors. Cromwell rose as the type and model of the Puritans. Under his lead they defeated the Cavaliers and executed their King. Charles perished on the scaffold, and England, following Holland's lead, was declared a republic. This was in 1649, the year ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... he would go on; the ladies came in, and together they passed an agreeable morning, Sir Robert declaring that on the scaffold he was entitled to benefit of clergy, and begging the eminent divine when he left to let him have his ghostly counsel every day for at least a week. In spite of his eminence, this gentleman had no very great breadth of view. To sit about on boxes and window-seats, picnicking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... another world and taking more notice of the one we inhabit. Of course we occasionally have heresy trials, and pictures of the offender and the Fat Bishop adorn the first page, but heresy trials not accompanied by the scaffold or the faggots are innocuous and ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... road became fewer, and presently open ground appeared between them on either side, the track on the right hand rising to a higher level till it merged in a knoll. On the summit a row of builders' scaffold-poles probed the indistinct sky like spears, and at their bases could be discerned the lower courses of a building lately begun. Barnet slackened his pace and stood for a few moments without leaving the centre of the road, apparently not much interested in the sight, till ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Barneveld is the true patriot, the martyr, whose cause was that of religious and political freedom. For him Maurice is the ambitious soldier who hated his political rival, and never rested until this rival was brought to the scaffold. ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... did up the scaffold go, As up a gilded car Of victory, by valorous chiefs, Gained in the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... ad Deen, at that moment, looking round upon the people, "Will no charitable body," cried he, "bring me a little water to quench my thirst?" Which immediately they did, and handed it up to him upon the scaffold. The vizier Saouy perceiving this delay, called out to the executioner from the king's closet window, where he had planted himself, "Strike, what dost thou stay for?" At these inhuman words the whole place echoed with loud imprecations against ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... scattered notices in Seneca and Quintilian, we should infer that the philosopher was employed as a repository of spiritual confidences—almost a father- confessor—at least as much as an intellectual teacher. When Kanus Julius was condemned to death, his philosopher went with him to the scaffold and uttered consoling words about the destiny of the soul; [5] and Seneca's own correspondence shows that he regarded this relation as the noblest philosophy could hold. Of such moral directors the most influential was ANNAEUS CORNUTUS, both from his varied learning and his consistent ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... and the bourgeoisie were often brought into contact; marriages even were contracted, whether during imprisonment or under the pressure of poverty, that never would have been dreamt of in a normal state of things; and whilst parents of opposite conditions shook hands in the scaffold-surveying charrettes, the children either drew near to each other, in a mutual helpfulness, the principle whereof was Christian charity, or met together to partake of amusements, the aim whereof was oblivion. For ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... Bumping against a scaffold, clutching with hands and feet; a breaking plank, a ghastly yell ... and then a body with arms and legs outspread in space, a thunderbolt ... a thud as of a bag of earth ... and there he lay, stretched at full length, like a man asleep. That scream ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... (234 to 215)—the country spared from humiliation, the character of the House of Commons redeemed. But, privately, what will become of our victory? Lay awake with the nightmare of coming office upon me—went to sleep only to dream that John was going to the scaffold ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... By Tories guarded all around; Dull solemn pleasure in his face, He saw the honours of his race, He saw their lineal glories rise, And touch'd, or seem'd to touch, the skies: Not the most distant mark of fear, No sign of axe or scaffold near, Not one cursed thought to cross his will Of such a place as Tower Hill. 680 Curse on this Muse, a flippant jade, A shrew, like every other maid Who turns the corner of nineteen, Devour'd with peevishness and spleen; Her tongue (for as, when bound for life, The husband suffers ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the Preacher's voice lasted. The party all stood, hats off, except those around the condemned one. They still kneeled, some of them, while others in bodily weariness, were frankly sitting on the scaffold. And the Preacher prayed on. His voice was thick and husky now; he could scarcely enunciate the words. The big clock ticked and two was struck. Still Jim prayed, as one who hopes and ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the count, when they reached the Carreau woods, "here we all are, as silent as if we were going to the scaffold." ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... the nation had been disturbed rather than endangered, were quenched by the vigilance and severity of that able monarch; during the wars of the Roses, the noblest blood in England had been poured out on the field or on the scaffold, and the wealth of the most opulent proprietors had been drained by confiscation. The parties of York and Lancaster were no more—the Episcopal and Puritan factions were not yet in being—every day diminished the influence of the nobles—the strength of the Commons ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... of Canterbury in Charles the First's time, and, like him, died on the scaffold, was also greatly interested in collecting books. He gave generously to Oxford University, and his books are in the Bodleian Library, with many other valuable ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... this time reached the house and like a criminal who faces execution and mounts the scaffold steps he climbed the broad flight leading to the front door. Mr. Crowninshield was on the veranda, sitting quietly in a big wicker chair, looking out toward the sea. He was thinking so intently on some imagining of his own that he did not hear the lad's footfall ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... uniform and carry weapons, by brutalizing him in a slavery in every respect like that from which he had compassionately freed the negro, and all to enable him to slaughter his neighbor without risking the scaffold like ordinary murderers who operate single-handed, without uniforms and with weapons that ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... sent to prison. In other words, he is at war with every person in the world except his son, the boy who told you such pretty fairy stories last night. If he is ever retaken and sent back to the penitentiary, he will never open his lips, not even if the accused son dies on the scaffold." ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... escaped from his enemies of North Wales, and then Sir Launcelot rode his way till a friend, and lodged him till on the morn; for he would not the first day have ado in the tournament because of his great labour. And on the first day he was with King Arthur thereas he was set on high upon a scaffold to discern who was best worthy of his deeds. So Sir Launcelot was with King Arthur, and ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... got hold of him, and meant to make an end of him. I saw him once again, on the day of my departure from the Inn. In that Canton the headsman still does his office with a sword; and I came upon this murderer sitting bound, to a chair, with his eyes bandaged, on a scaffold in a little market-place. In that instant, a great sword (loaded with quicksilver in the thick part of the blade) swept round him like a gust of wind or fire, and there was no such creature in the world. My wonder ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... with its dead roots had been prostrated by the storm. The imposing system had wrought its own destruction. Eighty Princes of the blood royal had perished, and more than half of the Nobility had died on the field or the scaffold, or were fugitives in foreign lands. The great Duke of Exeter, brother-in-law to a King, was seen barefoot begging bread from ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... soon rid of, Sir Damian," said the man; "and I pray you to take some patience, when you remember that ten minutes since you had little right to think these bracelets would have been removed for any other purpose than your progress to the scaffold." ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... his bolts drawn, and made a terrified bound. He believed they were come to conduct him to the scaffold; so that when he saw merely and simply, instead of the executioner he expected, only his commissary of the preceding evening, attended by his clerk, he was ready to ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... dogmas of peace and harmony. Why give them an aspect of alarm? What do we seek? To win nations to the universal public. Then why inspire fright? Of what avail is intimidation? It is wrong to do ill in order to do good. You do not pull down the throne to leave the scaffold standing. Let us hurl away crowns, let us spare heads. The revolution is concord, not affright. Mild ideas are ill-served by men who do not know pity. Amnesty is for me the noblest word in human speech. I will shed no blood save at hazard of my own.... In the fight let us be the enemies ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... they believed James Francis to be our rightful king. Frank," cried the lad passionately, "I can't tell you how I loathe the reptiles. I knew that wretch directly; my father pointed him out to me as one to beware of. If he knew what we do, he would send my dear, brave father to the scaffold, and he is trying hard to send yours. Where's your pity for the poor ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... friend, "pour cet ange, en quoi vous a-t-elle offens'e; elle qui n'a jamais fait tort 'a personne; et dont la vie enti'ere n'offre qu'un tableau de vertu et de bienfaisance." Both suffered upon the same scaffold. It was this lady who was selected to be made an example of, from among many others who slighted Madame du Barri; and for this she was exiled to the distance of fifteen leagues from Paris, or from wheresoever the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... sixteenth Louis and the bride's great-aunt, as the nearing procession is, I see, appositely crossing the track of the tumbril which was the last coach of that respected lady.... It is now passing over the site of the scaffold on which she lost her head. ... Now ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... was in the habit of walking in his somnambulic fits through crowded thoroughfares. He was a plasterer by trade, and it was stated in court that it was not an uncommon thing for him to fall asleep while at work on the scaffold, yet he never met with any accident, and would answer questions put to him as if he were awake. In like manner, we are informed that Dr. Haycock, the Professor of Medicine at Oxford, would, in a fit of somnambulism, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... they are Christians because they can say, 'all this I 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 which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... examine all the pass-books now out of the bank, the total would undoubtedly be found much larger; they demanded Morley's arrest at once; in fact, if the law had allowed it, they would have sent him to the scaffold within ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... of it: I'll take my oath. Mind you, it isn't like a church made up of different scraps of memory. It's just that particular church, and I know it by heart, down to a scaffold-hole, partly hidden with grass, close under the lowest string-course of the tower, facing ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a great one; but to be bad, 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
... Nadenka go up to the ice-hill and look about for me . . . then she timidly mounted the steps. . . . She was frightened of going alone—oh, how frightened! She was white as the snow, she was trembling, she went as though to the scaffold, but she went, she went without looking back, resolutely. She had evidently determined to put it to the test at last: would those sweet amazing words be heard when I was not there? I saw her, pale, her lips parted with horror, get into the ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... republic. I personally was quite impartial, being born an American and never having lived in France until after the Franco-Prussian War. I had no particular ties nor traditions, had no grandfather killed on the scaffold, nor frozen to death in the retreat of "La Grande Armee" from Moscow. They always told me a republic was in the air—young talents and energy must come to the front—the people must have a voice in the government. I think the average Frenchman is intelligent, but I don't think the vote of ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... placed 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, several were visibly affected, one kneeling on the bare ground, and another ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Ayesha that in England "blasting" was not an amusement that could be indulged in with impunity, and that any such attempt would meet with the consideration of the law and probably end upon a scaffold. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard |
