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More "Defenceless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... masses of film and fluid, floating at the mercy of wind and wave, possess powers which we should hardly associate with so simple a structure, and can accomplish works of which we should little suspect them. Delicate and defenceless as they appear, they can capture fishes of large size, and digest them with ease and rapidity. Some of them are in truth formidable monsters. Professor E. Forbes gives the following humorous description of the destructive ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... cabin—one with a private bathroom, for Mr. Twist had what Aunt Alice called ample means—on these two defenceless children. If they had been Belgians now, or Serbians, or any persons plainly in need of relief! As it was, America would be likely, he feared, to consider that either Germany or England ought to be looking after them, and might conceivably ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... and caught hers in a firm, compelling grasp. A splendid creature sent to comfort him. A creature blown by the winds of heaven to his threshold. A dear defenceless thing without home or kindred, unprotected, uncared of, weak and in need of affection, in dire ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... have I none, Hangs my helpless soul on Thee: Leave, ah! leave me not alone, Still support and comfort me; All my trust on Thee is stayed; All my help from Thee I bring; Cover my defenceless head With the shadow ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... a private soldier, of a daring boldness above his station, collected these bands of robbers into a little army, set open the prisons, invited the slaves to assert their freedom, and plundered with impunity the rich and defenceless cities of Gaul and Spain. The governors of the provinces, who had long been the spectators, and perhaps the partners, of his depredations, were, at length, roused from their supine indolence by the threatening commands ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Turks have artillery and cannot use it,' said Lord Montacute. 'Why, the most favoured part of the globe at this moment is entirely defenceless; there is not a soldier worth firing at in Asia except the Sepoys. The Persian, Assyrian, and Babylonian monarchies might be gained in a morning with faith and the flourish of ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... were assembled, and the square crowded with unarmed Indians, Ovando gave a signal, and instantly the horsemen rushed into the midst of the naked and defenceless throng, trampling them under foot, cutting them down with their swords, transfixing them with their lances, and ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... negotiations and dismissed Lin Tse-hsue. As the Chinese concessions were regarded as inadequate, hostilities continued; the British entered the Yangtze estuary and threatened Nanking. In this first armed conflict with the West, China found herself defenceless owing to her lack of a navy, and it was also found that the European weapons were far superior to those of the Chinese. In 1842 China was compelled to capitulate: under the Treaty of Nanking Hong Kong was ceded to Great Britain, a war indemnity was paid, certain ports were thrown open to European ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... like the defenceless villages scattered up and down over Israel. There is no need for bulwarks of stone. The wall of fire is round about. The Prophet has a vision of a great city, of a type unknown in those old times, though familiar ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... bona-fide hunters, who want fresh meat, and take along the tidbits of their game to be cooked for them at the next dinner-station,—and by excited pseudo-hunters, who will bang away with their rifles at the defenceless herd, until the ground flows with useless blood, and somebody suggests to them that they might as well call it sportsmanship to fire into a farmer's cow-yard, resting over ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... this second and later match that the trouble began. The steward was not content with collecting the most powerful athletes he could find, but caused them to seize weapons and to attack the defenceless citizens who had come to take part in the games. The Londoners hurried home, bleeding with wounds, and immediately took counsel as to what was best to be done. Serlo, the mercer, who had held the office of mayor of the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... of the scene he had just witnessed had fairly unmanned him. The red and black setting of the room had a suggestion of Oriental cruelty in its very garishness. Desmond looked from Strangwise, cool and smiling, to Bellward, gross and beastly, and from the two men to Barbara, wan and still and defenceless. And he ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... before the Lord, she truly reflected the inner spirit though not the external profession of her father's court. That taunt from the supercilious, curling lip of the royal princess, who had honoured him by consenting to become his wife, was a burning ray of persecution streaming on David's defenceless head. If his religion had been confined to the surface, while the pomp and circumstance of royalty occupied his heart, it would have died out then and there, as the tender sprouting corn, whose roots rest on a rock, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... reached Villiersdorp eventually, and we fell back from Frankfort towards Bethlehem—the new headquarters. It was with heavy hearts that we said good-bye to our kind friends in Frankfort, for well we knew by this time what the passage of a British column meant for the defenceless non-combatants—houses broken down and burnt, children and greybeards torn from their families, and all the other useless and unnecessary cruelties that have broken so many lives, converted so many joyous homesteads into tombstones of black despair, and imprinted ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... disordered brain, swift as lightning flashes. In a moment Canidia was forgotten, and he was Pentheus, struggling with Agave and her demented crew. They were tearing him to pieces, their fingers were at his throat. Then he was in the East, a defenceless traveller in the tropical desert, surrounded by Thugs. He pointed to one particular spot where he saw his insidious foe—he described the dusky supple figure, the sinuous limbs, gliding serpent-like towards ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... and a smaller proportion of silk, until finally the fifth door had barely enough silk to hold the earth together. The sixth attempt, if made, was a failure, because the spinnerets had exhausted their supply of the web fluid. When the poor persecuted spider finds his domicile thus open and defenceless, he is compelled to leave it, and wait until his stock of web ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... ground, disabled guns and broken caissons are abandoned, others in the bad state of the roads cannot be removed quickly enough, and are captured by the enemy's troops, during the night numbers lose their way, and fall defenceless into the enemy's hands, and thus the victory mostly gains bodily substance after it is already decided. Here would be a paradox, if it did not solve itself in ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... for this is that man-killing means, sooner or later, the arrival of white men on elephants, with guns, and hundreds of brown men with gongs and rockets and torches. Then everybody in the jungle suffers. The reason the beasts give among themselves is that Man is the weakest and most defenceless of all living things, and it is unsportsmanlike to touch him. They say too—and it is true—that man-eaters become mangy, and lose ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... commit treachery, use falsehoods, and perform massacres.' [17] Personally, he shrinks from such a mission. His softer heart is not strong enough for these deeds. He relates [18] that he 'never could see without displeasure an innocent and defenceless beast pursued and killed, from which we have received no offence at all.' He is moved by the aspect of 'the hart when it is embossed and out of breath, and, finding its strength gone, has no other resource left but to yield itself up to us who pursue ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... has become of her? My soul is racked with anxiety on her account, and I curse the folly and imprudence that led me to re-enter this devoted land. My child—my poor child—can I forgive myself for perilling your defenceless innocence in this ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... over to the political control of the common enemy of the government and of the negro. But of this let nothing be said in this place. Waiving humanity, national honor, the claims of gratitude, the precious satisfaction arising from deeds of charity and justice to the weak and defenceless,—the appeal for impartial suffrage addresses itself with great pertinency to the darkest, coldest, and flintiest side of the human heart, and would wring righteousness from the unfeeling ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... refuge have I none, Hangs my helpless soul on thee— Leave, ah! leave me not alone! Still support and comfort me. All my trust on thee is stayed, All my help from thee I bring:— Cover my defenceless head, Beneath the shadow of ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... thereon, And died beneath them, frustrate. Harald sent A herald to that city proffering terms: "Harald is dead: Christian was he in youth: He sends you spoils from many a city burnt, And craves interment in your chiefest church." Next day the masked procession wound in black Through streets defenceless. When the church was reached They laid their chief before the altar-lights: Anon to heaven rang out the priestly dirge, And incense-smoke upcurled. Forth from its cloud Sudden upleaped the dead man, club in hand, Spurning his coffin's gilded walls, and ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... outcry so startled Malcolm that for a moment he forgot his watch, and when he looked again the men had vanished. Not having any clue to their intent, and knowing only that on such a night the house was nearly defenceless, he turned at once and made for it. As he approached the front, coming over the bridge, he fancied he saw a figure disappear through the entrance, and quickened his pace. Just as he reached it, he heard a door bang, and supposing it to be that which shut ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... threatening gestures we could think of, actually lay hold of the helpless infant, destroy, and devour it;—to see her widely open her destructive jaws, and the poor lamb beat down with greedy haste; to look on the defenceless posture of tender limbs first trampled upon, then torn asunder; to see the filthy snout digging in the yet living entrails, suck up the smoking blood, and now and then to hear the crackling of the bones, and the cruel ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... never been so wounded before. If—if I had not loved you as I have this would have been over between us long ago. And then I excused you because you were sick and unjustly persecuted, but you are well now, Mr. Westerfelt—well enough to know what's right and just to a defenceless girl." ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... more particular notice of the peculiarities of the humming-birds in different districts, and thus discovered how greatly they vary according to their localities. It seems a wonder how such defenceless little creatures can exist, surrounded as they must be by numerous foes. They escape in the daytime by the rapidity of their flight; and at night from their small size, and the care they take to guard their nests (many of which are built hanging to the ends of boughs, down which even ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... the rule of our conduct the law of benevolence, all motive arising from the second cause is taken away. There is not a nation in Europe that could be led on to war against a harmless, just, forgiving, and defenceless people." ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... a man, I should swiftly resent the affront you have thrust upon me, and suitable redress would be peculiarly sweet and welcome; but you are a defenceless and unfortunate woman, and my hands are tied. I desire to help you; you repulse me and insult my manhood. I will do my painful duty, because it is sternly and inexorably my duty; but, I wish to God, I had never set my ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... shot was in tended. Several of those horrible faces, which upon riot days suddenly appear as if they came out of the ground, darted toward the unhorsed officer. I, and several other young men who were as little disposed as myself to allow a defenceless man to be slaughtered, ran toward him. I recognized Christian as I approached; his right leg was caught under the horse, and he was trying to unsheath his sword with his left hand. Sticks and stones were showered at him. I drew out the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... establishment and maintain himself in London,—quite as much as he could do, even though the favours of the "D. R." should flow upon him with their fullest tides. In such circumstances, would it be honourable in him to ask a girl to love him because he found her defenceless ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... purpose. A few French and Indians hovered about them, now and then scalping a straggler or inscribing filthy insults on trees; while others fell upon the border settlements which the advance of the troops had left defenceless. Here they were more successful, butchering about thirty persons, chiefly ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... acts committed by exasperated enemies in the heat of battle, and executed, in conformity with the laws of war, upon men armed and most fiercely resisting; there was another more horrible carnage in the city, where a harmless and defenceless crowd of women and children were butchered by their own countrymen, who threw their bodies, most of them still alive, upon the burning pile while streams of blood damped the rising flame; and lastly, wearied with the piteous slaughter of their friends, they threw themselves, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... errand thinking that the villa was defenceless. See your mistake! Each one of these behind me has more arrows in store than all your number, and never shot bolt from bow without piercing the mark. Off! Away with your foul odours and your yelping throats! And if, when you have turned tail, any cur among you dares to bark back ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... last war of Paris, it deserves only to be hooted at. Methinks I see a crowd of schoolboys rising up in arms against their master, and afterwards whipped for it. Cardinal de Retz, who was witty and brave (but to no purpose), rebellious without a cause, factious without design, and head of a defenceless party, caballed for caballing sake, and seemed to foment the civil war merely out of diversion. The Parliament did not know what he intended, nor what he did not intend. He levied troops by Act of Parliament, and the next moment cashiered them. He threatened, he begged ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... them. It is not my object to write a history of the war, but merely to sketch it so far as Washington was directly concerned. The South was left, in the main, to defend itself against the raids which the British generals made in its defenceless territories, and these were destructive and cruel. But Gates was sent to cope with Cornwallis and Tarleton. Washington himself could not leave his position near New York, as he had to watch Clinton, defend ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... shield were seen the dents made by more than three hundred arrows. His rescue had scarcely been effected before the ships of his deadly rival, Nicuesa, sailed into the harbor; but, instead of taking advantage of Ojeda's defenceless condition, the high-minded hidalgo offered to join with him in an attack upon the savages, in order to avenge his defeat. Combining their forces, the two erstwhile enemies fell upon the Indians while they were asleep, slaughtered an immense ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... move, to wriggle, to scratch with its legs or snap with its mandibles, the Cetonia-larva, a new Prometheus bound, offers its defenceless flanks to the little Vulture destined to devour its entrails. Without too much hesitation, the young Scolia settles down to the wound made by my scalpel, which to the grub represents the wound whence I have just removed it. It thrusts its neck into the belly of its prey; ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... his life that he was really living, getting out of life the full of its juice. Was he not smiting hip and thigh? He longed, I am sure, to be in the thick of the actual fighting, but age debarred him, and he was not of that more sensitive type which shrinks from smiting the defenceless if it cannot smite anything stronger. I remember ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... proper form; and if we gave Madame Cibot a few forty-franc pieces, it is the custom of the trade—we always do so in private houses when we conclude a bargain. Ah! my dear sir, if you think to cheat a defenceless woman, you will not make a good bargain! Do you understand, master lawyer?—M. Magus rules the market, and if you do not come down off the high horse, if you do not keep your word to Mme. Cibot, I shall wait till the collection ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... as the position was very difficult. The boy was not to be trusted, and if I went with him I should be leaving these two alone and, in Anscombe's state, almost defenceless. Still it seemed as though I must. Just then I looked up, and there at the garden gate saw Anscombe's driver, Footsack, the man whom I had despatched to Pretoria to fetch his oxen. I noted that he looked frightened and was breathless, for his eyes ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... with you, and in which, if the blame is thrown on her, she will have no opportunity of defending herself. Be on your guard, then; have a noble courage; fear nothing but the meanness and the wickedness of accusing the absent and the defenceless. The opportunity offered you to-day of speaking conscientiously, however trifling it may in itself appear, may possibly be the turning point of your life; may lead you on to future habits of cowardice and deceit, or may impart to you new vigilance and energy ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... and Tuscaroras. But we will not offend a courtly ear by the recital of those disgusting scenes. Besides this, it might give pain to that humanity which hath, as you observe, prompted your overtures, to dwell upon the splendid victories obtained by a licentious soldiery over unarmed men in defenceless villages, their wanton devastations, their deliberate murders, or to inspect those scenes of carnage painted by the wild excesses of savage rage. These amiable traits of national conduct cannot but revive in our bosoms that partial affection we once felt for everything ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... to France, than Francois began to look out for new pretexts and means for war. Affairs were not unpromising. His mother's death in 1531 left him in possession of a huge fortune, which she had wrung from defenceless France; the powers which were jealous of Austria, the Turk, the English King, the members of the Smalkald league, all looked to Francois as their leader; Clement VII., though his misfortunes had thrown him into the Emperor's hands, was not unwilling to treat ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... sound, and she shrank appalled. The sudden, paralysing conviction flashed upon her that the palace had been deserted by its guards and was in the hands of murderers. She seemed to hear them swarming everywhere, unopposed, yet lusting for blood, while she, a defenceless woman, stood ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... saying, "No, I am dead." Lucretia naturally enough inquires into the cause of her disquietude, and but too soon discovers, by the broken hints of the victim, the source of her mental agitation. Terrified at their defenceless state, they then mutually conspire with Orsino against the Count; and Beatrice proposes to way-lay him (a plot, however, which fails) in a deep and dark ravine, as ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... by the upsetting of all his ideas, by the rapidity of events which found him defenceless, by the ease with which his friends were settling the most cherished matters of his solitary life, that he remained silent and motionless as if moonstruck, thinking of nothing, though listening and striving to understand the meaning of the rapid sentences the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... much unlike a certain boar which I had formerly seen at Limoges, except the sharp horn on its snout, that was about a cubit long; by the means of which that animal dares encounter with an elephant, that is sometimes killed with its point thrust into its belly, which is its most tender and defenceless part. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the clouds, they went, and down again, towards the defenceless Earth, that could not flee from the chariot of the Sun. Great rivers hid themselves in the ground, and mountains were consumed. Harvests perished like a moth that is ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... resorts for an antidote. Were there any truth in the tale as regards the mongoos, it would be difficult to understand, why other creatures, such as the secretary bird and the falcon, which equally destroy serpents, should be left defenceless, and the ichneumon alone provided with a prophylactic. Besides, were the ichneumon inspired by that courage which would result from the consciousness of security, it would be so indifferent to the bite of the serpent, that we might conclude that, both in ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Lastly, who led you across the unfathomable abyss to this delightful world, and established that reign here which now totters to its base? How, therefore, dares yon treacherous fiend to cast a stain on Satan's bravery? he who preys only on the defenceless—who sucks the blood of infants, and delights only in acts of ignoble cruelty and unequal contention. Away with the boaster who never joins in action, but, like a cormorant, hovers over the field, to feed upon the wounded, and overwhelm the dying. True ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... surely, but the apparent and seemingly sudden effect of patriotic daring. Such one's fancy forms young Isadas the Spartan; who, hearing the enemy's approach while at the baths, starts off unmindful of his own defenceless state, snatches a spear and shield from one he meets, flies at the foe, performs prodigies of valour, is looked on by both armies as a descended God, and returns home at last unhurt, to be fined by the Ephori for breach of discipline, at the same time that a statue was ordered to commemorate ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... staggered. "What do you mean, General? You will shoot a poor defenceless girl—and in face of that ukase before you—in face of my demand for her protection! I have promised her marriage," I cried in desperation, "and you condemn her ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... now come forth thus early, hoping so to anticipate the visit of his numerous clients, and take him at advantage, unprepared and defenceless. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... artistic, not to say a bacchanalian, character; and seen more than one association easily formed and yet more easily dispersed. With a Cistercian rule, perhaps they might have lasted longer. In the neighbourhood of women it is but a touch-and-go association that can be formed among defenceless men; the stronger electricity is sure to triumph; the dreams of boyhood, the schemes of youth, are abandoned after an interview of ten minutes, and the arts and sciences, and professional male jollity, deserted at once for two sweet eyes and a caressing accent. And next after ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Colonel, or Knight in Arms, Whose chance on these defenceless dores may sease, If ever deed of honour did thee please, Guard them, and him within protect from harms, He can requite thee, for he knows the charms That call Fame on such gentle acts as these, And he can spred thy Name o're Lands and Seas, What ever clime the Suns bright circle ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... and defenceless under a cynical sky, which was unthreatening but mocking. Dotting a stretch of country thirty miles on either side of the railway, and extending as far to the east and west along its line, there were scattered hundreds of homes, though ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... forces, and one of them was Rajah Allang, the worst of the Sultan's uncles, the governor of the river, who did the extorting and the stealing, and ground down to the point of extinction the country-born Malays, who, utterly defenceless, had not even the resource of emigrating—"For indeed," as Stein remarked, "where could they go, and how could they get away?" No doubt they did not even desire to get away. The world (which is circumscribed by lofty impassable mountains) ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... sir; I spared you when you were unarmed—I am unarmed now. A man who has no excuse for crime is indeed defenceless! ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... latter-day fiction to equal him. Defoe in his inimitable manner has defined surely and deftly the peculiar characteristics of the sect in this portrait. On three separate occasions we find William saving unfortunate natives or defenceless prisoners from the cruel and wicked barbarity of the sailors. At page 183, for example, the reader will find a most penetrating analysis of the dense stupidity which so often accompanies man's love of bloodshed. ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... doubted whether the forbearance, fortitude, and magnanimity displayed in her latter years, do not redound more highly to her praise than all that preceded. Elizabeth wished for some plausible pretext to take away the life of the unhappy Mary, whom, though so defenceless, she regarded as a dangerous rival. The Duke of Norfolk made offers of marriage to Mary, to which she consented, in case she should be liberated. His scheme also was to favor the Catholic cause, and on its being discovered he was thrown into prison, where, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... who could raise protecting walls for thee, Thou young, defenceless land of liberty? Or who could build a fortress strong enough, Or stretch a mighty bulwark long enough To hold thy far-extended coast Against the overweening host That took the open path across the sea, And like a tempest poured Their desolating horde, To quench ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... poor Mr. William Lyon Mackenzie, in the Times, he has been very quiet, except now and then, when he has given an explosive and amusing paper in the Quarterly. But now he has published a new book, on "The Defenceless State of Great Britain," in which, the Examiner says "he has made up for lost time." Says the critic, "It is calculated to rouse all the old women in the country. Such a fee-fa-fum of a book we never read. The Duke's letter to Sir John Burgoyne was nothing to it, and it ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... princes who cast destruction over our house, and made us spectacles of barbarity. But, nevertheless, many great and Christian men the Lord hath raised out of the house of Radcliffe, who have passed away; and now, oh! Father of Heaven! how wonderfully hast Thou spared the remnant of my house, a defenceless orphan, to whom no way is open but to Thy Fatherly heart. Now Thou hast brought me here, what still awaits me? 'Leave Thou me not; let me never forget Thee. Thou hast girded me with strength into the battle. I will not therefore fear what man can ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... definition of law, and obviously, none more correct could be substituted for it. The application of it would at once annul the Fugitive Slave Act, and abolish slavery. That Act reverses the maxim. It commands what is wrong, and forbids what is right. It commands us to trample on the weak and defenceless, to persecute the oppressed, to be accomplices in defrauding honest laborers of their wages. It forbids us to shelter the homeless, to protect abused innocence, to feed the hungry, to "hide the outcast." Let theological casuists argue as they ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... dun dusk, thunder Rolling and battering and cracking, The caverns shudder with a terrible glare Again and again and again, Till the land bows in the darkness, Utterly lost and defenceless, Smitten and blinded and overwhelmed By the crashing ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... it, this chanced to be the little Helen, altogether defenceless and unarmed. Murtagh, still shouting, rushed to the rescue; while Henry, with his musket raised to his shoulder, endeavoured to get between the ape and its intended victim, so that he could fire right into ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... were to ask one of themselves whether he knew of any Hindu who could be really trusted in any matter involving money, he would at once reply that he did not know of anybody. The day-labourer in particular, being a defenceless mortal, rarely gets from anybody the full sum to which he is entitled. If he is paid by the day, bearing this in mind, he retaliates by doing as little work as possible. Hence labourers are almost always ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... same time giving a supererogatory kick to the good old English participle (already deceased) of the latter orthography. And then, it is not always quite certain whether its events occurred or transpired! The misapplication of this last word is a shocking abuse of our defenceless mother tongue, and one I have not often seen publicly rebuked. It is not long since I saw the poor dissyllable in question evidently misapplied in the dedication of a book, and on Sunday, not long ago, I heard the pastor of one of the first churches in ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... had now become supreme. The faint familiar perfume that stole about his room filled him with a kind of frenzy. Was this the chivalric devotion of which he had so boasted? this the desire to protect a young and defenceless woman? He no longer dared question himself. He seemed to feel her warm breath against his cheeks. He threw up his arms with a gesture of despair. A sigh stirred the deathlike stillness. At last! She was there, just within his doorway; ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... of powerful aeroplanes, which Spooner called the "Clutching Hand," came out from the land and flew round us, and simply prodded us with their propellers as we lay defenceless on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... one money bill; this General Society was to be created by another money bill. Such a bill the Lords could not amend; they might indeed reject it; but to reject it was to shake the foundations of public credit and to leave the kingdom defenceless. Thus one branch of the legislature was systematically put under duress by the other, and seemed likely to be reduced to utter insignificance. It was better that the government should be once pinched for ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sides, a community of thought with the party attacked. The result was that, as in civil war, the quarrel, through understanding, was the more determined. The man who signed "Aurelius" had not spared to point out, with a certain melancholy sternness, the plague spots, the defenceless places. Moreover, throughout his exposition there ran a harsh and sombre thread, now felt in denunciation and now in ironic praise. There was more than unveiling of the weakness of any human policy or party; the letter was in ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... supposed from this that poor Mr. Burdovsky must be a simple-minded man, quite defenceless, and an easy tool in the hands of rogues. That is why I thought it my duty to try and help him as 'Pavlicheff's son'; in the first place by rescuing him from the influence of Tchebaroff, and secondly by making myself his friend. I have ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the rankness of political society. Revolve our whole discourse; add to it all those reflections which your own good understanding shall suggest, and make a strenuous effort beyond the reach of vulgar philosophy, to confess that the cause of artificial society is more defenceless even than that of artificial religion; that it is as derogatory from the honor of the Creator, as subversive of human reason, and productive of infinitely more mischief ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the old Regent would have allied himself with Satan, if he had led a horde of plunderers. I was greatly amused to see in this camp the commencement of an Id-Gah or place of prayer; for the villains, while they robbed and murdered even defenceless women, prayed ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... warehouses was counted by millions; before the sun had set on the 'great fury.' Those Spaniards, and Italians, and Walloons, were now thirsting for more gold, for more blood; and as the capital of England was even more wealthy and far more defenceless than the commercial metropolis of the Netherlands had been, so it was resolved that the London 'fury' should be more thorough and more productive than the 'fury' of Antwerp, at the memory—of which the world still shuddered. And these professional soldiers had been taught to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... see that they are watchful," exclaimed Maria Theresa, "I see it. Do not deny it, you are one of those whose evil eyes see evil doings in every impulse of my dear defenceless child's heart. But have a care, sir cardinal, the friendless dauphiness will one day be Queen of France, and she will then have it in her power to bring to justice those who persecute her now!" [Footnote: "Memoires de Madame de Campan," vol. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... always comes—and it's wearing on a body. Darn it! They'd ought to know by this time I always get my own way. If they wasn't such a decent bunch I'd have words with 'em, giving me the same trouble year after year, probably because I'm a weak, defenceless ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... is stayed, All my help from Thee I bring, Cover my defenceless head With the shadow of ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... the fact, that in the early history of our country, the tomahawk and scalping-knife were put into the hands of our savage neighbors, by our enemies at war, and that a bounty was awarded for the depredations they committed on the lives of our defenceless fellow-citizens. Our feelings were shocked at the recital, and a prejudice was created, as well to these poor wandering savages, as to the nation that prompted them to the work, which neither time nor education has eradicated. Yet, as merciless ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... the sixteenth century, and wearing a singular collar of jewels, stepped out from behind a curtain, attended by two other men, who, by their dress, were, or seemed to be, of inferior rank. Without a word, these three threw themselves upon the unarmed and defenceless painter with the fury of wild animals pouncing on prey. There was a brief and breathless struggle—three daggers gleamed in air—a shriek rang through the stillness—another instant and the victim lay dead, stabbed to the heart, while ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... felt that, whatever might befall them, they were no longer altogether defenceless, and leaving the sheds behind them, they again plunged into the shrubbery, their object now being to discover a way of escape from the garden into ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... which they changed and of the causes of the change, about men there is not much, and that little is more to the purpose. Deprived of the care of God, who had possessed and tended them, they were left helpless and defenceless, and were torn in pieces by the beasts, who were naturally fierce and had now grown wild. And in the first ages they were still without skill or resource; the food which once grew spontaneously had failed, and as yet they knew not how to procure it, because they had never felt the pressure ...
— Statesman • Plato
... a foe inhuman, Oh, but our hearts rebel; Defenceless victims ye are, in claws of spite a prey. * * * * * Nor trouble we just Heaven that quick revenge be done On Satan's chamberlains highseated in Berlin; Their reek floats round the world on all lands neath the sun: Tho' in craven Germany was no man found, not one With spirit enough to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... and her female attendants were already lashed to the principal masts, and ropes were given to the others around her, as indispensable precautions; for the deck of the bark, now cleared of every particle of its freight, was as exposed and as defenceless against the power of the wind, as a naked heath. Such was the situation of the Winkelried, when the omens of the night changed to their ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... barges rowing up the river, bristling with weapons and crowded with men in armor. The sentries on the bluff challenged, and received no answer. One of them fired at the advancing boats. Still no response. Laudonniere was almost defenceless. He had given his heavier cannon to Hawkins, and only two field-pieces were left. They were levelled at the foremost boats, and the word was about to be given, when a voice from among the strangers called that they were French, commanded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... lined with steel rings, mail as stout as any forged. Some one had stabbed once and again at the coat without avail, and had then torn it open and stabbed his defenceless breast. Though we had killed two of their men, they had rained blows enough on this man of ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... against the republic. And when did it occur?" he continued with rising fury. "Was it not shortly after the day in which that heartless villain, the Proveditore Marcello, captured the woivode's wife, and hung her, unoffending and defenceless, unshriven and unabsolved, upon a tree on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... entreaty to succour us, for the commonwealth is in such distress, that unless God inspire him to show us his servants the mercy of his natural disposition, and move him to give us a single Magister militum and a single Dux, we are utterly destitute, for Rome and its neighbourhood are specially defenceless. The exarch writes that he can give us no help, for he has not force enough to guard Ravenna. Therefore, may God command the emperor quickly to succour us, before the army of that most wicked nation take the places ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... the 5th century the Saxon King Horsa, with his brother Hengist, who had greatly improved the fort at Horncastle, were defeated in a fight at Tetford by the Britons under their leader Raengeires, and the British King caused the walls to be nearly demolished and the place rendered defenceless. (Leland's Collectanea, vol i, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... Government was responsible for the grinding poverty of the masses; nor could they very well realize the moral wretchedness imposed by that Government upon the whole of educated Russia. But the atrocities committed upon the defenceless prisoners are there in all their baseness, concrete and palpable, admitting of no excuse, no doubt or hesitation, crying out to the heart of humanity against Russian tyranny. And the Tzar's Government, stupidly confident in its apparently unassailable position, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... can be found have to be sought on the moorland road to weight it, and hinder our banquet from flying bodily away. It is at last spread—cold lamb, cold partridges, chickens, mayonnaise, cakes, pastry—they have just been arranged in their defenceless nakedness under the eye of heaven, when the rain begins. And, when it begins, it begins to some purpose. It deceives us with no false hopes—with no breakings in the serried clouds—with no flying glimpses of blue sky. Down it comes, straight, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... arms were stretched out at the moment to grasp the weak defenceless man, who sat gnashing his teeth, and awaiting the assault, whilst in his heart he cursed himself and all the world besides. The miller called upon the company to desist, and they retreated a stop or two, whilst ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... had felt then for the departed General as he looked at his photograph. It was intolerable, he had thought then, that a man should have those large, full eyes, that straight, manly look and bearing, who had gone to his grave having deliberately planned that his dead hand should so deeply wound a defenceless woman, and that woman his sweet, young wife. Murray's mind was so full now of relief at the idea that Sir David had done his best at the last, that in his relief he almost forgot that, in a woman's mind the main fact might still be that there ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... it subjected me to that scorn, and to those insults, which a brother, who has been so tenacious of an independence voluntarily given up by me, and who has appeared so exalted upon it, ought not to have shewn to any body, much less to a weak and defenceless sister; who is, notwithstanding, an affectionate and respectful one, and would be glad to shew herself to be so upon all future occasions; as she has in every action of her past life, although of late she has met with such ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... from him permission straight. "My daughter, night with ebon wing Hovers above; the hour is late. My son is active, brave, and strong, Conversant with the woods, he knows Each path; methinks it would be wrong For thee to venture where he goes, Weak and defenceless as thou art, At such a time. If thou wert near Thou might'st embarrass him, dear heart, Alone, he would not have ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... of the morning, rise! approach you here! Come—but molest not yon defenceless urn! Look on this spot—a nation's sepulchre! Abode of gods, whose shrines no longer burn. E'en gods must yield—religions take their turn: 'Twas Jove's—'tis Mahomet's; and other creeds Will rise with other years, till man shall learn Vainly his incense soars, his victim bleeds; Poor child of Doubt ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... the marble floor, with the death wound at the breast. Her instinct—she could not have reasoned then—told her that her father must have found the lovers together, and that in sudden rage he had stabbed Don John, defenceless. ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... fact also to your superiors," he said, with taunting irony. "The monster of the seas, he who plunders defenceless fishermen ravages unprotected coasts, and eludes the flag of King George, as other serpents steal into their caves at the footstep of man, is safe in speaking his mind, backed by a hundred and fifty freebooters, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... on primeval wrongs, He blew his battle-horn, at which uprose Whole nations; here, ten thousand of most might He called aloud, and soon Charoba saw His dark helm hover o'er the land of Nile, What should the virgin do? should royal knees Bend suppliant, or defenceless hands engage Men of gigantic force, gigantic arms? For 'twas reported that nor sword sufficed, Nor shield immense nor coat of massive mail, But that upon their towering heads they bore Each a huge stone, refulgent as the stars. This told she Dalica, then cried aloud: "If on ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... rather see the devil than to see him; they were glad when he died. But while so much was said of Uncle Esau, which was also true of many other negro drivers, the overseers themselves were not guiltless of cruelty to the defenceless slaves. ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... Hill, there is no more doubt than that they beat the French at Blenheim; but through the war their chiefs seem constantly to have been afraid of assaulting entrenched Continentals afterwards; else why, from July to March, hesitate to strike an almost defenceless enemy? Why the hesitation at Long Island, when the Continental army was in our hand? Why that astonishing timorousness—of Howe before Valley Forge, where the relics of a force starving, sickening, and in rags, could scarcely man the lines, which they held before a great, victorious, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... three months and a {48} half. They were filled with hardship. On the very first day of the long march, a band of Indians from the north, finding Hearne defenceless, plundered him of wellnigh all he had. 'Nothing can exceed,' wrote Hearne, 'the cool deliberation of the villains. A committee of them entered my tent. The ringleader seated himself on my left hand. ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... the straw, when it is chopped into little pieces, is given to both horses and camels. The Touaricks show the greatest antipathy to the Arabs, more especially since the late murderous attack of the Shânbah on their defenceless countrymen. Some of the Touaricks go so far as to say, "Mahomet was not an Arab." My Touarghee friend Omer quarrelled violently with two Souf Arabs, who were also visiting me. I told them it was indecent to quarrel in the house of a stranger whom they were together visiting, and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... sibi vindicant, adversa uni imputantur). That is my own experience. The people of Holland have not only laid at my door all the disasters and calamities that have befallen our republic; they have not been content to see me fall unarmed and defenceless into the hands of four individuals whose design was to murder me; but when, by the agency of Divine Providence, I escaped the assassins' blows and had recovered from my wounds, they conceived a violent hatred against such of their magistrates as they believed ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... creeping cautiously on all fours after the gipsy woman. When they were about halfway in, a hand was laid on Dandie Dinmont's heel, and it was all the stout farmer could do to keep from crying out—which, in the defenceless position in which they were placed, might well have cost ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... a nimble hand she had unbuttoned and rolled up the sleeve of her blouse. She stuck her pretty blue-veined arm before his eyes. "Look here, sir, it was you, wasn't it? It was your powerful jaw inflicted this bite upon the arm of a defenceless young leopardess—" ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... young Germans who worked in the mills, spent most of their evenings at a bowling club; but Auermann himself, exhaling a strong odour of bay rum, would arrive promptly at quarter past eight, take off his coat, and thus, as it were stripped for action, would turn upon the defenceless Edward. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hours when it strikes, like the fatal flash, fraught with destruction? When there is but a single moment longer in which rescue is still possible, ought assistance to be delayed? Open me the door; you need have nothing to fear from a poor defenceless wretch, who is deserted of all the world, pursued and distressed by an awful fate, when he comes to beseech Mademoiselle to save him from threatening danger?" La Martiniere heard the man below moaning and sobbing with ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the army and the nation. That also has been demonstrable on many occasions during recent years. I recall the case of Lieutenant von Bruesewitz, of Carlsruhe. This young officer ran his sword through the back of a defenceless civilian by whom he fancied himself insulted in a restaurant, the man dying within a few hours of the deed. His murderer attempted no other exculpation, or indeed explanation, than by saying that according to the army ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... sent into the southern provinces, with orders to disperse them and apprehend the ringleaders. These orders were carried out with much barbarity. Amongst various assemblies which were discovered and attacked in the Cevennes, were those of Auduze and Vigan, where the soldiers fell upon the defenceless people, put the greater number to the sword, and hanged upon the nearest trees those who did not succeed in making ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... had no judges, no police organisation, our tax flowed in spontaneously, and soldiers we knew not. Yet there was no theft, no robbery, no murders among us; the payment of the tax was never in arrears; and, as will be shown later on, we were by no means defenceless. Our stores of weapons and ammunition, as well as our subsidies to the warlike Masai, might be reckoned as a surrogate for a military budget. As to the lack of a magistracy, we were such arrant barbarians that we did not even consider a ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... bloodshed and adventure he seemed to delight. Like the free-lance in all ages, he seems to have squandered his booty as soon as it was acquired, and then to sea once more, to face the desperate hazard of an encounter with the knights, to raid defenceless villages, to lie perdu behind some convenient cape, dashing out from thence to plunder the argosy of the merchantman. Intolerable conditions of heat and cold he endured, he suffered from wounds, from fever, from hunger and thirst, from hope deferred, ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... survival of the fittest; the preying of the stronger on the weaker—of the tiger on the feebler beasts of the jungle; the eagle on the smaller birds of the air; the wolf on the sheep; the shark on the poor, defenceless fish, and so on; neither could He be the Creator that deals in diseases—foul and filthy diseases, common, not only to all divisions of the human species, but to quadrupeds, birds, fish, and even flora; that brings into existence cripples and idiots, the blind, the deaf and dumb; and watches ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... and supple in its movements than the male. They prey upon kangaroos, opossums, bandicoots, and other native animals; hunting by night, their exquisite sense of smell enables them to steal cautiously upon these defenceless animals, in the thick covers of the low grassy flats and scrubs, or to run them down on the more open hill and forest land. They are not very fleet, but follow the track with untiring perseverance, occasionally uttering a kind ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... would see you far enough before I allowed you to try, Mr. Rowley!' I cried. 'Why, you would be quite defenceless! A footpad that was an infant child could rob you. And I should probably come driving by to find you in a ditch with your throat cut. But there is something in your idea, for all that; and I propose we put it in execution no farther ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their apparent security, and could not help observing, when we were night and day pursued by bandits, "These robbers must have an extraordinary affection for Muslims, and be very Deists themselves; for these few defenceless people pass unmolested, and we are pursued continually, although our caravan is full ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... were those of surprise and indignation that a vile Barbarian should dare to insult the capital of the world; but their arrogance was soon humbled by misfortune; and their unmanly rage, instead of being directed against an enemy in arms, was meanly exercised on a defenceless and innocent victim. Perhaps in the person of Serena, the Romans might have respected the niece of Theodosius, the aunt, nay, even the adoptive mother, of the reigning Emperor; but they abhorred the widow of Stilicho; and they listened with credulous passion to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... those chiefs who have been slain. Thus Achilles offers up twelve young Trojans to the ghost of Patroclus. In course of time it became usual to sacrifice slaves at the funeral of all persons of condition; and either for the amusement of the spectators, or because it appeared barbarous to massacre defenceless men, arms were placed in their hands, and they were incited to save their own lives by the death of those who ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... now continually augmenting, and my circumstances daily growing easier. Spain having been several years at war against Great Britain, and being at length joined by France, our situation became one of great danger; our colony was defenceless, and our Assembly was composed principally of Quakers. I therefore formed an association of citizens, numbering ten thousand, into a militia; these all furnished themselves with arms and met every week for drill, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... cause in hand. For Mrs Darvell was gifted with a range of expression and a freedom of speech which had been denied to her "man," and he had learned to dread the times when the missus was put out, as occasions when he stood defenceless before that deadly weapon—the tongue. He was dreading it now, although he sat so quietly smoking in the chimney-corner. The air had that vaguely uneasy feeling in it that precedes a storm. Presently there would be the first clap of thunder. The clock struck nine. No Frank. An unheard-of ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... captivity of a fishery so entirely defenceless, (for not one of the vessels has any arms) a single frigate or privateer of twentyfour or even twenty guns would be quite sufficient. The beginning of December would be the best time to proceed from hence, because they would then find the whale vessels ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... felt, indeed, to have taken Nature unawares, surprised her without disguise; so that for once she displayed her veritable face—a face not yet made up and camouflaged to conceal the fact of its in-dwelling terror from puny and defenceless man. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... principles. He who proceeds without principle, as chance, timidity, or self-preservation directs, will not perhaps fare better; but he will be less blamed. What are we in the great scale of events, we poor defenceless frontier inhabitants? What is it to the gazing world, whether we breathe or whether we die? Whatever virtue, whatever merit and disinterestedness we may exhibit in our secluded retreats, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... would not be God, but a fiend. He who loves purity and chastity and has no wrath against impurity and unchastity, but loves them, too, is a moral leper. He who loves the defence of the poor and the helpless, but has no wrath against the cold-blooded murderer, the one crushing the defenceless, but loves him, too, is a fiend. Character, from God to Devil, can only be told by what one loves ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... Frankfort towards Bethlehem—the new headquarters. It was with heavy hearts that we said good-bye to our kind friends in Frankfort, for well we knew by this time what the passage of a British column meant for the defenceless non-combatants—houses broken down and burnt, children and greybeards torn from their families, and all the other useless and unnecessary cruelties that have broken so many lives, converted so many joyous homesteads into tombstones of black despair, and imprinted into the very souls of many ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... and the doe said, "I am now half assured, but unless you bind fast your sword, I dare not come in." Then Canneloro, who wished to become friends with the doe, bound his sword as a countryman does, when he carries it in the city for fear of the constables. As soon as the ogre saw Canneloro defenceless, he re-took his own form, and laying hold on him, flung him into a pit at the bottom of the cave, and covered it up with a stone—to ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... last is an actual invasion! Prussian officers landing on our defenceless shores, on the transparently flimsy pretext of making themselves acquainted with our military establishments, at the rate (excluding Sundays) of 240 a week, or in this present September, of 1,080 a month, or, amazing and terrifying total, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... city, retarded their flight, and many of the leaders were captured. The remnant fled to London, thinking that "every bush was full of marshals," and suffering severely from the hostility of the peasantry. Only three persons were slain in the battle, but there was a cruel massacre of the defenceless citizens after its close. So vast was the booty won by the victors that in scorn they called the fight ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Warsaw participated in all street manifestations and political processions which took place during the year 1860-1861. Among those pierced by Cossack bullets during the manifestation of February 27, 1861, were several Jews. The indignation which this shooting down of defenceless people aroused in Warsaw is generally regarded as the immediate cause of the mutiny. Rabbi Meisels was a member of the deputation which went to Viceroy Gorchakov to demand satisfaction for the blood that had been spilled. In the demonstrative ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... those who have been thus far successful conspirators against the general Treasury and ruthless oppressors of every vital interest of defenceless California, with resonant voice and open hand he is clearly visible upon parade, demanding attention from the elected servants of all the people, and easily dwarfing the lessor lobby by the splendor of ...
— How Members of Congress Are Bribed • Joseph Moore
... and daughter were on American ground again, and would be given over to his care more readily than to another's; that the arrival of troops before the enemy's camp would be fraught with risk for the defenceless two; and that an attempt to take them by force would ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... in my grandfather's name, but not one in my father's name. I have an idea that when a vice or virtue skips one generation, it appears with increased violence or persistence in the next, for, passing over my father into my defenceless breast, the spirit of sport went mad in me—or almost so. No miser ever had a more cheerful and happy hour than I had as I read ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... places others who would deal justly with the people. And because the land had become overrun with forest during the days of misrule, he cut roads through the thickets, that no longer wild beasts and men, fiercer than the beasts, should lurk in their gloom, to the harm of the weak and defenceless. Thus it came to pass that soon the peasant plowed his fields in safety, and where had been wastes, men dwelt again in peace ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... their maids, to send them to the calybuce sugar-house, or to some other place established for the purpose of punishing slaves, and have them severely flogged; and I am sorry it is a fact, that the villains to whom those defenceless creatures are sent, not only flog them as they are ordered, but frequently compel them to submit to the greatest indignity. Oh! if there is any one thing under the wide canopy of heaven, horrible enough to stir a man's soul, and to make his very blood boil, it is the thought ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... Ajax, therefore, had now nothing but a headless spear, while the bronze point flew some way off and came ringing down on to the ground. Ajax knew the hand of heaven in this, and was dismayed at seeing that Jove had now left him utterly defenceless and was willing victory for the Trojans. Therefore he drew back, and the Trojans flung fire upon the ship which was at once wrapped ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... of the 5th century the Saxon King Horsa, with his brother Hengist, who had greatly improved the fort at Horncastle, were defeated in a fight at Tetford by the Britons under their leader Raengeires, and the British King caused the walls to be nearly demolished and the place rendered defenceless. (Leland's Collectanea, vol i, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... ashamed of yourself, sir," said Mrs. Gruppins, turning on him indignantly; "to think that you should take advantage of a poor and defenceless widow, and me so inexperienced and ignorant ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... boy leading him by the sleeve out of the church. After two days' prayer, St. Maurus saw the same, but Pompeian could not see this vision, by which was represented that the devil studies to withdraw men from prayer, in order that, being disarmed and defenceless, they may easily be made a prey. On the third day, St. Benedict finding the monk still absent from church in the time of prayer, struck him with a wand, and by that correction the sinner was freed from the temptation. Dom. German Millet[4] tells us, from the tradition and archives ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... affair at Saberne was found industriously hacking at a cripple. In all these matters I would avoid sentiment. We must not lose our tempers at the mere cruelty of the thing; but pursue the strict psychological distinction. Others besides German soldiers have slain the defenceless, for loot or lust or private malice, like any other murderer. The point is that nowhere else but in Prussian Germany is any theory of honour mixed up with such things; any more than with poisoning or picking pockets. No ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... when both sons were forced to flee; when the elder was taken and imprisoned; when the most atrocious public extortion was practised; and when ruffianly officials regarded the defenceless widows as their prey. Their house had to be mortgaged, and then first one and then the other of their two vineyards; and finally one of their fields was seized by the mortgagees. And thus it came about that these ladies ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... Commissioner Spain visited Rauparaha, at the request of the leading settlers of Wellington, to assure him that the matter should be left to the arbitrament of the Crown. The Crown, as represented by Mr. Shortland, was, perhaps, at the moment more concerned at the defenceless position of Auckland, in the event of a general rising, than at anything else. Moreover, the philo-Maori officials held that Rauparaha and Rangihaeata were aggrieved persons. A company of fifty-three Grenadiers was sent to ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... ordinary citizen's rights, the Negro slave in both countries was out of consideration. In the Old South, for instance, a slave could be arrested, tried, and condemned with but one witness against him, and without a jury.[41] In Brazil he was equally as defenceless. Professional slave runaway catchers might pounce upon a slave who was about his duty, imprison him, subject him to indignities, on the ground that he was a fugitive, and return him to his master, claiming money for their trouble. In such a sad case, no one would take the slave's part, none would ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... it is a Christian duty to forgive—that when a bad man smites one defenceless cheek, we are taught to offer the other to his upraised hand. But the Lord of Heaven and earth promises no forgiveness of transgression unless it is followed by repentance; and where God himself draws the strict line between Justice and Mercy, let ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... PROFESSOR HOLLOWAY! Have I sinned in oil? CABBURN pursues me. Have I a dark remembrance associated with any gentlemanly garments, bespoke or ready made? MOSES and SON are on my track. Did I ever aim a blow at a defenceless fellow-creature's head? That head eternally being measured for a wig, or that worse head which was bald before it used the balsam, and hirsute afterwards - enforcing the benevolent moral, 'Better to be bald as a Dutch cheese than come to this,' - undoes me. Have I ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... dependent on their aid and obliged to purchase their support by allowing them liberties, as when William II proposed to play the tyrant, or in the time of Stephen from the weakness of the king, complaints are frequent of their cruelties and oppressions, and the defenceless must have suffered whatever they chose to inflict. The contrast of the reign of Stephen, in the conduct and character of the foreigners in England, with that of Henry, was noted at the time. In the commander of his mercenaries, William of Ypres, who had been one of the unsuccessful pretenders ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... to my deserts. I was, for some time past, fast getting into the pining, distrustful snarl of the misanthrope. I saw myself alone, unfit for the struggle of life, shrinking at every rising cloud in the chance-directed atmosphere of fortune, while, all defenceless, I looked about in vain for a cover. It never occurred to me, at least never with the force it deserved, that this world is a busy scene, and man, a creature destined for a progressive struggle; and that, however I might possess a warm heart ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... say, rather, the fear of ennui," interrupted Flemming. "One of their own writers has said with a great deal of truth, that the gentry of France rush into Paris to escape from ennui, as, in the noble days of chivalry, the defenceless inhabitants of the champaign fled into the castles, at theapproach of some plundering knight, or lawless Baron; forsaking the inspired twilight of their native groves, for the luxurious shades of the royal gardens. What do you think ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... States. No doubt, the Rebel Government may send to England and purchase swift steamers like the Alabama, and man them with the reckless outcasts of every nationality, and send them forth to prey like pirates upon defenceless commerce. No doubt, in their hate, the Rebels may build sea-monsters like the Merrimack, or the Arkansas, or those cotton-mailed steamers at Galveston, and make all stand aghast at some temporary disaster. These things are unpleasant, but they are unavoidable. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... greatest evils that ever annoyed the community. If the lowest ruffian may stab your good name with impunity in England, will you be so uncandid as to exclaim against Italy for the practice of common assassination? To what purpose is our property secured, if our moral character is left defenceless? People thus baited, grow desperate; and the despair of being able to preserve one's character, untainted by such vermin, produces a total neglect of fame; so that one of the chief incitements to the practice ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Florentine dress of the sixteenth century, and wearing a singular collar of jewels, stepped out from behind a curtain, attended by two other men, who, by their dress, were, or seemed to be, of inferior rank. Without a word, these three threw themselves upon the unarmed and defenceless painter with the fury of wild animals pouncing on prey. There was a brief and breathless struggle—three daggers gleamed in air—a shriek rang through the stillness—another instant and the victim lay dead, ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... servants; she could pardon all offenders. In a word, the Queen could by prerogative upset all the action of civil government within the Government, could disgrace the nation by a bad war or peace, and could, by disbanding our forces, whether land or sea, leave us defenceless against foreign nations. Why do we not fear that she would do this, ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... Within a dungeon, where he may avouch His real estate and name; and there's no harm done, Should he prove other than I deem. This robbery (Save for the actual loss) is lucky also; He's poor, and that's suspicious—he's unknown, 290 And that's defenceless.—True, we have no proofs Of guilt—but what hath he of innocence? Were he a man indifferent to my prospects, In other bearings, I should rather lay The inculpation on the Hungarian, who Hath something which I like not; and alone Of all around, except the Intendant, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... to Man, have their Natures softened with something mild and tractable, and by that means are qualified for a Domestick Life. In this Case the Passions generally correspond with the Make of the Body. We do not find the Fury of a Lion in so weak and defenceless an Animal as a Lamb, nor the Meekness of a Lamb in a Creature so armed for Battel and Assault as the Lion. In the same manner, we find that particular Animals have a more or less exquisite Sharpness and Sagacity in those particular Senses which most turn to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the new champion aimed a fierce blow at Sigmund, which the old hero parried with his sword. The shock shattered the matchless blade, and although the strange assailant vanished as he had come, Sigmund was left defenceless and was soon wounded unto death by ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Haman was the son of those who fell upon the tribes, faint and weary, in the wilderness; who had pursued them with inveterate hatred; who had ever joined with their foes or stood ready to attack them in their defenceless state. ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... extensive jungle. The elephant awoke before they could distinctly see its form, owing to the extreme thickness of the covert, but the fight commenced. There was a considerable difference between the attack upon defenceless villagers, who fled before it in hopeless panic, and a stand-up fight with two experienced European shikaris armed with the best rifles; the terror of the district quickly showed its appreciation of discretion, and, badly wounded, it retreated through the forest, well followed ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... pain to General Lafayette. "We must pacify them, or you, general, must prevent them by force!" "It is impossible," replied Lafayette. "How could we use force against defenceless women? Not one of my soldiers would obey my commands, for these women are the wives, the mothers, the sisters of my soldiers! They have no other weapons than their tongues with which to storm the heart of the queen! How could we conquer them with weapons of steel? We must let them go! But we must ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... also thinking of the shop was evident, for Miss Sarah was now heard remarking, "You left us defenceless, Caroline, and we surrendered soon after ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... the terrible power of certain gases in the physical world, beings who combine with other beings, penetrate them as active agents, and produce upon them witchcrafts, charms, against which these helpless slaves are wholly defenceless; they are, in fact, enchanted, brought under subjection, reduced to a condition of dreadful vassalage. Such mysterious beings overpower others with the sceptre and the glory of a superior nature,—acting upon them at times like ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... the external profession of her father's court. That taunt from the supercilious, curling lip of the royal princess, who had honoured him by consenting to become his wife, was a burning ray of persecution streaming on David's defenceless head. If his religion had been confined to the surface, while the pomp and circumstance of royalty occupied his heart, it would have died out then and there, as the tender sprouting corn, whose roots rest on a rock, dies out ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... blockade at some Southern port. While there was much newspaper comment in England that the vessels were "new Alabamas," and in America that they were "floating fortresses," suitable for attack upon defenceless Northern cities, their primary purpose was to ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... caught the cold gleam of steel in the hand that he brought back as stealthily as he had carried it to his poniard. Sant' Iddio! What a coward he was for all his bulk, to go so slyly about the business of stabbing a poor, helpless, defenceless Fool. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... satisfactorily; maybe also the satisfaction of the spider when the fly comes near the web; but there was also kindness, pity, great tenderness, and all that over which angels rejoice, as the poet has it. I felt sorry the defenceless little thing should fall into my hands; and that pity increased the love, and the desire to conquer Aniela. I felt also a sting of conscience that I had deceived her, and yet I had the consciousness that I had spoken the truth when I asked for her sympathy and friendship. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... could raise protecting walls for thee, Thou young, defenceless land of liberty? Or who could build a fortress strong enough, Or stretch a mighty bulwark long enough To hold thy far-extended coast Against the overweening host That took the open path across the sea, And like a tempest poured Their desolating horde, To quench thy dawning ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... government therefore is primarily an oligarchy of directors of labour and distributors of subsistence. It is a very close oligarchy, for those beneath it are quite defenceless, levelled down to an equality of poverty and misery. It is a form of government very difficult to replace, for it holds in its hands the threads of such an intricate organisation that it must be protected against ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... evening, when the higher powers drew off to cards, and when Lady Anne had her phalanx of young ladies round her; and whilst I stood a defenceless young man at her mercy, she made me feel her vengeance. She talked at me continually, and at every opening gave me sly cuts, which she flattered herself I ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... their own sufferings, and compassionate to those of others, have emulated their robust companions in the practice of every cruelty. The very children, taught by example, and encouraged by the exhortation of their parents, dealt their feeble blows on the dead carcasses of the defenceless children of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Governor did not assault any with his own hand; but, having asked the missionaries where they came from, and being answered, 'From England,' and 'From France,' just gave the order, 'Sha' (kill) to the soldiers, who answered with a shout and immediately fell upon their defenceless victims, killing them indiscriminately."[5] ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... in that spot should be caught by skilled fowlers, and he caused wicks which had been set on fire to be fastened beneath their wings. The birds sought the shelter of their own nests, and filled the city with a blaze; all the townsmen flocked to quench it, and left the gates defenceless. He attacked and captured Handwan, but suffered him to redeem his life with gold for ransom. Thus, when he might have cut off his foe, he preferred to grant him the breath of life; so far did his mercy qualify ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... prince, vowing revenge against the whole Scottish nation, whom he deemed incorrigible in their aversion to his government, assembled a great army, and was preparing to enter the frontiers, secure of success, and determined to make the defenceless Scots the victims of his severity, when he unexpectedly sickened and died near Carlisle; enjoining with his last breath his son and successor to prosecute the enterprise, and never to desist till he had finally subdued the kingdom of Scotland. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... said Holmes. 'But you won't. It would add to the difficulties in which the Reverend James Tattersby is already deeply immersed. Your troubles are sufficient, as matters stand, without your having to explain to the world why you have killed a defenceless guest in your ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... hurried in. A stranger had just entered the room. But before me stood Miss Agnes, pale, erect, her lips quivering. She held fast a chair, which she had drawn up in front of her, as one would place a shield between one's self and some wild animal. How slender and defenceless she looked! I followed the terrified glance of her eyes. There, in the middle of the room, stood a stranger,—not so terrible to look upon, for he was young, and it seemed to me I had never seen so handsome a man. His black ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... been chiefly derived from the romances of Cooper and his imitators. We have been accustomed to regard the aboriginal red man as an incarnation of treachery and remorseless ferocity, whose favourite recreation is to butcher defenceless women and children in cold blood. A few of us, led away by the stock anecdotes in worthless missionary and Sunday School books, have gone far into the opposite extreme, and have been wont to regard the Indian as the Noble Savage who never forgets a kindness, who is ever ready to return good for ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... lurking within those vast forest depths? It therefore behoved them to adopt at least a reasonable amount of precaution, and so to equip themselves that, in the event of their encountering new and hitherto unsuspected dangers, they might not find themselves in a wholly defenceless condition. ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... leather jerkin lined with steel rings, mail as stout as any forged. Some one had stabbed once and again at the coat without avail, and had then torn it open and stabbed his defenceless breast. Though we had killed two of their men, they had rained blows enough on this man of ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... corrected the vicious, and forgave an enemy; by which he at once remitted the strongest provocations, and exercised the most ardent charity. Compassion was indeed the distinguishing quality of Savage: he never appeared inclined to take advantage of weakness, to attack the defenceless, or to press upon the falling. Whoever was distressed was certain at least of his good wishes; and when he could give no assistance to extricate them from misfortunes, he endeavoured to soothe them by sympathy and tenderness. But when his heart was not softened by the sight of misery, he was ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... The darkness is gone; the cruelty is gone which the darkness bred; the moans have passed away which the victims uttered; the cloud has vanished which once sat continually upon their graves—cloud of protestation that ascended forever to thy throne from the tears of the defenceless, and from the anger of the just. And lo! we—I thy servant, and this dark phantom, whom for one hour on this thy festival of Pentecost I make my servant—render thee united worship in this thy ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... princes of the House of Austria? What prevented this house, particularly in its German branch, from yielding to the pressing demands of so many of its subjects, and, after the example of other princes, enriching itself at the expense of a defenceless clergy? It is difficult to credit that a belief in the infallibility of the Romish Church had any greater influence on the pious adherence of this house, than the opposite conviction had on the revolt of the Protestant princes. In fact, several ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... moras[10] of Spartan troops for its protection. He always had his eye upon this place, and watched his opportunity. Hearing that the garrison had made an expedition into Lokris, he marched, hoping to catch Orchomenus defenceless, taking with him the Sacred Band and a few cavalry. When he came to the city he found that the garrison had been relieved by fresh troops from Sparta, and so he led off his men homewards through Tegyra, the only way that he could, by a ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... two years elapsed, before the perfidious Cherokees broke out again in a fresh place, killing and driving the defenceless inhabitants at a most barbarous rate. Marion instantly flew again to the governor with the tender of his services to fight for his afflicted countrymen. His excellency was so pleased with this second instance of Marion's patriotism, that he gave him a ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... havin' the brazen impudence to come here arter the harm you've done that po' defenceless darling boy," she said, with a noble dignity which obscured somehow her slovenly figure and her dirty kitchen. Peering out from under the staircase, I could see that my father stood quite humbly before her, twirling his hatbrim ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... given, even if founded on no mistake or bad information, though it might alleviate, would by no means remove the blame of the king's counsellors, or justify the strange irregularity of their proceedings: that the same force which, without resistance, had massacred so many defenceless men, could easily have secured their persons, and have reserved them for a trial, and for punishment by a legal sentence, which would have distinguished the innocent from the guilty: that the admiral in particular, being dangerously wounded, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... and was afraid for an instant that he was on the point of passing from the chapter of his cleverness to that of his timidity. It was a false alarm, however, for he only animadverted on the pleasures of the elegant extract hurled—literally hurle in general—from the centre of the room at one's defenceless head. He intimated that in his opinion these pleasures were all for the performers. The auditors had at any rate given Miss Rooth a charming afternoon; that of course was what Mrs. Dallow's kind brother had mainly intended in arranging the little party. ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... married by a Protestant priest. He had not committed the one sin which his wife's church recognised as the only cause for divorce. There was no escape from his obligation, provided his wife would forgive him and take him back. Her wrong to him had borne the bitter fruit of his wrong to this defenceless girl. Let her come back—she could not come too soon—and face him with his faithlessness. He would tell her what she had done, and bid her to forgive him or ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... several of the ambulance mules were killed or badly wounded, and it was a marvel only one of the ambulance men was hit, for in one of their tents were four bullet holes, and a similar number in the Red Cross flag itself. Some of the occupants of the hospital were Boer prisoners, some were defenceless natives, so all set to work to throw up trenches for the protection of these non-combatants, and among the diggers and delvers was the Wesleyan chaplain with coat thrown off, and plying pick like one to the manner born. To that task he stuck till ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... while the Chancas shouted with joy, for now Kari was defenceless and save for the death itself, this fight to the ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... food from him and strode to the door of the cabin. The storm was coming up fast now. The lightning flashed and the thunder shook the house. Morley's heart ached for the boy struggling alone and defenceless through the night, but he was glad he was gone! Whatever lay before of defeat or victory—he thanked God that the last of his race had had courage at least to make ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... sentence: "In deep sleep I shall seal you. He who awakes the defenceless sleeper, shall have her to wife." Bruennhilde falls on her knees to him. "If I am to be bound in fast sleep, an easy prey to the most ignoble of men, this one prayer you shall grant which a noble terror lifts to you: Let the sleeper be protected by a barrier ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... reek with his acts, that run the gamut of every crime in the decalogue, crimes for the most part actuated apparently by no other motive than a monstrously innate thirst for notoriety—and the victims, for the most part, too, have been the innocent and the defenceless. What is the end of this to be? If the police cannot cope with this blood-mad ruffian, is New York to sit idly by and submit to another reign of terror instituted and carried on under the nose of authority by this inhuman jackal? If so, we are committing a crime against ourselves, we are insulting ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... same irascible voice continued, "get out of there! In the name of the law I charge you with the abduction of a defenceless female, and my orders are to bring you forthwith before the ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... harp—an instrument of great price, let it be. But you, my dear friend, had ridden night and day to find the man whom our neighbours thought we had murdered. Our faithful friend Bimjee'—Baji Lal stretched out his hand to the barber—'defied fire and smoke to rescue a defenceless woman from an atrocious death. Neither of you had anything to gain by these deeds of bravery and self-sacrifice. You did them for pure love of us. What do we want with that selfish man's gifts? Chunda ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... the grinding anxiety, the sleepless nights, I have suffered, knowing how defenceless the army committed to my charge actually was! You have done our cause a service impossible to measure or reward." He shook ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... room. For a moment the shock of horror stunned her. Then she tore frantically at the cords. All thought of failure, of exposure, of dismissal had fled from her. The three poor women—that was her thought—were sitting unwarned, unsuspecting, defenceless in the pitch-blackness of the salon. A few feet away a man, a thief, was peering in. They were waiting for strange things to happen in the darkness. Strange and terrible things would happen unless she ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... soothingly clean and sweet after the tumult and the reek of the town. Appalled, yet fascinated, I listen to the oft repeated tales of just how Jim McCarty sprang into the saloon and cleaned out the brawling mob. I feel very young, very defenceless, and very sleepy as ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... conditions, however, the Marquis did not punctually observe. The British officers were insulted by the savage Indians, who robbed them of their clothes and baggage, massacred several of them as they stood defenceless on parade, and barbarously scalped all the sick people in the hospital. Finally, Montcalm, in direct violation of the articles as well as in contempt of common humanity, delivered up above twenty men of the garrison to the Indians in lieu of the same number they ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... answered from the Rose by a column of smoke, and the eighteen-pound ball crashed through the bottom of the defenceless Spaniard. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the sea, and though to be sure there was no doubt a wide channel between each, through which it might have been easy to carry a ship under control, yet there was every probability of a vessel in the defenceless condition of the schooner, without a stitch of sail on her and under no other government of helm than a fixed rudder, being swept against one of those frozen floating hills when indeed it would be good-night to her and to me too, for after ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... their sufferings warp aside His principle, and tempt him into sin For their support, so destitute; but they Neglected pine at home, themselves, as more Exposed than others, with less scruple made His victims, robbed of their defenceless all. Cruel is all he does. 'Tis quenchless thirst Of ruinous ebriety that prompts His every action, and imbrutes the man. Oh for a law to noose the villain's neck Who starves his own; who persecutes the blood He gave them in his children's veins, and hates And wrongs the ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... sons back to France, than Francois began to look out for new pretexts and means for war. Affairs were not unpromising. His mother's death in 1531 left him in possession of a huge fortune, which she had wrung from defenceless France; the powers which were jealous of Austria, the Turk, the English King, the members of the Smalkald league, all looked to Francois as their leader; Clement VII., though his misfortunes had thrown him into the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... public weal requires that one should commit treachery, use falsehoods, and perform massacres.' [17] Personally, he shrinks from such a mission. His softer heart is not strong enough for these deeds. He relates [18] that he 'never could see without displeasure an innocent and defenceless beast pursued and killed, from which we have received no offence at all.' He is moved by the aspect of 'the hart when it is embossed and out of breath, and, finding its strength gone, has no other resource left but to yield itself up to us who pursue it, ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... hither to insult me, false-hearted villain?" exclaimed La Tour, passionately; "prisoner and defenceless, though I now am, you may yet have cause to repent the rashness which brings you ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... to have been brooded over many years: it had been the subject of innumerable war messages to the various tribes, a large number of whom had favored his views. And when it broke out in the spring of 1832, the suddenness of the movement, the great cruelties of the onset, and the comparatively defenceless state of the frontier, gave it all its alarming power. As soon as the army could be got to the frontiers, and the Indian force brought to action, the contest was over. The battle of the Badaxe annihilated his ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... lights together. The parson in his gloomy pulpit, surrounded by a framework of dusty carved angels, took on an awful appearance of menacing Authority as he raised his voice to make himself heard above the clatter. Sitting there in the dark, I felt very small, and solitary, and defenceless, alone in a great, big, black world. The church was as cold as a tomb; some of the candles guttered and went out; the parson in his black robe spoke of death and judgment; I thought I heard a child's voice screaming, and could hardly believe it was only the wind, and felt ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... and indignation was too deep for utterance or even for tears. The priest and my father uttered not a word. Perhaps my father's conscience made him ashamed of such vile work—that of laying violent hands on a defenceless girl of eighteen years of age, for no crime whatever, only the love of liberty and pure Bible religion. But if the priest was silent, his vile countenance indicated a degree of hellish pleasure and satisfaction. Never did piratical ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... and grew heavy with the javelins that stuck upon them. And thus forced to quit their own weapons, they endeavored to take advantage of those of their enemies, laid hold of the javelins with their hands, and tried to pluck them away. But the Romans, perceiving them now naked and defenceless, betook themselves to their swords, which they so well used, that in a little time great slaughter was made in the foremost ranks, while the rest fled over all parts of the level country; the hills and upper grounds Camillus had secured beforehand, and their ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... conflict. Two or three times I was tempted to rattle out a volley of indignation at his amazing and unparalleled effrontery, and of calling him to account for his turpitude; but my better judgment withheld me, bidding me reserve my blows until they should fall unerringly and fatally upon his defenceless head. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... finally, to soothe the turbulence of his unmanly fears, the last act of his unscrupulous councillors, ere the Empire fell, was to authorise his abandoning his people in the hour of peril, careless who suffered in defenceless Rome, while he was secure in fortified Ravenna. Such was the man under whom the mightiest of the world's structures was doomed to totter to its fall! Such was the figure destined to close a scene which Time and Glory had united to hallow and ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Firmly and calmly he relied on the consciousness, whatever happened, of his own independence and strength. Thus he wrote to Spengler: 'I have commended the matter to God, and I think also I have kept it so well in hand that nobody can find me defenceless on any point so long as Christ and I are united.' To Spalatin he wrote: 'Free is Luther, and free also is the Macedonian (Philip of Hesse).... Only be brave and behave like men!' We have taken this from letters rich in similar thoughts, addressed by Luther ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... why did Heav'n release me From prison? My sole friend, misled by passion, Was bent on robbing of his wife the tyrant Who ruled Epirus. With regret I lent The lover aid, but Fate had made us blind, Myself as well as him. The tyrant seized me Defenceless and unarm'd. Pirithous I saw with tears cast forth to be devour'd By savage beasts that lapp'd the blood of men. Myself in gloomy caverns he inclosed, Deep in the bowels of the earth, and nigh To Pluto's realms. Six months I lay ere Heav'n ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... the Jacobin, now crowded on all sail; and Lord Howe, thinking they intended to escape, gave the order for a general chase, but they were joined by nine other ships, and wore round and sailed towards the Queen. This craft was almost defenceless, owing to the loss of ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... gathering in the changeful atmosphere of the English court. The jealousies of the king, become too habitual to be discarded, had in fact only received a new direction from the birth of his son: his mind was perpetually haunted with the dread of leaving him, a defenceless minor, in the hands of contending parties in religion, and of a formidable and factious nobility; and for the sake of obviating the distant and contingent evils which he apprehended from this source, he showed himself ready to pour forth whole rivers of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... in Freeland. We had no judges, no police organisation, our tax flowed in spontaneously, and soldiers we knew not. Yet there was no theft, no robbery, no murders among us; the payment of the tax was never in arrears; and, as will be shown later on, we were by no means defenceless. Our stores of weapons and ammunition, as well as our subsidies to the warlike Masai, might be reckoned as a surrogate for a military budget. As to the lack of a magistracy, we were such arrant barbarians that we did ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... executioners of the aristocracy, the swords of the Germans and the waves of the unknown ocean, without ever yielding or wavering; who had torn to pieces the Sullan constitution, had overthrown the rule of the senate, and had furnished the defenceless and unarmed democracy with protection and with arms by means of the struggle beyond the Alps. And he spoke, not to the Clodian public whose republican enthusiasm had been long burnt down to ashes and dross, but to the young men from the towns ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... would have done the same thing. The secret benefactor had given her no cause for suspicion. He remained unknown to her, and insisted on remaining unknown; but he had forewarned her of the machinations of others, and acted himself as the guardian of defenceless virtue. What more could ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... abates within a few days. The port of Carthagena lies four hundred and fifty-six miles from the port of Hispaniola called Beata, where preparations are generally made for voyages of discovery. Immediately on landing, Hojeda attacked the scattered and defenceless natives. They had been conceded to him by royal patent because they had formerly treated some Christians most cruelly and could never be prevailed upon to receive the Spaniards amicably in their country. Only a small quantity of gold, and that of poor quality, was found amongst ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... weakened, prostrated, enervated, state government! You have a bill of rights to defend you against the state government—which is bereaved of all power, and yet you have none against Congress—though in full and exclusive possession of all power. You arm yourselves against the weak and defenceless, and expose yourselves naked to the armed and powerful. Is not this a conduct ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... hundred horse, being landed, Antony sent most of his ships back to Italy, to transport the remainder of the soldiers and horse. The pontons, which are a sort of Gallic ships, he left at Lissus with this object, that if Pompey, imagining Italy defenceless, should transport his army thither (and this notion was spread among the common people), Caesar might have some means of pursuing him; and he sent messengers to him with great despatch, to inform him in what part of the country he ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... what right he exerted this unlimited authority over her? a question, which her better judgment would have with-held her, in a calmer moment, from making, since it could avail her nothing, and would afford Montoni another opportunity of triumphing over her defenceless condition. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... a man deliberately committed murder, Al Hutchins did that morning in solitary at the Warden's bidding. He robbed me of the little space I stole. And, having robbed me of that, my body was defenceless, and, with his foot in my back while he drew the lacing light, he constricted me as no man had ever before succeeded in doing. So severe was this constriction of my frail frame upon my vital organs that I felt, there and then, immediately, that death was upon me. And still the miracle ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... and, as he believed himself now safe from attack, he gave him the sword for his defence. The wolf had been watching this proceeding, evidently intent on attacking the person who was travelling without a sword. When he saw that the first he had attacked was now defenceless, he made after him at full speed, and overtaking him before he got into the town, leaped upon him, unarmed as he now was, and ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... bringing down the roof in its train. The digger fell forward on his face, his ribs jammed across his pick, his arms pinned to his sides, nose and mouth pressed into the sticky mud as into a mask; and over his defenceless body, with a roar that burst his ear-drums, broke stupendous masses ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... we know, is a defenceless being; but it takes much sharpening of the intellect to appreciate the fact that "he cannot speak for himself." His sex is popularly coupled with the sense of strength. The illusion conceals his feebleness, and ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... violated where discordant sounds or unsuitable selections of music are permitted to distract attention and disturb devotion. A ragged carpet, faded fringes, or dingy window panes, would speedily find a reformer; and surely the sensitive, defenceless ear has as good a claim to exact order as the more voluntary sense of seeing. Better, indeed, no music, than such as binds the wings of the soul to earth instead of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... to her frank and generous nature as a particularly shameful and seductive form of that criminal attitude towards life which she was endeavouring to adopt. But she could not resist the attraction of being treated with affection by a woman who had just shewn herself so implacable towards the defenceless dead; she sprang on to the knees of her friend and held out a chaste brow to be kissed; precisely as a daughter would have done to her mother, feeling with exquisite joy that they would thus, between them, inflict the last turn of the screw of cruelty, in robbing M. Vinteuil, as though they were ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... poor privilege, sir, that of insulting the defenceless. You know I am doubly so—defenceless from age, defenceless in virtue of my sacred profession; but if I am defenceless against your insults, Sir Thomas Gourlay, I am not against your threats, which I despise and defy. The integrity of my life is beyond ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... one of her family who fell into our hands reveals the secret springs of her action. Wishing to spare her as a member of the defenceless sex, it pains us to say, that, ingenious as her counterfeit walking is, she is an impostor. Worse than this,—with all our reverence for her brazen crinoline, duty compels us to reveal a fact concerning her which will shock the feelings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... do, it might be done decently. Those of you who have delighted to listen to the classic eloquence of Everett, to the lofty speech of Sumner, to the noble appeals of Andrew, aye, to the sincere and manly utterances of Robinson, take that speech and read it. He insulted womanhood in the person of a defenceless girl. He insulted purity by a speech so gross that the principal Democratic paper in Boston declares it unfit for circulation, and demands that it be suppressed. He insulted every colored man in the State, when, in an unguarded moment, speaking ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... restraint, and they abandoned themselves to the most excessive and poignant grief; but now, on the arrival of their mistress, their affliction seemed to know no bounds. There is not to be found in the world perhaps, an object more truly sorrowful, than a lonely defenceless woman in tears; and on such an occasion as this, it may very easily be conceived that the distress was more peculiarly cutting. A heart that could not be touched at a scene of this nature, must be unfeeling indeed. Females were arriving the whole ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... custom. But I am compelled to accept such an estimate of the Dyak character with reservations. From all that I could learn, head-hunting is a sport, like fox-hunting in England. Nor does it, as a rule, involve any great risk to the hunters, for the head-hunting raids are usually mere butcheries of defenceless people, the Dyaks either stalking their victim in the bush and killing him from behind, or attacking a village when the warriors are absent and slaughtering everyone whom they find in it—old, men, women, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... plotting to stop the Christian man from building the house of the Lord, and preaching the gospel to the heathen; ready to call up storms, and floods, and forest fires; to hurl the crag down from the cliffs, or drop the rotting tree on their defenceless heads—all real and terrible in those poor monks' eyes, as they walked on, singing their psalms, and reading their Gospels, and praying to God to save them, for they could not save themselves; and to guide them, for they knew not, like Abraham, whither they went; and to show them ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... begin to find himself at home. And when that essentially modern creature, the English or American girl-student, began to walk calmly into his favourite inns as if into a drawing-room at home, the French painter owned himself defenceless; he submitted or he fled. His French respectability, quite as precise as ours, though covering different provinces of life, recoiled aghast before the innovation. But the girls were painters; there was nothing to be done; and Barbizon, when I last saw it and ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "plain unvarnished" account of the terrible scene through which the missionaries were so wonderfully preserved, but to understand more fully their imminent peril we should know, that the town, at the time of the revolt, was almost defenceless. The English civil and military chief absent; the officer in command on his death-bed; no English troops in the town, and but about a hundred sepoys, who though trained to British modes of warfare are by no means equal in skill or valor to British troops; and the chief engineer disabled by sickness;—the ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... however, were acts committed by exasperated enemies in the heat of battle, and executed, in conformity with the laws of war, upon men armed and most fiercely resisting; there was another more horrible carnage in the city, where a harmless and defenceless crowd of women and children were butchered by their own countrymen, who threw their bodies, most of them still alive, upon the burning pile while streams of blood damped the rising flame; and lastly, wearied with the ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... into the defenceless young throat, he nevertheless controlled his sentiments and looked up for instructions. Since the splendid decapitation which Coronado had performed, Texas respected him as he had never heretofore ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... isolated spot, and my resources are few. I fear I should have found life here somewhat monotonous before long, with no other society than that of my excellent sire. It is true, I might have made a target of the defenceless invalid; but I haven't ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... guilty, and now he is innocent, and it is as much my duty to free him as it was to condemn him." Villefort thus forestalled any danger of an inquiry, which, however improbable it might be, if it did take place would leave him defenceless. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... assemble in the Gast Huis Church, then used as a town hall. More than five hundred of them had entered the church when a priest, suddenly rushing in, bade them prepare for death. Scarcely had the announcement been made when a band of Spanish soldiers entered and, after discharging a volley into the defenceless crowd, attacked them sword in hand. The church was then fired and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... look in the face the heiress of the Lagidae? Had not one hundred years before Popilius, the Roman commissioner, come unarmed into the presence of Antiochus Epiphanes, while he was advancing to the gates of defenceless Alexandria, drawn a circle in the dust about the king, and bidden him answer, before he stepped over, whether he would court destruction or obey the mandate of the Republic and leave Egypt in peace? And had not the great king obeyed—humbly? Why, then, should not a Roman patrician maiden ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... three powers, the ministry, the House of Commons, and the people. The House is strong because it can call the ministry to account for every act, and can by refusing supplies compel their resignation. The ministry are not defenceless, because they can dissolve Parliament, and ask the people to judge between it and them. Parliament, when it displaces a ministry, does not strike at executive authority; it merely changes its agents. The ministry when they dissolve Parliament do not attack ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... a defenceless foe, Paddy gave him a dab on the end of his already flat nose, by way of reminding him that he was off his guard. The Kafir took the hint, caught up his sticks and sprang at his opponent with the yell of a ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... those nights; and we did not forget the past and gone; for Mrs Bantem stood up after supper, with her stiff glass of grog in her hand—a glass into which I saw a couple of tears fall—as she spoke of the dead—the brave men who fell in defence of the defenceless and innocent, hoping that the earth lay lightly on the grave of Lieutenant Leigh, while she proposed the memory of ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... the kobong or crest of that southern region. In many portions of New Holland, particularly where the country is wooded and the soil tolerably fertile, kangaroos are very abundant; but so great havoc is made among these defenceless creatures by their various enemies, especially by man, that their numbers appear to be upon ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... haughtily. "Insult a defenceless girl with her poverty! It is a noble act, and one worthy of a high-born ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... that their local position enabled them to reap a rich harvest by plundering vessels in passing this great highway of nations, commenced their piratical career. The small coasting vessels of the gulf, from their defenceless state, were the first object of their pursuit, and these soon fell an easy prey; until, emboldened by success, they directed their views to more arduous enterprises, and having tasted the sweets ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... do not want weapons to face an old man in broad daylight; and he is too much of a soldier to attack me if I am defenceless. If the servant comes after I am gone, you must remember every detail of what he says, and you must also arrange a little matter with him. Here is money, as much as will keep any Roman servant quiet. The man will be rich before we have ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... possessors of some deadly weapons, as stings or poison fangs, or they are uneatable, and are thus so disagreeable to the usual enemies of their kind that they are never attacked when their peculiar powers or properties are known. It is, therefore, important that they should not be mistaken for defenceless or eatable species of the same class or order, since in that case they might suffer injury, or even death, before their enemies discovered the danger or the uselessness of the attack. They require some signal or danger-flag ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... mighty good to have you back, daddy," she replied. "Just think of our being alone, a pair of poor defenceless women, three whole months without a man about the house! If you ever dare do it again you're liable to find one in your place when ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... those I have not seen—fires the memory of which will live in my heart for years and years! If we burn the vessels of the French, is it not because they have hounded on the Indians to burn our homesteads, ay, and with them our defenceless wives and children, mothers and sisters? Shall not deeds like these bring about a stern retaliation? Are we not here to take vengeance upon those who have been treacherous foes, and shamed the Christian profession that they make? Shall we pity or spare when we remember what they have done? ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in the parlance of the world, with no exaggeration of phrase, as 'pirates,' The spoliations of their incessant guerilla warfare upon his defenceless rights have unquestionably amounted to millions. In the very front rank of this predatory band stands one who sustains in this case the double and most convenient character of contestant and witness; and it ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... life that he was really living, getting out of life the full of its juice. Was he not smiting hip and thigh? He longed, I am sure, to be in the thick of the actual fighting, but age debarred him, and he was not of that more sensitive type which shrinks from smiting the defenceless if it cannot smite anything stronger. I remember ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... the devout man of old demanded for his God." "In the enormous machine of the universe, amid the incessant whirl and hiss of its jagged iron wheels, amid the deafening crash of its ponderous stamps and hammers, in the midst of this whole terrific commotion, man, a helpless and defenceless creature, finds himself placed, not secure for a moment that on an imprudent motion a wheel may not seize and rend him, or a hammer crush him to a powder. This sense of abandonment is ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... too ready to blame the wretched. Let us be less harsh on the results of the most powerful of all social solvents. Where poverty is absolute there exist no such things as shame or crime, or virtue or intelligence. I knew not what to do; I was as defenceless as a maiden on her knees before a beast of prey. A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... come, we shall see them coming, and would it not be better that we should all be together, even if we are obliged to conceal ourselves in consequence of not being prepared? Suppose the savages were to overrun the island, and find my mother, my little brother, and sister, defenceless, at the time we were obliged to retreat from our house; ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... nature, must often have been severely tried by these throngs, but not even delicate health prevented her from exercising a large and beautiful hospitality to these spiritually lame, halt, and heart-sick who came to receive a healing touch. Though never ruffled, Emerson was not defenceless before boorish intruders. On one occasion a boisterous declaimer against "the conventionalities," who kept on his hat in the drawing-room after invitation to lay it aside, was told, "We will continue the conversation in the garden," ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... said, 'I am no foreign murderer to kill a defenceless man. You shall away to the justice to answer for yourself. The hangman has a ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... tempered men in the world; and it was agreed between us, that Richard should be called oftener and worked more severely. The varlet was not suffered to stand up in his place; but was summoned to take his station near the master's table, where the voice of no prompter could reach him; and, in this defenceless condition, he was so harassed, that he at last gathered up some grammatical rules, and prepared himself for his lessons. While this tormenting process was inflicted upon him, I now and then upbraided him. But you will take notice that he did not incur any corporal ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... waistcoat, the revolver, too, might have been meddled with. Since he had entered the cottage, he had never examined either waistcoat or revolver. Supposing the charges had been drawn?—supposing he was defenceless, if a pinch came? He began to sweat with fear at the mere thought, and in the darkness he fumbled with the revolver in an effort to discover whether it was still loaded. And just then came a sound—and Mallalieu ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... already she saw in fancy her daughter's head encircled with a wreath of sainted glory, and she placed her in the Ursuline convent, in hopes that the example of the nuns might induce her to join their sisterhood— Josepha was in my power defenceless! ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... virtuously zealous in an instant on behalf of the lovely dame who tells them bewitchingly, she is alone and defenceless, with pitiful dimples round the dewy mouth that entreats their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of speed and copious howling brought all dwellers in Separ out to gaze and disappear like rabbits—all save the new agent in the station. Nobody ran out or in there, and the horde whirled up to the tiny, defenceless building and leaped to earth—except Lin and me; we sat watching. The innocent door stood open wide to any cool breeze or invasion, and Honey Wiggin tramped in foremost, hat lowering over eyes and pistol prominent. He ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... guard of eunuchs and armed men, in such a manner, that a stranger would rather suppose the cavalcade to be carrying some desperate villain to execution, than employed to prevent the intrigues or escape of a defenceless woman. At home, the sex are covered with gauze veils, which they dare not take off in the presence of any man, except their husband, or some near relation. Over the greatest part of Asia, and some parts of Africa, women ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... of this story is to give an idea of what might happen to America, being defenceless as at present, if she should be attacked, say at the close of the great European war, by a mighty and victorious power like Germany. It is a plea for military preparedness in the ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... passions of man.... You have dispensed with all these precautions. You have turned a consul into a diplomatist, and that metamorphosed consul is forsooth to be at liberty to direct the whole might of England against the lives of a defenceless people.' Disraeli in turn denounced proceedings which began in outrage and ended in ruin, mocked at 'No reform, new taxes, Canton blazing, Persia invaded,' as the programme of the party of progress and civilisation, and reprobated a prime minister who ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... garrison, supported by as small a fleet, as could safely be left, and to send the rest of the troops and ships to harry the coast. This proposition, if by the vague term of chastisement he meant the burning of defenceless towns, was unworthy of Burgoyne; but when later he proposed with this detached force to occupy Rhode Island, doubtless using Newport as a base, he outlined a plan which, if followed, would have seriously ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... army, had kept the army down to five regiments of infantry and one battalion of cavalry. This force was required constantly on the frontier and could not be spared to suppress domestic insurrection. In such a defenceless condition, the Union must turn to the militia of ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... coward, but there were five men arrayed against him with a probable sixth in the form of the counter-man who was watching the turn of affairs with great interest from the safe vantage-point of his high counter. It was too much to expect that any men who had dealt with a defenceless and handicapped stranger as these had dealt with the Chinaman would fight fair. Besides, Bob was further hampered by the terrified Betty who clung tightly to his arm and implored him not to fight. It seemed ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... moment and when the nature of the ground rendered a successful dash practicable before the straggling column could form square, and to undertake the storming of fortified places, and the plundering of hostile districts only when these were left comparatively defenceless, was finally the method of warfare which experience had forced upon the tribes at the period when Schamyl appeared on ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... beauty were all subordinated to, forgotten almost in the supreme human passion speaking through her. Macias, in the height of his despair while he was still alone with her, had flung her his sword, declaring that he would go forth and seek his death an unarmed and defenceless man. Then, when he becomes conscious of the approach of his rival, the soldier's instinct revives in him; he calls for his sword; she refuses it, and he makes a threatening ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... made Burnett feel very anxious, for he could not give a satisfactory reply. "They will scarcely venture to ill-treat the defenceless, well knowing that vengeance will speedily overtake them," he answered at length. "Besides, remember, O Rajah, that this holy man has only told us what he fears may possibly take place. The events he speaks of have not actually occurred, and we may hope that something may have prevented ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... had commenced on the plantation of Col. Alexander; that three or four of the patrol had been killed, &c." The day after, people flocked from every quarter, armed to the teeth, swearing vengeance on the defenceless slaves. Nothing can teach plainer than this, the constant and tormenting fear in which the slaveholder lives, and yet he repents not ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... me with an indignant pity. I tried in vain to sleep. In the darkness of night our plan came to seem like an atrocious outrage upon a guileless, defenceless ne'er-do-well. For my share of the guilt, I resolved to convey to Potts privately on the morrow a more than perfunctory promise of aid, should he find himself distressed at any time in what he would doubtless term his new ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... but my daughter, my pure, my beautiful Rita, what will become of her—alas! what has become of her? My soul is racked with anxiety on her account, and I curse the folly and imprudence that led me to re-enter this devoted land. My child—my poor child—can I forgive myself for perilling your defenceless innocence in this ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... utterly staggered. "What do you mean, General? You will shoot a poor defenceless girl—and in face of that ukase before you—in face of my demand for her protection! I have promised her marriage," I cried in desperation, "and you condemn ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... times, authors or actors alone who are subject to the hiss. The orator may provoke it by a bold speech in support of an unpopular measure or an unpopular man. But here the hisser is not so safe, nor the hissee—to coin a convenient word—so defenceless. The orator is not hampered by the studied words of a written part: he has the right of free speech, and he may retort upon his sibilant surrounders. Macready records that on one occasion, when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... you have not retreated into the desert and defenceless wilderness of scepticism, or of false and feeble philosophy. I should not have thought it worth my while to have followed you there; I should as soon think of arguing with the peasant who informs me that the basaltic columns of Antrim or ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... flinched from the necessary task of facing him down. Where women of more breeding have immeasurable resources of tradition behind them, to quell any such inquisition, she was by training defenceless. She had plenty of pluck, plenty of adroitness; but she could only play the sex game with Alf very crudely because he was not fine enough to be diverted by such finesse as she could employ. All Jenny could do was to ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... by force. Yet a Council of Philosophers (disciples of Rousseau and Voltaire) have sent forth Dumouriez, at the head of an hundred thousand men, to instruct the people of Flanders in the doctrine of freedom. Such a missionary is indeed invincible, and the defenceless towns of the Low Countries have been converted and pillaged [By the civil agents of the executive power.] by a benevolent crusade of the philanthropic assertors of the rights of man. These warlike ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... that they will resist the clamour to withdraw the Cruisers from the Western Coast of Africa, and that they will NOT WITHDRAW the British Cruisers. If a blow is to be struck, let it be struck at Cuba, or the Brazils, and not on the defenceless Africans, because they are defenceless. If a burglar prowls about, a whole neighbourhood is on the alert to protect itself against his depredations. If a band of pirates swarm in a sea or infest our coasts, a fleet is fitted out to capture them. But it is attempted to ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... such a trifle as ten sous. Since Salvat's arrest, the woman and the child had been forsaken and suspected by one and all. Driven forth from their wretched lodging, they were without food and wandered hither and thither dependent on chance alms. Never had greater want and misery fallen on defenceless creatures. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... they, although fraught with novelty and presage of danger, had not altogether crowded out. And as the sense of peril dulled, the craft of sophistry grew clumsy. Remorse laid hold upon him in these dim watches of the night. Self-reproach had found him out here, defenceless so far from the specious wiles and ways of men. All the line of provocations seemed slight, seemed naught, as he reviewed them and balanced them against a human life. True, it was not in some mad quarrel that his skill ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... hev a goot chance o' bein' in need o' sparin' yoursels; an' it iss not much o' the blood o' the Grants, either, that's in your veins, or ye would scorn to consort wi' such fire-raisin' cut-throats. It iss the fortune of war—whatever, and we can't affoord to leave our weemen an' bairns defenceless. So we accept your terms, if we are not hindered from ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... this blindness abates within a few days. The port of Carthagena lies four hundred and fifty-six miles from the port of Hispaniola called Beata, where preparations are generally made for voyages of discovery. Immediately on landing, Hojeda attacked the scattered and defenceless natives. They had been conceded to him by royal patent because they had formerly treated some Christians most cruelly and could never be prevailed upon to receive the Spaniards amicably in their country. Only a small quantity of gold, and that of poor quality, was found amongst them; ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... not a boy, and you must allow me in these matters to judge for myself." As he spoke his spirit rose; the image of the head on his shoulder, defenceless against attack save for him, became clearer and clearer, and words escaped him which he never afterwards forgot, nor did his father forget. "And it is a shame—I say it is a shame to speak against her. ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... supreme. The faint familiar perfume that stole about his room filled him with a kind of frenzy. Was this the chivalric devotion of which he had so boasted? this the desire to protect a young and defenceless woman? He no longer dared question himself. He seemed to feel her warm breath against his cheeks. He threw up his arms with a gesture of despair. A sigh stirred the deathlike stillness. At last! She was there, just within his doorway; the pale glimmer of the veiled moon fell upon her. Her trailing ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... the ridiculous I have when they are made ridiculous. For you were not brought up in that strange house from a mere baby. I was. You had not your little wits sharpened by their intriguing against you, suppressed and defenceless, under the mask of sympathy and pity and what not that is soft and soothing. I had. You did not gradually open your round childish eyes wider and wider to the discovery of that impostor of a woman who calculates her stores of peace of mind ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... scattered the slave-traders on all sides, and, for the time being, effectually broke up their power. The slave-traders of the Sudan were of Arab nationality, and were in the habit of advancing farther, year by year, upon the villages of the defenceless Africans, and spreading their ravages into the heart of Africa. They always attacked the less warlike tribes, and, upon breaking into a negro settlement, would carry off the whole population, except ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... century the Saxon King Horsa, with his brother Hengist, who had greatly improved the fort at Horncastle, were defeated in a fight at Tetford by the Britons under their leader Raengeires, and the British King caused the walls to be nearly demolished and the place rendered defenceless. (Leland's Collectanea, vol i, pt. ii, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... dusk, thunder Rolling and battering and cracking, The caverns shudder with a terrible glare Again and again and again, Till the land bows in the darkness, Utterly lost and defenceless, Smitten and blinded and overwhelmed By the crashing rods ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... Also, deceiving her would have been like deceiving a child; hurting her was like hurting a child. (That was what enraged me when he hurt her, and I had to stand by, and listen.) She was so simple, and direct, and defenceless. So, you see, as soon as I realised what had happened, I told her. It wasn't a dramatic avowal, and it had no very immediately dramatic consequences. In fact, for a while its only effect was to bring me across the room from my habitual arm-chair, to sit on the floor near her with my ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... divine protection, I set out defenceless. Such was my terror, however, that at first I halted every four or five yards, looking fearfully towards the spot where I had left the Indians, lest they should wake and miss me. But when I was about two hundred yards off I mended ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... actors alone who are subject to the hiss. The orator may provoke it by a bold speech in support of an unpopular measure or an unpopular man. But here the hisser is not so safe, nor the hissee—to coin a convenient word—so defenceless. The orator is not hampered by the studied words of a written part: he has the right of free speech, and he may retort upon his sibilant surrounders. Macready records that on one occasion, when Sheil was hissed, he "extorted the applause of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... a good many of them—will be ashore to-night; but, recognising the fact that Russia and Japan are at war, do you, gentlemen, as reasonable, sensible men, really believe for a moment that the Russian fleet will be left defenceless in an open roadstead, or that the vigilance of the lookouts will be relaxed? I do not. And, if not, the approach of such a formidable array as ours would assuredly be detected, and the alarm given, long before we could arrive ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... for the solitary vessel,—an anxiety which I have now ceased to feel,—for the flag of truth waves brightly through the smoke of the battle, and my antagonists, wholly intent on the destruction of the leading ship, have lost their position, and exposed themselves in defenceless disorder to the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... against their own constitutional rights, and, aided by the rebellious Servian hordes, commenced a course of Vandalism and extinction, sparing neither women, children, nor aged men; murdering and torturing the defenceless Hungarian inhabitants; burning the most flourishing villages and towns, among which, Nagy-Igmand, the seat of learning for Transylvania, was reduced to a ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... thinking of the shop was evident, for Miss Sarah was now heard remarking, "You left us defenceless, Caroline, and we ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... summer of 1808, of some despatches from the Governor of Martinique to the French Ministry asking for supplies and additional troops, and describing the condition of the island as almost defenceless, first directed the attention of the British Government to the reduction of this French colony. Preparations for the attack began at Barbados in November, 1808, the expedition assembled at Carlisle ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... delinquency he had not himself remarked; irate at his wife's imputation, and fearful of having forfeited her respect, he starts out to redeem his reputation in her eyes, and to maker her retract any insinuation she had made. Erec is simply angry with himself, but he expends his wrath upon his defenceless wife until he is reassured of her love ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... thou no longer livest, and that I Shall never see thee on the earth again, Incredible it seems! Alas, alas! What is this thing, that they call death? Oh, would That I, this day, the mystery could solve, And my defenceless head withdraw from Fate's Relentless hate! I still am young, and still Feel all the blight and misery of age, Which I so dread; and distant far it seems; But, ah, how little different from age, The flower of my years!"—"We both were born," ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... themselves in their plaids for sleep, but it was likely on the ground. They sadly missed the cozy bed their mother used to make. Where they had to stop was so shelterless, silent, chilly, and lonely. They were weary, hungry, defenceless, trembling like nestlings cast violently out of the nest. Margaret the oldest was a mother to the others. She loved her Bible. It contained God's many promises, one especially precious on a night like this: "Fear thou not; for I am ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... loose, we cannot know what lives of harmlessness, of innocence, of virtue, they are going to destroy. You find your range, you fix your elevation, you touch a button: you hear your gun go off. And over there, among the unarmed—the weak, the defenceless, the infirm—it has done—what? Singled out for destruction what life or lives; ten, twenty, a hundred?—you do not know. So with nations, when once they have gone to war; their imprecision becomes—horrible; though the cause of your war ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... had now come forth thus early, hoping so to anticipate the visit of his numerous clients, and take him at advantage, unprepared and defenceless. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... and they fell fast around their king. But Sigmund stood as in a trance, and the war rage faded from his face. All-Father Odin had come to claim the sword he had given all those many years ago, and had left him defenceless against the foe who now ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... he was carrying. I was in the porch. The beautiful girl who formerly made my affliction so bitter to me was passing at the moment, with her arm drawn affectionately through her father's. She saw the stumble, and sprang forward with a cry of alarm. It looked, certainly, as if my defenceless feet must receive the crash, and I attempted instinctively to withdraw them,—partially succeeding! I saw this at the same time that I heard the sweetest words that ever fell into my heart, in the most joyful, self-forgetful tones ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... saw the commencement of the Indian Mutiny, a terrible outbreak of cruelty and fanaticism which, while it inflicted unspeakable anguish upon hundreds of our defenceless countrywomen and their children, desolated many an English home, and evoked the horror and compassion of the civilised world, was also the occasion of numberless acts of heroism and devotion, not only on the part of British soldiers and their native allies, ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... cat's back, and cuddled down in the soft fur near her neck, feeling very safe and warm there. The owl would certainly not attack him there, he thought, and the cat could not possibly hurt him. It was one thing to pounce down on a defenceless little creature running on the ground amongst the barley, quite another to try and snatch him from the ...
— Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit • S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell
... dangers Lady Davenant protected him, and she took care that nobody hurt him in his defenceless state, before his shell was well formed and hardened. She was further of peculiar service in keeping all safe and smooth between the ward and guardian. All Beauclerc's romance the general would have called by the German word "Schwaermerey,"—not fudge—not humbug—literally "sky-rocketing"— visionary ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... own security and for the good of the cause in which I labor, I ought to seal your lips forever, for what is the life of one man compared to the end I seek? The occasion is fitting; no one knows that I have come here; I am armed; you are defenceless; your death would be attributed to the outlaws, if not to more supernatural causes—yet I'll let you live and trust that I shall not regret it. You have toiled, you have struggled with energetic perseverance, and like myself, you have your scores to settle with society. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... ferocious banter. He showed a skill I should never have credited him with in finding the places where the unhappy Dutchman was most sensitive. Strickland employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective. The attack was so unprovoked that Stroeve, taken unawares, was defenceless. He reminded you of a frightened sheep running aimlessly hither and thither. He was startled and amazed. At last the tears ran from his eyes. And the worst of it was that, though you hated Strickland, and ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... him; his wife is regarded with jealousy; your frankest speech covers in his view some hidden and sinister meaning. You must be careful of your attentions to Mrs. Abercrombie to-night, for he will construe them adversely, and pour out his wrath on her defenceless head when ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... the moment that he was deprived of his command, the triumphant cause of the Emperor had fallen, fallen until now it lay in utter ruin. The Saxons held Bohemia; all Western Germany was in Gustavus' hands; nothing interposed between the conquerors and defenceless Austria—nothing but Wallenstein. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... time to think, a second Indian had sprung through the open window. A feeling of helpless rage swept over him at being cornered, defenceless; and, expecting every instant to be despatched with no more consideration than if he had been a rat, he stood at bay, determined not to be ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... had a keen-cutting weapon, and used it unsparingly. Being alone, with no male relative to defend her; being poor, and so further defenceless; being old, thus lacking weak woman's usual protection of beauty, she had absolutely nothing to fall back on when her ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... a Christian duty to forgive—that when a bad man smites one defenceless cheek, we are taught to offer the other to his upraised hand. But the Lord of Heaven and earth promises no forgiveness of transgression unless it is followed by repentance; and where God himself draws the strict line between Justice and Mercy, let no merely ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... she cried shrilly, the two scraggy muscles of her neck standing out long and thin as she screamed; "ye muckle lump—to strike a defenceless wean!—Dinna greet, my lamb; I'll no let him meddle ye.—Jock Gilmour, how daur ye lift your finger to a wean of mine? But I'll learn ye the better o't! Mr. Gourlay'll gie you the order to travel ere the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... were lyrical about engine-drivers, telephone- repairers, stretcher-bearers, and so on. The story which had the most success concerned a soldier (a schoolmaster) who in an engagement got left between the opposing lines, a quite defenceless mark for German rifles. When a bullet hit him, he cried, "Vive la France!" When he was missed he kept silent. He was hit again and again, and at each wound he cried, "Vive la France!" He could not be killed. ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... Waarenlexikon—a work of great accuracy and value (Leipzig, 1870), article Haifisch.] the pike, the trout family, and other ravenous fish, as well as of the fishing birds, the seal, and the otter, by man, would naturally have occasioned a great increase in the weaker and more defenceless fish on which they feed, had he not been as hostile to them also as to ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... certain of her fate; they could only be the desperate remnant of the decimated tribes, the foraging raiders of starving and desperate men, hunted from refuge to refuge, and carrying fire and sword in their vengeance wherever an unprotected caravan or a defenceless settlement gave them the power of plunder and of slaughter, that spared neither age nor sex. She was known throughout the length and the breadth of the land to the Arabs: she was neither child nor woman to them; she was but the soldier ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the fine sentiments and ennobling customs of the Teutonic nations, particularly with respect to the gallantry and generosity of the male toward the female sex, grew into beautiful combination with the rule of protecting the weak and defenceless everywhere, and how these elements were blended with the spirit of religious devotion which entered into the organization and practices of chivalry, forms one of the most fascinating features in the study of its development; and this gentler ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... that ever dogs the optimistic feast, warns us of a sack under our beds, and robbers about to try a barely-bolted door. . . Then do we, who have so sweetly sung our senses to sleep, start up, in their grip, rush to the doctor and the blacksmith, rig alarums, proclaim ourselves intestinally torn, defenceless, a prey to foes within and without. It is discovered to be no worse than an alderman's dream, but the pessimist frenzy of the night has tossed a quieting sop to the Radical, and summoned the volunteers to a review. Laudatory articles upon the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... danger, had not altogether crowded out. And as the sense of peril dulled, the craft of sophistry grew clumsy. Remorse laid hold upon him in these dim watches of the night. Self-reproach had found him out here, defenceless so far from the specious wiles and ways of men. All the line of provocations seemed slight, seemed naught, as he reviewed them and balanced them against a human life. True, it was not in some mad quarrel that his skill had taken it and had served to keep his own—a duel, a fair fight, ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... would it not be better that we should all be together, even if we are obliged to conceal ourselves in consequence of not being prepared? Suppose the savages were to overrun the island, and find my mother, my little brother, and sister, defenceless, at the time we were obliged to retreat from our house; ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... arms and wrapped his cloak about him, while his heart stirred with shame and anger against the gratuitous cruelty of the instruments in this persecution. In the awakened warmth of his feelings, he resolved that, at whatever risk, he would not forsake the poor little defenceless being whom Heaven had confided to his care. With this determination, he left the accursed field, and resumed the homeward path from which the wailing of the boy had called him. The light and motionless burden scarcely ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... resist the clamour to withdraw the Cruisers from the Western Coast of Africa, and that they will NOT WITHDRAW the British Cruisers. If a blow is to be struck, let it be struck at Cuba, or the Brazils, and not on the defenceless Africans, because they are defenceless. If a burglar prowls about, a whole neighbourhood is on the alert to protect itself against his depredations. If a band of pirates swarm in a sea or infest our coasts, a fleet is fitted out to capture them. But it is attempted ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... any emergency, firmness to resist temptation when presented in its most alluring form, was blended with that genuine kindness of manner, that deference towards the weak and defenceless, which renders its fortunate possessor not only esteemed, but beloved. Yet with so much that was admirable in mind and heart, of him it might be said, as it was of one of old, "One thing thou lackest." Strange, that the subject of the greatest ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... elements of danger to the state and the nation. Ignorance and vice, disease and crime, crowd themselves into cities. There they find their best hiding-places, their surest protection, and their most defenceless victims. It makes one tremble to think of the thousands of youth in our cities whom the school and the church do not reach, and who are moulded by these influences into the worst and lowest forms of humanity. They can not and will not go out into the country themselves, except upon some ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... the contradiction between his first assertions and those that followed, all become clear in the light of this new theory. He had seen his wife kill a defenceless woman before his eyes, and whether influenced by his old affection for her or by his pride in her good name, he could not but be anxious to conceal her guilt even at the cost of his own truthfulness. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... I anticipate, as I rolled heedlessly along in the chaise to —— Hall? Sensual gratification at the expense of a poor defenceless orphan, whose future life would be clouded with misery. I could see my wickedness, and moralise upon it; but the devil was triumphant within me, and I consoled myself with the vulgar adage, "Needs must when the devil drives." With this, I dismissed the subject ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Sarah Brown would have been very susceptible to such a drug; her mind was always on the brink of innocent intoxication. Perhaps she was only half a woman, so that half a joy could make her heart reel and sing, and half a sorrow break it. She was defenceless against impressions, and too many impressions make the heart very tired. Therefore, I think, she was a predestined victim of magic, and it seems unlikely that the witch should have missed such an ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... undertaking to govern boys and men—they always have, and they always will. Nor am I opposed to the claim that women have equal rights with men. I rather claim that they have the sacred superior rights that God and good men accord to the weak and defenceless, by which they have the easiest work, the most safe and comfortable places, and the largest share of all the most agreeable and desirable enjoyments of this life. My main objection to the Woman-Suffrage organization is this, that a wrong mode is employed to gain a right object. ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... the fittest; the preying of the stronger on the weaker—of the tiger on the feebler beasts of the jungle; the eagle on the smaller birds of the air; the wolf on the sheep; the shark on the poor, defenceless fish, and so on; neither could He be the Creator that deals in diseases—foul and filthy diseases, common, not only to all divisions of the human species, but to quadrupeds, birds, fish, and even flora; that brings into existence ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... beheld, asylum. Alas! Why do I blame thee! the terror of Ananga's shaft has rendered thee a fugitive;—let me implore his pity. Lord of the flowery bow, victor of demons and of gods! dost thou not blush to waste thy might upon a weak defenceless maiden, or art thou truly without form and sense? Ah me, I fear my death impends, and this the fatal cause." She looks at the picture and goes on, "No one approaches; I will try and finish the likeness I am here attempting to portray. My heart beats high, my hand trembles, yet I must try, ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... take part in all the festivities with which he ostentatiously celebrated his happiness. She had the courage to receive his cutting coldness, his cruel sarcasm, his contempt, with calm composure and sweet submission. With the smile of a stoic, she offered her defenceless breast to his poisoned arrows, and even the tortures she endured were precious in her sight. She was convinced that the prince had not relinquished or forgotten her—that his indifference and contempt was assumed to hide his living, breathing ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... venture. Before surrendering to his desire for silence and rest, he glanced under lowered lids at his host's blue-tinged, loosely-hanging cheeks. Conscientiously silent when his wife wished to discuss literature with her new discoveries, Lord Poynter became dutifully loquacious when exposed defenceless to the task of entertaining them and took refuge in gusty, nervous geniality or odd, sly confidences on matters of ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... he been called Devil's Own by his former comrades and playfellows. A defenceless girl—my daughter! By good St. Anthony, if he crosses my path again it shall be for the last ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... round, she saw him leaning back in his chair, a defenceless animal without his spectacles, his eyes small and purpled ringed, his hair tossed about, his spruceness gone. 'I am sure you ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unaware of his danger, was holding out his hands to the flames; it was not until the man was close behind him that be heard his footsteps and turned his head. His face was frozen; the frost had bound him hand and foot, making him defenceless, so that he could hardly stir; the only means of appeal he had was the expression ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... strike Rob's defenceless hand, for Shaddy's keen knife-blade met it a couple of inches below the gaping jaws, cut clean through its scale-armed skin, and the head dropped among the lovely petals of the orchis, while the body, twisting ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... isolated, escape the contagion. The pagan Indians, rendered desperate under the terrible scourge which was so rapidly cutting them off, and being powerless to check it, resolved to wreak their vengeance upon the defenceless whites. So they sent a band of warriors to destroy every white person in the country. The first place they reached, where dwelt any of the pale-faces, was the Victoria Mission on the Saskatchewan River. ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... a brazen thing! You know that he is dead, and you know that I know it. Oh, to rob the living of name and honors for a selfish and temporary advantage is crime enough, but to rob the defenceless dead—why it is more ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... accomplished? Unseen in the heights above, the Tyrolese peasantry hurl down rocks, roots, and trunks of pine trees, as well as sending a "deadly hail" from their rifles along the "whole line" of the defenceless ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... who all of a sudden surrounded them, and in the Catalan tongue bade them stand and wait until their captain came up. Don Quixote was on foot with his horse unbridled and his lance leaning against a tree, and in short completely defenceless; he thought it best therefore to fold his arms and bow his head and reserve himself for a more favourable occasion and opportunity. The robbers made haste to search Dapple, and did not leave him a single thing of all he carried in the alforjas and in the valise; and lucky it was for Sancho ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... so rarely does, a gentleman, will soon begin to find himself at home. And when that essentially modern creature, the English or American girl-student, began to walk calmly into his favourite inns as if into a drawing-room at home, the French painter owned himself defenceless; he submitted or he fled. His French respectability, quite as precise as ours, though covering different provinces of life, recoiled aghast before the innovation. But the girls were painters; there was nothing to be done; and Barbizon, when I last saw it and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... battle lost. And the war too was lost by the deaths of Harold and his brothers, which left England without leaders, and by the unyielding valour of Harold's immediate following. They were slain to a man, and south-eastern England was left defenceless. ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... another at Augusta, Georgia,[71] three years afterward had like plans of setting houses afire at night and then attacking other quarters of the respective towns when the white men had left their homes defenceless. Both plots were betrayed, and several participants in each were executed. These conspiracies were eclipsed in turn by the elaborate Vesey plot at Charleston in 1822, which, for the variety of the negro types ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... little; do as little as possible; and endeavor to appear insensible to their insults. I would say to you, if you will excuse the triviality of the comparison, imitate those feeble insects who simulate death when they are touched. They are defenceless; and that is their only ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... insidious hostilities to its government, their various practices to withdraw the affections of the people from it, the evident tendency of their arts and those of their agents to countenance and invigorate opposition, their disregard of solemn treaties and the laws of nations, their war upon our defenceless commerce, their treatment of our minister of peace, and their demands amounting to tribute, could not fail to excite in me corresponding sentiments with those which my countrymen have so generally expressed in their ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... cried the cook, struggling with the inspector. "Whatever do you mean? Shame—shame to 'old a defenceless lady. 'Elp!" ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... ease with which it avoided his best-aimed blows, only served to rouse his spirit, and at length striking with increased force his stick came to the ground and was broken to pieces. For some moments he now stood within two yards of the animal perfectly defenceless and not knowing what to do. Suddenly it sprang past him, actually brushing against his arm with its side, and began pursuing the dogs round and round among the bushes. In the end my informant's partner appeared on the scene with his rifle, and the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... emperor Su Tsung died, in 762, Tengri, the khan of the Uighurs, decided to make himself ruler over China. The events of the preceding years had shown him that China alone was entirely defenceless. Part of the court clique supported him, and only by the intervention of P'u-ku Huai-en, who was related to Tengri by marriage, was his plan frustrated. Naturally there were countless intrigues against P'u-ku Huai-en. He entered ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... eight hundred horse, being landed, Antony sent most of his ships back to Italy, to transport the remainder of the soldiers and horse. The pontons, which are a sort of Gallic ships, he left at Lissus with this object, that if Pompey, imagining Italy defenceless, should transport his army thither (and this notion was spread among the common people), Caesar might have some means of pursuing him; and he sent messengers to him with great despatch, to inform him in what part of the country he had landed his army, and what number of troops he had ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... who knows the laws. Well, it was in this way: You know my history; Barbet is an usurer; he has the keen glance and the shrewd action of that breed of men. His money was always at my heels to help me over my worst needs. Strange to say, on the days I was most defenceless against despair ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... crept up the portrait line by line As it lay on the coals in the silence of night's profound, And over the arm's incline, And along the marge of the silkwork superfine, And gnawed at the delicate bosom's defenceless round. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... nothing more frequently than meekness, patience, and a contempt of this world, is it not plain what the meaning of the place is? Namely, that he might now dismiss his ambassadors in a more naked, defenceless condition, he does not only advise them to take no thought for shoes or scrip, but even commands them to part with the very clothes from their back, that so they might have the less incumbrance and entanglement ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... and of the causes of the change, about men there is not much, and that little is more to the purpose. Deprived of the care of God, who had possessed and tended them, they were left helpless and defenceless, and were torn in pieces by the beasts, who were naturally fierce and had now grown wild. And in the first ages they were still without skill or resource; the food which once grew spontaneously had failed, and as yet they knew not how ...
— Statesman • Plato
... never tainted, while standing waters easily grow corrupt, so a fluency of expression washes away the censures of the caviller, while the narrow limits of a discourse which is too concise is almost defenceless; for the arguments which I am enlarging upon are thus briefly ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... to be ashamed of yourself, sir," said Mrs. Gruppins, turning on him indignantly; "to think that you should take advantage of a poor and defenceless widow, and me so inexperienced and ignorant of ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... have at length found their commemoration in an historical act. History, which will represent Mr. Parnell sitting silent under the appeal of Mr. Forster, and Gordon setting forth upon his tragic enterprise, will not forget Mr. Cole carrying the dynamite in his defenceless hands, nor Mr. Cox coming coolly to ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... on, the sun slanted its rays cruelly through the little skylight on to the spot where he lay, and the flies, attracted by the rare chance, swarmed in under the door and through the cracks to make merry with their defenceless victim. Had the sun been seven times as hot, or the flies venomous and deadly, he would have preferred it, for it would have shortened his misery considerably. When at last the sun got across the window, and left him at peace, he was scarcely in a position ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... Ponce de Leon in Andalusia, being revived, carried new division into the cities, whose streets literally ran with blood. [32] In the country, the nobles and gentry, issuing from their castles, captured the defenceless traveller, who was obliged to redeem his liberty by the payment of a heavier ransom than was exacted even by the Mahometans. All communication on the high roads was suspended, and no man, says a contemporary, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... the unfortunate Federico, when again in dismal solitude, and with the prospect of a cruel death before his eyes, to reflect on the firmness he had shown, and on the agony of jealous doubt he had inflicted on his rival. In his defenceless and desperate circumstances, such revenge was doubly sweet; and for a while he dwelt on it with pleasure. Then his thoughts took other direction, and an active and excited imagination transported ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... the people of the house what has happened," said our good-hearted student; "they would be most awfully offended, and there is no knowing what they might do with defenceless travellers in ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... of my brother alone with a property exposing her to the machinations of prowling selfishness! Would it atone for the wrong of depriving her of one uncle, to take the other from her, and so leave her defenceless with a burden she could not carry? Must I take so-called justice on myself at her expense—to the oppression, darkening, and endangering of her life? Were I accused, I would tell the truth; but I would ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... were slaughtered promiscuously, a special ferocity was always displayed by the barbarous conqueror toward the unarmed and defenceless ministers of religion. They took a particular delight in their case in adding insult to cruelty; and not without reason did the Church at that time consider as martyrs the priests and monks who were slain by the pagan Scandinavians. Their sanguinary and hideous ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... at the local art competitions, and had afterwards come to Paris as the town laureate, with an allowance of eight hundred francs per annum, for a period of four years. In the capital, however, he had found himself at sea, defenceless, failing in his competitions at the School of Arts, and spending his allowance to no purpose; so that, at the end of his term, he had been obliged for a livelihood to enter the employment of a dealer in church statues, at whose establishment, for ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... placing pretty Miss Débutante next young Strongboys instead of giving her over into the clutches of old Mr. Boremore will never enter these obtuse entertainers’ heads, any more than that of trying to keep poor, defenceless Mrs. Mouse out ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... living world around him—he has lost it all; he retains only its sources of pain, and the unfading memory of his own crime. Scoffed at by the unfeeling, pitied by some, by all shunned—contempt and commiseration and scorn are the smarting scourges to which he stands defenceless for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... by Governor Pickens of South Carolina to induce Major Anderson by his demands and threats to return to his defenceless position at Fort Moultrie. President Buchanan, at the instigation of his Secretary of War, Floyd, was on the point of ordering him to do so, but when the matter was considered in a Cabinet meeting, other counsels prevailed, and Floyd made this ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... coming!" the soldier cried in a terrified whisper. "My God, they are coming! Come back! Come back!" For Claude had their only weapon, and the guard was defenceless. Defenceless by the side of the stairs up which the foe ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... troublesome times Captain Stephens can no more return to our cottage. Do you know, my little friend, that I cannot bear being cooped up here during all this strife and tumult, when brave men and defenceless women are at the mercy of savages and ill-advised men of our own class. There have been evil and oppressive doings by government and its agents, but I do not think that Monsieur Riel and my father have taken the prudent course to remove the wrongs. It will not be fair or honorable ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... assured, but unless you bind fast your sword, I dare not come in." Then Canneloro, who wished to become friends with the doe, bound his sword as a countryman does, when he carries it in the city for fear of the constables. As soon as the ogre saw Canneloro defenceless, he re-took his own form, and laying hold on him, flung him into a pit at the bottom of the cave, and covered it up with a stone—to keep him ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... cavalry from Suffolk to cut the Weldon Railroad. He also sent out detachments to destroy the railroad between Petersburg and Richmond, but no great success attended these latter efforts. He made no great effort to establish himself on that road and neglected to attack Petersburg, which was almost defenceless. About the 11th he advanced slowly until he reached the works at Drury's Bluff, about half way between Bermuda Hundred and Richmond. In the mean time Beauregard had been gathering reinforcements. On the 16th he attacked Butler with great vigor, and with ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... too, that the officers of this Branch of the service should have all misbehaved in exactly the same manner. Their acts of oppression and outrage were always perpetrated in defence of some supposed right of a defenceless and friendless race, overwhelmed with poverty—the bondmen of ignorance—who had no money with which to corrupt, no art with which to beguile, and no power with which to overawe these representatives of authority. For the first time in the history of mankind, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... is," said Hinman, shaking hands with both of us, "I thought I'd drop in to find out if there was anything I could do. No reasonable person," he went on, turning to Swain, "believes you killed that defenceless old man; but those ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... reminded the people that the Indians were not exterminated, that they still hung in numerous hordes about the frontiers, and that it needed but a single word from the Crown, to bring them, once more, with tomahawk and scalping-knife, upon their defenceless homes. Already, indeed, had the emissaries of Great Britain taken measures to this end. The savage was already shaking off his apathy, scenting the carnage from afar, and making ready for the onset. ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... her daughter's head encircled with a wreath of sainted glory, and she placed her in the Ursuline convent, in hopes that the example of the nuns might induce her to join their sisterhood— Josepha was in my power defenceless! ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... Burlington Heights, to destroy a quantity of British stores at that place, which was the principal depot of Vincent's army. A body of Glengury Fencibles had been sent from York to protect the depot, thus leaving the capital defenceless. Chauncey therefore sailed for York, and Scott, landing without opposition on the 23rd of July, burned the barracks, and such public buildings as had previously escaped, broke open the jail, and plundered both private and public stores. Chauncey then sailed for the Niagara. On the 8th of ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... of near relations compelled by torture to be the murderers of each other, of corpses outraged and mutilated, were told and heard with full belief and intense interest. Then it was added that the dastardly savages who had by surprise committed all these cruelties on an unsuspecting and defenceless colony had, as soon as Oliver came among them on his great mission of vengeance, flung down their arms in panic terror, and had sunk, without trying the chances of a single pitched field, into that slavery which was their fit portion. Many signs indicated ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... occasion; it was now very good, as being modest, gracious, and ready. Yet the something never left it. It has been written of men who have undergone a cruel captivity, or who have passed through a terrible strait, or who in self-preservation have killed a defenceless fellow-creature, that the record thereof has never faded from their countenances until they died. Was there any such ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... called their own, or are pensioners on the bounty of those strangers by whom their fortunes have been overthrown. They who were noble and gentle for ages are now merged in the common mass of the people. All over those vast regions there are countless millions, helpless and defenceless, deprived of their natural leaders and their ancient chiefs, looking with only some small ray of hope to that omnipresent and irresistible Power by which they have been subjected. I appeal to you on behalf of that people. I have ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... church recognised as the only cause for divorce. There was no escape from his obligation, provided his wife would forgive him and take him back. Her wrong to him had borne the bitter fruit of his wrong to this defenceless girl. Let her come back—she could not come too soon—and face him with his faithlessness. He would tell her what she had done, and bid her to forgive him ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... Knight in arms, Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize, If deed of honour did thee ever please, Guard them, and him within protect from harms. He can requite thee, for he knows the charms That call fame on such gentle acts as these, And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas, Whatever clime the sun's bright circle ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... accept such an estimate of the Dyak character with reservations. From all that I could learn, head-hunting is a sport, like fox-hunting in England. Nor does it, as a rule, involve any great risk to the hunters, for the head-hunting raids are usually mere butcheries of defenceless people, the Dyaks either stalking their victim in the bush and killing him from behind, or attacking a village when the warriors are absent and slaughtering everyone whom they find in it—old, men, women, and children. The head of an orang-utan, by the ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... fattening on its spoils; and the world was presented with the astounding spectacle of a great municipality whose civic mechanism was largely employed in trading in the bodies and souls of the innocent and defenceless. What has been published in this connection is but the merest hint of what exists—and exists, most appalling of all, as the evidence has come to me under the seal of confidence in overwhelming volume and force to demonstrate—under ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... welcome, for all ghosts are supposed to be mischievous and to take no delight but in injuring the living. Hence, for example, a widower in mourning goes about everywhere armed with an axe to defend himself against the spirit of his dead wife, who might play him many an ill turn if she caught him defenceless and off his guard. And he is subject to many curious restrictions and has to lead the life of an outcast from society, apparently because people fear to come into contact with a man whose steps are dogged by so dangerous a ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Mrs. Kent. "That dreadful man is downstairs now! Eliza threw him out once this afternoon, but he's here again. He may have murdered Mr. Carter by this time. Oh, inspector, do hurry down at once and see what's happened! There's a defenceless high-church curate in the cellar with him. Mary, show ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... name, am the son of one of these, and was brought up to be a robber like them. Since I have been grown up I have often assisted in plundering expeditions, when they would fall suddenly on some defenceless village, and carry away not only all the property on which they could lay their hands, but several of the richest of the inhabitants, whom they would keep prisoners till a ransom had been paid, or till, compelled by torture, they confessed ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... a few Italian officials—he built up a figure, typical, representative, according to him, of the New Italy, small, insolent, venal,—insulting and despoiling the Old Italy, venerable, beautiful and defenceless. And then a natural turn of thought, or a suggestion from one of the group surrounding him, brought him to the scandals connected with the Abyssinian campaign—to the charges of incompetence and corruption which every Radical paper was ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... facing realities.... It was just when the Germans were taking Bruges, the Uhlans broke into this convent.... But I think it was in Louvain, not Bruges.... I have a wretched memory for names.... Well, they broke in, and took all those poor defenceless ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... harassed, so trampled upon, so plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in the parlance of the world, with no exaggeration of phrase, as 'pirates,' The spoliations of their incessant guerilla warfare upon his defenceless rights have unquestionably amounted to millions. In the very front rank of this predatory band stands one who sustains in this case the double and most convenient character of contestant and witness; and it is but a subdued ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... she answered with passion, "because I was forced into it, bullied into it, starved into it. What would you do if you were a defenceless, motherless girl of eighteen, with a drunken father who beat you—yes, beat you with a stick—apologised in the most gentlemanlike way next morning and then went and got drunk again? And what would you do if that father were in the hands of a man like my husband, body and ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... name, don't say that!" urged Theron. He raised his voice in agitated entreaty. "You don't know what these people are—how they would leap at the barest hint of a scandal about me. In my position I am a thousand times more defenceless than any woman. Just a single whisper, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... instead of twenty. My dreamy life, into which no knowledge of evil had been allowed to penetrate, in which I had been guarded from all pain, shielded from all anxiety, kept, innocent on all questions of sex, was no preparation for married existence, and left me defenceless to face a rude awakening. Looking back on it all, I deliberately say that no more fatal blunder can be made than to train a girl to womanhood in ignorance of all life's duties and burdens, and then to let her face them for the first time away from all the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... achieved by the Hungarian arms before the fatal blow was aimed at the country. The fortress of Buda was taken after a gallant assault, in the course of which the Austrian commandant bombarded the defenceless city of Pest on the opposite bank of the Danube, and thus the capital, too, was restored to the country. Yet after this last glorious feat of war, good fortune deserted the national banners. The grand heroic epoch was hastening to its tragic end. Two hundred thousand Russians crossed the borders ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... to turn them over to the political control of the common enemy of the government and of the negro. But of this let nothing be said in this place. Waiving humanity, national honor, the claims of gratitude, the precious satisfaction arising from deeds of charity and justice to the weak and defenceless,—the appeal for impartial suffrage addresses itself with great pertinency to the darkest, coldest, and flintiest side of the human heart, and would wring righteousness from the unfeeling calculations of ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... lashed to the principal masts, and ropes were given to the others around her, as indispensable precautions; for the deck of the bark, now cleared of every particle of its freight, was as exposed and as defenceless against the power of the wind, as a naked heath. Such was the situation of the Winkelried, when the omens of the night changed ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... mother's devotion, she mistook this first test of marriage for life itself, and the refractory child cursed life, unknown to me, nor daring to complain to me, out of sheer modesty perhaps! In so cruel a position she would be defenceless against any man who stirred her deeply.—And I, so wise a judge as they say—I, who have a kind heart, but whose mind was absorbed—I understood too late these unwritten laws of the woman's code, I read them by the light of the fire that wrecked my roof. Then I constituted my ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... invasions of the north. The aim of the former was to conquer, that of their antagonists to convert, if antagonists those can be called who sought to turn them from their evil ways. The monk penetrated through their most gloomy forests unarmed and defenceless; he found his way alone to their fortresses. Nothing touches the heart of a savage so profoundly as the greatness of silent courage. Among the captives taken from the south in war were often high-born women of great beauty and purity of mind, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... had prepared myself to receive blows and insults with a calm brow, but I had no armour with which to oppose the noble weapons of sympathy and good fellowship. They overcame the stubborn hatred with which I was accustomed to meet life, and left me defenceless. I felt as if I had been face to face with the hero ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... the loss of Palestine. By the command of the sultan, the churches and fortifications of the Latin cities were demolished: a motive of avarice or fear still opened the holy sepulchre to some devout and defenceless pilgrims; and a mournful and solitary silence prevailed along the coast which had so long resounded with the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... first time, perceived the ruse, and began to calculate its results. Those giant ships, that but a moment ago seemed rushing to destruction, had rounded to at a safe distance, and were preparing, with the speed and skilfulness of a perfect discipline, to pour a hostile host upon the defenceless shores. In vain the cavalry bugle called their horsemen to the saddle; in vain the artillery car rattled along the streets; both ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... against the license of private war; the Truce of God [16] was confirmed, a suspension of hostilities during four days of the week; women and priests were placed under the safeguard of the church; and a protection of three years was extended to husbandmen and merchants, the defenceless victims of military rapine. But a law, however venerable be the sanction, cannot suddenly transform the temper of the times; and the benevolent efforts of Urban deserve the less praise, since he labored to appease some domestic quarrels that he might spread the flames of war from the Atlantic ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... childish widow and the vapourish child; This nature prompts; minds uninform'd and weak In such alliance ease and comfort seek: Push'd by the levity of youth aside, The cares of man, his humour, or his pride, They feel, in their defenceless state, allied; The child is pleased to meet regard from age, The old are pleased e'en children to engage; And all their wisdom, scorn'd by proud mankind, They love to pour into the ductile mind, By its own weakness into error led, And by fond age with prejudices fed. The Father, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... first to arrive. However, Rougon sent them all back to their posts, after reprimanding them severely for abandoning the gates of the town. Thrown into consternation by this reproach—for in their panic, they had, in fact, left the gates absolutely defenceless—they again set off at a gallop, hurrying through the streets with still more frightful uproar. Plassans might well have thought that an infuriated army was crossing it in all directions. The fusillade, the tocsin, the marches and countermarches of the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... first Lot, with seventeen more of all Sorts and Sizes, but not one of Quality with him. When he saw this, he found what they meant; for, as I said, he understood English pretty well; and being wholly unarm'd and defenceless, so as it was in vain to make any Resistance, he only beheld the Captain with a Look all fierce and disdainful, upbraiding him with Eyes that forc'd Blushes on his guilty Cheeks, he only cry'd in passing over ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... entreated him to have pity on his defenceless state. The king raised him up and promised his protection, and kept his word. Themistocles was taken by two guides safely across the mountains to Pydna, where he found a merchant ship about to sail for Asia. A storm drove it to the island of Naxos, which was besieged ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... grow virtuously zealous in an instant on behalf of the lovely dame who tells them bewitchingly, she is alone and defenceless, with pitiful dimples round the dewy mouth that entreats their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Shakspeare assign the same place to them in his play, which they occupy in the history of Macbeth as related in the old chronicles? A monstrous crime is committed: Duncan, a venerable old man, and the best of kings, is, in defenceless sleep, under the hospitable roof, murdered by his subject, whom he has loaded with honours and rewards. Natural motives alone seem inadequate, or the perpetrator must have been portrayed as a hardened villain. Shakspeare wished to exhibit a more sublime picture: an ambitious but noble ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... rid himself of her. But, after all, it was only some three hundred and fifty pounds a year, and depended on the life of a lady of forty-odd, who might live to be a hundred. A girl with no more than that is nearly as defenceless as she ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... but more active and supple in its movements than the male. They prey upon kangaroos, opossums, bandicoots, and other native animals; hunting by night, their exquisite sense of smell enables them to steal cautiously upon these defenceless animals, in the thick covers of the low grassy flats and scrubs, or to run them down on the more open hill and forest land. They are not very fleet, but follow the track with untiring perseverance, occasionally ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... What the Hague Convention desired to prevent was the destruction without chance of escape of human lives en masse, which would have been the case if shells with poisonous gas were rained down on a defenceless enemy who did not see them coming and was exposed to them irremediably. The changing forms of warfare make new ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... gone—through a door at the rear of the desk, a door that he had not noticed before, that was not even in evidence now, that was simply a movable section of the wall panelling—and for an instant Jimmie Dale experienced a sense of sickening impotence. It was as though he stood defenceless, unarmed, and utterly at the mercy of some venomous power that could crush what it would remorselessly and at will ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Jeremias. "I have inquired particularly. The bird in the wood is not more defenceless than that child. Poverty there will be in the house; and what little there is, that monster of a housekeeper ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... would judge the matter fairly. Herdonius, if nothing else, by avowing himself an enemy, in a manner gave you notice to take up arms: this man, by denying the existence of war, took arms out of your hands, and exposed you defenceless to your slaves and exiles. And did you, (without any offence to Caius Claudius and to Publius Valerius, now no more let me say it,) did you advance against the Capitoline hill before you expelled those enemies from the forum. It is shameful before gods ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... where they fell on their knees and began to say a litany. I stood at the door looking at them. It was a pitiful sight. There were one or two old men and some women, and some little children and a young girl who was in hysterics. They seemed so helpless, so defenceless against the rain ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... acts of violence and murder; and some Catholic priests, who had imprudently signalized their zeal, were tortured by the fanatics with the most refined and wanton barbarity. The spirit of the Circumcellions was not always exerted against their defenceless enemies; they engaged, and sometimes defeated, the troops of the province; and in the bloody action of Bagai, they attacked in the open field, but with unsuccessful valor, an advanced guard of the Imperial cavalry. The Donatists who were taken in arms, received, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... defend the girl from the anger of his secretary, but when she said, with a certain challenge, "Through the door," he doubted if she were so defenceless as she seemed. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... and comfort. As it was, we were forced to await the issue without counsel. Polly Ann and I talked it over many times while Tom sat, morose and silent, in a corner. He was the pioneer pure and simple, afraid of no man, red or white, in open combat, but defenceless ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... regularly and frequently undertaken. Occasionally a trader establishes himself in a village for months together, driving a profitable trade in hardware, cloth, tobacco, etc. These traders usually travel in a small boat with a company or crew of only two or three men, and they are practically defenceless against any small party of the natives who might choose to rob or murder them. Such traders have now and again been robbed, and sometimes also murdered, by roving bands of Sea Dayaks, but we know of no such act committed by Kayans or Kenyahs. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... that Pignaver's agents must have seized her as soon as he himself had been taken away, and he dared not think of what would happen when they brought her back to Venice and delivered her up to her uncle. That they would murder the defenceless girl he did not believe, and besides, it was much more likely that Pignaver would prefer to torment her to death at his leisure, after assassinating her lover. Stradella guessed as much as that from what he knew ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... raised, the body's attitude, not studied surely, but the apparent and seemingly sudden effect of patriotic daring. Such one's fancy forms young Isadas the Spartan; who, hearing the enemy's approach while at the baths, starts off unmindful of his own defenceless state, snatches a spear and shield from one he meets, flies at the foe, performs prodigies of valour, is looked on by both armies as a descended God, and returns home at last unhurt, to be fined by the Ephori for breach ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... she flew to do Jacob's bidding. She had a terrible fear of London streets, at night, as well she might, and the open country beyond was even worse to her excited imagination. And Cherry was so pretty, so simple, so credulous, and withal so utterly defenceless should there be any sort of attack made upon her. Keziah's hands shook as she lighted the lantern; and as minutes were fast slipping away and still there was no sign of the truant, she was rather relieved than terrified to hear the sharp accents of her aunt's voice mingling with ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... full of its juice. Was he not smiting hip and thigh? He longed, I am sure, to be in the thick of the actual fighting, but age debarred him, and he was not of that more sensitive type which shrinks from smiting the defenceless if it cannot smite anything stronger. I remember saying to ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... appalled. The sudden, paralysing conviction flashed upon her that the palace had been deserted by its guards and was in the hands of murderers. She seemed to hear them swarming everywhere, unopposed, yet lusting for blood, while she, a defenceless woman, ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Herrera devoured its contents. From them he learned all that Rita herself knew of the place and reasons of her captivity. She detailed the manner in which she had been decoyed from Segura, described what she conjectured to be the position of the convent, and implored Zumalacarregui to protect a defenceless orphan, and rescue her from the prison in which she was unjustifiably detained. After twice reading the letter, the handwriting of which recalled a thousand tender recollections, although the information it contained filled him with alarm and ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... removed, in order, at the proper time, to make way for this impostor. You know not, sir, but there may be a base and inhuman murder involved in this matter—nay, a double murder—that of my cousin, too; yes, and the worst of all murders, the murder of the innocent and defenceless. As a man, as a magistrate, but, above all, a thousand times, as a father—as the father and uncle of the very two children that have disappeared, it becomes your duty to examine into ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
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