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More "Gunpowder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we have spoken, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed the invention or wide application of a considerable number of practical devices which were unknown to the Greeks and Romans. Examples of these are, besides printing, the compass, gunpowder, spectacles, and a method of not merely softening but of thoroughly melting iron so ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... the House still further embarrassment, advis'd the governor not to accept provision, as not being the thing he had demanded; but he repli'd, "I shall take the money, for I understand very well their meaning; other grain is gunpowder," which he accordingly bought, and they ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... likely spot in which to find a pirate's nest—just a group of some five- and-twenty rocks, they are not much larger, and one island about ten miles long and six wide, with reefs and shoals all round. Did you ever smell gunpowder, Six-foot?" ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... had it not been for the intervening stairs and Stodger's and my quick interposition of our bodies between the two men, matters certainly would have gone hard with the private secretary. Maillot's temper was like gunpowder; the quiet question seemed to sting him to an ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... and hands were not a little grimed with the gunpowder, washed himself, combed out his curly black hair, and found all the party in the fore-cabin. Gascoigne, who had not been asked in the forenoon, was, by the consideration of Captain Sawbridge, added ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... an explosion of gunpowder on board the Oxford during a banquet of Morgan's captains off ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... and lime, they could not make a piece of glass, and their crockery is rather primitive. A water-clock is their nearest approach to a watch; indeed, ours delighted them exceedingly. They know nothing about steam, electricity, or gunpowder, and mercifully for themselves nothing about printing or the penny post. Thus they are spared many evils, for of a truth our age has learnt the wisdom of the old-world saying, 'He who increaseth knowledge, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... me, and receive my soul.' Then they fetched fresh faggots, but that fire was spent also. He did but say softly, 'For God's love, good people, let me have more fire.' This was the worst his agony could wring from him. The third fire kindled was more extreme, and reached at last the barrels of gunpowder. Then, when he saw the flame shoot up toward them, he cried, 'Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me! Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!' And so, bowing forward his head, he died at last as quietly as a child ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the pastor were like a spark to gunpowder. The countenances of the mournful retinue suddenly expanded, and, accepting what had fallen from him as an omen and a light from heaven how they were to interpret their present situation, they uplifted, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... during the final days of our journey I no longer invoked his aid to my reflections upon this especial topic: What would the Virginian do to Trampas? Would it be another intellectual crushing of him, like the frog story, or would there be something this time more material—say muscle, or possibly gunpowder—in it? And was Scipio, after all, infallible? I didn't pretend to understand the Virginian; after several years' knowledge of him he remained utterly beyond me. Scipio's experience was not yet three weeks long. So I let him ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... miserable rascals always run away as soon as they smell gunpowder," said Thugut, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... sent to attempt a settlement at Nansemond, on the south side of the James below Jamestown, while Captain Francis West, brother of Lord De La Warr, was sent to settle at the falls of the James. Returning to Jamestown after an inspection tour at the falls, Captain Smith was injured by burning gunpowder and incapacitated. Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin seemingly used this opportunity to depose him and to compel him to return to England to face their charges against him as had been the fate of previous presidents. These three men, failing to agree ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... the sun went round the earth. He is aware that there is a place called New Holland: Columbus and Gama went to their graves in ignorance of the fact. He has heard of the Georgium Sidus: Newton was ignorant of the existence of such a planet. He is acquainted with the use of gunpowder: Hannibal and Caesar won their victories with sword and spear. We submit, however, that this is not the way in which men are to be estimated. We submit that a wooden spoon of our day would not be justified in calling Galileo ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... afternoons—sun out an' a blue wind blowin'—they'd troop at his heels over the roads an' hills o' the Tickle. They'd have no festival without un. On the eve o' Guy Fawkes, in the fall o' the year, with the Gunpowder Plot t' celebrate, when ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... and his mind with instinctive reverence, were raised for other purposes than those of becoming auxiliary to the ferocity of war. That genius and taste, and toil and cost, had not thus expended their unrivalled powers, and lavished their munificent resources, in erecting gothic magazines of gunpowder, and saxon sheds for the accommodation of atheistic fabricators of ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... forth from all quarters. Peregrine had greased the already slippery oak stairs, had exchanged Oliver's careful exercise for a ribald broadsheet, had filled Mr. Horncastle's pipe with gunpowder, and mixed snuff with the chocolate specially prepared for the peculiar godly guest Dame Priscilla Waller. Every one had something to adduce, even the serving-men behind the chairs; and if Oliver and Robert did not add their quota, it was because absolute silence at meals was the rule ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Silas McClish, (27), was born April 24, 1833; in 1854 went to California gold mines where he lost an eye by a premature explosion of gunpowder in blasting in a mine; returned to Putnam County, Ohio, married Mary Ellen Wagoner, by whom he had four ...
— The Stephens Family - A Genealogy of the Descendants of Joshua Stevens • Bascom Asbury Cecil Stephens
... ready for a start at six to-morrow,—put Mr. Forester's Manton alongside my Joe Spurling in the top tray of the case, my single gun and my double rifle in the lower, and see the magazine well filled—the Diamond gunpowder, you know, from Mr. Brough's. You'll put up what Mr. Forester will want, for a week, you know—he does not know the country yet, Tim;—and, hark you, what wine have ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... curling over his head, Well powder'd with white smoking ashes; He drinks gunpowder tea, melted sugar of lead, Cream of tartar, and dines on hot spice gingerbread, Which black from ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... they had themselves been frightened until they saw the Blackrobe holding the calumet. A long-haired tribe, somewhat resembling the Iroquois, but calling themselves Tuscaroras; they were rovers, and had axes, hoes, knives, beads, and double glass bottles holding gunpowder, for which they had traded with ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... be,' said Colonel Halkett. 'That's a young man who's an Englishman without French gunpowder notions in his head. He works for us down at the mine in Wales a good part of the year, and has tided us over a threatening strike there: gratuitously: I can't get him to accept anything. I can't ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... castle, received intelligence that M. de Kersin was a few leagues to windward, and certainly intended to attack Cape-coast, his whole garrison did not exceed thirty white men, exclusive of a few mulatto soldiers: his stock of ammunition was reduced to half a barrel of gunpowder; and his fortifications were so crazy and inconsiderable, that, in the opinion of the best engineers, they could not have sustained for twenty minutes the fire of one great ship, had it been properly directed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... spontaneous growth in each separate breast, not propagated by agitation, but springing self sown, the expression of the honest anger of honest men at a system which had passed the limits of toleration, and which could be endured no longer. At such times the minds of men are like a train of gunpowder, the isolated grains of which have no relation to each other, and no effect on each other, while they remain unignited; but let a spark kindle but one of them, and they shoot into instant union in a common explosion. Such a spark was kindled in Germany, at Wittenberg, on the 31st of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... full of foul smells. The smell of drugs and of mouldy gunpowder, the smell of dirty rags, of unwashed bodies, the smell of stale smoke, of scorching sealskin, of soaked and rotting canvas that exhaled from the tent cover—every ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... in fer the war; He don't vally principle more 'n an old cud; Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood? So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... committing other irregularities. Seeing that the French did not, or could not, prevent them, and that all the baggage which could not be transported on the shoulders of his troops would fall into the hands of these savages, Washington ordered it to be destroyed, as well as the artillery, gunpowder, and other military stores. All this detained him until ten o'clock, when he set out on his melancholy march. He had not proceeded above a mile when two or three of the wounded men were reported to be ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Baltimore the country is more rolling than from Perryville to Wilmington, and there are many picturesque points. One could find at Gunpowder River and Stemmer's Run several beautiful points of view, but by the time he reaches these places the traveler begins to get impatient for the great city, the terminus of his wanderings, which soon begins to announce itself by more thickly congregated houses, and roads cut straight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... the 'bossing' element will be absent from the school we shall choose. I doubt it would work very well with you, Beverly. Sparks and gunpowder are apt to lead to pretty serious explosions and I dislike pyrotechnics which are likely to spread disaster. Now go change your clothes and make yourself presentable for I hear Uncle Athol calling and I dare say the momentous question is about to be answered. But ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... he asked with dull apathy. "The gold vessels from the Catholic Cathedral of Quebec, after—after trying to blow up Government House with gunpowder." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Damon. "Bless my gunpowder! What do you mean?" and he looked down at the earthen floor of the tent as though expecting it to open ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... why has God permitted us to discover gunpowder?" said Brother Tobias, whistling merrily. "I say to you that by the power of gunpowder and the naked sword Silesia will soon be in possession of the faithful believer Maria Theresa. Is it not manifest that God is with her? The devil in the beginning, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... tea-root, and succeeded in producing a bottle of ardent spirits. This induced one Quintal to 'alter his kettle into a still,' and the natural consequence ensued. Like the philosopher who destroyed himself with his own gunpowder, M'Coy, intoxicated to frenzy, threw himself from a cliff and was killed; and Quintal having lost his wife by accident, demanded the lady of one of his two remaining companions. This modest request being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... pause in the curiously picturesque place, which looked no more than a village, with its gray-brown houses and gray brown shadows huddled confusedly together. Probably it looked much the same when the Camisards used to hide themselves and their gunpowder in caves near by; and certainly scarce a stone or brick had been added or removed since Stevenson's eyes saw the town, and his pen wrote of it, as he turned away there from the Tarn region, instead of being the first Englishman to explore it. And what a wild region it looked ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... action and that he was not. It would have been about as rational to suggest that the lighted match should not be taken out of the hand of Guy Fawkes till a committee had formally reported on the probable effects of gunpowder if ignited in large quantities beneath the chamber in which the Parliament was sitting. Strafford would not have respected forms in the midst of what he must have well known was a revolution. He would probably ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... of a prohibition of gunpowder, at this moment some Europeans are popping away incessantly at Embabeh just opposite. Evidently the Pasha wants to establish a right of search on the Nile. That absurd speech about slaves he made ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... understood in western Europe, and for centuries the secret was carefully preserved in the eastern capital. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it was used by the Moslem against the Christian, but the discovery of gunpowder soon made the earlier substance obsolete. In the 16th century cannon had already reached considerable dimensions, but in a naval battle between galleys these weapons were not used after the first volley or so. The ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... of foreign vessels trading with this port are American, principally from New York and Salem. After the American come the German, then come the French and English. They arrive loaded with American sheeting, brandy, gunpowder, muskets, beads, English cottons, brass-wire, china-ware, and other notions, and depart with ivory, gum-copal, cloves, hides, cowries, sesamum, pepper, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... bridle. This is a rare curiosity, which is kept in the vestry. It would seem, from all that can be learned, that two hundred years ago there were in England viragoes so virulent, women so gifted with gab and so loaded and primed with the devil's own gunpowder, that all moral suasion was wasted on them, and simply showed, as old Reisersberg wrote, that fatue agit qui ignem conatur extinguere sulphure ('t is all nonsense to try to quench fire with brimstone). For such diavolas they had made—what ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... the ground. Merton came back with his load in time to see how it was done, and nodded his head approvingly. I now felt rested enough to dig awhile, and Merton started off to the barn-yard again. We next sowed, in even shallower drills, the little onion seed that looked like gunpowder, for my garden book said that the earlier this was planted the better. We had completed only a few rows when Mr. Jones appeared, and said: "Plantin' onions here? Why, neighbor, this ground is too dry and light ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... not tell tales against them or claim a share of the treasure in this vessel? Of all desperate villains I never met the like of Barros. He loved blood even better than money. He'd quench his thirst before an engagement with gunpowder mixed in brandy. I once saw him choke a man—tut! he is very well—leave him to ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... he accidentally trod as he was pacing up and down the room. He swore an oath that emanated from his fear, and thought that the lower regions had actually opened to receive the gold he was meditating upon, since fire and smoke accompanied the noise, together with a smell of gunpowder. He rushed out of the room, just as his mother, alarmed by ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... rewards of the soldier were small; he was paid in glory. No profession brought so much honor as the military; and it was from the undivided attention of a great people to this profession, that it was carried to all the perfection which could be attained before the great invention of gunpowder changed the art of war. It was not the number of men employed in the Roman armies which particularly arrests attention, but the genius of organization which controlled and the spirit which animated ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... as well as I could, but very shortly—for I was terribly wearied, and only persuaded to talk at all through fear of offending one so powerful if I refused to do so—what were the properties of gunpowder, and he instantly suggested that I should illustrate what I said by operating on the person of one of the prisoners. One, he said, never would be counted, and it would not only be very interesting to him, but ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Bacon was thus used for the very reason that he had been the friend of Essex. He was not commonly called upon in such prosecutions. He was not employed by Cecil in the Winchester trials of Raleigh, Grey, and Cobham, three years afterwards, nor in those connected with the Gunpowder Plot. He was called upon now because no one could so much damage Essex; and this last proof of his ready service was required by those whose favour, since Essex had gone hopelessly wrong, he had been diligently seeking. And Bacon acquiesced in the demand, apparently without surprise. No record ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... thrice true, indeed, because of the ridicule showered on her as a woman trying to do a man's work. No man ever had the courage of his convictions as much as she. It takes a bold spirit to stand up against the dangers of gunpowder in the old-time, legitimate way; but it is a braver one that withstands ridicule and that mean cunning which makes wit of every act looking toward the advancement of women. The Free Press has perhaps had as ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... to smell gunpowder?" ejaculated Rob, firing a pistol immediately under his nose, whilst the ball perforated the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... nephew Finot," he said. "You see, Philippe, the reign of phrases and quill-drivers is upon us; we may as well submit. To-day, scribblers are paramount. Ink has ousted gunpowder, and talk takes the place of shot. After all, these little toads of editors are pretty good fellows, and very clever. Come and see me to-morrow at the newspaper office; by that time I shall have said a word for you to my ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... was necessary for the dilapidated walls; and the whole effect would be materially increased by a plantation of spruce fir, the present rugged and broken ascent being first converted into a beautiful slope, which might be easily effected by blowing up a part of the rock with gunpowder, laying on a quantity of fine mould, and covering the whole with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... entertainments, the more so as they were required to pay for them, and they naturally preferred the public rejoicings, which cost them nothing. They were particularly fond of illuminations and fireworks, which are of much later origin than the invention of gunpowder; although the Saracens, at the time of the Crusades, used a Greek fire for illuminations, which considerably alarmed the Crusaders when they first witnessed its effects. Regular fireworks appear to have been invented in Italy, where the pyrotechnic art has retained its superiority ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... after the unhappy battle of Dunbar, distinguished himself by the obstinate defence of the Castle against the arms of Cromwell, who, incensed at the opposition which he had unexpectedly encountered in an obscure corner, caused the fortress to be dismantled and blown up with gunpowder. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... was suddenly abated, either by the increasing violence of the storm or by the change in Vere. It would have been difficult to say by which. The lightning flashed. The thunder at moments seemed to split the sky asunder as a charge of gunpowder splits asunder a rock. The head wind rushed by, yet had never passed them, but was forever coming furiously to meet them. On the roof of the little cabin the rain made a noise that was no longer like the rustle of silk, but was ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... they were but resolute—eventually beat back the mob. And then, even as his courage was rising at the thought, a deafening explosion seemed to shake the entire Chateau, and the gates—their sole buckler, upon whose shelter he had been so confidently building—crashed open, half blown away by the gunpowder keg that had been ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... men and women, then I am ready in the Lord's name to look you in the face. When two armies have rushed into battle the officers of either army do not want a philosophical discussion about the chemical properties of human blood or the nature of gunpowder; they want some one to man the batteries and swab out the guns. And now, when all the forces of light and darkness, of heaven and hell, have plunged into the fight, it is no time to give ourselves to the definitions and formulas and technicalities ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... many ways money is as dangerous to handle as gunpowder. You can't be too careful either as to who you are working with. Anyhow there was a mighty flashy burst up, a sensation, and—his familiar haunts knew him no more. But before he vanished he went to see Miss Moorsom. That very fact argues for his innocence—don't ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... man of great weight among the peaceable members of the club, by reason of his military character, and of the gunpowder scenes which, by his own account, he ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... from which either shot or shell could be thrown with effect into any of the lanes or passes near. It is probably needless to add that the interior arrangements of this house of God had undergone a change as striking as that which affected its exterior. Barrels of gunpowder, with piles of balls of all sizes and dimensions, now occupied the spaces where worshippers had often crowded; and the very altar was heaped up with spunges, wadding, and other implements necessary ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... clear of trouble. As the ice drive jammed and held them in Hudson Straits, they were aghast to see, sailing full tilt with the roaring tide of the straits, a fleet of English frigates, the Hudson's Bay Company's annual ships; but Iberville sniffed at danger as a war horse glories in gunpowder. He laughed his merriest, and as the ice drive locked all the ships within gunshot, ran up an {163} English flag above his French crew and had actually signaled the captains of the English frigates to come aboard and visit ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... is engaged on a History of the Art of War, of which the above, though covering the middle period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the general use of gunpowder in Western Europe, is the first instalment. The first battle dealt with will be Adrianople (378) and the last Navarette (1367). There will appear later a volume dealing with the Art of War among the Ancients, and another covering the 15th, 16th, and ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... to hang at the top of the mast, the gunpowder and pistols which we had brought from the frigate. We made signals by burning a large quantity of cartridges; we even fired some pistols, but it seems the fire we saw, was nothing but an error of vision, or, perhaps, nothing more than the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... unfortunate expedition; and there is still more misfortune, for that ship which was admiral of his fleet [the "Edgar"] is blown up in the Thames by an accident and carelessness of some rogue, who was going, as they think, to steal some gunpowder: five hundred men ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... them with faces of consternation, asking one another what had happened. The ground was covered with scattered fragments of wooden pillars, mats, and bamboo cane-work; I looked and saw that one end of the gallery in which I had been walking, and the alcove, were in ruins. There was a strong smell of gunpowder. I now recollected that I had borrowed a powder-horn from one of the soldiers in the morning; and that I had intended to load my pistols, but I delayed doing so. The horn, full of gunpowder, lay upon the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... "I beg you to go to the Convention and ask them to send us orders to dig up the floor of cellars, to wash the soil and flag-stones and collect the saltpetre. It is not everything to have guns, we must have gunpowder too." ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... in degree to hold even their favour steadily; and many of the nobles always envied and hated him, because they were as proud and not as high as he. He was at this time building a great Palace in the Strand: to get the stone for which he blew up church steeples with gunpowder, and pulled down bishops' houses: thus making himself still more disliked. At length, his principal enemy, the Earl of Warwick—Dudley by name, and the son of that Dudley who had made himself so odious with Empson, in the reign of Henry the Seventh—joined with seven other members of the Council ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... all the officers thoroughly enjoyed themselves for five minutes. The little marquis went into the drawing-room to get what he wanted, and he brought back a small, delicate china teapot, which he filled with gunpowder, and carefully introduced a piece of German tinder into it, through the spout. Then he lighted it, and took this infernal machine into the next room; but he came back immediately and shut the door. The Germans all stood expectantly, their faces full of childish, smiling curiosity, and as soon ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... the Gunpowder Treason. By Wm. Harrison Ainsworth. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by George Cruikshank. ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... how a machine could be constructed to work with gunpowder as fuel. His arrangement was to explode the gunpowder in a closed vessel provided with valves, and cool the products of combustion, and so cause a partial vacuum to be formed. By the aid of such a machine, water could be raised. ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... the siege a welcome addition was made to the Spanish forces. Three vessels from Hispaniola arrived at Vera Cruz, and the two hundred men, artillery, gunpowder, and quantity of horses they brought placed the Spaniards again in possession of superior arms. Previous to this the brigantines had arrived, transported by the Tlascalans, eight thousand bearers loaded with timbers and appliances, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... age-long witness to the presence and keen activity of that during the Age of Pericles in Athens. It was built at almost break-neck speed, yet remains a thing of permanent inimitable beauty, defying time and the deliberate efforts of men and gunpowder to destroy it. The work in it which no eye could see was as delicate, as exquisite, as that which was most in evidence publicly; every detail bore the deliberate impress of the Spirit, a direct spiritual creation. There is no straight ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... on very slender pay, and to the utter ruin of their fortunes, all those who are not noble have their lands heavily taxed. Does he not know that wine, brandy, soap, candles, leather, saltpetre, gunpowder, are taxed in France? Has he not heard that government in France has made a monopoly of that great article of salt? that they compel the people to take a certain quantity of it, and at a certain ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... convinced me that I had to do with a madman. He had some idea of making a ship go against the wind and against the current by means of coal or wood which was to be burned inside of her. There was some other nonsense about floating barrels full of gunpowder which would blow a ship to pieces if she struck against them. I listened to him at the time with an indulgent smile, but now looking back from the point of vantage of my old age I can see that not all the warriors and statesmen in that room—no, not even the Emperor himself—have ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the other holds of the country, for the rock which forms its base serves for little else than a solid foundation. I presume one of the requisites of such a site was the difficulty or impossibility of undermining the walls, a mode of attack that existed long before gunpowder was known. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... moving in the same direction forever or until something changed their motion), you could not throw a ball; the second you let go of it, it would stop and fall to the ground. You could not shoot a bullet any distance; as soon as the gases of the gunpowder had stopped pushing against it, it would stop dead and fall. There would be no need of brakes on trains or automobiles; the instant the steam or gasoline was shut off, the train or auto would come ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... out of her by force, with a rhythmical swaying of her body to right and left. She did not smile, and indeed knitted her brows, her delicate, high, rounded eyebrows, between which a dark blue mark, probably burnt in with gunpowder, stood out sharply, looking like some letter of an oriental alphabet. She almost closed her eyes but their pupils glimmered dimly under the drooping lids, fastened as before on Kuzma Vassilyevitch. And he, too, could not look away from those marvellous, ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... water, we know that there is bound up a latent force beside which steam and electricity are powerless in comparison. To release that force it is only necessary to apply the sympathetic key; just as the heated point of a needle will explode a mine of gunpowder and lay a city in ashes. That force is asleep. The atoms which could give it reality are at rest, or, at least, in a condition of quasi-rest. But in the stupendous mass of incandescent gas which constitutes the nebula ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... of melinite are the leading idea in France. It is manufactured at Bourges and is said to be a hundred times as powerful as gunpowder, or ten times nitroglycerine, and reduces what it strikes to a fine powder. They have also a new rifle powder ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... appoint officers of sovereign justice, who should be commissioned by the crown; and nominate military officials by sea and land over ships, troops, and fortresses, the king agreeing to appoint their nominees. They were empowered to build forts, forge cannon, make gunpowder, and do all things necessary for the security of the ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... join them, and as he went a bullet sang past him and his left wrist dropped nerveless at his side. He scarcely felt the wound. The brutal jar of the repulse had stunned every sense in him but that of thirst. The reek of gunpowder caked his throat, and his tongue crackled in his mouth like a ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a trick that I should care to have played upon me,' said Lord Grey, amid a general murmur of applause and surprise. 'Od's bud, man, you have lived two centuries too late. What would not your thews have been worth before gunpowder put ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... by the provisions he had laid in, he purchased a sufficient stock of coals and fagots to last him during the whole period of his confinement; and he added a small barrel of gunpowder, and a like quantity of ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it was not proposed to use steam in connection with the cylinder and piston which now really constitutes the steam-engine. Reverting again to the example of the gun, it was suggested to push a piston forward in a tube by the explosion of gunpowder behind it, or to repeat the Savery experiment with powder instead of steam. These ideas were those of about 1678-1685. The very earliest cylinder and piston engine was suggested by Denis Papin in 1690. These early inventors only went a portion ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... exit at the black mouth of the tunnel and reward his success with a cheer? Was it not Speug, with Duncan Robertson's military assistance, who constructed a large earth-work in a pit at the top of the Meadow, which was called the Redan and was blown up with gunpowder one Saturday afternoon, seven boys being temporarily buried beneath the ruins, and Peter himself losing both eyebrows? And when an old lady living next the school laid a vicious complaint against Speug and some other genial ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... the cartridge," said he to Phil Evans, "I took some gunpowder as well. With the powder I will make a fuse that will take some time to burn, and which will lead into the fulminate. My idea is to light it about midnight, so that the explosion will take place about three or four ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... and Church politics. He was rarely seen in Convocation, and he always regarded its revival as a misfortune. He proposed, however, in it a petition for the discontinuance of the use of the State services commemorating the martyrdom of Charles I., the restoration of Charles II., the discovery of the gunpowder plot, and the Revolution of 1688; and Parliament soon after adopted his view. He also sat on the Royal Commission in 1864 for considering the subject of clerical subscription. He took on this occasion a characteristic line, advocating a complete abolition of the subscription of the ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... A mine charged with gunpowder, it appeared, had been laid beneath its vaults by Demdike, with a view to its destruction at some future period, and this circumstance being known to Nance, she ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of Tartarin of Tarascon had to the Franco-German war. It has been devised merely to make flesh creep in certain tabernacles of fanaticism in the less civilised parts of England and Scotland. So far as action goes it will end in smoke, but not in gunpowder-smoke. There will no doubt be riots in Belfast and Portadown, for which the ultimate responsibility will rest on learned counsel of the King. But there have been riots before, and the cause of Home Rule has survived all the blackguardism and bloodshed. It ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... the invention as a wonder toy. Gunpowder was discharged from the point of the finger by persons charged on an insulating stool. Electrical kisses passed from bold lips to lips in social circles. Even timid people mounted up on cakes of resin that their friends might see their hair stand on end. Sir William Watson, of London, completed ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... us very apprehensive for the health of the fleet. Contrary, however, to expectation, the number of sick in the ship I was embarked on was surprisingly small, and the rest of the fleet were nearly as healthy. Frequent explosions of gunpowder, lighting fires between decks, and a liberal use of that admirable antiseptic, oil of tar, were the preventives we made use of against impure air; and above all things we were careful to keep the men's bedding and wearing apparel dry. As we advanced towards the Line, the weather grew gradually ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... fabrics; in making shoes; in furriery; in hat making; in making toys; in the flax, shoddy and hair industries; in watchmaking and housepainting; in the making of spring beds, pencils and wafers; in making looking-glasses, matches and gunpowder preparations; in dipping phosphorus match-sticks and preparing arsenic; in the tinning of iron; in the delicacy trade; in book printing and composition; in the preparation of precious stones; in lithography, photography, chromo-lithography and metachromotype, and also in the founding ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... which have naturally, and probably rightly, been taken as allusions to the Jesuit Garnet's appeal to the doctrine of equivocation in defence of his perjury when, on trial for participation in the Gunpowder Plot, do not stand alone in Macbeth. The later prophecies of the Witches Macbeth calls 'the equivocation of the fiend That lies like truth' (V. v. 43); and the Porter's remarks about the equivocator who 'could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God's ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... had been reduced to his unenviable situation; and, that all passers-by might take note that the execution had not been done without authority, there was painted upon the smooth white bark of the tree, in large black letters, traced by a finger well charged with moistened gunpowder, the ominous name—JUDGE LYNCH,—the Rhadamanthus of the forest, whose decisions are yet respected in the land, and whose authority sometimes bids fair to supersede that of ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... would seem as if dame Nature, who will sometimes be partial, had given him brass enough for a dozen ordinary braziers. All this he had contrived to pass off upon William the Testy for genuine gold; and the little Governor would sit for hours and listen to his gunpowder stories of exploits, which left those of Tirante the White, Don Belianis of Greece, or St. George and the Dragon quite in the background. Having been promoted by William Kieft to the command of his whole disposable forces, he gave importance ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... Indians rushed out of the wood with a hideous shout, at about the distance of a hundred yards; and as they ran towards us, the foremost threw something out of his hand, which flew on one side of him, and burnt exactly like gunpowder, but made no report: The other two instantly threw their lances at us; and as no time was now to be lost, we discharged our pieces, which were loaded with small shot. It is probable that they did not feel ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... the British Channel, which formed the natural defence of the realm. The opening of the Atlantic had revolutionised war and seamanship. Long voyages required larger vessels. Henry was the first prince to see the place which gunpowder was going to hold in wars. In his first years he repaired his dockyards, built new ships on improved models, and imported Italians to cast him new types of cannon. 'King Harry loved a man,' it was said, and knew a man when he saw one. He made acquaintance with sea captains at Portsmouth and Southampton. ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... insisted, he could by his inventions have aided Saint Louis in his crusade more than his whole army. [Footnote: Emile Charles, Roger Bacon. Sa vie et ses ouvrages, 17.] Nor is this assertion altogether fantastic. Bacon understood the formula for gunpowder, and if Saint Louis had been provided with even a poor explosive he might have taken Cairo; not to speak of the terror which Greek fire always inspired. Saint Louis met his decisive defeat in a naval battle fought in 1250, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... than actually to persuade the Pope to punish an Italian writer, named Reboul, for publishing an apology for the English Roman Catholics who refused to take the oath of allegiance required by the English monarch in 1606, after the discovery of the gunpowder plot. This certainly was a singular and remarkable performance, and must have required much tact and diplomacy. It is conjectured that the artful King so flattered the Pope as to induce him to protect the English sovereign from the attacks of his foes. ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... a brass falcon to be charged with a sufficient quantity of gunpowder well purged from its sulphur, and curiously made up with fine camphor, he then had a suitable ball put into the piece, with twenty-four little pellets like hail-shot, some round, some pearl fashion; then taking his aim and levelling it at a page of his, as if he would have ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... nests, trepang, ornamental woods, pearls, pearl-shells, tortoise-shell, and the skins of birds of paradise. At Singapore, there are hundreds of Chinese shopkeepers, who sell all kinds of miscellaneous articles, such as penknives, cotton thread, writing-paper, gunpowder, and corkscrews, often at a price which would be ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... sea became greater than ever, several new ships of war were put in commission, and many others taken into the service of the government; the exportation of gunpowder was forbid; the bounties to seamen were continued, and the number of those that either entered voluntarily, or were pressed, increased daily, as did also the captures from the French, among which was the Esperance, of seventy guns, taken ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... to make the first act relate to tree-felling or tree planting, or, say, a performance by Mr. Tree; the second to a son or the sun; and the third to some treasonable situation, such as, for example, the Gunpowder Plot. On account of the time which is occupied in preparing and acting it is better to choose two-syllabled words—which, with the whole word, make three scenes—than three- or four-syllabled ones; although there are ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... followed on the same ground and duly had their day. Indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about Gunpowder Plot. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... that the beauty of antiquity is the expression of those virtues which were useful at the time of Theseus, as Stendhal rightly tells us. Individual force, which was everything of old, amounts to almost nothing in our modern civilization. The monk who invented gunpowder modified sculpture; strength is only necessary now among subalterns. No one thinks of asking whether Frederick the Great and Napoleon were good swordsmen. The strength we admire, is the strength of Napoleon advancing alone upon the First Battalion of the royal troops near Lake Loffrey ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... informing him that Miss Drake was having the pond at the foot of her garden emptied into the Lythe by means of a tunnel, the construction of which was already completed. They were now boring for a small charge of gunpowder expected to liberate the water. The process of emptying would probably be rapid, and he had taken the liberty of informing Mr. Faber, thinking he might choose to be present. No one but the persons employed would be ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... Repeatedly, too, it has withstood and repelled the attacks of an enemy, once when an army of not less than fifteen thousand men sat down before it, and a second time, when pressed by thirteen thousand. But the invention of gunpowder, and still more effectually the changes in men's manners which followed the discovery of printing, slowly robbed it of its importance, till at last it was deserted by its owners, who transferred their residence to the more commodious, but far less picturesque mansion which they still continue ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... experiments with the Leyden jar, made an electrical battery, killed a fowl and roasted it upon a spit turned by electricity, sent a current through water and found it still able to ignite alcohol, ignited gunpowder, and charged glasses of wine so that the drinkers received shocks. More important, perhaps, he began to develop the theory of the identity of lightning and electricity, and the possibility of protecting buildings by iron rods. ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... reply was like a spark to gunpowder. In a moment the cavern presented a scene singularly tragic-comic; the whole party was one busy mass of battle, with the exception of Ted and Batt, and the wife of the latter, who, having first hastily put aside everything that might ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... how so many fiddlers could play at one time, without putting one another out." While the fellow was lighting the upper candles, he cried out to Mrs. Miller, "Look, look, madam, the very picture of the man in the end of the common-prayer book before the gunpowder-treason service." Nor could he help observing, with a sigh, when all the candles were lighted, "That here were candles enough burnt in one night, to keep an honest poor ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... bethought me. We shall be ready for any night-rush. I'll take a leaf out of modern warfare, and show them not only that we are top-dog (a favourite phrase of the mate), but why we are top-dog. It is simple—night illumination. As I write I work opt the idea—gasoline, balls of oakum, caps and gunpowder from a few cartridges, Roman candles, and flares blue, red, and green, shallow metal receptacles to carry the explosive and inflammable stuff; and a trigger-like arrangement by which, pulling on a string, the caps are exploded ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... resisted it would be fined, sold up, knocked on the head by policemen, thrown into prison, and in the last resort "executed" just as they are when they break the present law. But as our proprietary class has no fear of that conversion taking place, whereas it does fear sporadic cut-throats and gunpowder plots, and strives with all its might to hide the fact that there is no moral difference whatever between the methods by which it enforces its proprietary rights and the method by which the dynamitard asserts his conception of natural human rights, the Fabian Society is ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... not far from Concord, there was a sharp fight in which several men were killed. This, in history, is called the Battle of Lexington. It was the beginning of the war called the Revolutionary War. But the king's soldiers did not find the gunpowder. They were glad enough to march back without it. All along the road the farmers were waiting for them. It seemed as if every man in the country was after them. And they did not feel themselves safe until they were once ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... the Bastille. It was a mediaeval dungeon of formidable aspect, armed with many cannon and dominating the outlet from the populous faubourg St. Antoine to the country beyond—one of the mouths of famishing Paris. It contained a great store {67} of gunpowder and a garrison of about 100 Swiss and veterans. The fortress had an evil reputation as a state prison. Although in July, 1789 its cells were nearly all unoccupied, popular legend would have it that numerous victims of ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... had been college-mate in Edinburgh. "He watered all that gunpowder in him years ago, did ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... extreme. He intended to cross the lake in the canoe; land well beyond Mabyn's camp; and fire the grass to the windward of the shack. No rain had fallen in weeks; the grass was as dry as tinder; and the old bleached shack itself almost as inflammable as gunpowder. He had, moreover, a small quantity of oil among the things seized from Mabyn. The night itself seemed to speak for the deed; it was as dark as Erebus; and there was a blustering, raw wind ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... his life are as follows. He was born in the Parish of St. Michael's Cheap, in London, on the 19th of October, 1605 (the year of the Gunpowder Plot). His father, as is apologetically admitted by a granddaughter, Mrs. Littleton, "was a tradesman, a mercer, though a gentleman of a good family in Cheshire" (generosa familia, says Sir Thomas's own epitaph). That he was the parent of his son's temperament, a devout man with a leaning toward ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Gunpowder.—If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Crusader," and Captain Westerway requested that he might be supplied with such provisions as the island afforded, in order to husband those which had been saved from the wreck, as they would be required as stores for the vessel. Among other things, he brought several cases of gunpowder, and the sportsmen were therefore able to range the island with their ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... you were away, Jasper, he went to the laboratory with Constance, and fired off a brass cannon with your new pile until he had used up all the gunpowder and spoiled the panels of the door. That is what he calls picking up something ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... by reason of which he foresees that death will be the consequence of a slight blow, as, for instance, that the other has heart disease, the offence is equally murder. /3/ To explode a barrel of gunpowder in a crowded street, and kill people, is murder, although the actor hopes that no such harm will be done. /4/ But to kill a man by careless riding in the same street would commonly be manslaughter. /5/ Perhaps, however, a case could be put where the ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... fire-works—our squibs, crackers, Roman candles, serpents, Catherine-wheels, and sky-rockets. Would it had produced nothing more harmful than these! But it has also supplied one of the ingredients of that villainous gunpowder, which has been the means of thrusting so many of our fellow-creatures prematurely out of the world. Etna, however, can hardly be held responsible for this sad misuse of the valuable substance which it affords; while even gunpowder itself has, on the whole, ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... little firing. The men in front had no time to reload, those behind could not fire because their friends were before them. It was a fierce hand-to-hand struggle, such as might have taken place on the same ground in the middle ages, before gunpowder was in use. Bayonets and clubbed muskets, these were the weapons on both sides, while dismounted troopers—for horses were worse than useless here, mixed up with the infantry—fought with swords. On the roads, on the sides of the slopes, waist deep in the ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... to ballad or flatter, Or rail, and your betters with froth to bespatter, And your talk's all dismals and gunpowder matter; But we, while old sack does divinely inspire us, Are active to do what our rulers require us, And attempt such exploits as the world ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... At a given signal a firework is launched from the steeple, runs along the wire, and sets light to the stake. As soon as the flames burst forth there is a general discharge of musketry, drums in the fields beat loudly, the smoke of incense, mingling with the smoke of gunpowder, ascends heavenwards, and the priests sing what is called the "Hymn of the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... "These five, none of the others." Then still lower down he pointed out other barrels, eight of them, filled with the best gunpowder, and showed them too where the slow matches ran to the little cabin, the cook's galley, the tiller and the prow, by means of any one of which it could be fired. After this and such inspection of the ropes and sails as the light would allow, they sat in the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... The struggle seemed fierce and long, with no breath wasted in useless outcry. Then there was a bright flash, a muffled report, and the stinging and fire of gunpowder ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... if possible, of this excellent purveyor. Pere Seguin was tall as an obelisk, strong as a Hercules, vif as gunpowder, thin and sinewy as any wolf in his beloved forests. His ear large, flat, and full of hair; his teeth long, white, regular, and sharp as those of his favourite and extraordinary dog; his eyes yellow, calm, and piercing ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... to rank amongst those who had volunteered their services to repel the invasion of a powerful, menacing foreign foe! Such was the man and such was his zeal and enthusiasm—such his devoted patriotism, that, had it been practicable to lay a mine of gunpowder under the Boulogne flotilla, he would, with the same alacrity as he now rescued the stag, have dashed into the sea with a lighted torch in one hand while he swam with the other! Such was the man who would have fearlessly applied the torch to the train, and freely have ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... gentlemen, who had just killed each other in the piece under representation, Nicholas accepted the invitation, and promised to return at the conclusion of the performances; preferring the cool air and twilight out of doors to the mingled perfume of gas, orange-peel, and gunpowder, which pervaded ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... way my Uncle Eddy's terrier used to do back in Kentucky when I visited there one summer," she said, after the plank was adjusted so as to balance them properly. "Only he barked all the time he was riding. But he was fierce because Uncle Eddy fed him gunpowder." ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... in the hands of a wretched girl like this. All the peace and happiness of his life were gone, and he felt like some unhappy prisoner who through the bars of his dungeon sees his jailer's children sporting with lighted matches and a barrel of gunpowder. He was at her mercy, for well he knew that it would resolve into this—that the smallest wish of this girl would become an imperative command that he dared not disobey. However absurd might be her whims and caprices, ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... collector, Sir Kenelm Digby, was born at Gayhurst, near Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, in 1603. He was the son of Sir Everard Digby, who was executed in 1606 for the part he took in the Gunpowder Plot. Sir Kenelm, who was the author of several remarkable works, is described by Lord Clarendon as a man of 'very extraordinary person and presence, with a wonderful graceful behaviour and a flowing courtesy and civility.' He was knighted in 1623. Digby possessed a very fine ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... thus exerted was made to do so by the mysterious and irresistible impulse of a superior being, we should instantly declare that being the agent, and the mind irresistibly influenced only a passive instrument, and no more to blame than the gunpowder. Now, if the sinner is passive he is no more to blame or praise than the passive instruments employed by the murderer. And if he is not passive, but active, then the thing is begun and done by himself as the real agent. ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... a business of profit. Their instrument consists of three or four needles, tied to a truncated and flattened end of a stick, in such an arrangement, that the points may form a straight line; the figure desired is traced upon the skin, and some dissolved gunpowder, or pulverised charcoal, is pricked in with the instrument, agreeably to the figure. It is said not to be painful, but it is sometimes accompanied by inflammation and fever, and has been known ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... received a liberal supply of presents. The next day they had been taken on board the man-of-war lying in the harbour, when they again drank the King's health, and were presented with a pound of gunpowder each. When they at last left for their wilderness homes, they were saluted by the cannon of Fort Howe and His Majesty's ship Albany, and they in return had given three huzzas and an Indian war-whoop. Such attention and good will had made a deep impression upon those ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... continuation of the railroad on the opposite shore; and went on by other cars; in which, in the course of the next hour or so, we crossed by wooden bridges, each a mile in length, two creeks, called respectively Great and Little Gunpowder. The water in both was blackened with flights of canvas-backed ducks, which are most delicious eating, and abound hereabouts at ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... fifteen, he was so well equipped that he was engaged to teach school in Maryland, at Gunpowder Falls, some of his pupils being so much larger and older than he that, at one time, he had to take a brand from the fire, and strike one of them, in order to ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... worked for the emancipation of the negroes who were here; that men worked openly and hard for it until 1832. Then came the Nat Turner Insurrection, when they killed all those women and children, and then rose the hell-fire-for-all, bitter-'n-gall Abolition people stirring gunpowder with a lighted stick, holding on like grim death and in perfect safety fifteen hundred miles from where the explosion was due! And as they denounce without thinking, so a lot of men have risen with us to advocate ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... destruction. The story of the siege need not here be told; nowhere has it been recorded with more picturesque and energetic brevity than in the glowing pages of Gibbon. Operations were carried on with unprecedented vigour and effect, rendered more terrible by the lavish use of gunpowder and artillery, then almost new elements in the art of war. Constantine did all that a Christian prince and a brave general could do. By his example he animated the courage of his soldiers, and revived the hearts of the citizens, sinking in despair. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... words were as a lighted match to gunpowder, and for the instant I firmly believed we would pay for ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... the character of an internal and internecine struggle. Under these circumstances propaganda, in the sense of an insidious exploitation of the sources of dissension and unrest, may as completely change the character of wars of peoples as they were once changed by the invention of gunpowder. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... that end and object, without a moment's delay. Fielding tells us that man is fire, and woman tow, and the Prince of Darkness sets a light to 'em. Mr. Jingle knew that young men, to spinster aunts, are as lighted gas to gunpowder, and he determined to essay the effect of an ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... determined to inflict at their hill fortress. But Skobeleff excelled Lomakin in skill no less than in prowess and magnetic influence. He proceeded to push his trenches towards the stronghold, so that on January 23, 1881, his men succeeded in placing 2600 pounds of gunpowder under the south-eastern corner of the rampart. Early on the following day the Russians began the assault; and while cannon and rockets wrought death and dismay among the ill-armed defenders, the mighty shock of the explosion tore away fifty ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... was not a pleasant one. Many of the arms had been lost, and the gunpowder was of course destroyed. The men were exhausted and worn out with their long struggle with the tempest. They were without food, and might at any moment be attacked ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... forces, or even by the invention of new arts and new processes. But since we have seen aerostation, the motive power of elastic vapors, the wonders of modern telegraphy, the destructive explosiveness of gunpowder, of nitro-glycerine, and even of a substance so harmless, unresisting, and inert as cotton, there is little in the way of mechanical achievement which seems hopelessly impossible, and it is hard to restrain the imagination from wandering forward a couple of generations to ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... in some dark, cold corner—or sitting forlornly partnerless against the bleak wall of the ballroom—or hiding shyly up in the dressing-room—waiting to be discovered! Little Miss Still-Waters, deeper than ten thousand seas! Little Miss Gunpowder, milder than the dusk before the moon ignites it! Little Miss Sleeping-Beauty, waiting for ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... his way; and to the Continent they went. The old squire never set his foot on even the coast of Calais: when he has seen it from Dover, he has only wished that he could have a few hundred tons of gunpowder, and blow it into the air; but Tom and Lady Barbara have lived ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... destruction when once his blood's up. And he minds what Master Scott says more than anyone. So I promised, Miss Dinah dear, the same as you have. And so he doesn't know to this day. Sir Eustace, ye see, has been in a touchy mood all along, ever since ye left. Like gunpowder he's been, and Master Scott has had a difficult enough time with him; and Miss Isabel has kept it from him so that he thinks it was just your going again that made her fret so. There, now ye know all, Miss Dinah dear, and don't ye for the love of heaven tell a soul what I've told ye! ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... their way into their bosoms." Their bosom is a rock of granite, on which falsehood has long since built her stronghold. Poor truth has had a hard work of it with her little pickaxe. Nothing but gunpowder will do. As a proof, however, of the progress of this sap of Truth, he gives us a confession they had made not long before he wrote. "Their fraternity" (as was lately stated by themselves in a solemn report) "has been the brotherhood of Cain and Abel, and they have organized nothing but Bankruptcy ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... witnessing again scenes like those which followed the destruction of the Roman Empire. Now look to the warriors of modern times; you see the spear, the javelin, the shield, and the cuirass are changed for the musket and the light artillery. The German monk who discovered gunpowder did not meanly affect the destinies of mankind; wars are become less bloody by becoming less personal; mere brutal strength is rendered of comparatively little avail; all the resources of civilisation are required to maintain and move a large army; wealth, ingenuity, ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... 1593, and in opposition to Bacon became Attorney-General in 1593. In 1598, on the death of his first wife, he married Elizabeth Hatton, Burghley's granddaughter, again depriving Bacon of a prize. He was retained to prosecute Essex, Southampton, and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, against all of whom he showed the same animus that he did against Raleigh. In 1606 he became Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas, in which capacity he maintained the independence of the Law Courts against ecclesiastical interference. ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... Benningsen fear that his line of communication would be cut, and so he ordered a retreat in the direction of Konigsberg, leaving the French masters of the horrible battlefield covered with dead and dying. Since the invention of gunpowder one has not seen such a terrible effect, for in relation to the numbers engaged at Eylau, in comparison to all the battles, ancient or modern, the proportion of losses was highest. The Russians had twenty-five thousand casualties, and although the figure ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... twelve hundred names that had been drawn read over and commented on all day by men who enlivened their discussion with copious draughts of bad whiskey, especially when most of those drawn were laboring-men or poor mechanics, who were unable to hire a substitute, was like applying fire to gunpowder. If a well-known name, that of a man of wealth, was among the number, it only increased the exasperation, for the law exempted every one drawn who would pay three hundred dollars towards a substitute. This was taking practically the whole number of soldiers called for out of the ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... Discountenancing Watchmen;" another, "The Board of Works," whose object was principally devoted to the embellishment of the university, in which, to do them justice, their labors were unceasing, and what with the assistance of some black paint, a ladder, and a few pounds of gunpowder, they certainly contrived to effect many important changes. Upon an examination morning, some hundred luckless "jibs" might be seen perambulating the courts, in the vain effort to discover their tutors' chambers, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... aside, and giving him a small present of gunpowder, asked his advice in such critical a situation. He was decidedly of opinion that I ought not to go to the king: he was fully convinced, he said, that if the king should discover anything valuable ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... work to unpack the dray: and after taking out sufficient flour, sugar, tea, &c., for use, the remainder of the goods were taken to the nearest store, where they were sold at an average of five times their original costs: the most profitable portion of the cargo consisted of some gunpowder and percusion-caps. The day after, by good fortune, we disposed of the dray and horses for 250 pounds, being only 40 pounds less than we paid for them. As the cost of keeping horses at the diggings is very great (sometimes two or three pounds a day per head), besides ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... a lofty and abstruse nature, developing itself in wonderful inventions—gunpowder, for instance, is ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... but at a proper distance; women picking linen for lint and chatting genially the while at shop doors and porter's lodge-gates; and a piquet of soldiers at the corner of every street, who felt us all over for hidden cartridges before they let us through; it was all entrancing! The subtle scent of gunpowder was in the air—the most suggestive smell there can be. Even now, here in England, the night of the fifth of November never comes round but I am pleasantly reminded of the days when I was "en pleine revolution" in the streets of Paris with my father and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... equal to the occasion," Sir Penthony remarks, admiringly. "As a penny showman he would have been invaluable and died worth any money. Such energy, such unflagging zeal is rare. That pretty gunpowder plot he showed his friends the other night would ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... the valor of twenty-fold heroes, but had to retreat; babbling about shells and mortars, battalions, manoeuvres, angles, fascines, and other items of military art; for war had filled the whole brain of the people, and enveloped the whole thought of man in a mist of gunpowder. ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... before him, you may set it down that he was likely to blow up with vexation; but, for all that, the first thing he blew up was the rocks—and that he might lose little or no time in doing it, he collected all the gunpowder and crowbars, spades and pickaxes, that could be found for miles about him, and set to it, working as if it was with inch of candle. For half a day there was nothing but boring and splitting, and driving of iron wedges, and blowing up pieces of rocks ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... we were all ready. The harpoon-guns were cleaned, oiled, and fastened, with their swivels, on the "billet-heads," in the bows of the boats. Each harpooner got a supply of gunpowder and percussion-caps; and all other requisites were put ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... it is not a fall this time, but something worse, for I haven't a penny in the world, nor likely to have, and to-morrow is the Fourth of July, when all the boys and girls will have pistols, gunpowder, and fire-works, while I shall not even be able to ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Graystock said something to the touchy rustic that he did not relish, and he writes his distaste in flames. What a power to intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly awake, to perceive that something is wrong in the social system; what a hellish faculty above gunpowder! ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... paper immediately ignites and the cotton explodes. Strange, is it not, that the beam should possess such heating power after having passed through so cold a substance? In his arctic expeditions Dr. Scoresby succeeded in exploding gunpowder by the sun's rays, converged by large lenses of ice; here we have succeeded in producing the effect with a small lens, and with a terrestrial ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... the excitement accompanying it, to carry out their scheme, and the Manchus appear to have been in total ignorance until the eleventh hour of the plot for their destruction. The discovery of the conspiracy bears a close resemblance to that of the Gunpowder Plot. A Chinese slave, wishing to save his master, gave him notice of the danger, and this Manchu officer at once informed Kanghi of the conspiracy. The son of Wou Sankwei and the other conspirators were immediately arrested and ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... name of God, why don't Col. Bigelow order us to retreat?" This man in after life received a pension from government, and died respected a few years since in this city. His children are now living here, and therefore we shall not call his name. He was always afraid of gunpowder. The English were also frightened and fled, leaving the hay on the hands of Col. Bigelow, who, having no use for it, returned it to its tory owner, on the express condition that he should not sell it to ...
— Reminiscences of the Military Life and Sufferings of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Commander of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Massachusetts Line in the Continental Army, during the War of the Revolution • Charles Hersey
... more handsomely or be more gallantly executed. There was a talk at one time that our author was about to take Guy Faux for the subject of one of his novels, in order to put a more liberal and humane construction on the Gunpowder Plot than our "No Popery" prejudices have hitherto permitted. Sir Walter is a professed clarifier of the age from the vulgar and still lurking old-English antipathy to Popery and Slavery. Through some odd process of servile logic, it ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... host, "we mix with our gunpowder and shot a certain composition which cooks as well ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... diversified by various attempts at arson—the latest, with aid of gunpowder, being successful. On the first of last February, the British minister's residence at Yedo was burned to the ground by armed incendiaries, who made their work more sure by laying trains of gunpowder, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... excuse myself from, is walking. I should certainly never have the gout, if I had lost the use of my feet. Cherubims that have no legs, and do nothing but stick their chins in a cloud and sing, are never out of order. Exercise is the worst thing in the world, and as bad an invention as gunpowder. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... 45 are poor and small, except a few kept for the king's own use. He has no well-bred mares. Their arms are the same as at Timbuctoo; the muskets, which are matchlocks, are made in the country. They are very dexterous in throwing the lance. Gunpowder is also manufactured there; the brimstone is brought from Fas; the charcoal they make; and he believes they prepare the nitre.[83] Their arrows are feathered and barbed; the bows are all cross-bows, with triggers; the arrows, 20 to 40 in a quiver, are made of hides, and hang on the left side. ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... from Keenan in reply was like a spark to gunpowder. In a moment the cavern presented a scene singularly tragic-comic; the whole party was one busy mass of battle, with the exception of Ted and Batt, and the wife of the latter, who, having first hastily put aside everything that might be injured, stood enjoying the ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the shipment of gunpowder, were thought of no more in the good town of Manhattan. This great emporium—we beg pardon, this great commercial emporium—has a trick of forgetting; condensing all interests into those of the present moment. It is much addicted to believing that which never had an existence, and of overlooking ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... own part, I could not look but with wonder and respect on the Chinese. Their forefathers watched the stars before mine had begun to keep pigs. Gunpowder and printing, which the other day we imitated, and a school of manners which we never had the delicacy so much as to desire to imitate, were theirs in a long-past antiquity. They walked the earth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The other parts of the summit of this hill are occupied by immense fragments of brickwork of no determinate figure, tumbled together and converted into solid vitrified masses, as if they had undergone the action of the fiercest fire, or had been blown up by gunpowder, the layers of brick being perfectly discernible. These ruins surely proclaim the divinity of the Scriptures. Layard says the discoveries amongst the ruins of ancient Babylon were far less numerous and important than could have been anticipated. No sculptures or inscribed slabs, the paneling ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... and indeed one or two declared that they had traced the dim outline of his figure. But no sound was heard to come from the cavern, except the sharp crack of the bullets against the rock, and the echo of the gunpowder. There had been no groan as of a man wounded, no sound of a body falling, no voice wailing in despair. For a few seconds all was dark with the smoke of the gunpowder, and then the empty mouth of the cave was again yawning before their eyes. Morton was now near it, still cautiously creeping. ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... themselves at the mere will of the owner of the island, who wanted to scare away the inhabitants who resided on the coast. He succeeded, this Count d'Artigas, and remains the sole and undisputed monarch of the mountain. By exploding gunpowder, and burning seaweed swept up in inexhaustible quantities by the ocean, he has been able to simulate a volcano upon the point of eruption and effectually scare ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... on the same ground and duly had their day. Indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about Gunpowder Plot. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... The fifth of November, Gunpowder treason and plot, I hope that night will never be forgot. The king and his train Had like to be slain; Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder Set below London to ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... one time of great strength, was now in a somewhat dilapidated condition. It contained eighty-five guns, mortars and howitzers, some of them of English manufacture, upwards of 250 tons of gunpowder, stowed away in earthen vessels, many millions of Enfield and Snider cartridges, and a large number of arms, besides quantities of saddlery, clothing for troops, musical instruments, shot, shell, caps, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... actually to persuade the Pope to punish an Italian writer, named Reboul, for publishing an apology for the English Roman Catholics who refused to take the oath of allegiance required by the English monarch in 1606, after the discovery of the gunpowder plot. This certainly was a singular and remarkable performance, and must have required much tact and diplomacy. It is conjectured that the artful King so flattered the Pope as to induce him to protect the English sovereign from ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... of Mr. Cushing's proposal, and yet something ought to be done. We must put up with what we have already, I suppose, and let Mr. Webster stand threatening to blow us all up with his pistol pointed at the elongated keg of gunpowder on which his left hand rests,—no bad type of the great man's state of mind after the nomination of General Taylor, or of what a country member would call a penal statue. But do we reflect that Vermont is half marble, and that Lake Superior can send us bronze enough for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... usual 6:30 Repast of Chipped Beef in Cream, Sody Biscuits and a Stoup of Gunpowder Tea, they ordered up Cape Cods, Pommes Let-it-go-at-that, Sweetbreads So-and-so, on and on past the partially heated Duck and Salad with Fringe along the Edges and Cheese that had waited too long and a Check for $17.40 and the Waiter peeved at ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... thousand cities, towns, villages, and hamlets, spread over the surface of America—in each the Declaration of Independence has been read; in all one, and in some two or three, orations have been delivered, with as much gunpowder in them as in the squibs and crackers. But let me ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... her steadily. Then he went up to Rachel, and taking her hand, raised it to his lips. There was in his manner a boundless reverent adoration that was to Lady Newhaven's jealousy as a match to gunpowder. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... life more joyous as war threatened to make it short. They displayed the same ardor, the same enthusiasm, in the ball-room as on the battle-field. They loved the smell of flowers as much as the smell of gunpowder. Every form of conquest tempted them, and they revived the customs of chivalry. In the language of the time, there flourished the twofold reign of Mars and Venus. In those heroic days courage was set higher than wealth. The women, with few exceptions, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Railroad was then in course of construction, or was being made to traverse the upper reaches of the city, through that part of which raged, to my young sense, a riot of explosion and a great shouting and waving of red flags when the gunpowder introduced into the rocky soil was about to take effect. It was our theory that our passage there, in the early afternoon, was beset with danger, and our impression that we saw fragments of rock hurtle through the air and smite to the earth another and yet another of the persons ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... stirred with a mixture of gypsum and Prussian blue during the firing, but is prepared in a more laborious manner, the leaves being selected and divided to form the different kinds known as Imperial, Gunpowder, Young Hyson, Hyson, Hyson Skin and Twankay. An aggregation of these kinds, proportioned according to their value, forms what is known as a "chop," whereas a chop of black tea comprises all of one grade or quality. Chinamen ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... from Mongolia; gunpowder, the printing press and many other great discoveries have been traced back to Celestial origin. Let us, then, adopt her method of dealing with troublesome subjects. A 'harikari' sentence saves the nation much trouble and expense. A coroner's verdict of 'suicide by request,' is much more simple, ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... the list, as follows; the words coming out by jerks, as the trotting of my horse permitted. "Fifty blankets, each with yellow strings and yellow trimmings; ten iron pots, four gallons each; forty pounds of gunpowder; seven muskets; twelve pounds of small beads; ten strings of wampum; fifty gallons of rum, pure Jamaica, and of high proof; a score of jews-harps, and three dozen ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... me aye made what they call an anniversary of our wedding-day, which happened to be the fifth of November, the very same as that on which the Gunpowder Plot chances to be occasionally held—Sundays excepted. According to custom, this being the fourth year, we collected a good few friends to a tea-drinking; and had our cracks and a glass or two of toddy. Thomas Burlings, if I mind, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... fifteenth-century Porta di Raspo, obtaining fine views down the alleys and through garden doors as we ascended the hill. High above our heads the battlements towered, and as we approached the walls we realised what a business it must have been to attack a town so protected before the invention of gunpowder. Soon the road bent away to the right, which was not the direction in which we wished to go, but a path led to some brick-works, and there we found an idle workman, who advised us to go along the shore as being much shorter. So we plunged and slid ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... deposited there is enormous,—practically inexhaustible. This profitable sulphur mine is owned, or was, a few months since, by General Ochoa, a resident of the capital. It is said that when Cortez had expended his supply of gunpowder, he resorted to the crater of Popocatepetl for sulphur to make a fresh supply, and that the natives had never ascended the mountain until the Spaniards showed them the way. Earthquakes are not uncommon, even to-day, near the base of this monarch mountain; ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... an old fort—for this region, being on the route to the upper lakes, was a constant battleground. Radisson's party gathered to attack it, {203} the Iroquois meanwhile firing constantly, but doing little harm. Darkness came on, and the assailants filled a barrel with gunpowder and, "having stoped the whole" (stopped the hole) and tied it to the end of a long pole, tried to push it over the stockade. It fell back, however, and exploded with so much force that three of ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... the 8th of September, 1173, when the royalist forces encircled the fortress. Gunpowder was then unknown, and contending armies could only meet hand to hand. For two months the siege was continued, with bloody conflicts every day. Wintry winds swept the plains, and storms of snow whitened the fields, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... cat's whiskers bristled. He turned to the mill with a fierce frown, his long tail going to and fro like that of a tiger in its lair; for Sooty Will had a temper like hot gunpowder, that was apt to go off sizz, whizz, bang! and no one to save the pieces. Yet, at least while the cook was by, he turned the mill furiously, as if with ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... annual tribute due by Sweden, and that country is also bound by treaty to furnish the Dey with a person capable of directing his gunpowder factory! Denmark not only pays tribute, but is bound to pay it in naval stores, and her consul here is at present in disgrace because his country has failed to pay its tribute at the specified ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sources of the wealth of this enormous country. The soil, for miles and miles a dead flat, is now barren as a desert, and we meet hardly a sign of active traffic. During the night we certainly did encounter a long train of heavily-laden bullock-waggons; but the merchandize was gunpowder, and its destination was up, instead of down ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... sulphur and noise, there are always fireworks. It is difficult to imagine festivity without them, and yet there must have been a time when rockets did not rise or Catherine wheels go round. You cannot have fireworks without gunpowder, and every school-boy knows that gunpowder was only invented in—I haven't got a dictionary of dates handy. Surely we ought to let off fireworks on Roger Bacon's birthday. "They let off fireworks when he was born," say the French in a slyly witty proverb, which is a circumlocutory way of ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... and lose their nitrogen, either as a lower oxide or as nitrogen. The nitrates of the metals, on heating, leave the oxide of the metal. It is as yielders of oxygen that nitrates are so largely used in the manufacture of explosives. Gunpowder contains from 65 to 75 per ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... the joke of the fellow who put gunpowder in a poor Irishman's pipe," broke in Shadow. "It put the Irishman's eyes out. I don't see ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... upon their policy, about whether they should leave the unmasked Gogol without and begin diplomatically, or whether they should bring him in and blow up the gunpowder at once. The influence of Syme and Bull prevailed for the latter course, though the Secretary to the last asked them why they attacked ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... the loss of both legs very common. The two buildings which accommodate them were formerly the Convent des Celestins, and that of the Dames de St. Louis. Two other handsome convents have been converted to uses less beneficent, one being now a gunpowder manufactory, and the other ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... spot in which to find a pirate's nest—just a group of some five- and-twenty rocks, they are not much larger, and one island about ten miles long and six wide, with reefs and shoals all round. Did you ever smell gunpowder, Six-foot?" ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... "Bless my gunpowder! But when I saw those savage creatures rushing at you, I thought it was all up with us. Are you hurt, Parker, my dear fellow? I ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... Channel, which formed the natural defence of the realm. The opening of the Atlantic had revolutionised war and seamanship. Long voyages required larger vessels. Henry was the first prince to see the place which gunpowder was going to hold in wars. In his first years he repaired his dockyards, built new ships on improved models, and imported Italians to cast him new types of cannon. 'King Harry loved a man,' it was said, and knew a ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... that anyone would think it so, Jean; but it seems to me that it is just because everyone seems so confident that the prison is safe from attack, that we shall have a chance. The thing that is troubling me most is where we can get a barrel of gunpowder. We must have powder to blow open the gate. I expect that any of the doors we may find locked, inside, will give way if a pistol is fired through the keyhole; but to blow in the main gate of the prison we must get powder, and a good deal of it. That, however, is a matter in which ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... the writing of it, it is the seeing of it—the planning and designing. Sometimes I brood over it for hours—I can not find what I want; and then suddenly a phrase flashes over me and like a train of gunpowder my thought goes running on—leaping, flying; and then the whole thing is plain as day. And I hold it all living in ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... purpose. In a world reeling and smoking with the insane fury of war, one nation should stand unshaken for the message of the spirit, for the glory of humanity; for the settlement of disputes by other means than gunpowder and women's tears. That was his dream. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... said only a little more the next time, and the next; and Daniel Burton pocketed his pencil in despair. Then came a day when a chance word about a new air raid reported in the morning paper acted like a match to gunpowder, and sent John McGuire off into a rapid-fire story that whipped Daniel Burton's pencil from his pocket and set it to racing again at breakneck speed to keep up ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... answer. On his reading this and speaking of what he had learned from it, the Indians looked on it as the work of enchantment. They could not comprehend how "paper could talk." Another thing was the following: They showed him a bag of gunpowder which they had somehow obtained, saying that they were going to sow it in the ground the next spring and gather a crop of this useful substance. After spending some days in this and other villages, the captive was taken into the woods, his captors making him understand that they were ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... collected in it and every functionary belonging to it also, high and low, upward and downward, from its son the Accountant-General to its father the Devil, and the whole blown to atoms with ten thousand hundredweight of gunpowder, would reform it in ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... corollary of the doctrine of just price. This is apparently the suggestion of Dr. Cleary in his excellent book on usury: 'It seems to me that the so-called loan of money is really a sale, and that a loan of meal, wine, oil, gunpowder, and similar commodities—that is to say, commodities which are consumed in use—is also a sale. If this is so, as I believe it is, then loans of all these consumptible goods should be regulated by ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... fired gunpowder by an electric spark, and, later on, a party from the Royal Society, in conjunction with Watson, conducted a series of experiments to determine the velocity of the electric fluid, ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... Congress over slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, Mr. Rives, of Virginia, was so unkind as to say, that the gentleman from Massachusetts, "if it so pleased his fancy, might disport himself in tossing squibs and firebrands about this hall; but those who are sitting upon a barrel of gunpowder, liable to be blown up by his dangerous missiles, could hardly be expected to be quite as calm and philosophic." Because he presented antislavery petitions, and insisted on the duty of Congress to consider them, Mr. King, of Alabama, affirmed that the course ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... angry," answered the anxious lady—"far from it. On the contrary, I really believe that our darlings have greatly improved his language and manners by their example; but Robin's exuberant spirits are far too much for them. It is like putting fire to gunpowder, and they are so fond of him. That's the difficulty. The boy does not presume, I must say that for him, and he is very respectful to nurse; but the children are constantly asking him to come and play with them, which he ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... sat in silence. Even the Marchesino's vivacity was suddenly abated, either by the increasing violence of the storm or by the change in Vere. It would have been difficult to say by which. The lightning flashed. The thunder at moments seemed to split the sky asunder as a charge of gunpowder splits asunder a rock. The head wind rushed by, yet had never passed them, but was forever coming furiously to meet them. On the roof of the little cabin the rain made a noise that was no longer like the rustle of silk, but was ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... only expressed the feeling of the other nobles. Yet he executed his murderous plot without their joining in it and by means of his own servants.[225] In the house before mentioned he caused a quantity of gunpowder to be laid under the chamber in which Darnley slept, in order to blow him into the air: alarmed at the noise made by opening the door, the young sovereign sprang from his bed; while trying to save himself, he was strangled together ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... of touching for the king's evil (IV, iii, 140-159),—a custom which James revived. The reference to an equivocator in the porter's soliloquy (II, iii) may allude to Henry Garnet, who was tried in 1606 for complicity in the {190} famous Gunpowder Plot, and who is said to have upheld the doctrine of equivocation. The date of composition ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... will fire his clearing, thus getting rid of a large share of the logger's waste with practically no labor. To the task of disposing of the remaining logs and stumps he will bring modern tools and methods into action. The axe and shovel and hand lever have given place to gunpowder, the donkey engine, derrick and winch. Stump powder puts all the big stumps into pieces easily. The modern stump-puller lifts out the smaller stumps with ease. The donkey engine and derrick pull together and pile ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... recorder grunted. "Another attempt! And gunpowder put in the street to blow the emperor up only last week. Good luck attends him:—only a few windows broken and some common people killed. Taken in the act, was ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of gunpowder!" I exclaimed in astonishment. "Do you mean that we've got to take such a quantity ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... had landed his troops in the Gallipoli Peninsula. On more than one occasion he honoured me with a surprise visit in my office. These interviews in my sanctum were of quite a dramatic, Harrison-Ainsworth, Gunpowder-Treason, Man-in-the-Iron-Mask character. He gave me no warning, scorning the normal procedure of induction by a messenger. He would appear of a sudden peeping in at the door to see if I was at home, would ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... the Bosphorus, which commanded the source whence the city drew her supplies. In the following year a quarrel between some Greeks and Turks gave him the excuse of declaring war. His cannon—for the use of gunpowder, for some time the monopoly of the Christian world, had been betrayed to Amurath by the Genoese—commanded the port, and a tribute was exacted from all ships that entered the harbour. But the actual siege was delayed until ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... loom, and have been promptly vulcanized. Is not Vulcan, with his hideousness and his strength, the emblem of this strong and hideous nation—sublime in its mechanical intelligence, patient in its season, and once in a century terrible, inflammable as gunpowder, and ripe with brandy for the madness of revolution, with wits enough, in fine, to take fire at a captious word, which signifies to it always: Gold and Pleasure! If we comprise in it all those who hold out ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... examinations in China; it was proposed to establish written examinations in the United States; therefore the proposed system was Chinese. The argument might have been applied still further. For instance, the Chinese had used gunpowder for centuries; gunpowder is used in Springfield rifles; therefore Springfield rifles were Chinese. One argument is quite as logical as the other. It was impossible to answer every falsehood about the system. But it was possible to answer certain falsehoods, especially when uttered ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... expeditiously home. The compass proper the Chinese cannot claim; it was probably introduced into China by the Arabs at a comparatively late date, and has been confused with the south-pointing chariot of earlier ages. As to gunpowder, something of that nature appears to have been used for fireworks in the seventh century; and something of the nature of a gun is first heard of during the Mongol campaigns of the thirteenth century; but firearms were not systematically employed until the fifteenth century. Add to ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... On the 12th of January, 1807, a ship laden with four hundred quintals of gunpowder blew up in the middle of the city of Leyden, part of which was thereby reduced to ruins, and one hundred and fifty persons, among others the celebrated professors Luzac and Kleit, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... motion a train of events whose result was beyond their ken. Mr. Palfrey, of Massachusetts, a few days later said with as much sagacity as wit that "Mr. Calhoun thought that he could set fire to a barrel of gunpowder and extinguish it when half consumed." In his anxiety that the war should be brought to an end, Calhoun proposed that the United States army should evacuate the Mexican capital, establish a defensive line, and hold it as the only indemnity ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the progress of the fire that, by the time the escapes reached the house, tongues of flame were shooting out from the windows, and it was impossible to place the ladders in position. The gunpowder had exploded with great violence, and casks of oil were burning ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... the four kings might be unable to see their way clearly without the help of gunpowder to any decision upon Joanna's intention, she—poor thing!—never could mistake her intentions for a moment. All her love was for France; and, therefore, any glove she might drop into the quadrivium must be wickedly missent by the post-office, if it found its way to any ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... remember The Fifth of November, The gunpowder treason and plot. I see no reason Why gunpowder ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... to the principle of breech-loading fire-arms, examples of which may here be seen three hundred years old. One very singular cannon was observed, actually made from closely woven rope, so strong and compact as to be capable of bearing a discharge with gunpowder, and which had once seen service in battle. The rusty old lances, broken spears, and dimmed sword-blades, hanging on the walls, shadowed by the tattered remnants of battle-flags bearing the bloody marks of contests in which they had taken part, were silent but suggestive tokens ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... favour steadily; and many of the nobles always envied and hated him, because they were as proud and not as high as he. He was at this time building a great Palace in the Strand: to get the stone for which he blew up church steeples with gunpowder, and pulled down bishops' houses: thus making himself still more disliked. At length, his principal enemy, the Earl of Warwick—Dudley by name, and the son of that Dudley who had made himself so odious with Empson, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... much a part of our times as it was in the times of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. Hence it finds frequent reflection in all branches of fiction, including science fiction. Yet, as in life, something new has been added, the most gigantic conspiracy of all, the human conspiracy against conspirators. Which makes for a fine stirring story in this short ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... fact that Meyerbeer's operas contain such strange scenes as phantom nuns dancing, girls bathing, sunrise, skating, gunpowder explosions, a king playing the flute, and the prima donna leading a goat, dramatic music owes to him new accents of genuine pathos and an addition to its resources of rendering passionate emotions. Through much that is merely showy and ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... apparent even to Harry and all the other young lieutenants that the battle was lost. He must have shed tears then, because afterward he found furrows in the mud and burned gunpowder on his face. The combat now was not for victory, but for existence. The Southerners fought to preserve the semblance of an army, and it was well for them that they were valiant Virginians led by a great ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... at my call. I had lost my power of abstraction—the realities around me were too engrossing. Ere the dying shriek of a majestic rooster had ceased to sound in my ear, his remains were served upon my table, together with a cup or two of very villanous gunpowder tea, and a pitcher of cider, with coarse bread and butter ad libitum. Supper was soon despatched, and in answer to a bell, lightly touched, a vinegar-visaged waiting-maid, of the interesting age of forty-five, entered ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... breakfast was ready. In the dining-room they met three other officers of lower rank—a lieutenant, Otto von Grossling, and two sub-lieutenants, Fritz Scheuneberg and Baron von Eyrick, a very short, fair-haired man, who was proud and brutal toward men, harsh toward prisoners and as explosive as gunpowder. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... piece of marble? Why, 'Poor child—poor child—poor child!'" added Rose-Pompon, with indignation; "neither more nor less than if I had come to complain to him of the toothache. But the worst of it is that I am sure, if he were not in love elsewhere, he would be all fire and gunpowder. Only now he is so ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... harbour presented a similar appearance. At every loop-hole a large lamp occupied the place of the muzzle of the cannon. At nine o'clock in the evening, salvoes were fired from the ships; and at the moment that the cannons were fired, the lamps vanished, flashes of light and gunpowder-smoke filled the air; a few seconds afterwards, as if by magic, the lamps had reappeared. This salute ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... warships to New York and notified all Europe to stand back and look pleasant, and by the great horn spoons, I am going to stand by Russia or bust. I would like to be over there at Port Arthur and witness an explosion of a torpedo under something. Egad, but I glory in the smell of gunpowder. Now, say, here is Port Arthur, by this barrel of dried apples, and there is Mushapata, by the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... carefully up, and entrusted it to the care of the chaplain of the Dutch embassy, who happened to be a native of Vaud. In passing the barrier, the packet fell into the hands of the officials. They tore it open and examined it, happily unconscious that they were handling the most explosive kind of gunpowder that they had ever meddled with. It was not until the chaplain claimed it in the name of ambassadorial privilege, that the manuscript was allowed to go on its way to the press.[79] Rousseau repeats a hundred ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... wheat or other grain. Some of the council, desirous of giving the House still further embarrassment, advis'd the governor not to accept provision, as not being the thing he had demanded; but he repli'd, "I shall take the money, for I understand very well their meaning; other grain is gunpowder," which he accordingly bought, and they ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... him, and the coolness also; for the sun beat on the flat rock above till it scorched the feet, and dazzled the eye, and crisped up the blackening sea-weeds; while every sea-snail crept to hide itself under the bladder-tangle, and nothing dared to peep or stir save certain grains of gunpowder, which seemed to have gone mad, so merrily did they hop about upon the surface of the fast evaporating salt-pools. That wonder, indeed, Elsley stooped to examine, and drew back his hands with an "ugh!" and a gesture of disgust, when he found that they were ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... husband was a distinguished officer in the artillery and a man of learning, but absolutely lacking in ambition, preferring to direct the instruction of Saint-Cyr rather than to risk the chances of advancement presented in active service. He became inspector of the gunpowder manufactory at Angouleme, and later retired to his home at Frapesle, near Issoudun. Though an excellent husband, his inactivity was a great annoyance to his wife. According to several Balzacian writers, Madame Carraud became ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... and called after their mother, for the not excessive sum of L28, exclusive of rigging and fittings. She carried a master, boatswain, cook, and sixteen jolly sailor-men, and she kept a good look out for pirates and was armed with cannon and bows, bills, five dozen darts, and twelve pounds of gunpowder! She was victualled with salt fish, bread, wheat and beer, and she plied with the Celys' trade to Zealand, Flanders, and Bordeaux.[47] She must have been about two hundred tons, but some of the other little ships were much smaller, for, as the learned ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... to town," bawled he. "We are going to read the proclamation and collar the soldiers and the bigwigs, and bring back with us guns and gunpowder, and lots of money. This ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... it have been for those people had they never been visited by Europeans; for, to our shame be it spoken, disease and gunpowder is all the benefit they have ever received from us, in return for their hospitality and kindness. The ravages of the venereal disease is evident, from the mutilated objects so frequent amongst them, where death has not thrown a charitable veil over their misery, by ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... able in a few minutes between his gasps to tell his story. Concealed by a lumber pile behind Rosenblatt's shack, with his ear close to a crack between the logs, he had heard the details of the plot. In the cross tunnel at the back of the cave bags of gunpowder and dynamite were to be hidden. To this mass a train was to be laid through the cross tunnel to a convenient distance. At a certain point during the conference Rosenblatt would leave the cave on the pretext ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... five, none of the others." Then still lower down he pointed out other barrels, eight of them, filled with the best gunpowder, and showed them too where the slow matches ran to the little cabin, the cook's galley, the tiller and the prow, by means of any one of which it could be fired. After this and such inspection of the ropes and sails as the light would allow, they sat in the cabin ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... suppliant; and to the others, they were attractively uncommon; the charm for them being in her fine outlines, her stature, carriage of her person, and unalterable composure; particularly her latent daring. She had the effect on the general mind of a lofty crag-castle with a history. There was a whiff of gunpowder exciting the atmosphere in the anecdotal part ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... or being conquered can it endure. When it is subjugated and disciplined it consists of workers to belabor the ground for others, or tax payers to fill a treasury from which others may spend, or food for gunpowder, or voting material for demagogues. It is an object of exploitation. At one moment, in spite of its aggregate muscle, it is helpless and imbecile; the next moment it is swept away into folly and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the Flowery Land. These same Chinese anticipated us in several most important discoveries, by as many centuries as we may have preceded others. In the knowledge of the properties of the magnet, the composition of gunpowder, the invention of printing, the manufacture of porcelain, of silk, and in the progress of literature, they were before us. But then the power of making further discoveries was arrested, and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... surface of the earth—ay, and deep under the bottom of the sea! His daily sun was a tallow candle, which rose regularly at seven in the morning and set at three in the afternoon. His atmosphere was sadly deficient in life-giving oxygen, and much vitiated by gunpowder smoke. His working costume consisted only of a pair of linen trousers; his colour from top to toe was red as brick-dust, owing to the iron ore around him; his food was a slice of bread, with, perchance, when he was unusually luxurious, the addition of a Cornish pasty; and his drink was ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... fight against the Mahommedans. Cyprus belonged to the Venetians, and in 1571 a Jew, who had renounced his faith, persuaded Sultan Selim to have it attacked, that he might gain his favourite Cyprus wine for the pressing, instead of buying it. The Venetian stores of gunpowder had been blown up by an accident, and they could not send help in time to the unfortunate governor, who was made prisoner, and treated with most savage cruelty. However, fifty years later, in 1571, the powers of Europe joined together under ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... faces of consternation, asking one another what had happened. The ground was covered with scattered fragments of wooden pillars, mats, and bamboo cane-work; I looked and saw that one end of the gallery in which I had been walking, and the alcove, were in ruins. There was a strong smell of gunpowder. I now recollected that I had borrowed a powder-horn from one of the soldiers in the morning; and that I had intended to load my pistols, but I delayed doing so. The horn, full of gunpowder, lay upon the table in the alcove all day, and the pistols, out of which I had shaken the old ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... boughs of sharp-thorned mimosa trees, which we tied to the trek tows and brake chains so that they could not be torn away. Also in the middle of the laager we made an inner defence of seven waggons, in which were placed the women and children, with the spare food and gunpowder, but the cattle we were obliged to leave outside. Early on the morning when we had finished the laager we heard that the impi of Moselikatse was close to us, and the men to the number of over ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... to its offensive weapon as a "torpedo," a term not altogether inappropriate while it was actuated by compressed air. But Capt. Ericsson having in the meantime wholly abolished compressed air in his new system of naval attack, substituting guns and gunpowder as the means of producing motive energy, it will be proper to adopt the constructor's term, projectile. It will not surprise those who are acquainted with the laws of hydrostatics and the enormous resistance offered to bodies moving swiftly ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... is of a material known only to themselves—a sort of nightmare illusion of velvet, covered with a slight tracery of refined mortar, curiously picked out and guarded with a nondescript collection of the very greenest green pellets of hyson-bloom gunpowder tea. The buttons (things of use in this garment) describe the figure and proportions of a large turbot. They consist of two rows (leaving imagination to fill up a lapse of the absent), commencing, to all appearance, at the small of the back, and reaching down ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... do more strange works than Geber, Lullius, Bacon, or any of those ancients. Crollius hath made after his master Paracelsus, aurum fulminans, or aurum volatile, which shall imitate thunder and lightning, and crack louder than any gunpowder; Cornelius Drible a perpetual motion, inextinguishable lights, linum non ardens, with many such feats; see his book de natura elementorum, besides hail, wind, snow, thunder, lightning, &c., ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... into,' said the doctor, 'and a couple of men catch one moment's glimpse of a boy, in the midst of gunpowder smoke, and in all the distraction of alarm and darkness. Here's a boy comes to that very same house, next morning, and because he happens to have his arm tied up, these men lay violent hands upon him—by doing which, they place his life in great danger—and swear he is the thief. Now, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... to mix them together as carefully as you could, using exactly the same proportion of each as is found in water, you would make something very dangerous, which might blow up with a terrible noise like gunpowder. It is only when they are "combined," which means very closely joined together, ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... thin figure of an Italian, who stood pale and trembling, and looking up to heaven as he crossed himself repeatedly. "There," said Arthur, "is a man who has left a parcel of his cursed rockets and fireworks, with I don't know how much gunpowder, in the count's house, from which we have just fled. The wind blows that way. One spark of fire, and the whole is ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... has eaten the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the buffalo with sharp horns; man has killed the lion with an arrow, with a sword, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of man what we have made of the horse and of the ox: his chattel, his slave and his food, by the mere power of his will. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... in the old provinces. In course the question is what this War Eagle intends to do. His section of the tribe is pretty considerable strong, and although at present I aint heard that any others have joined, these Injuns are like barrels of gunpowder: when the spark is once struck there's no saying how far the explosion may spread. When one band of 'em sees as how another is taking scalps and getting plunder and honor, they all want to be at the ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... and set up their hunger wails beyond the reach of our bullets; and the heat of the day with its peril of arrow and rifle-ball filled the long hours. Hunger was a terror now. Our meat was gone save a few decayed portions which we could barely swallow after we had sprinkled them over with gunpowder. For the stomach refused them even in starvation. Dreams of banquets tortured our short, troubled sleep, and the waking was a horror. A luckless little coyote wandered one day too near our fold. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... compelled to leave that neighborhood, he wandered about Germany, and went as far as Switzerland, carrying with him, and communicating to all who would listen to him, the plan of a general revolution. Everywhere he found men's minds prepared; he threw gunpowder on the burning coals, and the explosion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the cries of the wounded and dying. The varying chances of the combat, the uncertainties of fear and hope produce in them emotions that they prefer to all others, however poetic and charming. It is with a sort of intoxication that they inhale the smell of gunpowder, perhaps even that of blood. A hotly contested victory is more agreeable to them than one too easily gained. Fortune is, in their eyes, a difficult mistress, whose favors seem the dearer, the harder they are of attainment. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... probably a peculiarity of the saw-mills on this coast, that they must provide a powerful rip-saw to rip in two the larger logs before they are small enough for a circular saw to manage. Indeed, occasionally the huge logs are split with wedges, or blown apart with gunpowder, in the logging camps, because they are too vast to be floated down to the mill in one piece. The expedients for loading vessels are often novel and ingenious. For instance, at Mendocino the lumber is loaded on cars at the mill, and drawn by steam up a sharp incline, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... who seems to have known him well, assures us that the devil was the inventor of gunpowder. But, for my own part, were I in the humor to ascribe any particular invention to the author of all evil, it should be that of distilling apple-brandy. We have scripture for it, that he began his capers with the apple; ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... Dale's immediate happiness at any price, and that the future might bring bitter repentance. But I offered no advice. I have finished playing at Deputy Providence. A madman letting off fireworks in a gunpowder factory plays ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... at him the flaxen-haired gentleman entered the room. The newcomer was a man of lofty stature, with a small red moustache and a lean, hard-bitten face whose redness made it evident that its acquaintance, if not with the smoke of gunpowder, at all events with that of tobacco, was intimate and extensive. Nevertheless he greeted Chichikov civilly, and the latter returned his bow. Indeed, the pair would have entered into conversation, and have made one another's acquaintance (since a beginning was made with their ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... for both sea and land, are fire-bombs. They have quantities of gunpowder, in the shape of loaves. Their artillery, although not large, is poor. They have also, and quite commonly poor, culverins and arquebuses, so that they depend mainly on their lances. I am informed that they do not fear the arquebuses very much, because ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... hands were not a little grimed with the gunpowder, washed himself, combed out his curly black hair, and found all the party in the fore-cabin. Gascoigne, who had not been asked in the forenoon, was, by the consideration of Captain Sawbridge, added to ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... spark thrown upon gunpowder. The gunsmith struck the counter with his open hand till the weapons ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... everybody, and quickly to be specified, are the wonderful events which turned the vision into reality. One of these events was the invention of gunpowder; another was the mariner's compass; a third was the invention of paper; a fourth, the printing-press; a fifth was the discovery that the earth goes round the sun once a year, and whirls on its own axis once a day; a sixth ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... novelties are the spark that ignites the mass of gunpowder. Everywhere, the uprising of the people takes place on the very day on which the electoral assembly meets. From forty to fifty riots occur in the provinces in less than a fortnight. Popular imagination, like that of a child, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... "Other gunpowder arms were there procured, and we barricaded Cowgill House so as to make it at once a decoy and a hornet's nest. I despise war and men of war so much that I have somewhat studied their campaigns, and I suggested, friend Clayton, that the stairway was a good tactical defensive position—is that ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... inspired him. Trunnion that instant desired his counsellor to prepare his cartridge-box, and order the quietest horse in the stable to be kept ready saddled for the occasion; his eye seemed to lighten with alacrity and pleasure at the prospect of smelling gunpowder once more before his death; and when Jack advised him to make his will, in case of accident, he rejected his counsel with disdain, saying, "What! dost thou think that Hawser Trunnion, who has stood the fire of so many ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... it is clear and supplied by a small creek and several springs, and the number of goslins which we saw on it, induced us to call it the Gosling lake. It is about three quarters of a mile wide, and seven or eight miles long. One of our men was bitten by a snake, but a poultice of bark and gunpowder was sufficient to cure the wound. At ten and a quarter miles we reached a creek on the south about twelve yards wide and coming from an extensive prairie, which approached the borders of the river. To this creek which had no name, we gave that of ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... tortoise-shell, birds of paradise, and Trepang; but the trade of Dobbo is not dependent on the productions of the Arrou Islands alone. The Bughis proas import large quantities of British calico, iron, hardware, muskets, gunpowder, etc. from Singapore, to obtain which Dobbo is visited by the natives of Ceram, Buru, New Guinea, and of all the adjacent islands, it being the only spot in this part of the world where British manufactures can at present be procured. The articles brought ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... are crowded, have produced only flashy fragments. Efforts, but not works—they seem to be effects without causes; and as a great author, who is not one of them, once observed to me, "They waste a barrel of gunpowder in squibs." ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... he said this, he gave me fifty LOUIS, with that gracious air that he could so well assume upon certain occasions, and which no person in the kingdom had but himself. I kissed his hand and wept. "You will take care of the accouchee, will you not? She is a good creature, who has not invented gunpowder, and I confide her entirely to your direction; my chancellor will tell you the rest," he said, turning to Madame, and then quitted the room. "Well, what think you of the part I am playing?" asked Madame. "It is that of a superior woman, and an excellent friend," I replied. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... passed since the words were spoken, have not yet brought up the Christian conscience to the full perception of their meaning and obligation. Too many of us still believe that 'great doors and effectual' can be blown open with gunpowder, and regard this Beatitude as a counsel of perfection, rather than as one of the fundamental laws ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... feverishly, "I have made an infernal machine with clockwork, and hid it in the hold near the gunpowder when we were at Fairhaven. I think it will go off between ten and eleven to-night, but I am not quite sure about the time. Don't tell those other beasts, but jump overboard and swim ashore. I have taken the boat I would have taken you too, but you told me you swam seven ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... educated at Benares, and that science is there more thoroughly understood and taught than the people of the west are aware of. We have, for many thousands of years, been good astronomers, chymists, mathematicians, and philosophers. We had discovered the secret of gunpowder, the magnetic attraction, the properties of electricity, long before they were heard of in Europe. We know more than we have revealed; and much of our knowledge is deposited in the archives of the caste to which I belong; but, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... sailors catched the sound of a blowing-horn. The only fire-arms on board were a pair of swivels of one-inch calibre; but it is quite surprising how much the sound is lost in foggy weather, as the report was heard but at a very short distance. The sound from the explosion of gunpowder is so instantaneous that the effect of the small guns was not so good as either the blowing of a horn or the tolling of a bell, which afforded a more constant and steady direction for ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
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