"Cannon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the long and dreary reign of Augustus III, the last Saxon king of Poland, came to an end. Russian diplomacy, supported by Russian cannon, placed Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski, the lover of Catherine II, upon the Polish throne in 1764. The year following, Kosciuszko, an unknown boy of nineteen years of age whose destiny was strangely ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... nor spire remain now; nor square nor street; nor convent, church, or barrack. The green turf covers all: even the foundations of the houses are buried. It is a city without an inhabitant. Dismantled cannon, with the rust clinging in great flakes; scattered implements of war; broken weapons, bayonets, gun-locks, shot, shell or grenade, unclaimed, untouched, corroded and corroding, in silence and desolation, with no signs of life visible within these once warlike parapets except the peaceful ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... pressed upon it. Cavalry with slashing sabres marked the crowning point of victory. In the later stages of the old warfare musketry volleys were added to the physical impact of the contending regiments, and at last cannon, as a quite accessory method of breaking these masses of men. So you "gave battle" to and defeated your enemy's forces wherever encountered, and when you reached your objective in his capital the war was done.... The new ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... of England. Once, spotted over these hills and through these forests, there were forges that roared from morning till night, chimneys that sent up their smoke and their poisonous vapour from one year's end to another; cannon were cast ... where now there is no harsher voice than the tap of the woodpecker.... One cannot fancy the forests of St. Leonards and Ashdown, the Wolverhampton of their age. But so it was; and not the least remarkable thing ... is the absence of traditions about the life ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... the earth, Lagrange found that if the velocity of the detached fragment exceeded that of a cannon ball in the proportion of 121 to 1 the fragment would become a comet with a direct motion; but if the velocity rose in the proportion of 156 to 1 the motion of the comet would be retrograde. If the velocity was less than in either of these cases the fragment would revolve as a planet in an ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... heard the old explanation of how a cannon is made: "you take a hole, and pour a lot of melted iron round it." Well, Trinkitat was a hole, and the English store-houses tents, soldiers, horses, camels were poured round it, and when they were withdrawn, nothing but the hole ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Delaware in General Assembly met, That the Hon. George B. Rodney, Daniel M. Bates, Esq., Dr. Henry Ridgely, Hon. John W. Houston, and William Cannon, Esq., be, and they are hereby appointed Commissioners, on behalf of the State of Delaware, to represent the people of said State in the Convention to be held at Washington, on the fourth ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... his by marriage would ultimately get himself cashiered by Court Martial, for 'inderin'. Much better have stuck to chopping up live heels and makin' of 'em into pies at Ball's Pond, than go seeking glory at the cannon's mouth! Michael had not reflected on the comparative freedom of his own life, contrasted with the monotonous lot of this ill-starred young man; if, indeed, we may safely accept Micky's description of it as accurate. Sapps Court did so, and went on in the belief that the Ball's Pond ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the river mouth didn't give way until after midnight, when it burst with a roar like cannon. When Oily Dave got to Seal Cove last night, the water reached to the shingles of his house; so the old fellow rowed across to Stee's hut and asked to be taken in for the night, because he was flooded out and the ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... the ceaseless fountain of star-shells, mingling with the flashing of guns, rose inland on our port beam my mind travelled overland to the flat at Bruges, and I wondered whether Zoe was lying awake listening to the ceaseless rumble of the Flanders cannon. We went on at full speed, as it was our intention to pass the Dover Straits before dawn. Though our intelligence bureau issues the most alarming reports as to the frightfulness of the defences here ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... investigates the general principles of fortification, and also artillery, in analyzing the principles of gunnery; but both are arts when considered with reference to the practical rules for the construction, attack, and defence of forts, or for the use of cannon. ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... in the conviction that we had, as my neighbors say, "echappe bien." I suppose it is human. It was like the first days of a real convalescence—life is so good, the world is so beautiful. The war was still going on. We still heard the cannon—they are booming this minute—but we had not seen the spiked helmets dashing up my hill, nor watched the walls of our little hamlet fall. I imagine that if human nature were not just like that, Life could never ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... Joanes." As Mr Mullens died Wednesday, February 21, 1620, on board the MAY-FLOWER in Plymouth harbor, on which day we know from Bradford' that "the Master [Jones, whose name was Thomas] came on shore with many of his sailors," to land and mount the cannon on the fort, and as they had a full day's work to draw up the hill and mount five guns, and moreover brought the materials for, and stayed to eat, a considerable dinner with the Pilgrims, they were doubtless ashore all day. It is rational to interpret the known facts ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... were still smoking, I had been taken in the "Boston Journal's" car. But instead of a single town, here for twenty miles along lay stretched a smouldering waste. The devastation was for the defensive purpose of giving an unobstructed view to the cannon of Antwerp's outer fortifications, which on that side covered one sector of the circle swept by her enormous guns. I should hesitate to mention the millions of dollars of self-inflicted damage to Antwerp's suburbs ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... minister of the largest and the richest and the most learned parish in the city, but, unless he strikes terror and pain into your conscience every Sabbath, unless he makes you tremble every Sabbath under the eye and the hand of God, he is no true minister to you. As Goodwin says, he is a wooden cannon. As Leighton says, he is a mountebank for ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... not continue counting. This fainting was not the result of bad health. It was the fashion to faint. The days of nerves and languid airs had come back. The women whose grandmothers had walked so firmly to the scaffold, and whose mothers had listened bravely to the firing of the cannon under the Empire, were now depressed and tearful, like so many plaintive elegies. It was just a matter of fashion. The misunderstood woman was supposed to be unhappy with her husband, but she would not have been any happier with another man. Indiana does not find fault with Colonel ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... to dreadful failings of the heart in its time of waiting—never giving in, indeed, but yet feeling the pressure whenever there is a moment to think. This matter mixed itself up so with all Philip saw that he never in after life saw a great cannon, or a pyramid of balls (which is not, to be sure, an every-day sight) without a vague sensation of trouble, as of something lying behind which was concealed from him, and which he would scarcely endure to have concealed. When he left his friends in the evening, however, it was with another ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... comprehension. For that reason we shall welcome the day when an official announcement is made that the British Government have taken over the country. One would like to see big "indabas" held at every town and centre in the country, formal raising of the Union Jack, cannon salutes, bands ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... Liberty; her breasts are sixfold, as the Egyptians carved them—for the Egyptians foresaw Fourier; her feet are resting on two clasped hands which embrace a globe,—symbol of the brotherhood of all human races; she tramples cannon under foot to signify the abolition of war; and I have tried to make her face express the serenity of triumphant agriculture. I have also placed beside her an enormous curled cabbage, which, according to our master, is an image ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... would be a simple one, and we should soon have been able to determine its direction, if life had described a single course, like that of a solid ball shot from a cannon. But it proceeds rather like a shell, which suddenly bursts into fragments, which fragments, being themselves shells, burst in their turn into fragments destined to burst again, and so on for a time incommensurably ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... force, would exercise no authority not needed for this purpose. But what force was needed, whether moral or physical, should be employed. Hence the call for troops. Hence the marching armies of the Republic, and the thunder of cannon at the gates of Vicksburg, Charleston and Richmond. Hence the suspension of the habeas corpus, the seizure and occasional imprisonment of treason-shriekers and sympathizers, for which he has been denounced as a tyrant by journals, which, slandering ...
— Abraham Lincoln - A Memorial Discourse • Rev. T. M. Eddy
... stratum, these, when placed in fusion, generally yield about forty per cent clear metal. This is the case in the mountains of Angat, situated in the Province of Bulacan, and also in the vicinity of the Baliwag River. In Morong, however, belonging to the Province of La Laguna, where the cannon-ball factory is established, the ore yields under twenty-two per cent. Its quality is in general better than the Biscayan iron, according to formal experiments and a report, made in 1798 to Governor Don Rafael Maria de ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... the crowd rushed forward and by desperate efforts succeeded in putting out the blaze before it had done much damage. Then the forts attempted to fire on the Americans, but their guns were spiked. Some cannon on the ships were discharged at the boats, but their shots went wild. When the Ranger was reached Captain Jones made the discovery that one of his men was missing. The reason was clear. He was a deserter and had been seen by his former comrades running from house to house and giving the ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... church-bells which should atone for his evil deeds. Not long after, Bonivard was telling the story to his friend Berthelier, the daring and heroic leader of the "Sons of Geneva" in their perilous struggle against tyranny, when the latter exclaimed, "What! spoil good cannon to make bells? Never! Give us the guns, and you shall have old metal to make bells enough to split your ears. But let guns be guns. So the Church will be doubly served. There will be chimes at St. Victor and guns in Geneva, which is a Church city." The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... between the Germans and Kiev. No more a wall of flesh to protect us. Poor soldiers, without a round of ammunition, fighting with naked hands. They will cross the Dnieper to one side of the city, crowding, fighting, falling together. And the German cannon driving them on, and crashing into the city, sometimes, wiping out whole streets of townspeople. And then, the gray lines of the Germans running into Kiev. The thousands of blue-eyed Germans and their pointed helmets and guttural ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... Hear the distant report of cannon in commemoration of the birth of George Washington, which is said to have occurred on the twenty-second day of February, 1732. It is presumable that those who find pleasure in public demonstrations of this sort are moved by what they regard as patriotic feelings and principles. ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... announced the approaching storm. We children were forbidden to quit the house: my father had no quiet, and went out. The battle began: I ascended to the garret, where indeed I was prevented seeing the country round, but could very well hear the thunder of cannon and the general discharge of musketry. After some hours we saw the first symptoms of the battle in a line of wagons, in which the wounded, with various sad mutilations and gestures, were slowly drawn by us, to be taken to the convent of St. Mary, now ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... defeated. The splendid charge of his company was met with a blinding storm of shot from the Venetian guns, but not a man gave back. Right up to the cannon they charged, shouting in the face of the fire—"France! France!"—but the cry was changed to "Bayard! Bayard!" as the chevalier leaped the ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... deputed by President Davis to return to the Northern States, and make large purchases and contracts "for machinery and munitions, or for the manufacture of arms and munitions of war;" as also to obtain "cannon and musket-powder, the former of the coarsest grain," and to engage with a certain proprietor of powder-mills for the "establishment of a powder-mill at some point in the limits of our territory." This letter gives a good idea of the business-like qualities brought ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... born at Koeln, he was called Hans von Nuernberg. He was cannon-founder and gun-maker ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... command of General Duncan, was fitted out for the Republican River country. Duncan was a jolly officer and a born fighter. His brother officers had a story that once on a time he had been shot in the head by a cannon-ball, and that while he was not hurt a particle, the ball glanced off and killed one of the ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... unusual form of lightning discharge, in which the flashes appear as globes or balls of light. They are sometimes visible for ten seconds, moving so slowly that the eye can follow them. They often rebound on striking the ground, and sometimes explode with a noise like a cannon. They have never been satisfactorily explained. Sometimes the phenomenon is probably subjective and due to persistence ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... Velasco dashed forward, pursuing the veil, the fluttering cloak—and the door of the carriage closed behind them. In that moment, as it closed, the horses leaped together, as twin bullets from the mouth of a cannon; galloping, lashed and terrified through the night. It was ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... Civil War broke out St. Philip's bells were melted and made into cannon, but those of St. Michael's were left in place until cannonballs from the blockading fleet struck the church, when they were taken down and sent, together with the silver plate, to Columbia, South Carolina, for safe-keeping. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... mingled with the knell of midnight from the steeple of the Old South, and with the roar of artillery, which announced that the beleaguering army of Washington had intrenched itself upon a nearer height than before. As the deep boom of the cannon smote upon his ear, Colonel Joliffe raised himself to the full height of his aged form, and smiled ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... bare pine floor, small work-bench, wall bunk with amazingly neat bed, frying-pan and ash-stippled coffee-pot on the shelf behind the pot-bellied cannon-ball stove, backwoods chairs—one constructed from half a barrel, one from a tilted plank—and a row of books incredibly assorted; Byron and Tennyson and Stevenson, a manual of gas-engines, a book by Thorstein Veblen, and a spotty treatise on "The Care, Feeding, Diseases, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... gone off to search for the prisoners, of course," said Brooke. "I don't believe they'll find anything about them on this road; and as for the castle, they'll be unable to do anything there unless they take cannon." ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... colonel, "have the same feeling when they hear the cannon beginning to growl at the opening of ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... And when the cannon's iron throat Shall bear the news to dells remote, And trumpet-blast resound the note, That victory is won; While down the wind the banner drops, And bonfires blaze on mountain-tops, His sides shall glow with fierce delight, And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... the expedition as scout and guide. On the second day out we suddenly discovered, on the opposite side of the Saline River, about a mile distant, a large body of Indians, who were charging down upon us. Major Arms, placing the cannon on a little knoll, limbered it up and left twenty men to guard it; and then, with the rest of the command, he crossed the river to meet ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... mention one of his lifelong traits, which revealed itself at times. Watt was no man of affairs. Business was distasteful to him. As he once wrote his partner, Boulton, he "would rather face a loaded cannon than settle a disputed account or make a bargain." Monetary matters were his special aversion. For any other form of annoyance, danger or responsibility, he had the lion heart. Pecuniary responsibility ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... the firing of cannon to our right was fast and furious, the shells dropping and bursting right among our field artillery. I watched with breathless anxiety, expecting all our guns to be abandoned, and half the men killed, when to my astonishment the men rode their horses right among ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... rapid meditations long enough to be aware that, here he was, dropped—plump—into the center of another ring of romance; nothing having separated him from his last love but two misdirected revolver shots, the warning boom of a gunboat's bow cannon, and a mad chase across ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the boat, and five minutes after they were on board. It was time; for they had scarcely sailed half a league, when d'Artagnan saw a flash and heard a detonation. It was the cannon which announced the closing ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... respond thus: "Bigod, sol drink iou agoud oin." At the great and princely banquets, when the pledge went round and the heart's desire of lasting health, says the chronicler, "the same was straight wayes knowne, by sound of Drumme and Trumpet, and the cannon's loudest voyce." It ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... animals, we observe in the successive genera a gradual transformation in all parts of the skeleton, an elongation of the neck, limbs and feet, a reduction of the digits from five to two, and eventually the coalescence of the remaining two digits into a "cannon-bone." The grinding teeth, by equally gradual steps, take on the ruminant pattern. In the upper Miocene the line divides into the two branches of the camels and llamas, the former migrating to Eurasia and the latter ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... their plaited manes: and with heavy little balls stuck full of spikes, dangling at their sides, to goad them on. The jingling of these trappings, and the rattling of their hoofs upon the hard stones; the dash and fury of their speed along the echoing street; nay, the very cannon that are fired—these noises are nothing to the roaring of the multitude: their shouts: the clapping of their hands. But it is soon over—almost instantaneously. More cannon shake the town. The horses have plunged into the carpets ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... just begun the rubber with Judge Gordon of Cerro-Gordo County. They were seated in Robie's grocery, behind the rusty old cannon stove, the checker-board spread out on their knees. The Colonel was grinning in great glee, wringing his bony yellow hands in nervous excitement, in strong contrast to the stolid calm of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... now a Local Board (with its offices in Lime Grove, Moseley Road) several Board schools, chapels, and churches, a police court, and that sure mark of advancement, a local newspaper. One thing still wanting, however, is a cemetery. Though an appropriate and convenient spot near Cannon Hill Park was chosen for the last resting-place, the ratepayers, at a meeting held July 21, 1879, decided that they could not yet afford the required outlay of some L17,000 necessary for the purpose, notwithstanding that the annual rateable value ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... platoon, and in such a manner that all will be visible. The muskets should be held at the shoulder. Each should be furnished with a large moustache, and should look directly forward. The performers having all taken their positions, the cannon will commence firing behind the scenes, and the curtain will rise on the first part of the tableau; after exhibiting this part twice, a piece of canvas, painted to represent water, should be spread in front of the throne, while the rest of the scenery and performers should be all ready, ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... the head waiter from the Hotel du Lac to carry him newspapers and cigarettes. He says that the man Antonio is in reality an American nobleman from New York, who merely plays at being a donkey-driver for diversion, and that unless he is set at liberty immediately a ship will come with cannon, but—we all know ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... return." "Kit," said Colonel Willis, "That is what I want you to do, and we will wait for you." But Kit Carson needed no time to prepare, he threw his saddle on and told Colonel Willis that he was ready without any delay. At about 10 o'clock in the forenoon the company left Fort Union, carrying one cannon and plenty of ammunition. At about daybreak on their second day out, they came upon a village of 100 or more tents camped on about the line of New Mexico and Arizona. There were Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, Utes, Arapahoes ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... been a wonderfully interesting boy to play with. And the cities we should see—quaint old Edinburgh, with its big, frowning castle on the top of that high rugged hill, and in the castle yard, old Mons Meg, the big cannon that every Scotch lad feels that he ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of old Patty Cannon and her kidnapper's den, and her death in the jail of his native town. He found the legend of that dreaded woman had strengthened instead of having faded with time, and her haunts preserved, and eye-witnesses of her deeds to ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... the talk is not quite so frivolous. Opposite to that large stone edifice, is an old cannon standing on end at the corner of the street, to keep carriages from trespassing on the pavement, and the non-military assemble round it; they are civic great guns. They are discussing the great ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... low on shot and powder charges for the two-pounder turret cannon, as well. The tankette had of course never been serviced after the battle. There was one good thing—neither had their pursuers'. Looking back, Geoffrey could see no sign of them. But he could also see the plain imprint of the tankette's steel cleats stretched ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... depths of the night I rushed into the street, and I listened with greedy ears, thinking I heard the trampling of dragoons and the heavy wheels of cannon; and often in the day, when I saw three or four persons speaking together, I ran towards them, and broke in upon their discourse with some wild interrogation, that made them ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... five minutes. She has since—through tears, laughter, and trembling—told me that I turned terrible, and gave myself to the demon. She says I left her, made one bound across the room; that Mr. Sympson vanished through the door as if shot from a cannon. I also vanished, and she ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... not mistaken for the sons of God. All that we have a right to infer from our ignorance of the cause of any event is that we do not know it: had the Mexicans attended to this simple rule when they heard the cannon of the Spaniards, they would not have considered them as gods: the experiments of modern chemistry would have defied the wisest philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome to have accounted for them on natural principles. An author of strong common sense has observed that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the best incentive to make men love their country; it encourages that patriotism which never falters, even at the cannon's mouth. The sight of a flag or the music of a band merely enthuses as long as one is in sight or the other can be heard; but history and its knowledge are lasting and a source of pride. So, therefore, let it be ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... occupies a position at the opposite extremity of the town. Its crumbling tower, shattered by the cannon of Charles' army, remains, but the nave and side aisles have recently been restored—that on the south side at the sole expense of John Pritchard, Esq., M.P., in memory of his brother. The celebrated divine, Richard Baxter, began his ministry at St. Leonard's, apparently ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... to the size and construction of a ship, and the method of manoeuvring her. We are now coming to a very important epoch in naval matters, the reign of Edward the Third. 1327, when the mariner's compass was discovered, or rather became known in Europe, and cannon were ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... Giant, young and strong, What impulse heaves thy throbbing breast? Shall warrior plumes bedeck thy crest? Wilt whisper peace? Or shout for war? Wilt plead for right, or bleed for wrong? Wilt peal the bugle-blast afar And urge the cannon's madd'ning roar? Or wing the note through vale and glen:— Hail! Peace on earth! Good-will to men! Reason return:—let strife ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... balloon began to descend again. The roar of the waves was louder than ever, and they beat the same tune that the great bass-drum and the cannon had played: ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... thought they had subdued France! Not they! At sight of the eagles, a national army sprang up, and we marched to Waterloo. There, the Guard died at one blow. Napoleon, in despair, threw himself three times before the cannon of the enemy without obtaining death. We saw that. The battle was lost. That night the Emperor called his old soldiers to him; on the field soaked with our blood he burned his banner and his eagles,—his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... upon me; and I could think of these men in no other way than as potential fighting men—the stern hard stuff with which you build and keep your empires. What a row Napoleon could have kicked up with half a million of these sagebrush boys to fling foeward under his cannon-clouds! ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... I Had almost then forgot him in my son; When just as the artillery ceased, and paused 130 The music, and the crowd embraced in lieu Of shouting, I heard in a deep, low voice, Distinct and keener far upon my ear Than the late cannon's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... can do well skil'd Mechanicks may; The benefit all living by me finde, All sorts of Artists, here declare your mind, What tool was ever fram'd, but by my might? Ye Martilisk, what weapons for your fight To try your valor by, but it must feel My force? Your Sword, & Gun, your Lance of steel Your Cannon's bootless and your powder too Without mine aid, (alas) what can they do; The adverse walls not shak'd, the Mines not blown And in despight the City keeps her own; But I with one Granado or Petard Set ope those gates, that 'fore so strong were bar'd Ye Husband-men, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... blowing-up of the very Bridges; cavalry posted in the woods; host doing its very uttermost against host, with unheard-of expenditure of gunpowder and learned manoeuvre; in which "the Fleet" (of shallops on the Elbe, rigged mostly in silk) took part, and the Bucentaur with all its cannon. Words fail on such occasions. I will mention only that assiduous King August had arranged everything like the King of Playhouse-Managers; was seen, early in the morning, "driving his own curricle" all about, in vigilant supervision ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... their feet, so that they could stand overboard and push behind; William Black's theory that motion could be obtained by employing trained sturgeon to haul the boat; and Martin Stotesbury's plea that propulsion could be given by placing a cannon upon the poop-deck and firing it over the stern, so that the recoil would shove the boat along,—are wonderful evidences of what the human mind can do when it exerts itself, but they are not as ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... and Julia ahead on a straight piece of road plodding along like they was hauling a load of wood to town, and I chirped to my Kentucky blue-blood, and, with Carrie's ribbons flying in the wind like the flags of a war-ship, we passed like a cannon-ball, leaving 'em in a cloud of dust as thick as a Texas sand-storm. And the funniest part was that I didn't, somehow, care a dern. I was on a new basis, an' ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... quarters and those of the Khan. Upon this fact transpiring, the Kirghises, by their prince Nourali, and the Bashkirs, entreated the Russian general to advance without delay. Once having placed his cannon in position, so as to command the Kalmuck camp, the fate of the rebel Khan and his people would be in his own hands; and they would themselves form his advanced guard. Traubenberg, however, why has not been certainly explained, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... years. The parish is older, dating from 1695. Queen Anne gave it a communion-service in 1708. In 1754 came from England its still-used chime of bells, which were laboriously transferred during the Revolution to Allentown, Pennsylvania, lest they should fall into British hands and be melted up for cannon. At Christ Church a pew was regularly occupied by Washington during his frequent residence in Philadelphia; and here have been seated Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and many another patriot, besides Cornwallis, Howe, Andre and others on the English side. Around and beneath ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... was shaken with the boom of cannon. Once, twice, thrice. Directly the boat-whistles took up the roar, making a hideous din. The fleet had moved. Spouting rockets and Roman candles, which painted above it a kaleidoscopic archway of fire, welcomed by answering javelins of light and red and orange and blue and green flares from ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... cried Teddy. "Fire the cannon! Ring the bells! Say, Fred, is this our lucky day, or ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... it came along to our part of the platform several of us grasped it also. Mr. Thompson shouted, "Give John Bull a hold of that rope." When the dear old flag reached the summit of the staff, and its starry eyes looked out over the broad harbor, such a volley of cannon from ship and shore burst forth that one might imagine the old battle of the Monitors was being ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... day, with a report like the report of a cannon, it separated from the mother glacier, slid out into the current, and began its southward voyage. Months had passed since then—perhaps a year, or even two or three years—and all the time it had been wasting away in the water ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... hard on Madeira. It was his normal mental habit to come to a conclusion instantly, and cut a way for it across other people's ideas and notions with the impetus and onslaught of a cannon-ball. That Monday his mentality was below—or above—normal. He kept telling himself that he was mixed. His desire to crush Steering, pick him up and crumple him and thrust him aside, stood before him constantly, like the picture of the physical thing. Up to the time that he had ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... and ending in dissolution. This is the ever-repeated refrain of his political discourses, puerile enough, it may be, to our rude hearing in Britain, but very grateful to polite and patriotic ears at Vienna, when the cannon of Wagram was yet sounding in audible echo beneath their towers. The propounder of such philosophy had not only the common necessity of all philosophers to pile up his political in majestic consistency with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... He had to fill his pipe again before we left the boat, and pulled at it nervously and wrinkled his black skin into countless puckers as he walked beside us, thinking of the vast interests at stake and listening to our excited conversation. As we left him to go over to the town for a small cannon we had borrowed to fire the signals, he touched Walter on the sleeve, and said in the most slow and earnest manner, as he drew the pipe from his mouth and knocked ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... was to watch the outgoing Continental trains, the first of which left Charing Cross for Dover and Calais at 9 A.M. I closely watched it therefore, and its passengers, and travelled with it to Cannon Street, where I continued my search, but without result. I was greatly helped in my quest by the not unusual fact noticeable on Sundays, that travellers ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... place of concealment, fly at him in a bound, and tear him to pieces without ceremony, a fact so well known to the hostile savages, that they feared the dogs of the French more than their warriors or their cannon. ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... defend it, and drive them back," I exclaimed. "Have you a sufficient supply of arms and ammunition for its defence? We must barricade all the doors and windows; and, unless they have cannon, they will not succeed in getting ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... continued to raise his iron mallet high in the air and to strike the path terrific blows that echoed through the mountains like the roar of a cannon. Each time the mallet lifted, however, there was a moment when the path beneath the monster was free, and perhaps the Scarecrow had noticed this, for when he came back to the others ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... keep to the hour fixed on; then all the bells began to ring. I knew them all well, and one I liked best of all; the Benedicta in Saint Sebalds Church, which had been cast by old Master Grunewald, Master Pernhart's closest friend. Their brazen voices stirred my soul and heart, and presently the cannon in the citadel and on the wails rattled out a thundering welcome to the Emperor, rending the summer air. My heart beat higher and faster. But suddenly I meseemed that all the bravery of the town and the holiday weed of the folks, the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is it in military affairs? Should she be placed in the militia to enforce the results of a ballot? Is there any one of us who believes that? Is there anybody here who would be glad to see a woman in the train-band, on the muster-field, at the cannon's mouth, or on the decks of your war-ships? That is what your argument means, if it means ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of 'dips down,' ... as it were, imparting information at each dip which the medium's mind thereupon seized upon, elaborated, and gave out in its own dramatic form and setting." If this be true of Mrs. Piper (whose messages are shot at you from a cannon's mouth, as it were), how much truer must it be of other types of mediums, in which the communications are certainly far less direct and impressive? Mrs. Piper might be styled the "possession" type of medium—as opposed to the "subliminal" ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... replied, that God only knew that; and that the ship was fast on a bank hitherto undiscovered. Upon this they began to throw the lead, and found that they had forty- eight feet of water before, and much less behind the vessel. The crew immediately agreed to throw their cannon overboard, in hopes that when the ship was lightened she might be brought to float again. They let fall an anchor however; and while they were thus employed, a most dreadful storm arose of wind and rain; which soon ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... dwellest high in Thy Heaven, above Cherubim, Seraphim, and Zeppelins, Thou who art enthroned as a God of thunder in the midst of lightning from the clouds, and lightning from sword and cannon, send thunder, lightning, hail and tempest hurtling upon our enemy ... and hurl him down to the dark burial-pits.—Battle Prayer, by PASTOR D. VORWERK, quoted ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... threatened to overthrow and destroy everything in its passage, equipages and people. But how could it be stopped? No one knew to whom the vehicle belonged, nor whence it came, nor whither it went. It was seen but for an instant as it darted forward like a bullet in its dizzy flight. How could one seize a cannon-ball in the air, as it leaped from the mouth ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... sulphur-steams—I could find no refreshment anywhere. Mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room; the sea, which I could hear from thence, rumbled dull like an earthquake—black clouds were casting up over it; the moon was setting in the waves, broad and red, like a hot cannon-ball—she threw her last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest. I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and my ears were filled with the curses the maniac ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... unseen listener, began to tell of the plans of the United Irishmen. He mentioned the names of one leader and another; told how the Government, vigilant and alert, had already struck at the organisation; of the general dread of spies and informers. He entered into details; told how the cannon, once given by the Government to the Volunteers, were hidden in one place, how muskets were stored in another, how the smiths in every village were fashioning pike heads, how many men in each locality were sworn, how every male inhabitant of Rathlin ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... bowl of it. It toppled over on to a pair of old brass andirons, smashing into a thousand pieces. Bits of glass flew in every direction, and "Grandpa," his fur electrified by his fright until he looked twice his natural size, shot through the door as if fired from a cannon, and was seen ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... attributed to evil spirits, and accordingly attempted to drive away by force of noise. It was supposed that the evil spirits would take refuge in any house that was silent, and for three whole nights cannon were fired from the court-house, and every human creature used the utmost powers nature or art afforded for producing a din. The mission party were uninfected by the contagion, but it was a time of ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... until about June, 1862. The Union troops had taken Fort Pillow. We had heard the firing of cannon, and did not know what it meant. One morning I was in the city after the mail, and I learned that a transient boat had just come down the river, which had lost a part of her wheelhouse. She was fired on from Fort Pillow, sustaining ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... had been rolling and creaking on our way whilst this talk had been going forward, and as we reached the base of the mountains we could hear the rumbling of cannon far away upon the right. This came from Massena, who was, as I knew, besieging Ciudad Rodrigo. There was nothing I should have wished better than to have gone straight to him, for if, as some said, ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mediaeval profusion. I certainly can never drain those profound golden cauldrons seething with champagne without a tendency to break into loud expressions of the inward music and conviviality that simmer in my soul. Salutes of cannon, galloping escorts, processions of landaus, beautiful teams of English horses, trains of private saloon carriages (cooled with water trickling over sweet jungle grasses) streaming through the sunny land, expectant crowds of beauty with hungry eyes ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... gazed at him swiftly. "It will be difficult." His face became grim, but he made no direct reply. A silence fell on the room through which vibrated the blows of the trip hammer at the Forge. The day was grey and definitely cold; a small cannon stove glowed in the counting house; but Ludowika kept mostly to her room. She sent him a note by the Italian, and Howat eyed the fellow bowing in the doorway. A flexibility that seemed entirely without ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Oxford put on a furious spurt, and got fully even with the leading boat. There was a louder roar than ever from the bank. Cambridge spurted desperately in turn, and stole those few feet back; and so they went fighting every inch of water. Bang! A cannon on the bank sent its smoke over both competitors; it dispersed in a moment, and the boats were seen pulling slowly towards the bridge—Cambridge with four oars, Oxford with six, as if that gum had ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... ultimate unknowable, when the process of redemption is, for this small particle, completed. Always, however, is exerted the gravitational pull of matter, and the energy that drove through, instead of pursuing a right line, tends to bend in a parabolic curve, like the trajectory of a cannon ball. In the completion of the process some portion of redeemed matter "gets by," so to speak, but other portions do not; they return to their source of origin and are reabsorbed in matter, becoming subject to the operation of future interpenetrating jets of spiritual energy. The ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... Fortified places were treated with some respect, before a power which nothing can withstand had found means to destroy them by dreadful showers of bombs, and by destructive batteries of hundreds of pieces of cannon. Before these furious storms which drive governors underground and reduce their garrisons to powder, repeated sallies bravely repulsed, and vigorous attacks nobly sustained, signalized both the art of the besiegers and the courage of the besieged; consequently, sieges were ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... trees and shrubs uprooted; a number of people had been killed, and many more seriously injured, by being struck by shingles from the roofs or branches from the trees, and by other hard substances which went hurtling like cannon-shot through the air. So rapid, however, is vegetation in the tropics that nature herself would repair much of the damage produced, and the industry of man the remainder—although the proprietors had to suffer severely in their pockets, while there was no power to restore ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. 1754 SHAKS.: As You Like It, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... be obliged to admit that Count Rumford was right in attributing the heat evolved by boring cannon to friction, and not (in any considerable degree) to any change in the capacity of the metal. I have lately proved experimentally that heat is evolved by the passage of water through narrow tubes. My apparatus consisted of a piston perforated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... with the solicitude of a friend and the tenderness of a father. The Lords of the Treasury allowed fifty pounds per month for its sustenance: the Marquis of Buckingham made them a present of a brass cannon and a stand of colors. When the Bourbons were restored in 1814 they relieved the government from this charge, and the institution was dissolved in 1820; in 1822 "Tyler's Green House," as it was called, was sold in lots, pulled down, and carried away; thus, Burke's own dwelling being destroyed ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... that man went right around here for twenty years, yes and more, all around this town, all around Petersburg, up at Old Salem, all over the country, practicing law, walking along the streets with people, talkin' with 'em on the corners, sittin' by 'em by the cannon stove in the offices of the hotels, sleepin' in the same rooms with 'em, as he did up at Petersburg at the Menard House, when the grand jury had the loft and they put Lincoln up there too, because there was no other place ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... rate I'll take the risk for this air and sunshine. Trenches and barbed wire run all along the beach—I suppose to help in case of an invasion. But an invasion is impossible in my judgment. Holy Moses! what a world!—the cannon in the big battle in France roaring in our ears all the time, this cannon at our door likely to begin action any night and all the rest along the beach and on the way to London, and this is what we call rest! The world is upside down, all crazy, all murderous; but we've got to stop this ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... and was provided with eighteen pieces of artillery. To meet this force, Conde had barely fifteen hundred hastily mounted and imperfectly equipped gentlemen, and twelve hundred foot soldiers, gathered from various quarters and scarcely formed as yet into companies. He had not a single cannon. Of his cavalry, only one-fifth part were provided with lances, the rest having swords and pistols. The greater number had no defensive armor; and not a horse was furnished with the leathern barbe with which the knight continued, as in the middle ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... the sorrow and havoc visited upon the American settlements in the Revolution by the savages who prepared their attacks in the shadow of Fort Niagara; the battles of Chippewa and of Lundy's Lane, that mixed the roar of their cannon with that of the fall; the savage forays with tomahawk and scalping-knife, and the blazing villages on either shore in the War of 1812,—these are the memories of the place, the links in a chain of tragical interest ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... section between Half Way and Hammon at the foot of the grade. If this thunderbolt of wood and steel collided with any other train, with the force and weight gathered by its plunge down the mountain, it would drive through such obstruction like a projectile from Tom's own big cannon. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... laughed and swore, and turned the blade aside with his bare hand. Then, pressing closer, he struck me with his fist, and thereupon the night and all its happenings went blank as if the blow had been a cannon shot to crush ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... "Fine cannon-fodder!" Mr. Head would exclaim, of course in German. "But no good without the rifles, the ammunition, and above all the guns, which ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... that I had lost my way. I vainly tried to find some landmark of yesterday's march, but was at last compelled to trust to the sagacity of my horse,—the redoubtable Spitfire, so named by reason of his utter contempt for gunpowder, whether sputtered out of muskets or belched forth by cannon. I gave him his head. He snuffed the air for a moment, deliberately swept the horizon with his eyes, and then turned short around and carried me back to the farm-house from which I had started. I arrived just in time for dinner. Two officers of Lane's brigade, which had marched ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... floor, before a door of thick oak. Our first knocking upon this had no effect, but at the second attempt, and while he was pulling his hat yet more upon his eyes, I heard a great rolling voice which seemed to echo on the stairway, and so leapt from flight to flight, almost like the rattle of a cannon-shot with its many reverberations. For the moment indistinct, I then became aware that the voice was that of a man singing and walking at the same time, and seemingly in no hurry to give us admission, for he passed from ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... an eminence beheld their enemy at a distance of six miles. General Leslie halted, arranging his troops on sloping grounds, facing the foe. There he prepared for action. Forty pieces of cannon bristled along the oval summit; the musketry and swordmen were placed on the hillside and outstretching plain. The encampment presented an appearance unusual in warfare. At the tent-door of each captain the ensign of the Covenant was unfurled. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... something delightful in its old buildings, and even its crooked streets. We forget political and even religious differences in view of ancient landmarks. We cling to the Old South, and would gladly have kept Brattle Square with its cannon-ball, whatever might have been thought of its theology. We cherish the memory of our fathers, and wish to keep among us, as far as possible, signs of the good old days. This is right and noble; but equally right, and quite as unselfish, is it to ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... think it would be wise to fill our bombshells with alternate copies of the Cambridge Platform and the Thirty-nine Articles, which would produce a mixture of the highest explosive power, and to wrap every one of our cannon-balls in a leaf of the New Testament, the reading of which is denied to those who sit in the darkness of Popery. Those iron evangelists would thus be able to disseminate vital religion and Gospel truth in quarters inaccessible to the ordinary missionary. I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... quinquereme, carrying a complement of about 300 men. Amidships was built a heavy castle or redoubt of timbers, pierced with loopholes for archery. On the forecastle rose a kind of turret, possibly revolving, from which, after Greek fire was invented, the tubes or primitive cannon projected the substance on the decks of the enemy. The dromon had two masts, lateen rigged, and between thirty and ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... of exultation, that he has no idea of a cannon charged with double cracks; but, surely, the great author will not gain much by an alteration which makes him say of a hero, that he redoubles strokes with double cracks, an expression not more loudly to be applauded, or more easily pardoned, than that which is ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson |
