"Cat-o'-nine-tails" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... held, and in the eyes of all. The victim was stripped and stretched against a pillar, or bent over a low post, his hands being tied, so that he had no means of defending himself. The instrument of torture was a sort of knout or cat-o'-nine-tails, with bits of iron or bone attached to the ends of the thongs. Not only did the blows cut the skin and draw blood, but not infrequently the victim died in the midst of the operation. Some have supposed that Pilate, out of consideration for Jesus, may have moderated either the number ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... taunting manner, that, though he had promised Sir William Courtney to be at home before him, he should find himself damnably mistaken; and then with a tyrannic tone bade him strip, calling the boatswain to bring up a cat-o'-nine-tails, and tie him fast up to the main geers; accordingly our hero was obliged to undergo a cruel and shameful punishment. Here, gentle reader, if thou hast not a heart made of something harder than adamant, thou canst not choose but melt at the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... Geoffrey, "The women, poor wretches, they can't help themselves; and the men who buy what they sell, one can't blame them either. But the creatures who make fortunes out of all this beastiness and cruelty, I say, they ought to be flogged round the place with a cat-o'-nine-tails till the life is beaten out of them. Let's get ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... most part, Saltus has treated at greater length and with greater effect elsewhere. He makes a whimsical plea for a modern revival of the Court of Love and in "Morality in Fiction" he derides that Puritanism in American letters whose dark scourge H. L. Mencken still pursues with a cat-o'-nine-tails and a hand grenade. He gives us a fanciful set of rules for a novelist which, happily, he has ignored in his own fictions. The most interesting, personal, and charming chapter, although palpably derived from "The Philosophy of Disenchantment," is that entitled "What Pessimism Is Not"; ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... would stand and look fixedly at a frog in a shady pool, and never once think of batrachians, or pause by a green bank to split some tall blade of grass into filaments without removing it from its stalk, passing on ignorant that he had made a cat-o'-nine-tails of a graceful slip of vegetation. He would hear the cathedral clock strike one, and go the next minute to see what time it was. 'I never seed such a man as Mr. Julian is,' said the head blower. 'He'll ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Dungeon beneath the Castle Moat. Wife chained to a post, with bread and water beside her. Enter Husband, with cat-o'-nine-tails. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... thieves; and especially is this so in England. Gipsy life may find favour in the East, but in the West the system cannot thrive. A real Englishman hates the man who will not work, scorns the man who would tell him a lie, and would give the thief who puts his hands into his pocket the cat-o'-nine-tails most unmercifully. The persecutions of the Gipsies in this country from time to time has been brought about, to a great extent, by themselves. John Bull dislikes keeping the idle, bastard children of other nations. He readily protects ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... or animals, must be a pitiful fellow indeed. I wish we had had him here in the sea. I should like to have had him stripped, and that kind of thing, and been well banged by ten of our clippers here with a cat-o'-nine-tails. Cruel to a fair female? Oh ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... sternly, "and if it wasn't that the young ladies perticler asked me not to, I'd clap the handcuffs on the lot of you for it, and as like as not you'd get a week in jail, and have your jackets warmed with that there cat-o'-nine-tails you may have heard tell on. Don't you think, miss," turning to Esther with a very grave face, "as 'ow I'd ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... with livid blue and grey spaces between them. As he stood, there was not an inch of naturally-coloured skin to be seen. It was like the back of a man who had been flayed alive, and then flogged with a cat-o'-nine-tails. ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... interview, purely a casual one, took place on the edge of the lily pond where Olive was sketching frogs, and where Nancy went for cat-o'-nine-tails. It proved to be a long and intimate talk, and when Mrs. Carey looked out of her bedroom window just before supper she saw, at the pasture bars, the two girls with their arms round each other and their cheeks close together. Nancy's curly chestnut crop shone in the sun, and Olive's thick black ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... heart which warms naturally toward the sex, but he has also a cat-o'-nine-tails, which longs to warm the back of such a Judge, and if he will come down from his woolsack he can both see and feel what that cat-o'-nine-tails is like. Whether she be blue-eyed, or black-eyed, or cross-eyed, makes no difference to PUNCHINELLO, for he is, under all circumstances, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... all that night the Zebra was more like a madhouse than one of his Majesty's ships. What authority there was was maintained at the end of the cat-o'-nine-tails. As for the enthusiasm and patriotic ardour which are usually supposed to hail the prospect of close-quarters with the enemy, one would have had to listen long and hard for any sign of either below ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... stripped Standish to the waist, and he walked forward with firm step and head erect, but at the sight of the whipping-post and the furnace, and the sinister figure beside them with a cat-o'-nine-tails in his hand, he halted suddenly with an involuntary gasp, ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... nor burdock from pigweed; they don' know a dand'lion from a hole in the ground; they don' know where the birds put up when it comes on night; they never see a brook afore, nor a bull-frog; they never hearn tell o' cat-o'-nine-tails, nor jack-lanterns, nor see-saws. Land sakes! we got ter talkin' 'bout so many things that I clean forgot the summer-house roof. But there! this won't do for me: I must be goin'; there ain't no rest for the workin'-man ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin |
