"Cudgel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spied a capstan bar which he snatched up as a cudgel. Chivalry had taught him that a man should never reckon the odds when a woman appealed for succor. With a headlong rush he crossed the wharf and swung the hickory bar. The pirate dodged the blow and whipped out his ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... steps we saw, crouching in front of his shop door by the light of a lamp that was hooded by whirling mosquitoes, the mass of Crillon, who was striving to attach to a cudgel a flap for the crushing of flies. Bent upon his work, his gaping mouth let hang the half of a globular and shining tongue. Seeing us with our parcels, he threw down his tackle, roared a sigh, and said, "That wood! It's touchwood, yes. A butter-wire's ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... soft stone,' he said; 'I am main weary. When the stone grows hard, which is a sign that I shall no longer be minded to rest, I will break thy back with a cudgel.' ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... "Athena's owls"—the silver drachmas and four-drachma pieces. But chiefest of all, THE CITY OWNS ITS PUBLIC POLICE FORCE. The "Scythians" they are called from their usual land of origin, or the "bowmen," from their special weapon, which incidentally makes a convenient cudgel in a street brawl. There are 1200 of them, always at the disposal of the city magistrates. They patrol the town at night, arrest evil-doers, sustain law and order in the Agora, and especially enforce decorum, if the public assemblies or the jury courts become tumultuous. They have a special ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... said he, "I am Hugh Morrison from Glenae, come of the Manly Morrisons of auld langsyne, that never took short weapon against a man in their lives. And neither needed they; they had their broadswords, and I have this bit supple (showing a formidable cudgel)—for dirking ower the board, I leave that to John Highlandman. Ye needna snort, none of you Highlanders, and you in especial, Robin. I'll keep the bit knife, if you are feared for the auld spae-wife's tale, and give it back to you whenever ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... to what he's afraid of, Monsieur Louis. Give me a good sickle and a good cudgel, and I'm not afraid of a wolf; give me a good gun and I'm not afraid of any man, even if I knew ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... man upon a donkey riding towards me. The man was commonly dressed, with a broad felt hat on his head, and a kind of satchel on his back; he seemed to be in a mighty hurry, and was every now and then belabouring the donkey with a cudgel. The donkey, however, which was a fine large creature of the silver-grey species, did not appear to sympathize at all with its rider in his desire to get on, but kept its head turned back as much as possible, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... the minister: "I have charged Blainvilliers to show him a cudgel and tell him that with its aid we can make the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... declare with affectionate cynicism that the arm had been broken by the cudgel of a Polish peasant while Castro was trying to filch a pig from a stable.... "I cut his throat out, though," Castro would grumble darkly; "so, like that, and it matters very little—it is even an improvement. See, I put ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the middle of the white, dusty road, in the full glare of the sun; he was sick unto death, and motionless. His master gave him the only medicine in his pharmacy—kicks and oaths and blows with a cudgel of oak, which had been often the only food and drink, the only wage and reward, ever offered to him. But Patrasche was beyond the reach of any torture or of any curses. Patrasche lay, dead to all appearances, down in the white powder ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... a cudgel). Pray take mine, and welcome, sir; I'm sure I gave it to that mule of mine ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... boy," thought Lupin, "cudgel your brains: you'll never spot it! Ah, if we had asked for Gilbert's pardon only, as Clarisse wished, you might have twigged the secret! But Vaucheray, that brute of a Vaucheray, there really could not be the least bond between Mme. Mergy and him.... Aha, by Jingo, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... country, together with its ill repute, made him quicken his pace, though he had no fear of molestation; having nothing to lose, he would be but poor prey for a highwayman, and he trusted to his cudgel to protect him from the attentions of ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... her integrity. I could have staked my life that she was clear of blame, and, though all was dark at the present, that the explanation of the mystery would show her part in these events to be both right and needful. It was true, let me cudgel my imagination as I pleased, that I could invent no theory of her relations to Northmour; but I felt none the less sure of my conclusion because it was founded on instinct in place of reason, and, as I ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... of technical artistic perfection the revolt was carried to its real consummation in the study of the faces of men. Rembrandt declared the sane and manly gospel that a man was dignified, not when he was like a Greek god, but when he had a strong, square nose like a cudgel, a boldly-blocked head like a helmet, and a jaw like ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... profession. That's the kind they mostly make parsons of now, I hear. My boy, to do anything really in that line, a man ought to have notions different from mine—rather. Why don't you advise me to set up a kindergarten? That would suit as well as chronicling ecclesiastical small beer. Cudgel your brains, and start something ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... a sort of bear; while your ring is through its nose, it will even dance under your cudgel; but should the ring slip, and you lose your hold, the brute will turn and ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... he will drink away your money in his low way; or, what's worse, he will open a drinkshop, and with your money start robbing the people. You say poverty, but does the rich peasant live better? He, too, asking your pardon, lives like a swine: coarse, loud-mouthed, cudgel-headed, broader than he is long, fat, red-faced mug, I'd like to swing my fist and send him flying, the scoundrel. There's Larion, another rich one at Dubetchnya, and I bet he strips the bark off your trees as much as any poor one; and he is a ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... attack of wrath when they found Carlyle suggesting that King Friedrich Wilhelm would have laid a stick across the shoulders of literary men had he been able to have his own way. The unfeeling old king used to go about thumping people in the streets with a big cudgel; and Carlyle rather implies that the world would not have been much the worse off if a stray literary man here and there could have been bludgeoned. The king flogged apple-women who did not knit and loafers who were unable to find work; and our ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... one night to get a dainty morsel. But Sultan had told his master what the wolf meant to do; so he laid wait for him behind the barn door, and when the wolf was busy looking out for a good fat sheep, he had a stout cudgel laid about his back, that combed his locks for ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... like the whole world of that old England—the maids of the Inn, the parish clerk, the two sportsmen, the hosts of the taverns, the beaux, the starveling authors—all alive; all (save the authors) full of beef and beer; a cudgel in every fist, every man ready for a brotherly bout at fisticuffs. What has become of it, the lusty old militant world? What will become of us, and why do we prefer to Fielding—a number of meritorious moderns? Who knows? But do not ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... the Admiral, "in that I will force you to leave this quarrel! Death of my life! shall this get abroad? Not that common soldiers or mariners ashore fall out and cudgel each other until the one cannot handle a rope nor the other a morris-pike! not that wild gallants, reckless and broken adventurers whose loss the next daredevil scamp may supply, choose the eve of sailing for a duello, in which ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... he had best to do further with them. So she asked him what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound, and he told her. Then she counselled him, that when he arose in the morning he should beat them without mercy. So when he arose, he getteth him a grievous crabtree cudgel, and goes down into the dungeon to them, and there first falls to rating of them as if they were dogs, although they never gave him a word of distaste. Then he falls upon them, and beats them fearfully, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... The cudgel in my nieve did shake, Each bristl'd hair stood like a stake, When wi' an eldritch, stoor quaick—quack— Amang the springs, Awa ye squatter'd, like a drake, On ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the throstle's note; Quick in dance as thought can be; Deft his tabor, cudgel stout, Oh, he lies by ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... discovered no contemptible sagacity and quick-wittedness in the science of horse-flesh, and was eminently expert in the arts of shooting, fishing, and hunting. Nor did he confine himself to these, but added the theory and practice of boxing, cudgel play, and quarter-staff. These exercises added ten-fold robustness and vigour ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... was striking about with—yes, here it is," he continued, picking up a stout piece of pine, one of the branches that had been in the fire till the small twigs were burned off, leaving it as a strong cudgel about two feet long. "He struck me with this, and he was dashing it about among ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... it myself,' said Ronald, and gave me as good a cudgel as a man could wish for in ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a whip cracked in passing over the assembled heads of a pseudocritical and mock-historic society. In either case we moderns at least might haply desire the intervention of a beadle's hand as heavy and a sceptral cudgel as knotty as ever the son of Laertes applied to the shoulders of the first of the type or the tribe of Thersites. For this brutal and brutish buffoon—I am speaking of Shakespeare's Thersites—has no touch of humour in all his currish composition: Shakespeare had none as nature has ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... slim cudgel from, his chum, who, at a silent signal, slipped back and picked up some of the slashed cord. There was enough of it to accomplish the tying ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... cried a voice which did not seem entirely unfamiliar to the shivering youth, though he could not have said exactly to whom it belonged, and was in no mood to cudgel ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... who declared that they were unable to go further, found out, after receiving a few ticklings of the stick, that they had been mistaken. The application of Golah's cudgel awakened dormant energies of which they had not deemed ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... the report went abroad that there was a sort of melee in school, and the teacher was flung upon the floor in the scuffle. By the time Samuel found himself on his back, the teacher stood over him with what the young rebel called a cugel (cudgel) ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... saying that I had done nothing but blunder and talk nonsense in his house. I will ask him for an explanation—that is, I will ask him to explain my mistake. After all is done and said, I am in the wrong perhaps—— Upon my word, it is very good of me to cudgel my brains like this. What business ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... of his lease of Sherborne into the fee. He was building there a new mansion. He was playing primero at the Palace with Lord Southampton, and doubtless as eagerly, though he did not, like the Peer, threaten to cudgel the Royal Usher who told them they must go to bed. He was exclaiming at the supineness which suffered Spain to prepare expeditions against Flanders or Ireland, capture 'our small men-of-war,' and ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... could only guess; but he did know that the beast must have ripped the clothes partly off the aeronaut's back, and in turn he could see that one of the animal's eyes was partly closed, from a vigorous whack which the desperate man had given with his cudgel, no doubt. ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... carried the heavy stick which the mother described him as having with him when he followed Drebber. It was a stout oak cudgel." ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Vardiello, seeing that she had something of the donkey in her, after crying "Hish, hish," began to stamp with his feet; and after stamping with his feet to throw his cap at her, and after the cap a cudgel which hit her just upon the pate, and made her quickly stretch ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... colpeos rushed fiercely through the gloom. Harding, Gideon Spilett, Herbert, Pencroft and Neb posted themselves in impregnable line. Top, his formidable jaws open, preceded the colonists, and he was followed by Jup, armed with knotty cudgel, which he brandished like ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... the throstle's note; Quick in dance as thought can be; Deft his tabor, cudgel stout; O, lie lies by the willow-tree! My love ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... good man had counted without his host. Don Porker was tired, and wouldn't budge an inch. Gudbrand talked to him, coaxed him, swore at him, but all in vain; he dragged him by the snout, he pushed him from behind, he whacked him on both his fat sides with a cudgel, but it was only labor lost, and Mr. Hog remained there in the middle of the dusty road like a stranded whale. The poor farmer was yielding to despair, when, at the very nick of time, there came along a country lad leading ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... stockings of blue yarn were the incontrovertible work of a mother or a sister; and on his head was a three-cornered hat, which in its better days had perhaps sheltered the graver brow of the lad's father. Under his left arm was a heavy cudgel formed of an oak sapling, and retaining a part of the hardened root; and his equipment was completed by a wallet, not so abundantly stocked as to incommode the vigorous shoulders on which it hung. Brown, curly hair, well-shaped features, ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a vermin, and starts some new game, to lead him a new dance, and give him a fresh breathing through bog and brake, with the rabble yelping at his heels and the leaders perpetually at fault. This he calls sport-royal. He thinks it as good as cudgel-playing or single-stick, or anything else that has life in it. He likes the cut and thrust, the falls, bruises, and dry blows of an argument: as to any good or useful results that may come of the amicable settling of it, any one is welcome ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... throat; no tongue to wreck a reputation withal. I would no more attack it than I would attack an isosceles triangle, a vacuum, or Hume's "phantasm floating in a void." My chosen enemy must be something that has a skin for my switch, a head for my cudgel—something that can smart and ache and, if so minded, fight back. I have no quarrel with abstractions; so far as I know they ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... to time, and a ram's horn filled with whisky, which he used regularly, but sparingly, every night and morning. His dirk, or SKENE-DHU, (that is, black-knife), so worn as to be concealed beneath the arm, or by the folds of the plaid, was his only weapon, excepting the cudgel with which he directed the movements of the cattle. A Highlander was never so happy as on these occasions. There was a variety in the whole journey, which exercised the Celt's natural curiosity and love of motion. There were the constant change of place and scene, the petty adventures incidental ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... Noreen, acuishla, and do the best it's the will of God to let you do. And tell her from me, Noreen—" He stopped, drawing in his lip, and clutching his cudgel hard. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... to appear in their likeness. Whether the puppet show of Punch and Judy inspires our street-urchins to have instant recourse to their fists in a dispute, after the fashion of every one of the actors in that public entertainment who gets possession of the cudgel, is open to question: it has been hinted; and angry moralists have traced the national taste for tales of crime to the smell of blood in our nursery-songs. It will at any rate hardly be questioned that it is unwholesome for men and women to see themselves as they are, if they are no better ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... visibly 'tumbles hills about with his words.' Adam the First has his condemnation written visibly on his forehead, so that Faithful reads it. At the very instant the net closes round the pilgrims, 'the white robe falls from the black man's body.' Despair 'getteth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel'; it was in 'sunshiny weather' that he had his fits; and the birds in the grove about the House Beautiful, 'our country birds,' only sing their little pious verses 'at the spring, when the flowers appear ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "That isn't quite as original as you may think for, Brenton. A good many of us others have employed that form of the phrase before. Still, there's no use in taking it for a sort of cudgel, to knock down the people who still cling to the dear old phrases. And they are good phrases, too. They deserve to be revered for their antiquity, and for the hold they have kept upon all mankind; still I don't, myself, see ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... whose name was Saevuna. She was wise in many things, and foresighted; but she was then very old, and Njal's sons called her an old dotard, when she talked so much, but still some things which she said came to pass. It fell one day that she took a cudgel in her hand, and went up above the house to a stack of vetches. She beat the stack of vetches with her cudgel, and wished it might never ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... better place to find it," rejoined Ling, spitting between his palm and the half of his cudgel to tighten his grip. The two of ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... rural, with laws, with codes, with customs; ground to the earth with imposts, with fines, with quit-rents, with mortmains, import and export duties, rents, tithes, tolls, statute-labour, and bankruptcies; cudgelled with a cudgel called a sceptre; gasping, sweating, groaning, always marching, crowned, but on their knees, rather a beast of burthen than a nation,—the French people suddenly stood upright, determined to be men, and resolved to demand an account of Providence, and to liquidate those eight centuries of misery. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... John cocked his cudgel and stood between us, threatening to knock the one dead who first offered to lift his hand against the other; but, perceiving no disposition in any of us to separate, he drove me home before him like a bullock, and ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... of that, my fine cur,' said the man, taking hold of the cudgel he had brought with him, ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... this instant that my unfortunate husband entered the room. He had evidently heard some suspicious sounds, and he came prepared for such a scene as he found. He was dressed in nightshirt and trousers, with his favourite blackthorn cudgel in his hand. He rushed at the burglars, but another—it was an elderly man—stooped, picked the poker out of the grate and struck him a horrible blow as he passed. He fell with a groan and never moved again. I fainted once more, but again it could only have been for a very few minutes during which ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ran, the leading boy cast an occasional look alongside the path. He was in search of a good stout cudgel. Knowing that the chances were the affair would presently come to a face-to-face issue between the two parties, he wished to be prepared as well ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... that bore his shield went before him. And when the Philistine looked about and saw David, he disdained him, for David was but a boy, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance. And he said to David, "Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with a cudgel?" And with curses he cried out again, "Come to me, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... the eye was the half-length of Robert M'Queen, of Braxfield, Lord Justice-Clerk. If I know gusto in painting when I see it, this canvas was painted with rare enjoyment. The tart, rosy, humorous look of the man, his nose like a cudgel, his face resting squarely on the jowl, has been caught and perpetuated with something that looks like brotherly love. A peculiarly subtle expression haunts the lower part, sensual and incredulous, like that of a man tasting good Bordeaux with half a fancy it has been somewhat too ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and women in night-attire; finally, the heavy burghers arrive, the masters themselves, noisy, almost disorderly, in their attempts to restore order. Beckmesser, singing at the top of his lungs, does not wake to consciousness of his surroundings until a cudgel falls across his back, wielded by David. He flees—but is at every few steps overtaken again and beaten. The two figures, in flight and pursuit, waving lute and brandishing cudgel, disappear and reappear at intervals among ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... beggar agreed to the bargain, and Wallace was left with the cloak, which he threw over his shoulders, and which covered him from head to foot. Pulling his cap well over his eyes, and choosing a trusty thorn cudgel from a neighbouring thicket, he went limping up to the door of the ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... Radisson, "the night is lighter than morning with the north light. The night"—this with a last drive—"the night is same as day to man of spirit! 'Tis the sort of encouragement half the world needs to succeed," said M. Radisson, throwing down the cudgel. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... also see that a person was standing outside. Now Jim must have determined to drop on somebody, and stationed himself behind the door, for as soon as he heard the knock which I also heard, he hurriedly opened the door, bounced into the open, and commenced to belabour mercilessly, with a stout cudgel, of which he had possessed himself, the "wretch 'at dared to knock at 'is door like that." I sincerely congratulated myself that it wasn't my tender carcase that Jim o' Jack's was playing with. The visitor hadn't had time to announce himself: Jim didn't allow that; but ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... makes is indeed, as Milton called it, "the precious lifeblood of a master spirit." Theirs is a true immortality, for it is their soul, and not their talent, that survives in their work. Dante's concise forthrightness of phrase, which to that of most other poets is as a stab[260] to a blow with a cudgel, the vigor of his thought, the beauty of his images, the refinement of his conception of spiritual things, are marvellous if we compare him with his age and its best achievement. But it is for his power of inspiring and sustaining, it is because they find ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... here, and we might have been tacking up by this time. Sir, says I, pray be advis'd by a friend, and make the best of your speed out of my doors, for I hear my wife's voice, (which by the by, is pretty distinguishable) and in that corner of the room stands a good cudgel, which somebody has felt e're now; if that light in her hands, and she know the business you come about, without consulting the stars, I can assure you it will be employed very much to the detriment of your person. Sir, cries he, bowing with great civility, I perceive ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... honourable gentleman, very poor, tall, and well made, whom everybody knew; extremely ugly—I don't know whether he became so after his marriage. He was a worthy man and a good soldier. But he was also a rough customer, and when his distinguished wife annoyed him he twirled his cudgel and belaboured her soundly. This went so far that the Marechale, not being able to stand it any longer, demanded an audience of the King, admitted her weakness and her shame, and implored his protection. The King kindly promised to set ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... sensibility and genius, and such is my friend Clarke, when a booby father presents him with his booby son, and insists on lighting up the rays of science in a fellow's head whose skull is impervious and inaccessible by any other way than a positive fracture with a cudgel: a fellow whom in fact it savours of impiety to attempt making a scholar of, as he has been marked a blockhead in the book of fate, at the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... long, sunny stretch of the road down to town she was so afraid that those overtures would not be "misunderstood" that she marched on beside him in the hot sun. She did not leave him until they reached the corner of Pike avenue—and then it was he that left her, for she could cudgel out no excuse for going further in his direction. The only hold she had got upon him for a future attempt was slight indeed—he had vaguely agreed ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... was a sailor, evidently,—a tall, stout, and muscular-looking person, with a certain dare-devil expression of countenance, not altogether unprepossessing. His face, greatly sunburnt, was more than half hidden by whisker and mustachio. He had with him a huge oaken cudgel, but appeared to be otherwise unarmed. He bowed awkwardly, and bade us "good evening," in French accents, which, although somewhat Neufchatelish, were still sufficiently ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... some drink from a stone jar. The chapman broke a rough jest as he passed, and the woman called shrilly to Alleyne to come and join them, on which the man, turning suddenly from mirth to wrath, began to belabor her with his cudgel. Alleyne hastened on, lest he make more mischief, and his heart was heavy as lead within him. Look where he would, he seemed to see nothing but injustice and violence and the hardness of ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the dwarf flourished his cudgel, and dancing round the combatants and treading upon them and skipping over them, in a kind of frenzy, laid about him, now on one and now on the other, in a most desperate manner, always aiming at their ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... of help, and yet at the same time guarding carefully against revealing the real object of their questioning. He, for his part, set it down to the natural curiosity they felt in an event that touched the life of one of them so nearly, and did his best to cudgel his memory. But nothing more came of it than they had already learned, and it was with a sense of depression and failure that they finally gave up the cross examination that they had come ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... by some Etruscan vases found at Veii, that the Etruscans practised all the Greek games—leaping, running, cudgel-playing, etc., and were not restricted, as Niebuhr supposes, to ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... no weapons more formidable than common sense, and some little knowledge of the habits of his country as contrasted with that of his adversary; but with these homebred implements he never failed to repulse the father with something of the power with which a nervous cudgel player would deal with a skilful master of the rapier, setting at nought his passados by the direct and unanswerable arguments of a broken head and a ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... my assistance to prove of much avail. Shouting, therefore, as well to intimidate the scoundrels as to let the person attacked know that there was succour at hand, I sprang upon the man who held the cudgel, and, seizing his uplifted arm, succeeded in averting the coming blow from the head of the intended victim, who, ignorant of the impending danger, was making most furious thrusts at his assailant with the point ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... your back, you impudent rascal, your stick would have hit the right thing. Or if I had a cudgel between my teeth instead of a tongue, I would exercise it on you till it was as tired as that of a preacher who has threshed his empty straw to his congregation for three mortal hours. Scarcely is the sun risen ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Dropping his cudgel, since he would have no use for it, Benson made his way down the alley to the street beyond. At the corner stood a small grocery store, whose proprietor was ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... trying her best to cudgel her cow into going up a ladder to eat the grass. But the poor thing was afraid and durst not go. Then the old woman tried coaxing, but it wouldn't go. You never saw such a sight! The cow getting more and more flustered and obstinate, the old ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... thing. I discharge him! cudgel him! Either you make a jest of me, Leander, or he has been making ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... at him. So they exacted a promise from my father to give up the land, and bade him be thankful they let him go alive. So it has remained with you. Go and ask your peasants—what do they call the land, indeed? It's called "The Cudgelled Land," because it was gained by the cudgel. So you see from that, we poor folks can't bewail the old order ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... implements of art and shut up shop, Was still a barber, so the wise is best In every craft, a king's among the rest." Hail to your majesty! yet, ne'ertheless, Rude boys are pulling at your beard, I guess; And now, unless your cudgel keeps them off, The mob begins to hustle, push, and scoff; You, all forlorn, attempt to stand at bay, And roar till your imperial lungs give way. Well, so we part: each takes his separate path: ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... came to his rescue. He gave his head a little shake, took a firm hold of his stick which was a stoutish sort of cudgel and striding boldly up to ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... who had left the room previous to this explanation, and who looked upon Reilly as an impostor or a spy, returned with a stout oaken cudgel, exclaiming, "Now, you damned desaver, I will give you a jacketful of sore bones for comin' to pry about here. This gintleman is a doctor; three of my family are lying ill of faver, and that you may catch it I pray gorra this day! but if you won't catch that, you'll catch this," and ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... some affair of Leslie's from the Hall, and whether he ought not to slip away after all. The birch boughs sighed a little, there was a fluttering down of withered leaves, and he remained undecided, gripping his stout oak cudgel by the middle. Then the hot blood pulsed fiercely through every artery, for the voice rose once more, harsh and clear this time, with almost a threat in the tone, and there was no possibility of doubting that the speaker ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... Passion demands a greater Respect than is due to their Quality. James is Servant in a great Family, and Elizabeth waits upon the Daughter of one as numerous, some Miles off of her Lover. James, before he beheld Betty, was vain of his Strength, a rough Wrestler, and quarrelsome Cudgel-Player; Betty a Publick Dancer at Maypoles, a Romp at Stool-Ball: He always following idle Women, she playing among the Peasants: He a Country Bully, she a Country Coquet. But Love has made her constantly in her Mistress's Chamber, where the young Lady gratifies a secret Passion of her own, by ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... or his UFO hungry NICAPions. They wanted blood and that blood had to taste like spaceships or they wouldn't be happy. The cudgel they picked ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... dog would feel pain immediately after having felt joy, though it were alone in the universe. I understand why a dog passes immediately from pleasure to pain when, being very hungry and eating a piece of bread, he is suddenly struck with a cudgel. But I cannot apprehend that his soul should be so framed that at the very moment of his being beaten he should feel pain though he were not beaten, and though he should continue to eat bread without any trouble or hindrance. Nor do I see how the spontaneity of ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... her, and the Aethiop, and the Rhinoceros (which put me in mind of poor Anthony Killigrew), and the Pig-fac'd Baby, and the Cudgel play; and presently halted before a Cheap Jack, that was crying his wares in a prodigious loud ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... this article. And further still, that he did not inspire it. And further still, the Ministerial Union of Elmira did not write it. And finally, the Ministerial Union did not ask me to write it. No, I have taken up this cudgel in defense of the Ministerial Union of Elmira solely from a love of justice. Without solicitation, I have constituted myself the champion of the Ministerial Union of Elmira, and it shall be a labor of love with me to conduct their side of a quarrel ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... But, instead of cakes, he gave him with his whip such a rude lash overthwart the legs, that the marks of the whipcord knots were apparent in them, then would have fled away; but Forgier cried out as loud as he could, O, murder, murder, help, help, help! and in the meantime threw a great cudgel after him, which he carried under his arm, wherewith he hit him in the coronal joint of his head, upon the crotaphic artery of the right side thereof, so forcibly, that Marquet fell down from his mare more like a dead than living man. Meanwhile ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... confine myself in this letter to the decency, the utility, and the necessity of scrupulously preserving the appearances of both. When I say the appearances of religion, I do not mean that you should talk or act like a missionary or an enthusiast, nor that you should take up a controversial cudgel against whoever attacks the sect you are of; this would be both useless and unbecoming your age; but I mean that you should by no means seem to approve, encourage, or applaud, those libertine notions, which strike at religions ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the field the first wrenched a stake out of a fence; the second caught up a rake, that had been left by the haymakers; and the last, unscrewing the butt of his rod, broke the line, and flourished the weapon as a cudgel. They all three leaped into the field one after another, and bore courageously down on the bull, being well accustomed to deal ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... thus much, not out of any malice or any soreness about me, but that those of my kindred into whose hands it please God these papers do fall hereafter, may bear up stoutly in such straits; and if they be good at the cudgel, that they, looking first at their man, do give it him heartily and ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... parent dear he hath to heed his cries;— Alas! his parent dear is far aloof, And deep in Seven-Dial cellar lies, Killed by kind cudgel-play, or gin of proof, Or climbeth, catwise, on some London roof, Singing, perchance, a lay of Erin's Isle, Or, whilst he labors, weaves a fancy-woof, Dreaming he sees his home,—his Phelim smile;— Ah me! that luckless imp, who weepeth all ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... was out of a Play—Hark ye, Witch of Endor, hold your prating Tongue, or I shall most well-favour'dly cudgel ye. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... laughing, nodding, and then putting the stout cudgel back again, and returning to go on preparing the cake for breakfast, the kettle being already hanging ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... grave, and, affecting to be offended, demanded sternly: "Monsieur Montigny, am I a mere mechanic to do your bidding? Brandish the law indeed! Is, then, the law but an ordinary cudgel, to thwack the shoulders with or beat the brains out? The law, sir, is a sacred weapon, not to be lightly taken up, neither to be profanely applied to paltry uses, any more than we would take the tempered razor ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... a terrible surprise to find himself in the hands of his old persecutors, from whom he had suffered so much, and hoped that he had been delivered; he lamented the rigour of his destiny, and trembled when he saw Bostava enter with a cudgel, a loaf, and a pitcher of water; he was almost dead at the sight of that unmerciful wretch, and the thoughts of the daily sufferings he was to endure for another year, when he was to die ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... not combat a leopardess; Ithuriel's spear glances pointless from a rhinoceros' hide. To match what is low and beat it, you must stoop, and soil your hands to cut a cudgel rough and ready. She did not see this; and seeing it, would not have lowered herself to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... time. Where did you come from? I never saw you before—and where did you learn to handle the cudgel ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... to his shoulder, and he got poor father against the sky, and I cannot tell the rest of it. Only they knew that Smiler came home, with blood upon his withers, and father was found in the morning dead on the moor, with his ivy-twisted cudgel lying broken under him. Now, whether this were an honest fight, God judge betwixt the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... man being roused, he longed to throw himself on his antagonist to grasp his throat, but the successful use of the cudgel against the sword indicated that this was an adept at quarter-staff and a man with naked hands would have easily been beaten if pitted with him. Sendlingen, warily and rapidly surveying the limited field of combat, caught sight of the Jew's walking-staff ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... on his walk, taking with him a thick cudgel and his own thoughts. He went away across the demesne and down into the road that led away by Gortnaclough and Boherbue towards Castleisland and the wilds of county Kerry. As he went, the men about the place refrained from speaking to ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... the deep voice from within. 'Thou mayest safely approach the window now, for the gaoler hath departed. After he had beaten thee and the other Friends with his great cudgel, next he was moved to beat me also, through the window, did I but come near to it to get my meat. And as he struck me I was moved to sing in the Lord's power, and that made him rage the more, whereat he fetched the fiddler, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... single member of the corporation that employed him. Possibly the same argument might be raised in defence of any historian, in that the public is virtually his employer. Here, however, reasoning by analogy fails, for the public is a very large body, and will seldom take up the cudgel in defence of any single individual. This is a question, however, which should be settled on the ground of right, not of expediency. But even if the right be left out of account, the expedient in this case is not necessarily opposed to truth and accuracy. This is well shown by the phenomenal ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... de Aguero, native of Tirteafuera, lying on the right hand as we go from Caraquel to Almoddobar del Campo, graduate in Ossuna, get out of my sight this instant, or, by the light of Heaven, I will take a cudgel, and, beginning with your carcass, will so belabor all the physic-mongers in the island, that not one of the tribe shall be left!—I mean of those like yourself, who are ignorant quacks. For those who are learned and wise I shall make much of and honor as so many angels. I say again, Signor Pedro ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... quite supplanted all other emotions, might have been a difficult problem for the cynic. But when she tilted her chin and stared the offender full in the eyes, propping her plump little hands in the side-pockets of her white reefer, Captain Mayo, like a man hit by a cudgel, was struck with the sudden and bewildering knowledge that he did not know much about women, for she asked, with a quizzical drawl, "Just what is there about me, dear captain, to inspire that everlasting regret which seems to ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... drugstore was closed from one to five, and during those hours Schulz took his weekly walk, accompanied by the dog which plodded desperately after him on her short legs. Sometimes we met him swinging along the by-roads, flourishing a cudgel and humming to himself. Whenever he saw a motor coming he halted, the little black dachshund would look up at him, and he would stoop ponderously down, pick her up and carry her in his arms until all danger ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... human heart; and nobles accustomed to command their bondmen will treat their domestics as slaves, as capricious or inhuman West Indians treated their domestic slaves. Those of Siberia punish theirs by a free use of the cudgel or rod. The Abbe Chappe saw two Russian slaves undress a chambermaid, who had by some trifling negligence given offence to her mistress; after having uncovered as far as her waist, one placed her head betwixt his knees; the other held ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... fairly squirmed with delight. Then she turned upon Anthony eyes swimming with tenderness, put up consoling lips.... The entrance of Polichinelle, however, cudgel and all, in the shape of a little white dog, dragging a bough with him, spoiled her game. Harlequin Sun, too, flashed out of hiding—before his cue, really, for the shower ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... home still in a state of bewilderment. The mystery was as dark as ever, and, cudgel my brains as I would, I could throw no ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... to tell of these editorial times. One day a gentleman entered the "John Bull" office, evidently in a state of extreme exasperation, armed with a stout cudgel. His application to see the editor was answered by a request to walk up to the second-floor front room. The room was empty; but presently there entered to him a huge, tall, broad-shouldered fellow, who, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... he is going to Ascot. I do not care a straw whether he is going to Ascot or not. He says he is not quite sure, but asks me what chance Passion Flower has for the Thousand Guineas. I know he doesn't value my opinion on the subject at a brass farthing—he would be a fool if he did, but I cudgel my brains to reply to him, as though he were going to stake his shirt on my advice. We reach the first floor, and are mutually glad to get rid of one another. I catch my hostess' eye. She looks tired and worried; she would be happier in bed, only she doesn't know it. She smiles sweetly, but ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... the shortest way home'), a startling miser (as, 'A penny saved is a penny earned'), one ignorant of largesse and human charity (as, 'Waste not, want not'), and a shocking boor in the point of honour (as, 'Hard words break no bones'—he never fought, I see, but with a cudgel). ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... proposition,' said he; 'and if it be accepted we will not disgrace L No. I for life. We will prove on his body whether he has any honorable feelings left. L No. I. himself shall choose whether he wishes us to report him or whether we shall keep the matter to ourselves cudgel him thoroughly for it, and then ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... we come to talk, thou wilt please to lay down that Plymouth cloak of thine." And he pointed to the cudgel, which among West-country mariners ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Wesete was to hold his wedding in Skaane, he went to the feast disguised as a beggar; and when all were sunken in wine and sleep, he battered the bride-chamber with a beam. But Wesete, without inflicting a wound, so beat his mouth with a cudgel, that he took out two teeth; but two grinders unexpectedly broke out afterwards and repaired their loss: an event which earned him the name of Hyldetand, which some declare he obtained on account of a prominent row of teeth. Here he slew Wesete, and got the sovereignty of Skaane. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... ordinary exercise of a Tartar or Arab, prepares him sufficiently for war. Running, wrestling, cudgel-playing, throwing the javelin, drawing the bow, etc. are the common pastimes of those who live in the open air, and are all of them the images of war. When a Tartar or Arab actually goes to war, he is maintained by his own herds and ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... he reach them before the dog reached him? Would they afford him a refuge or a cudgel? He threw out his quid, ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... that, on entering the town, our travellers had laid aside their arms as being useless encumbrances, though Lawrence still carried his oaken cudgel, not as ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... down to one corner of the hall, and obtaining a stout ashen cudgel, which he handed to his companion, who, after a moment's hesitation, thrust in the staff, and found that the opening was about half as deep again as the height of the step; but though he tapped the bottom, which seemed to be firm, and tried from side to side, there ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... down and secured possession of a stout cudgel himself, as though he felt inclined to back up his ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... of something. I pray thee, think of something, Harry." He looked at me with such exceeding wistfulness that I was forced to cudgel my brains for something which, having a slight savour of truth, might be seasoned to pungency at fancy. "Often have I heard her say that she liked a fair man," I replied, and indeed I had, and believed her to have said ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins |
