"Fencing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... few minutes; but his absence did not interrupt our conversation. There was not much to be made out of it on either side, for we were only fencing with one another. I learned nothing about Olivia's friends, and I was satisfied he ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... in fencing was considered particularly neat, and became the favorite song of the studio, to be howled in and ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... on the vault by stabs with a knife or dagger, or by other sharp objects, such as the spike of a railing. More frequently a pointed instrument, such as a fencing foil, the end of an umbrella, or a knitting needle, is thrust through the orbit into the base of the brain. Occasionally the base of the skull has been perforated through the roof of the pharynx, for example, by the stem ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... they tell him, as the dampness wears itself away, he will suffer less and less from rheumatism, ague, and lumbago. He has a hedge round the garden; it is eighteen inches high. To keep the boys out he has put up barbed- wire fencing. But wire fencing affords no real privacy. When the Talboys are taking coffee on the lawn, there is generally a crowd from the village watching them. There are trees in the garden; you know they are trees—there is a label ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... cottage was an out-house which ran flush along the side of Beacon Street, fencing off our bit of a garden from the road and an adjacent tenement; and this out-house, mother, who was of an inventive nature, with a strong proclivity for money-making, had converted into a shop for the sale of all sorts of birds, both foreign and ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... impatiently, "Look, Hans, let's don't waste time fencing. You run a clearing agency for, ah, information. You're strictly a businessman, nonpartisan, so to speak. Fine, thus far our department has tolerated you. Perhaps we'll continue to. Perhaps the reason is that we figure we get ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... only given him fame and fortune, but which has enriched many others and saved many millions of dollars to the farmers of America. He has not only founded a mammoth industry, but he has revolutionized an economic system of the world. By his ingenuity and perseverance the fencing system of a pastoral continent has been reduced to a minimum of expense and simplicity. Not that he individually has accomplished all this, but as the patentee of the first really successful barb-wire fence, he laid the solid foundation ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... melancholy, long-drawn growling of the Polar Bear, growing ever in volume and impatience until half-past four precisely; and we would snatch our rifles, and with stealthy tread and every sense alert make our way through the jungle—until stopped by the spiked fencing round the Zoological Gardens?) I feel sure it was you, in spite of your side whiskers and the greyness and the thinness of your once clustering golden locks. You were hurrying down Throgmorton Street chained to a small ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... called Endielon, a day's journey from Amida, in order that he might with more security devote himself to pious contemplation. The men of this place, assisting his purpose, had surrounded him with a kind of fencing, in which the stakes were not continuous, but set at intervals, so that those who approached could see and hold converse with him. And they had constructed for him a small roof over his head, sufficient ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... not the honor of your acquaintance, but a fencing-party can never be unpleasant to a man of honor; and if you will be my second, in a quarter of an hour we shall be on the ground. I am Paul de Gondi; and I have challenged Monsieur de Launay, one of the Cardinal's clique, but in other respects a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... families have left the church. Meanwhile it is a breach of etiquette for other guests to leave their places. At some weddings, just before the bride's arrival, the ushers run ribbons down the whole length of the center aisle, fencing the congregation in. As soon as the occupants of the first pews have left, the ribbons are removed and all the other guests go out by themselves, the ushers having by that time hurried to the bride's house to make ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... think) by impairing it, in praising themselves for their Defects, freely allowing they commit some few frivolous Errors, in order to be esteemed persons of uncommon Talents and great Qualifications. They are generally professing an injudicious Neglect of Dancing, Fencing and Riding, as also an unjust Contempt for Travelling and the Modern Languages; as for their Part (say they) they never valued or troubled their Head about them. This panegyrical Satyr on themselves certainly is worthy of your Animadversion. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... side by side, have from the beginning of human habitation reclaimed the Fens. The first has been the canalisation, the fencing in of the tideways; the second has been the banking out of the general sea. The spring tides covered much of this land, and when they retired left it drowned. Against their universal advancing sheet of water a ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... in the fine arts alone that this false correctness is prized by narrow-minded men, by men who cannot distinguish means from ends, or what is accidental from what is essential. M. Jourdain admired correctness in fencing. "You had no business to hit me then. You must never thrust in quart till you have thrust in tierce." M. Tomes liked correctness in medical practice. "I stand up for Artemius. That he killed his patient is plain enough. But still he acted quite according to rule. A man dead is a man dead; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is said. Luther's cure of his friend and helper, Melanchthon, by prayer for and encouragement of the patient, is well known. Xavier's miracles were legion, but have been somewhat discredited by a recent author.[69] I add but one example. "A certain Tome Paninguem, a fencing-master, says, I knew Antonio de Miranda, who was a servant of the Father Francis, and assisted him when saying Mass. He told me that when going one night on business to Combature, he was bitten by a venomous serpent. He immediately ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... panting, Ricardo scrambled on his hands and knees upon the wharf, energetic and unaided. He rose up at Heyst's elbow and stamped his foot on the planks, with a sharp, provocative, double beat, such as is heard sometimes in fencing-schools before the adversaries engage their foils. Not that the renegade seaman Ricardo knew anything of fencing. What he called "shooting-irons," were his weapons, or the still less aristocratic knife, such as was even then ingeniously ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... would sweeping, and scrubbing, and moving furniture about. But you're born to a life of ease, my dear, so those things are out of the question for you. But fencing lessons would be good for you—and fashionable, too, which would double their value, ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... Peers and fifteen thousand veteran warriors of France. The messengers from the heathen king reached this orchard and asked for the emperor; their gaze wandered over groups of wise nobles playing at chess, and groups of gay youths fencing, till at last it rested on a throne of solid gold, set under a pine-tree and overshadowed with eglantine. There sat Charles, the king who ruled fair France, with white flowing beard and hoary head, stately of form and majestic of countenance. No need was ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... dusk, when his majesty withdrew, the town was founded and complete, a new and ruder Amphion having called it from nothing with three cracks of a rifle. And the next morning the same conjurer obliged us with a further miracle: a mystic rampart fencing us, so that the path which ran by our doors became suddenly impassable, the inhabitants who had business across the isle must fetch a wide circuit, and we sat in the midst in a transparent privacy, seeing, seen, but unapproachable, like bees in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had an invincible impression upon my thoughts, that my deliverance was at hand, and that I should not be another year in this place. However, I went on with my husbandry, digging, planting, and fencing, as usual; I gathered and cured my grapes, and did every necessary thing, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... class gymnastics with counting, and especially with music, horseback riding, etc., are rhythmic; tennis, baseball and football, basketball, golf, polo, etc., are less rhythmic, but are concerted and intense. These latter emphasise the conflict factor, best brought out in fencing, boxing, and wrestling, and lay more stress on the psychic elements of attention and skill. The effect of musical accompaniment, which the Swedish system wrongly rejects, is to make the exercises more fundamental and automatic, and to proportionately ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... figure not only by his birth, his wealth, and his various historic chateaux, but also by his sporting proclivities, his daring automobile racing, his marvelous fencing, and his spectacular hunting trips, the Duke of Raincy-la-Tour has long been in addition an amateur aviator of considerable fame, and it was to the French Flying Corps that he was attached when hostilities began. Here he distinguished ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... thoroughfare. From hence I came through some villages to a small town of the name of Bakewell. The whole country in this part is hilly and romantic. Often my way led me, by small passes, over astonishing eminences, where, in the deep below me, I saw a few huts or cottages lying. The fencing of the fields with grey stone gave the whole a wild and not very promising appearance. The hills were in general not wooded, but naked and barren; and you saw the flocks at a ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... was available at the Lake of Clouds. There were the exhibitions such as fencing bouts, bull fighting, and bear baiting. There were sports like swimming, mountain climbing, and skiing. In the evenings there was dancing in the main ballroom, behind glass walls which separated residents from citizens and citizens from the elite. There was a well-stocked drug bar containing ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... that Juan should be quite a paragon, And worthy of the noblest pedigree (His sire was of Castile, his dam from Aragon): Then for accomplishments of chivalry, In case our lord the king should go to war again, He learn'd the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery, And how to scale a ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... you then find yourself travelling through a dense forest of stringy barks, the finest of which have been levelled to the ground, with the axe, for the purpose of being sawn into planks for building, or split into rails for fencing. From Crafer's Inn, situated under the peak of Mount Lofty, the road to Mount Barker passes through a barren country for some miles, and crosses several steep valleys, in the centre of which there are rippling streams; the summit of the ranges still continues ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... class is one which is rapidly increasing in America, and which needs, especially among its new recruits, the very kind of advice I am now giving. Severer games, such as cricket, which I see girls playing with their brothers, tennis, fencing, and even boxing, have for both sexes moral values. They teach, or some of them teach, endurance, contempt of little hurts, obedience to laws, control of temper, in a word, much that under ordinary circumstances growing girls do not get out of their gentler games. These are worth some risks, ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... useless. They could not run the offenders to earth, and their efforts to do so would bring down upon their employer the wrath of the duffers. Result, all the fences on the station would be fired for a dead certainty, and the destruction of more than a hundred miles of heavy log fencing on rough country like Bruggabrong ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... discovered. M. de Witte, performing a duty intrusted to him by his Imperial master, was quite a different person from de Witte, the exponent of liberal ideas, pleading the cause of an oppressed people before the Tsar; and an adamantine side of his character, quite unexpected, was revealed. The fencing between the two skilled diplomats, de Witte and Komura, afforded a fascinating study in racial methods and characteristics at a high point of development; the impression left being that the intense sincerity of purpose in the Japanese, and the lack of ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... of it to tenants and friends of my own, after it comes into my hands." He was rather disappointed, when the rent was paid to the day. "But," said he, "it won't be so next year; the man is laying out his money on the ground, on draining and fencing, and that won't pay suddenly. We'll leave the rent in his hands for a year or so, and bring down an ejectment upon him, if he once gets into our power, as he surely will. Then, all that he has done to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... ran into a wooden summerhouse, painted cunningly after the Chinese fashion, shut themselves in, and drew their swords. Rogatchov had once taken lessons in fencing, but now he was scarcely capable of drawing a sword properly. The blades crossed. Vassily was obviously playing with Rogatchov's sword. Pavel Afanasievitch was breathless and pale, and gazed in consternation ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... makes me act in this manner, as stupid fools assert, but it is simply a way in which I relieve my anger, that it may not break my heart. It is the same as if a man who has to fight a duel should take fencing-lessons, and practise with the sword, in order to hit his adversary. But I have satisfied my anger, and will again be as gentle as ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... her to get excited and to chatter, to enumerate her causes for complaint against poor Count de Baudemont, who certainly had no suspicion of his wife's escapade, who would have been very much surprised if any one had told him of it at that moment, when he was taking his fencing lesson ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the marble did continue, as I could see by the glittering roof of a cavern, for such it was. But the floor attracted my attention as well as the roof, for on it were numerous cases not unlike coffins, bearing the stamp of a well-known Birmingham firm, labelled "fencing iron" and addressed to Messrs. Marnham & Rodd, Transvaal, ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... were a few who stood head and shoulders above their companions in athletics. Hodge went in for fencing, and Professor Rhynas declared he would make a master of the foil. Hugh Bascomb, with a pugilist's thick neck and round head, was spending all his spare time boxing, and it was said that he could strike a blow that would stagger an ox. His admirers declared it was a beautiful sight ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... afternoon, and at night some one tells him stories of the valorous men who occupied the throne before him. He rides, plays baseball and cricket, swims, goes shooting—and, you may take it from me, sir, he is already enjoying fencing lessons with Colonel Quinnox, chief of the Castle guard. Mr. Tullis, the American, has charge of his—you might say, his education and entertainment. They want to make of him a very wonderful Prince. So they are starting at the bottom. He's quite a wonderful little chap. What ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... consisted in training the human mind to logical reasonings. It exercised the intellect and strengthened it, as gymnastics do the body, without enlarging it. It was nothing but barren dialectics,—"dry bones," a perpetual fencing. The soul cries out for bread; the Scholastics ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... law of the land, every Free State farm has to be fenced. Blocks of sandstone, about four feet high and twelve inches square, are generally used for fencing uprights. Here, then, were lines ready made, and covering the country in every ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... part in the athletic sports of cricket, hockey, or football; but his nature inclined him nevertheless to manly exercises, and despite his excellence with the pencil, which was manifested at a remarkably early age, he is said to have preferred the lessons of Angelo the fencing, to those of Burgess the drawing, master. He was not distinguished at school as a classical scholar, and Latin verses in particular proved so serious a stumbling-block that he always got a schoolfellow to do them for him. His famous friend and fellow-pupil, Thackeray, carried an indelible ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... years old was placed as page in some other noble household. There, for two years, he learned riding and fencing, and the use of arms. When the lord killed a deer the pages skinned it and carried it home. At a feast the pages carried in the chief dishes and poured the wine for their lords to drink. They helped the ladies of the house in ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... more necessary, if we were to keep in condition. Here athletics may be regarded as the luxury, which we are not yet entitled. Here, with the gym work, the fencing, the drills under arms and the boat drills, we're kept in the pink of physical condition without need ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... to scatter wide. Nature was so lavish with him that she gave him all she could, and placed all in one receptacle. Such was Cliges, who combined good sense and beauty, generosity and strength. He possessed the wood as well as the bark; he knew more of fencing and of the bow than did Tristan, King Mark's nephew, and more about birds and hounds than he. [228] In Cliges ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... trembling in a transport of maniac fury with which an inexplicable fear ran cross-odds as warp and woof. The other had totally deluded him until the climax brought its accusation, and now the unmasked plotter took refuge in bluster, fencing for ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... elder Vorchtel was powerless to change his children's conduct, he never wearied of representing to his son how unjust and dangerous were the attacks with which, on every occasion, he irritated Wolff, whose strength and skill in fencing were almost unequalled in Nuremberg. In fact, the latter would long since have challenged his former friend had he not been so conscious of his own superiority, and shrunk from the thought of bringing fresh sorrow upon Ursula ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... der bum," was a rather disreputable-looking man of about thirty, having the appearance of the Jew peddler, and carrying a pack, which he had stuffed down between his knees and the back of the next seat, thus completely fencing ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... have it by any means inferred from this that the gentleman from Minnesota would insinuate that the people out in his section desire this timber merely for the purpose of fencing up their farms, so that their stock may not wander off and die of starvation among the bleak hills of the St. Croix. (Laughter.) I read it for no such purpose, sir, and make no such comment on it myself. In corroboration of this statement ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... he adorned the poops of galleys with precious stones, and constructed arduous works with no other purpose than caprice; he often dressed like a woman, and generally appeared with a golden beard; he devoted himself to fencing, driving, singing, and dancing, and was ruled by gladiators, charioteers, and actors. Such was the man to whom was intrusted the guardianship of an empire. No wonder he was removed ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... rather hates them, because he dreads the competition. In a little time their success in the woods makes them neglect their tillage. They trust to the natural fecundity of the earth, and therefore do little; carelessness in fencing often exposes what little they sow to destruction; they are not at home to watch; in order therefore to make up the deficiency, they go oftener to the woods. That new mode of life brings along with it a new set ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... heard a humorist say, "making statues all over the stage." No picture can equal the scene where Horatio and Marcellus swear by his sword, he holding the crossed hilt upright between the two, his head thrown back and lit with high resolve. In the fencing-bout with Laertes he is the apotheosis of grace; and since, though his height and shoulder-breadth are perfect, he is somewhat spare in form, you call to mind—in accounting for this charm of motion, not studied, "like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... a sloping patch of growing wheat, perhaps about thirty acres in extent. This was the real business of the homestead, and, in spite of the crazy fencing of barbed wire about it, it looked ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... judicious director can expect from him. He should be encouraged through every step of his progress, and specially encouraged when he has gained a certain point, and arrived at an important resting-place. It is thus we are taught the whole circle of what are called accomplishments, dancing, music, fencing, and the rest; and it is surely a strange anomaly, if those things which are most essential in raising the mind to its true standard, cannot be communicated with equal suavity and kindness, be surrounded with allurements, and regarded as sources ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... Game), a low fellow, to be heard of at the bar of the Black Badger. Mr. Toots selects this man as his instructor in fencing, betting, and self-defence. The Chicken has short hair, a low forehead, a broken nose, and "a considerable tract of bare and sterile country behind each ear."—C. Dickens, Dombey and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... should be freely allowed in many forms. The exercise of the body must be duly attended to. Nowadays this is provided for in the shape of games, some being optional, others prescribed, and such sports as boating, swimming, fencing, &c. But severe exercise should only be allowed under adequate medical control, and should be increased very gradually. In the case of girls, let them run, leap and climb with their brothers for the first twelve years or so of life. But as puberty ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the daily papers that you will sell the entire property owned by the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, including railway tracks, exhibit and other buildings, fencing, furniture, wiring, lamps, piping, plumbing, machinery, etc.—in fact, everything owned by the company. If this is the fact we can pay you about $400,000 and perhaps more. Will you kindly furnish us a complete list of everything that you have for sale and specified ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... to-morrow night. Longer than that we must not stay in this horrible place, we shall have wood enough for our purpose in the building, by pulling down part of the rear of our house, where it won't be missed, or from the trees in our garden, or part of the fencing. We should have a paddle for each person, as we shall require two or three canoes to convey ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... our house, a little higher up the mountain, he has discovered a fencing gallery: that till nightfall he had been engaged in a fencing bout against Japanese, who fought with two-handed swords, springing like cats, as is the custom of their country. With his French method of fencing he had given ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... person poured into his ears, only said: "Human misery! human misery!" And again, "Ah! how we are encompassed with infirmity! What can we do of ourselves, but fail? We should, perhaps, do worse than this if God did not hold us by the right hand, and guide us to His will." At last, weary of fencing thus, he faced the battle, and the comments on this unhappy fall becoming ever sharper and more emphatic, exclaimed: "Oh! happy fault, of what great good will it not be the cause![1] This lady's soul would have perished with many others had she not lost herself. Her loss will be ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... marching back to us from Reading. I was a scholar of Trinity College in Oxford at that time, and may begin my history at three o'clock on the same afternoon, when going (as my custom was) to Mr. Rob. Drury for my fencing lesson, ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... is Mother's doing. It has been her plan, ever since she heard that you were wrecked, that we should come out here to find you, and she has had me regularly trained for it. I had masters for fencing and gymnastics, we always talked Hindustani when we were together, and she has encouraged me to fight with other boys, so that I should ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... le Vicomte was a capital marksman, and could lodge eight balls out of ten in the neck of a bottle at a distance of twenty paces. He also displayed his master's swords; for Monsieur le Vicomte handled side arms as adroitly as pistols. He took a lesson every day from one of the best fencing-masters in Paris; and his duels had always terminated fortunately. He also showed the viscount's blue velvet dressing-gown, his fur-trimmed slippers, and even his elaborately embroidered night-shirts. But it was the dressing-room that most astonished and stupefied ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... sobriety, it will come truer than you think. Consider every other kind of fence or defence, and you will find some virtue in it; but in the iron railing none. There is, first, your castle rampart of stone—somewhat too grand to be considered here among our types of fencing; next, your garden or park wall of brick, which has indeed often an unkind look on the outside, but there is more modesty in it than unkindness. It generally means, not that the builder of it wants to shut you out from the view of his garden, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... close fight, in which, the use of fire-arms being then unknown, strength of body generally decided the victory. These athletic exercises supplied the place of those in use amongst our nobility, as dancing, fencing, riding the great horse, &c.; but they did not confine themselves to a graceful mien, nor to the beauties of a shape and face; they were for joining strength ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... meditatively at the barometer, the captain gets his old accordion and squeezes out the Russian National Hymn, while Bush and I go on deck to inhale a few breaths of pure fresh fog, and chaff the second mate about his sea-serpent. In reading, playing checkers, fencing, and climbing about the rigging when the weather permits, we pass away the day, as we have already passed away twenty and must pass twenty more before we can hope ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... of society had at one time, and, in fact, at the same period, served under the great Conde; both were pre-eminent, not only in literature, but in games of chance. St. Evremond was famous at the University of Caen, in which he studied, for his fencing; and 'St. Evremond's pass' was well known to swordsmen of his time;—both were gay and satirical; neither of them pretended to rigid morals; but both were accounted men of honour among their fellow-men of pleasure. They ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... profiting by Sidney's copy of Virgil. Here at least he was away from Mr. Adderley and study, and it passed endurance to have Latin and captivity both at once. He was more obliged for Berenger's offer to impart to him the instruction in fencing he had received during his first visit to Paris; the Chevalier made no difficulty about lending them foils, and their little court became the scene of numerous encounters, as well as of other games and ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... enemies—"played the god an engine on his foe"—much as a modern prince might a gatling-gun; but it seems to have slowly dawned upon the royal ignorami that the Lord is usually on the side of the heaviest battalions—a fact which Napoleon emphasized. The practice of fencing in a nation with a few wild-eyed prophets, or sending a single soldier forth with a hair-trigger hoodoo and the jawbone of a defunct jackass to drive great armies into the earth, gradually fell into disuse—curses and blessings became ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... are: rowing, golf, tennis, basket ball, field hockey, running, archery, and baseball. The unorganized sports include walking, riding, swimming, fencing, skating, and snowshoeing. Each sport has its instructor, or instructors, from the Department of Physical Training. The members are grouped in class squads governed by captains, and each class squad furnishes a class team whose members are awarded numerals, before a ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... is described after Rabelais, thus:—"Cardinal Mazarin keeps a nine-holes; Mary of Medicis foots stockings; and Katharine of Sweden cries 'Two bunches a penny card-matches—two bunches a penny!' Henry the Fourth of France carries a raree-show, and Mahomet sells mussels. Seneca keeps a fencing-school, and Julius Caesar a ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... continent of peace. At Cleveland in Ohio there is a great street called Euclid Avenue, lined with villas each standing in its own grounds and separated from each other and from the street only by a light iron fencing instead of the high brick wall with which the Briton shuts out his detested kind. The villas are not vast or suggestive of over-grown plutocracy, they are suggestive of moderate wealth, pleasant summers, cheerful ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... my deere knight? An. What is purquoy? Do, or not do? I would I had bestowed that time in the tongues, that I haue in fencing dancing, and beare-bayting: O had I ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... these lessons, glad of some active occupation, and the exercise had developed the young baron's frame, strengthened his muscles, and greatly augmented his natural suppleness and agility. He was passionately fond of and had thoroughly studied the noble art of fencing, and, while he believed himself to be still only a scholar, had long been a master in it—a proficient, such as is rarely to be found, even in the great cities. A better instructor than old Pierre he could not have had—not in Paris itself—and ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... 1703),—seemingly on a series of evenings, in the intervals of his diplomatic business; the Beausobre champions being introduced to him successively, one each evening, by Queen Sophie Charlotte. To all appearance the fencing had been keen; the lightnings in need of some dexterous conductor. Vota, on his way homeward, had written to apologize for the sputterings of fire struck out of him in certain pinches of the combat; says, It was the rough handling the Primitive Fathers got from these Beausobre ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... No pugilist or fencing-master could have parried a blow more neatly. Then the one-eyed hostler began to thrust and strike with the bar ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... continued Heywood. "If only out of vanity. Fencing,—oh, I hate the man, and the art's by-gone, if you like, but he's ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... up to be a man," replied Dot, fencing a little, "if I were big and strong like you," taking hold of the huge sinewy hand. "I could work then for mother and the girls; but now you will be always obliged to take care of me, and so—and so—" and here Dot's lips quivered a little, "I would rather go with dear father, if Esther would ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... It was the most imprudent thing I ever did in all my life; but I had sworn I would not leave the stage till I had rescued that noble play from all the rubbish of the fifth act. I have brought it forth without the grave-digger's trick and the fencing match. The alterations were received with general approbation beyond my most warm expectations.' Garrick Corres., ii. 126. See ante, ii. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... held both hand and money rather tightly imprisoned in her larger palm, and began to chatter, so as to leave the other no opening. "Oh, blessed darkness! how easy it makes things! does it not? I am glad there was no candle; we should have been fencing and blushing ever so long, and made ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... are not altogether wrong. Did you ever see a fencing match? Imagine two invisible personalities dodging and doubling, springing and darting. That will give you some idea. And all without a flutter of passion or real interest. It is good exercise for the lighter wits, but stupid ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... softest sofa; Mrs. Hazeldean's work-table rather in disorder, as if it had been lately used; the "St. James's Chronicle" dangling down from a little tripod near the squire's armchair; a high screen of gilt and stamped leather fencing off the card-table,—all these, dispersed about a room large enough to hold them all and not seem crowded, offered many a pleasant resting-place for the eye, when it turned from the world of nature to the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Leipsig, to form yourself upon; but, however, do not get a habit of neglecting either; and attend properly to both, when you go to courts, where they are very necessary, and where you will have good masters and good models for both. Your exercises of riding, fencing, and dancing, will civilize and fashion your body and your limbs, and give you, if you will but take it, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... making his training attractive to his pupil: he did not attend merely to his head; he thought of other things as well; joined him in the sports and exercises he knew, and taught him those in which he was uninstructed. Fencing, for instance, was one of these; Edward was a tolerable master of his foil, and in a few months Gustavus, under his tuition, could parry a thrust and make no bad attempt at a hit himself. His improvement in every way was so ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... stranger's compartment and relieve him of all anxiety for his hand-baggage. Then the cloak-room, that refuge of temporary sojourn, where his baggage remains in the porter's charge till it is put back into the train, who will contend that our parcels' windows, with their high counters fencing the depositor from the grim youths standing like receiving and paying tellers within, compare with the English cloak-room? Its very name descends from the balls and assemblies of the past, and graces ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... chronicler, became so accustomed to seeing honor satisfied in this manner that they paid little attention to these meetings, pursuing their own humble duties, indifferent to the follies of fashionable society. The fencing schools flourished—what memories cluster around that odd, strange master of the blade, Spedella, a melancholy enigma of a man, whose art embodied much of the finest shading and phrasing peculiar to himself; from ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... our religion against our common enemies; and possibly a more sure foundation this day will be laid for ruining popery and prelacy, the chief of them, than yet hath been led unto in any age. For popery hath been a religion ever dexterous in fencing and mounting itself by association and joint strength. All sorts of professors amongst them are cast into fraternities and brotherhoods; and these orders carefully united by vow one with another, and under some more general notion of common dependence. Such ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... shouted, "you are right. We do talk silly; but we shall do so no longer. I am tired of this verbal fencing. A plain answer to a plain question. Did you or did you not send your troops to give me the ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... very pious and noble parents, at Faucon, on the borders of Provence, June the 24th, 1169, and was baptized John, in honor of St. John the Baptist. His mother dedicated him to God by a vow from his infancy. His father, Euphemius, sent him to Aix, where he learned grammar, fencing, riding, and other exercises fit for a young nobleman. But his chief attention was to advance in virtue. He gave the poor a considerable part of the money his parents sent him for his own use: he visited the hospital every Friday, assisting the poor sick, dressing and cleansing ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... that in many ways the place is good for us. The first expense is heavy. I have spent about 1,000 already, sinking some of my private money in the fencing, building, &c., but very soon the cost of all the commissariat, exclusive of the stores for the voyage, and a little English food for the whites, will be provided. Palmer has abundance of sweet potatoes which ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cattle, sheep, horses and goats, without restriction. Such a system, or lack of system, means that the range is not so much used as wasted by abuse. As the West settles the range becomes more and more over-grazed. Much of it can not be used to advantage unless it is fenced, for fencing is the only way by which to keep in check the owners of nomad flocks which roam hither and thither, utterly destroying the pastures and leaving a waste behind so that their presence is incompatible with the presence of home-makers. The existing fences are all illegal. Some of them represent ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and by free institutions, has been devoted to the internal development of our own country. The surplus wealth produced by our labors has been applied immediately to reproduction in our own land. We have been cutting down forests and breaking virgin soil and fencing prairies and opening mines of coal and iron and copper and silver and gold, and building roads and canals and railroads and telegraph lines and cars and locomotives and mills and furnaces and schoolhouses and colleges and libraries and hospitals and asylums ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... fencing, not really talking," he answered imperturbably. "You can't pretend to be sincere in trying to pull that antimacassar home-and-mother stuff on me. Ask Bernard Shaw, ask Freud, ask Mrs. Gilman, how good it is for children's stronger, better ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... said, "I don't blame you for fencing, but I like plain words. You've done well out of this new Party. I haven't. You've no hobby except saving your money. I have. My last two experiments, notwithstanding the Government allowance, have left me drained. ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... never finished. The hand of Monkey was already pointing upwards to the space of sky. He saw the fringe of pine tops fencing it about with their feathery, crested ring, and in the centre shone faint, scattered stars. Over the fence of mystery that surrounds common objects wonder peeped with one eye ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... between four and six, earlier or later according to the time of year, Paul Astier came to take his douche at Keyser's hydropathic establishment at the top of the Faubourg Saint-Honore Twenty minutes' fencing, boxing, or single-stick followed by a bath and a cold douche; then a little halt at the flower-shop, as he came out, to have a carnation stitched in his buttonhole; then a constitutional as far as the Arc de ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... strong lines of trenches among and along the edge of the numerous woods which crown the slopes. These trenches are elaborately constructed and cleverly concealed. In many places there are wire entanglements and lengths of rabbit fencing. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... stood high in the favour of the admiral, who never lost an opportunity of showing the interest he had in him. Had the hostility shown itself in any offensive degree Francis would at once have resented it; but Matteo, and some of those on board, who had been his comrades in the fencing rooms, had given such reports of his powers with his weapons, that even those most opposed to him thought it prudent to observe a demeanour ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... employment, we are likely to give the impression of a procedure too slow to be practicable. Such an impression is inevitably produced by every verbal description of a complicated process. Compare the time occupied in describing a movement in fencing with that required to execute it; compare the tedium of the grammar and dictionary with the rapidity of reading. Like every practical art, criticism consists in the habit of performing certain acts. In the period of apprenticeship, ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... said river Southwardly, and on the East side, until it comes to the first station, leaving Quokin, and Phillis his wife, quiet in their possessions; which tract of land, (except Mary Richards' fields and plantation,) which is within the said boundaries, and wood for Mary's own use, and fencing stuff for her fences as they now stand, with all the appurtinances and privileges thereunto belonging, shall be forever for the important purpose of propagating the Gospel in Marshpee, without any let, hindrance or molestation. In confirmation whereof, we have hereunto set ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... this complaisance, however, the king did not neglect precautions for placing his authority on a sure basis, and fencing it round so as to screen it effectually from the insults to which it had been formerly exposed. He retained in pay most of the old Italian levies, with the ostensible purpose of an African expedition. He took good care that the military orders should ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... dissolute behaviour, and desperately audacious—famous in his time amongst the common bullies and swaggerers, as being the first that, to the great admiration of many at his boldness, brought into England the bold and dangerous way of fencing with the rapier in duelling. Whereas, till that time, the English used to fight with long swords and bucklers, striking with the edge, and thought it no part of man either to push ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... would be no point in the duel. As a matter of fact, where our definition of duel is verified, and weapons in themselves deadly are used, the encounter cannot be other than dangerous, especially between foes and where the blood is up. In the French army, where the regimental fencing-master stands by, sword in hand, ready to parry any too dangerous thrust, serious results still have occurred. If any man will have it that short smooth-bore pistols at forty paces in a fog are not to be counted dangerous weapons, all ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... the buccaneer added to his insolence by imitating the cry which cats make when they are angry, when they disagree. This last outrage capped the climax; but against his attack he found, in the buccaneer, a gladiator of the greatest strength in fencing; and he had shortly the chagrin of seeing himself disarmed; his sword was struck off some ten paces. The buccaneer threw himself upon the Gascon; raised his gun like a club; he seized the chevalier by the collar and cried, "Your life is mine; I am going to break your ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... Hsiang-lien was, in fact, a young man of an old family; but he had been unsuccessful in his studies, and had lost his father and mother. He was naturally light-hearted and magnanimous; not particular in minor matters; immoderately fond of spear-exercise and fencing, of gambling and boozing; even going to such excesses as spending his nights in houses of easy virtue; playing the fife, thrumming the harp, and going in for everything and anything. Being besides young in years, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... when Antoinette waxed confidential and revealed her true thoughts—evenings rare, because, as a rule, she was fencing coquettishy with tongue and eyes—she acknowledged that the nearest approach to her ideal that she had ever seen was a handsome, lithe young Atlantic City life guard. She put such a valuation upon the courage of this sun-bronzed, ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... jurists and physicians, nobles 'who had not only, like so many others, received, but deserved, the honour of knighthood.' Then follows a list of famous mechanicians, painters, and musicians, and in conclusion the name of a fencing-master Michele Rosso, who, as the most distinguished man in his profession, was to be ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... invisible wire fencing—a group of peasants were working in the field. An old woman and a young girl, with ropes about their shoulders, were drawing a harrow, guided by a withered old scarecrow of a man. They paused for a moment at the wire fencing, and looked through. It was an odd contrast; the ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... This was old fencing ground between them, and Stephen parried her pleasantly enough, but his eyes strayed speculatively to the other end of the table, where, however, they rose no higher than the firm, lightly-moulded hand that held ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... hearing before Annas and the interview within the palace between Jesus and Herod, for he would not be deterred from entering, as the Jews were, and there seems to have been no other impediment in the way. The passage has three stages—the fencing between the Sanhedrists and Pilate, the 'good confession before Pontius Pilate,' and the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... section of river boundary, exchange territory for 51 small Bangladeshi exclaves in India and 111 small Indian exclaves in Bangladesh, allocate divided villages, and stop illegal cross-border trade, migration, violence, and transit of terrorists through the porous border; Bangladesh protests India's fencing and walling off high-traffic sections of the porous boundary; a joint Bangladesh-India boundary commission resurveyed and reconstructed 92 missing pillars in 2007; dispute with India over New Moore/South Talpatty/Purbasha Island in ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... far more important on her mind than fencing with Grover Cleveland—an interview with President Theodore Roosevelt. Here was a man eager to right wrongs, to break monopolies, to see justice done to the Negro, a man who talked of a "square deal" for all, and yet woman suffrage ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... substances of things grew into being out of the amorphous dark, he must have seen more and more distinctly the festive preparations beyond the beech clumps near the green pavilion in the outer park, the three stands for the privileged spectators, the raw, new fencing of the enclosure, the sheds and workshops, the Venetian masts and fluttering flags that Banghurst had considered essential, black and limp in the breezeless dawn, and amidst all these things a great shape covered with tarpauling. A strange and terrible portent for humanity was that ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... Shakespeare's plays are very numerous. There is little need to remind the reader, for instance, of the hand-to-hand encounters of Macbeth and Macduff, Posthumus and Iachimo, Hotspur and the Prince of Wales, Richard and Richmond. Romeo has his fierce brawl with Tybalt, Hamlet his famous fencing scene, and there is serious crossing of swords both in "Lear" and "Othello." English audiences, from an inherent pugnacity, or a natural inclination for physical feats, were wont to esteem highly the combats of the stage. The players were skilled ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... firearms; while to their boxing skill—learned under a veteran of the prize-ring, who was employed by Chester's father in the town in which they lived—they added that dexterity which comes only with hard experience. Daily fencing lessons had made both proficient in the ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... his hat gone, his white coat sadly rent and gashed, flecked, too, with red, M. Beaucaire, wary, alert, brilliant, seemed to transform himself into a dozen fencing-masters; and, though his skill appeared to lie in delicacy and quickness, his play being continually with the point, sheer strength failed to beat him down. The young man was ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... seeth. Lancelot bringeth off his knights like as the wild-boar goeth among the dogs, and Kay dealeth him great buffets of his sword when he may catch him, and Lancelot him again, and so they depart, fencing ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... the proprietor), the sum of nine hundred pounds sterling per annum; it being provided and declared that the first annual expenditure, or as much thereof as the lessees may require, shall be made on fencing, subject always, however, to the aforesaid sanction of the said proprietors or their factor; the one half of said sum, viz. four hundred and fifty pounds sterling per annum, for five years, shall be repaid to the said lessees by the proprietors, through some drainage ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... Kellermann's heavy brigade and also my own Hussars at Padua on the mainland. But Suchet with the infantry held the town, and he had chosen me as his aide-de-camp for that winter, because he was pleased about the affair of the Italian fencing-master at Milan. The fellow was a good swordsman, and it was fortunate for the credit of French arms that it was I who was opposed to him. Besides, he deserved a lesson, for if one does not like a prima donna's singing one ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... country, where these bare-legged caterans could have held their own amid their native clouds and mists. All taken, you say! It is a lesson and a warning to us. I tell you that unless Monmouth infuses more energy into his councils, and thrusts straight for the heart instead of fencing and foining at the extremities, we shall find ourselves as Argyle and Rumbold. What mean these two days wasted at Axminster at a time when every hour is of import? Is he, every time that he brushes a party of militia aside, to stop forty-eight hours and chant ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him on to go straight to the point. No fencing, said this inward monitor, no circumlocution—get to it, straight out. And Stoner thrust his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a copy of the reward bill. He opened it before his employer, ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... humble parentage, and contending in his earlier years with the extremest poverty, he completed a theological education, became a tutor, volunteered in the Danish navy, travelled in France and England, and began his career of gymnast as a fencing-master in Stockholm. He died a professor, a knight, and a member of the Swedish Academy, and was posthumously honored as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Nance was fencing for time. Her cool, keen indifference gave little indication of the turmoil that was going on within. If she could manage to see Mac without letting him know where she lived, without Dan's ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... liked, that was very clear. In the pathos of this conviction he dwelt compassionately upon the thought of poor old Lindau; he resolved to make him accept a handsome sum of money—more than he could spare, something that he would feel the loss of—in payment of the lessons in German and fencing given so long ago. At the usual rate for such lessons, his debt, with interest for twenty-odd years, would run very far into the hundreds. Too far, he perceived, for his wife's joyous approval; he determined ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... spring Gunnlaug was walking abroad, and his kinsman Thorkel with him; they walked away from the town, till on the meads. before them they saw a ring of men, and in that ring were two men with weapons fencing; but one was named Raven, the other Gunnlaug, while they who stood by said that Icelanders smote light, and were ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... Blount's explanation of "Canes lesos," "I can meet with no such word in this sense: why may it not be dogs that have received some hurt? laesos from laedo." Clancturam should be clausturam, and so it is given in the above edition, and explained "a tax for fencing." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... by all genuine logicians for recognising the vital points of an argument. A day in a court of justice would have taught him more about evidence than a month spent over Aristotle. He had become fitter for the parade of the fencing-room than for the real thrust and parry of a duel in earnest. The mere rhetorical flourish pleases him as much as a blow at his antagonist's heart. Another glaring instance in the same paper is his apparent failure to perceive that there is a difference between proving that such a prophecy as ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... with which Webster defended himself was a manly one, and it is noticeable how years of fencing had improved the temper of his weapons. He was keener in his thrusts, more dexterous and supple, and comported himself in these disputes as a man entirely confident of his position. It is not vanity ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... putting the thread through the eye of the needle, should the Japanese maiden slip the eye of the needle over the point of the thread? Perhaps the most remarkable, out of a hundred possible examples of antipodal action, is furnished by the Japanese art of fencing. The [8] swordsman, delivering his blow with both hands, does not pull the blade towards him in the moment of striking, but pushes it from him. He uses it, indeed, as other Asiatics do, not on the principle of the wedge, but of the saw; yet there is a pushing motion where we should expect ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... his feet, although his ordinary walk was pleasant enough. But his arms were put to artistic uses; not the baser ones like boxing, but all sorts of fencing, manual practice, and the handling ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... Drennan had grown hard through loss of faith in men he had trusted. A woman hater and sharp of tongue, he finds a match in Ygerne whose clever fencing wins the admiration and ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres |
