"Hangman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... worst features of the superstition; as to practice, he ordered the learned and acute work of Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, one of the best treatises ever written on the subject, to be burned by the hangman, and he applied his own knowledge to investigating the causes of the tempests which beset his bride on her voyage from Denmark. Skilful use of unlimited torture soon brought these causes to light. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... unfortunate lord to a banquet at Shrewsbury, where he welcomed him as his intimate friend. On the third or fourth day of the feast he took him to hunt in a wood where he had prepared an ambuscade, and while all the rest were engaged in the chase, the common hangman of Shrewsbury, one Godwin "port hund," or the town's hound, bribed by Edric to commit the crime, sprang from behind a bush, and foully assassinated the innocent ealdorman. Not to be behind his favourite in cruelty, Ethelred caused the two sons of the unfortunate Elfhelm to be brought ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... and seeing how he trembled, Granger knew that he had not answered truly. With a shrug of his shoulders, twisting round on his heel, he had said sneeringly, "On the Last Chance River we don't run away from loneliness as though the hangman were behind us. If we did, we should be ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... of England," and marked as an historical error that passage in which it is recorded that, in the reign of Queen Anne, the famous degree of the University of Oxford respecting passive obedience, was ordered by the House of Lords to be burnt by the hands of the common hangman, as contrary to the liberty of the subject and the law of the land. Nevertheless, I wish, whatever be the modesty of those who impute, that the imputation was a little more true, the Catholic cause would not be quite so desperate with the present. Administration. I fear, ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... lady would take such terms?" asked Balian in dismay. "Rather, I think, would she choose to die by her own hand than by that of your hangman, since she can never ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... highwaymen into dark corners of woods, and there the wretched criminal finds in their bags (for ghosts of this breed have good substantial luggage) nothing but a halter and a bit of silver (value exactly 13-1/2d.) to pay the hangman. When he turns to the owner, he has vanished. Occasionally, they are the legends told by some passing traveller from distant lands—probably genuine superstitions in their origin, but amplified by tradition into marvellous exactitude ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... hell's a hangman's whip To hand the wretch in order; But where ye feel your honor grip, Let that aye be your border. 694 BURNS: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... alternately dipping in vial and inkstand. This may enflame my zeal against Bankrupts—but it was my speculation when I could see better. Half the world's misery (Eden else) is owing to want of money, and all that want is owing to Bankrupts. I declare I would, if the State wanted Practitioners, turn Hangman myself, and should have great pleasure in hanging the first after my salutary law should be establish'd. I have seen no annuals and wish to see none. I like your fun upon them, and was quite pleased with Bowles's sonnet. Hood is or ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... secret reached the abstract. You felt that the man had known the foretaste of evil which is the calculation, and the after-taste which is the zero. In his impassibility, which was perhaps only on the surface, were imprinted two petrifactions—the petrifaction of the heart proper to the hangman, and the petrifaction of the mind proper to the mandarin. One might have said (for the monstrous has its mode of being complete) that all things were possible to him, even emotion. In every savant there is something of the corpse, and this man was a savant. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... you. For I see that you would not understand. You are very young (as I hope). Perhaps you may soon grow older (which I pray for you). Let this suffice then. My Benjamin may deserve a hanging. Who knows? We are not God, ma'am, neither you nor I. Therefore I have no mind to be a hangman. And you—why, you are young enough to wait another occasion. And so I give you good-night. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... a man once, when he was upon the ladder with the rope about his neck, confess, when ready to be turned off by the hangman, that that which had brought him to that end was his accustoming of himself, when young, to pilfer and steal small things. To my best remembrance he told us, that he began the trade of a thief by stealing of pins and points;[15] ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... brought to the Canongate, as if he and his guard had not been sufficient to keep down any riot within the city. The manacles were too little for Wilson's wrists, who was a strong, powerful man; when the hangman could not make them meet, Porteous flew furiously to them, and squeezed the poor man, who cried piteously during the operation, till he got them to meet, to the exquisite torture of the miserable prisoner, who told him he could not entertain one serious thought, so necessary ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... rogue! If the Jaylors be so pregnant what is the hangman, troe? By the time my misery hath brought me to climbe to his acquaintance I shall find a frend to the last gaspe. What's here? a Lady? are the weomen so cruell here to insult ore ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... war with Holland brought the earl into popular disfavour, and his unpopularity was increased by the sale of Dunkirk to the French. Court intrigues led to the loss of his offices and he retreated to Calais. An apology which he sent to the Lords was ordered to be burnt by the common hangman. For six years, till his death in Rouen, he lived in exile, but he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. His private character in a dissolute age was unimpeachable. Anne Hyde, daughter of the earl, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... handle of his revolver. Nothing kept him from shooting that man, yes, and that woman also, but the certainty that the deed would make him a fugitive for life, subject everywhere to the summons of the hangman. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... resuscitate Brodie immediately after the execution. The operator was Degravers, whom Brodie himself had employed. His efforts, however, were utterly abortive. A person who witnessed the scene, accounted for the failure by saying that the hangman, having been bargained with for a short fall, his excess of caution made him shorten the rope too much at first, and when he afterwards lengthened it, he made it too long, which consequently proved fatal to the experiment."—Curiosities ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... women, red-eyed with drinking, and leering stupidly upon the surging heads below. Some asked if Calcraft did the "job," and others volunteered sketches of Calcraft's life. One man boasted that he had taken a pot of beer with him, and another added that the hangman's children and his own went to school together. "He pockets," said the man, "two-pun ten for every one he drops, besides his travelling expenses, and he has put away three hundred and twenty folks. He ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... he asked. "Supposing they contained instructions to our Ambassador which you might consider inimical to your interests? Do you mean that you would look at home for the murderer? You mean that you have men so devoted to their native land that they were willing to run the risk of death by the hangman to aid her? You mean that your Secret Service is perfected to that extent, and that the scales of justice are held blindfolded? Or do you mean that Scotland Yard would have its orders, and that these men ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... boys! Clear the track! The witches are here! They've all come back! They hanged them high,—No use! No use! What cares a witch for a hangman's noose? They buried them deep, but they would n't lie, still, For cats and witches are hard to kill; They swore they shouldn't and wouldn't die, Books said they did, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... who had first spoken was on the point of making an angry reply, but his companion exclaimed with a laugh, "Let the boor alone to do his business; by the look of his face 'twill bring him pretty close to the hangman's rope!" and, taking no further notice of us, they ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... cast-linen! Were it only to put it in my power to say, that I have a shirt on my back! But the idle wenches, like Solomon's lilies, "they toil not, neither do they spin;" so I must e'en continue to tie my remnant of a cravat, like the hangman's rope, round my naked throat, and coax my galligaskins to keep together their many-coloured fragments. As to the affair of shoes, I have given that up. My pilgrimages in my ballad-trade, from town to town, and on your stony-hearted turnpikes too, are not what ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... regret in that, sir," said Saltwell. "It will save the hangman some work, if he sends them all ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... advantage of his superior abilities is nothing other than a slightly more roundabout expression of the doctrine that might is right. It was precisely to prevent their doing this that the policeman stood on the corner, the judge sat on the bench, and the hangman drew his fees. The whole end and amount of civilization had indeed been to substitute for the natural law of superior might an artificial equality by force of statute, whereby, in disregard of their natural differences, the weak ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... notice; but it marked a distinct epoch in Deistical literature. For the first time, the secular arm was brought to bear upon a writer of this school. The book was presented by the Grand Jury of Middlesex, and was burnt by the hands of the hangman in Dublin by order of the Irish House of Commons. It was subsequently condemned as heretical and impious by the Lower House of Convocation, which body felt itself bitterly aggrieved when the Upper House refused to confirm the sentence. These official censures were a reflex of the opinions expressed ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... spells) were never so barbarous and cruel as during the first of the last three centuries. The milder of them would have refused two cubits of earth to the two philosophers; and not only would have rejected them from the cemetery of the common citizens, but from the side of the common hangman; the most ignorant priest thinking himself much wiser, and the most enlightened prince not daring to act openly as one who could think otherwise. The Italians had formerly two illustrious men among them; the earlier was a poet, the later a philosopher; one was exiled, the other was imprisoned, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... he sent a ship for their relief, with ten guns and ninety men, well armed; giving them this express command, "that they should not return into his presence without having totally destroyed those pirates." To this effect he gave them a negro to serve for a hangman, and orders, "that they should immediately hang every one of the pirates, excepting Lolonois, their captain, whom they should bring alive to the Havannah." This ship arrived at Cayos, of whose coming the pirates were advertised beforehand, and ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... he had just perpetrated an act of daring unparalleled in my experience, and, in the clamor now shut out by the glass door I tardily recognized the entrance of the police into some barricaded part of the house—the coming of those who would save us—who would hold the Chinese doctor for the hangman! ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Concluded his accounts to square, Since, should he not, he understood, From various tokens, famine would— A death for which no mortal wight Had ever any appetite. A ruin, crown'd with ivy green, Was of his tragedy the scene. His hangman's noose he duly tied, And then to drive a nail he tried;— But by his blows the wall gave way, Now tremulous and old, Disclosing to the light of day A sum of hidden gold. He clutch'd it up, and left Despair To struggle with his halter there. Nor did the much delighted man E'en stop ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... the pirates cheered, for they wanted to set their feet on land again somewhere where the hangman would not come and jerk them off it at once; and bold men though they were, it was a strain seeing so many lights coming their way at night. Even then...! But it swerved away again and was ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... It is sometimes called "Nep," as contracted from Nepeta. Hoffman said, "The root of the Cat mint, if chewed, will make the most gentle person fierce and quarrelsome"; and there is a legend of a certain hangman who could never find courage to exercise his gruesome task until he had masticated ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... perform the office. In his pastoral letter to his clergy urging them to take the oath of allegiance, Burnet grounded the claim of William and Mary on the right of conquest, a view which gave such offence that the pamphlet was burnt by the common hangman three years later. As bishop he proved an excellent administrator, and gave the closest attention to his pastoral duties. He discouraged plurality of livings, and consequent non-residence, established a school of divinity as Salisbury, and spent much time himself in preparing candidates ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... name of the finisher of the law, or hangman about the year 1608.—'For he rides his circuit with the Devil, and Derrick must be his host, and Tiburne the inne at which he will lighte.' Vide Bellman of London, in art. PRIGGIN LAW.—'At the gallows, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... they were all in the cart together, with the ropes about their necks, and the hangman down again upon the ground; and as soon as that was done, a great silence fell everywhere. I had seen Mr. Gavan say something to the hangman, and he answered again; but I could not ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... proclamashin 's kinder skeert em more'n did us Berkshire folks." Abner explained to a crowd at the tavern. "They all wanter be on the hangman's side wen it comes tew the hangin. They hain't got the pluck of a weasel, them fellers daown east hain't. This ere war'll hev tew be fit aout in this ere caounty, I guess, ef ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... cried, "God bless us!" and "Amen," the other; As they had seen me, with these hangman's hands. Listening their fear, I could not say, "Amen," When they did say, God ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... nothing else. Is this the plea? If so, the rejoinder is, that the mighty conspiracy includes the whole circle of Artists of all kinds, and comprehends all degrees of men, down to the worst criminal and the hangman who ends his career. For, all these are intimately known to the London Correspondent of the Tattlesnivel Bleater, and all these ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... word to George for the world. I want to talk to you. If it hasn't turned me sick! I should make a poor hangman. But it was in ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... That accursed beast, a corpse, and a ghost, and a prisoner at last—well, he has been my evil genius. If he were drowned or hanged; born to be hanged, I hope: all I want is quiet—just quiet; but I've a feeling the play's not played out yet. He'll give the hangman the slip, will he: not if I can help it, though; but caution, Sir, caution; life's at stake—my life's on the cast. The clerk's a wise dog to get out of the way. Death's walking. What a cursed fool I was when I came here and saw those beasts, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... day that ever shone for me. Your life is forfeit—doubly forfeit, for my father's death and your own practices to meward. But I myself have done amiss; I have brought about men's deaths; and upon this glad day I will be neither judge nor hangman. An ye were the devil, I would not lay a hand on you. An ye were the devil, ye might go where ye will for me. Seek God's forgiveness; mine ye have freely. But to go on to Holywood is different. I carry ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thankful and Pleasant you should be that Charles Nutter is not a Corpes in the Buchar's wood, and jiggin Home to you like Sturk did. But well in health, what I'm certain shure he is, taken the law of Mary Matchwell—bless the Mark—to get her emprisind and Publickly wiped by the commin hangman.' All which rhapsody conjured up a confused and dyspeptic dream, full of absurd and terrific images, which she could not well comprehend, except in so far as it seemed clear that some ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... be tried for his life could look on this apartment and its horrors unmoved, he would certainly be a fit subject for the attentions of the hangman, and deserving of no human sympathy. It was enough to shake the ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... sheriff!" he said; "O Christ you save and see! And what will you give to a silly old man To-day will your hangman be?" ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... when all the honest Whore-masters in the Neighbourhood would have rose against the Cuckolds to my Rescue. If Fornication is to be scandalous, half the fine things that have been writ by most of the Wits of the last Age may be burnt by the common Hangman. Harkee, [Mr.] SPEC, do not be queer; after having done some things pretty well, don't begin to write at that rate that no Gentleman can read thee. Be true to Love, and burn your Seneca. You do not expect me to write my Name from hence, but I ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... breath of her mouth still moves in my hair, and I know that she lied, And I feel her, Bill, sir, inside me—she operates there like a drug. Were it better to live like a beetle, to wear the cast clothes of a slug, Be the louse in the locks of the hangman, the mote in the eye of the bat, Than to live and believe in a woman, who must one day grow aged and fat? You must see it's preposterous, Bill, sir. And yet, how the thought of it clings! I have lived out my time—I have prigged lots of verse—I have kissed (ah, that stings!) ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... social compact. It was but yesterday that these men fought and drank and dug their own graves in their own sluices. At the city of Helena, on the site of Last Chance Gulch, one recalls that not so long ago citizens could show with a certain contemporary pride the old dead tree once known as "Hangman's Tree." It marked a spot which might be called a focus of the old frontier. Around it, and in the country immediately adjoining, was fought out the great battle whose issue could not be doubted—that between ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... upon. My signature was worth three thousand francs! Taking me altogether, I myself was not worth that amount. Sheriff's deputies rose up before me, turning their callous faces upon my despair, as the hangman regards the criminal to whom he says, 'It has just struck half-past three.' I was in the power of their clerks; they could scribble my name, drag it through the mire, and jeer at it. I was a defaulter. Has a debtor any right to himself? Could not other men call me to account ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... Worldly Wiseman was much commoved with passion, and shaking his cane with a very threatful countenance, broke forth upon this wise: "Learning, quotha!" said he; "I would have all such rogues scourged by the Hangman!" ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... street a cloud of ashes flies. But whether black or lighter dyes are worn, The chandler's basket, on his shoulder borne, With tallow spots thy coat; resign the way To shun the surly butcher's greasy tray— Butchers whose hands are dyed with blood's foul stain, And always foremost in the hangman's train. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... own confession, caitiff," said the king, "and thou knowest upon what terms alone thou canst save thyself from the hangman, and ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... them to the Fire, and others of them he caused to be drowned: If Witches are immersible, how came they to die by drowning in Bohemia? Besides, it has sometimes been known that Persons who have floated on the Water when the Hangman has made the Experiment on them, have sunk down like a Stone, when others have ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... to receive the rents, four priests, a reporter of the Freeman's Journal, some local reporters, and four of the tenants rushed into the room; and the priests in the rudest possible manner (the Rev. P. Farrelly, one of them, calling me "Francy Hyne's hangman," and other terms of abuse) informed me that unless I re-instated a former Roman Catholic tenant in a farm which he had previously held, and which was then let to a Protestant, and gave an abatement ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... redouble his oppressions as if to avenge himself for the shame of having been compelled to renounce them. Then were our estates laid under shameful impositions, our houses ransacked, our bodies imprisoned. Then was the steel of the hangman blunted with mangling the ears of harmless men. Then our very minds were fettered, and the iron entered into our souls. Then we were compelled to hide our hatred, our sorrow, and our scorn, to laugh with hidden faces at the mummery ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... went into a store and cut off about fifty feet of new rope. Some fellows that knew how tied a hangman's knot. As we came up to the stranger, we heard him say to a man, 'I tell you, sir, these bonds will pauperize unborn gener—' But the noose dropped over his neck, and cut short his argument. We led him a block and a half through the little town, during ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... He knotted a hangman's noose at one end of the rope, tried it to make sure it worked properly and ordered the estate slaves to hang the body to a convenient limb of a near ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... persuader. Constable protests and is persuaded. (Laughter.) Enter ghost—not clear whose ghost, but any ghost in a storm. Punch unnerved. Ghost gibbers. Punch more unnerved. Ghost gibbers again. Punch terrified. Exit ghost and enter hangman, to whom Punch, unstrung by recent encounter with apparition, falls an easy prey. Curtain. You bow from the mouth of the booth. I adjust nose and collect money in ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... trees west of the road where it tops the hill is pointed out as the gallows tree, although early accounts speak of a rough gallows having been erected. There is a story to the effect that one Hans Anderson, a farmer of the neighborhood, was the hangman, and that he was finally worried into his grave by the ghost of this same spy, who would not leave him in peace; but no mention is made of the tough old General having been ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... girl. Her brother lying bound by her side, his death about to be decreed, his end near as if the executioner were standing over him—for in this light does Uraga appear. Called upon to save his life by promising to become the wife of this man— hideous in her eyes as the hangman himself; knowing, or believing, that if she does not, in another hour she may be gazing upon a blood-stained corpse—the dead body of her own brother! No wonder she trembles from head to foot, and hesitates to endorse the negative he has so ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... How he was to comply he did not know. It would be simply brutal to tell her. He would feel like a hangman. And she believed so in Harry, she wouldn't listen; even if she did, he thought bitterly, she would hate him for destroying her ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... Socialist organ Pokrok in Prostejov, Mr. Joseph Kotek, was sentenced to death on Christmas Eve of 1914. The sentence was passed at noon, confirmed at half-past four and carried out at half-past six. As no one could be found to act as hangman, Kotek was shot. The reason given for the verdict was that the accused editor of the Pokrok, which was suppressed as being dangerous to the State, delivered a speech at a meeting of a co-operative society in which he said that all Czechs were unanimous ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... the plain. From their side the figures in the midst—the red, gold, and white about the pavilion, the steel of the soldiers, the drooping women between them—were about as real as a handful of marionettes. It seemed impossible such puppets could decide issues of life and death. But the red hangman and his machines were ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... reader, believe the story, resting assured that if you are taken in the thing shall be a matter for the hangman. ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... the past. The dwelling to which the average Anglo-Saxon will most promptly direct his steps, and the only one I have space to mention, is the so-called Maison de Tristan l'Hermite—a gentleman whom the readers of "Quentin Durward" will not have forgotten—the hangman-in-ordinary to that great and prompt chastener Louis XI. Unfortunately the house of Tristan is not the house of Tristan at all; this illusion has been cruelly dispelled. There are no illusions left at all, in the good city of Tours, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... lashed fast with rope-yarns. Pawing, clawing, blaspheming, he was conquered and bound, inch by inch, and drawn to where the inexorable shears lay like a pair of gigantic dividers on the snow. Red Bill adjusted the noose, placing the hangman's knot properly under the left ear. Mr. Taylor and Lawson tailed onto the running-guy, ready at the word to elevate the gallows. Bill lingered, contemplating his ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... by troops, and after defending it, with the help of his friends, for two hours, he was wounded and captured. Next day the Duke despatched the following note to the Governor of Reggio-Emilia: 'A terrible conspiracy against me has broken out. The conspirators are in my hands. Send me the hangman.—Francis.' ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... art. I was listened to in breathless attention. In the deep silence which surrounded me, in the glowing eyes of my audience, in the murmurs of applause which greeted me, I saw that I was still Voltaire, and that the hangman's hands, which had burned my 'Lettres Philosophiques,' had not destroyed my fame or extinguished my genius. While I read, a servant entered upon tiptoe, to rekindle the fire. The Duchess Ventadour sat near the chimney. She whispered, or thought she whispered, to her servant. I read a little ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... to thee, hangman? Forsooth, well do I know thee, Roger the Black: come ye into the glade yonder, so will I split thy black poll ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... some sort of protection; and the gaoler, for his part, implored his reverence the chaplain to be of the party, as the hill was not in good spiritual repute. So, when the time came, the four started together, and the hangman and the farmer's son went before them to the foot of ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Demosthenes without mention that there were those who whispered graft and bribery in connection with his name. There are a few very good and very dull people who try to stop all adverse criticism. All raillery strikes them as cruel. They would like to see every parody murdered by the common hangman. Even the best of comedy is constitutionally repellent to them. They want only highly colored characters from which every mellow shade of fault has been obliterated. One cannot say that they have a real love of human nature, because they do not know what human nature is. They are ready to ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... an artist, by the very nature of his endeavors, must needs stand above all public-clapper-clawing, pro or con. He writes, not to please his customers in general, nor even to please his partisans in particular, but to please himself. He is his own criterion, his own audience, his own judge and hangman. When he does bad work, he suffers for it as no holy clerk ever suffered from a gnawing conscience or Freudian suppressions; when he does good work he gets his pay in a form of joy that only artists know. One could no more think of him exposing ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... lucky! O, I'll let you go: but not until the hangman gets hold of you. Villain and robber, you shall ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... engagement in Bolton, Eng., I met Billington, the official hangman, who was convinced that I could not escape from the restraint he used to secure those he was about ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... 'I am no foreign murderer to kill a defenceless man. You shall away to the justice to answer for yourself. The hangman has a ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... had rather cheat the hangman. I told those doctors yesterday that they were giving themselves and me a great deal of useless trouble. The villains, as I told you, could not believe we should not betray them, and meant to make an end of us all. It's best as it is. My poor faithful ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... combined power of two such men as Bertram himself and his friend Dinmont, without reckoning their unexpected assistant Hazlewood, who was unarmed, and of a slighter make; but Bertram felt, on a moment's reflection, that there would be neither sense nor valour in anticipating the hangman's office, and he considered the importance of making Hatteraick prisoner alive. He therefore repressed his indignation, and awaited what should pass between the ruffian and his ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... all the illigant dancin' That iver was danced at a ball, Whin Teddy came out to the crowd, And danced upon nothin' at all— Wid a himpin cravat round his neck That the hangman had fixed on his head; An' so he kept kickin' an' prancin' Long afher he ought to be ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... discussing your affair with Ditty. I've got to judge between you two. I'm judge, jury, and hangman in this case—until we make some port where there's a consul, at least. Now, here's the mate. No more fighting, remember or I'll take a ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... death. At one time the keeper who had charge of the prisons at Hobart complained to the authorities of the inadequate facilities for putting men to death by hanging. He said it was impossible to hang conveniently more than thirteen men at once, and as the hangman had been very busy of late, he thought that the facilities ought to be increased so that the work could be performed ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... passionate admirer of that fair queen who sits by your side, shall be the cause of her ruin and your own, [Footnote: In the diamond-necklace affair.] and shall die in disgrace and exile. You, son of the Condes, shall live long enough to see your royal race overthrown, and shall die by the hands of a hangman. [Footnote: He was found hanging in his own bed- room.] You, oldest son of St. Louis, shall perish by the executioner's ax; that beautiful head, O Antoinette, the same ruthless blade ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the king's countenance moved. "I know no Lieutenant Keith," he said, sternly; "he who was once known to me by that name was stricken from the officers' roll with the stigma of disgrace and shame, and was hung by the hangman in effigy, upon the gallows. If Mr. Keith is still living, I advise him to remain in America, where no one knows of his crime, or of his ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... with the hangman's noose about his neck all because of Mary's cruel neglect, I wondered if her beauty would so easily atone for her faults. I may as well tell you that he changed his mind concerning ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... theory is, that the destinies of the nation are to be hanged on these monstrous gibbets, and you wonder whether the laws of gravitation will be complaisant enough to turn upside down for the accommodation of the hangman, whoever he may be. It is not without pain that you are forced at last to the commonplace belief that these remarkable mountings of the Public Buildings are neither masts nor booms, but simply derricks,—mechanical contrivances for the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... it,' he murmured at last. 'You would not have blood on your hands. My God!' he exclaimed, with sudden vehemence, 'you cannot mean this, Villiers, that you will make yourself a hangman?' ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... fiercer! ship by ship the proud Armada sweeps, Where hot from Sumter's raging breast the volleyed lightning leaps; And ship by ship, raked, overborne, 'ere burned the sunset bloom, Crawls seaward, like a hangman's hearse bound ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... sham wreck had passed muster; they were clear of her, they were safe away; and the water widened between them and her damning evidences. On the other hand, they were drawing nearer to the ship of war, which might very well prove to be their prison and a hangman's cart to bear them to the gallows—of which they had not yet learned either whence she came or whither she was bound; and the doubt weighed upon their heart ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... authors, have been blessed with the same talents, and have employed them to the same purposes. There are some, however, who, though not void of these talents, have made so wretched a use of them, that, had the consecration of their labours been committed to the hands of the hangman, no good man would have regretted their loss; nor am I afraid to mention Rabelais, and Aristophanes himself, in this number. For, if I may speak my opinion freely of these two last writers, and of their works, their design appears to me very plainly ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... his comrade in presence of Marie Antoinette: "If the hangman does not guillotine this accursed ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... a tone of regret; "he has not broken his neck. Fate reserves that for the hangman to do! He has only left the neighborhood to return to England. But let us hope that the ship may be lost! I'm sure his presence on board will be enough to raise the demon and ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... None but the hangman could come up so quickly—now I have the pleasure of running behind on foot, and besides I'm just as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the sight of a corpse dangling from a tree uncanny, a vision armed with threats which made them hold their hangman's hand, for, while crafty enough, they were superstitious to a degree. They let the gallows-tree stand grim and expectant on the hill-side, a terror to foes and a clan discipline, and, when necessary, found ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... two professions of which I can claim to know anything—the law and the stage—are closed to me, since I cannot find employment in either without revealing myself as a fellow who is urgently wanted by the hangman. As things are it is very possible that I may die of hunger, especially considering the present price of victuals in this ravenous city. Again I have recourse to Epictetus for comfort. 'It is better,' he says, 'to die of hunger having lived without grief and fear, than to live with a troubled ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... travel in the seventeenth century. The commission sent over from England to look into conditions which brought about Bacon's Rebellion complained, 1677, that Governor Berkeley had sent them from his plantation "Greenspring" to Jamestown, a distance of three miles, in his coach with the common hangman as a postillion. William Fitzhugh, a well-to-do planter of Stafford County, owned a calash, a sort of a cab ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... my death's-man! Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough, Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman: If thou be, do thy office in right form; Fall down upon thy knees, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Heaven! I have half a mind yet to hunt him down, and hand him over to the hangman for ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... make his poetry more familiar with criminal justice than is usual with him. All kinds of proceedings connected with the subject, all sorts of active or passive persons, pass in review before us: the hypocritical Lord Deputy, the compassionate Provost, and the hard-hearted Hangman; a young man of quality who is to suffer for the seduction of his mistress before marriage, loose wretches brought in by the police, nay, even a hardened criminal, whom even the preparations for his execution ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... idle loungers who yelled themselves hoarse at what he said, were crowds of honest citizens who believed as he did, and were ready to follow his leadership. Gashford had added to his followers even Dennis, the hangman of London, and the foolish nobleman not knowing the ruffian's true calling, thought him ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... prince at that time, they could not bear to hear a writer talk of excommunicating him, though they themselves afterwards cut his head off. Prynne was summoned to appear before the Star Chamber; his wonderful book, from which Father Le Brun stole his, was sentenced to be burnt by the common hangman, and himself to lose his ears. His ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... round their necks and the keys of the town in their hands, went out through the gates, and all the folk of Calais stood weeping and blessing them as they went. When they came to the king, he called for the hangman, saying—"Hang me ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... so far from land as this. Hangin''s the fit and proper punishment for hoss-stealin', but man-stealin''s so great a crime that I'm not right sure what the punishment is. Now, we don't know much 'bout boats and ropes,—though we can tie a hangman's knot when necessary,—but we do know somethin' 'bout guns and human natur'—here, you, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... following their ordinary business. A butcher, I make no doubt, would feel compunction at the slaughter of a fine horse; and though a surgeon can feel no pain in cutting off a limb, I have known him compassionate a man in a fit of the gout. The common hangman, who hath stretched the necks of hundreds, is known to have trembled at his first operation on a head: and the very professors of human blood-shedding, who, in their trade of war, butcher thousands, not ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... call in the assistance of Dr. Baxter, the principal medical officer of the island, but this offer Napoleon refused at once, alleging that, although "it was true he looked like an honest man, he was too much attached to that hangman" (Lows), he also persisted in rejecting the aid of medicine, and determined to take no exercise out-of-doors as long as he should be subjected to the challenge of sentinels. To a representation that his determination might convert a curable to a fatal malady, he replied, "I shall at least have ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to the head of the bronze horse whereon the stately figure of Marcus Aurelius sat in triumph before the door of the Pope's house, as it sits today on the Capitol before the Palace of the Senator. And Otto caused the body of murdered Roffredo to be dragged from its grave and quartered by the hangman and scattered abroad, a warning to the Regions and their leaders. They left Pope John in peace after that, and he lived five years and held a council in the Lateran, and died in his bed. Possibly after his rough experience, his rule was more gentle, and when he was ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... accursed gallows prepared for you by the New Men; believe me, the masked and silent hangman stands waiting to throw the rope of shame ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... house, and there was old Campana, naked to the waist, with his large sombrero and long pigtail hanging down his back, like a mandarin of twenty buttons. Next followed his two black assistants, naked as I have described them, all three with their coils of rope in their hands, like a hangman and his deputies; then advanced friend Bang and myself, without our coats or hats, with handkerchiefs tied round our heads, and our bodies bent down so as to stem the gale as strongly ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... part—exist on earth, and no worse the worse; and yet I think I have not been stained with all the soils of the sea. I have been with pirates, and thieves, and soldiers of fortune, and gentlemen of blood, and highway robbers; and once I supped with a hangman—off boiled rabbit and tripe, an excellent alliance in a dish—and all this without being myself either pirate, highwayman, or yet hangman. It is not always a man's company, but mostly a man's mind, that makes him what he is or is not. If a man is going to be a pitiful fellow and sorry knave, I am ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... business instanter. He may not fear the gallows or the stake or the pillory, but he certainly does love his press notices. He may or may not keep the faith, but you can bet he always keeps a scrapbook. Silence—that's the thing he fears more than hangman's ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... my opponents would be so utterly inexperienced in that most necessary work of literary execution. No, no: give me the Germans or the Jews for executioners: they can do the hanging properly, while the English hangman is like the Russian, to whom, when the rope broke, the half-hanged revolutionary said: "What a country, where they cannot hang a man properly!" What a country, where they do not hang philosophers properly—which would be the proper ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... They're all pestilential, and if I had my way I'd have them stacked in the market place and burned by the common hangman. But the most pestilential of the lot is Sypher's Cure. You ought never to ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... said, "you've earned more than you'll ever get paid in this life, and there's a tolerably heavy bill against you for the next. It looks to me as if it would be a good thing if you went off there to settle up the account right now. But I'm not going to take upon myself to be your hangman. I'm just going to give you a chance of pegging out, and I sincerely hope you'll take it. I've brought our friend here to be your room mate for the evening. It's just about nightfall now, and you've got to stay ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... fact that the cruel man is generally his own hangman; and he who throws stones at Heaven frequently comes off with a broken head. But the reverse of the medal shows us that innocence is a shield of fig-tree wood, upon which the sword of malice is broken, or blunts its point; so that, when a poor man fancies himself already dead and buried, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... speech of Lord Lucas in the House of Lords, the 22nd February, 1670-1 (which speech was burnt by the common hangman), he thus adverted to that coin: "It is evident that there is scarcity of money; for all the parliament's money called breeches (a fit stamp for the coin of the Rump) is wholly vanished—the king's proclamation and the Dutch have swept it all away, and of his now majesty's coin there ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... take death more patiently; Like him, the which by judge condemned to die, To suffer with more ease, his eyes doth blind. Your lips in scarlet clad, my judges be, Pronouncing sentence of eternal "No!" Despair, the hangman that tormenteth me; The death I suffer is the life I have. For only life doth make me die in woe, And only death ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... I leave that job to the regular hangman. He will perform it in due time, I have no doubt," replied Deck, as ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... it's dear friend, noble 'squire. Just now, it was all idiot, cub, and run me through the guts. Damn YOUR way of fighting, I say. After we take a knock in this part of the country, we kiss and be friends. But if you had run me through the guts, then I should be dead, and you might go kiss the hangman. ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... heads cut off; and their loathsome trunks thrown into a deep hole under the gallows. The heads of those three notorious regicides, Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw, and Ireton are set upon poles on the top of Westminster Hall by the common hangman. Bradshaw placed in the middle (over that part where the monstrous high court of justice sat), Cromwell and his son-in-law Ireton on either ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... The hangman turned and bowed in mock reverence to the spectators beneath him. He had not yet learned in a land of puny archers how sure and how strong is the English bow. Half a dozen men, old Wat amongst them, had run forward toward the wall. They were too late to save ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... invited himself to dine with me, and brought Anthony Pearson and several others along with him to dinner. That their principal discourse all dinner time was only who it was that beheaded the king. One said it was the common hangman; another, Hugh Peters; others were also nominated, but none concluded. Robert Spavin, so soon as dinner was done, took me by the hand, and carried me to the south window. Saith he, 'These are all mistaken; they have not named the man that did the fact: it was Lieutenant-Colonel Joice. I was in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... beard, but his eye was bright and searching, and there was no hint at superannuation in either port or movement. He was dressed in a long skirtlike garment of black cloth—true priest garb—and for a girdle he wore a length of hempen rope tied in the peculiar and sinister fashion known as the "hangman's knot." Around his neck, suspended like a priest's stole, hung a steel chain with pendent manacles or handcuffs that jangled unmusically as he moved. A grotesque, almost ridiculous figure this priest of the Doomsmen, but with the first look into the man's face ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... have my family with me, for which I thank my Deliverer from the jaws of the lion of oppression, and praise the Lord of hosts for a free country, where I can vote as well as preach according to the dictates of my own conscience without the torturing whip or the hangman's rope." ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... they submitted to their caprices, became enslaved to their opinions, and allowed them to govern in place of themselves. Then was the sovereign power subordinate to the sacerdotal, and the prince was only the first servant of the church; she degraded him to such a degree as to make him her hangman; she obliged him to execute her sanguinary decrees; she forced him to dip his hands in the blood of his own subjects whom the clergy had proscribed; she made him the visible instrument of her vengeance, her fury, and her concealed passions. Instead of occupying ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... people to adore; the will of the priests, who govern the prince, always becomes the will of God. A wit justly observed, that the true religion is always that, on whose side are the prince and the hangman. Emperors and hangmen long supported the gods of Rome against the God of Christians; the latter, having gained to his interest the emperors, their soldiers, and their hangmen, succeeded in destroying the ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... Foyle, eager and alert, was leaning forward, anxious not to miss a word. A great deal of what had been obscure was being cleared up. But so far nothing that Grell had said but could be interpreted as a motive—and a singularly strong one—which might in other circumstances weave a hangman's rope ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... wise man tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I can not comprehend the honor that lies in that; whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor, and the hangman more than the lord chief-justice of a city. Every creature has it, both of nature and art, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... which you owed to the manes of the Covenanters for the flattering picture which you drew of Claverhouse in Old Mortality. His character is inconceivable to me: the atrocity of his murder of those peasants, as undauntedly devoted to their own good cause as himself to his, his personal (almost hangman-like) superintendence of their executions, are wholly irreconcilable with a chivalrous spirit, which, however scornful of the lowly, could never, in my mind, be cruel," Scott, in reply, gave his matured opinion in the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... themselves behind the curtains of a tier of berths, directly in the rear of the chair where Baker was to sit at the table. In his hand Ethan held the heave-line, at one end of which Lawry had made a hangman's noose. Mrs. Light and the girls had been instructed to rattle the chairs, make as much noise as they could, and otherwise engage the attention of the robber, as soon as he ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... entered the subterranean camp. From Buetow in Pomerania comes a saga similar to that of Olger at Kronburg. A mountain in the neighbourhood is held to be an enchanted castle, communicating by an underground passage with the castle of Buetow. A criminal was once offered his choice whether to die by the hangman, or to make his way by the passage in question to the enchanted castle, and bring back a written proof from the lord who sat enchanted within it. He succeeded in his mission; and the document he brought back is believed to be laid up among the archives of the town. According to another ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... what judges, sleek as their ermine, preach upon as rebellion to the government—the government that, in fact, having stung starvation into treason, takes to itself the loftiest praise for refusing the hangman—a task—for appeasing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... only becoming——" He stopped short. He was going to add: "an honest man." But it is scarcely proper to talk about the rope in the hangman's house, and there are certain words which should never be pronounced in the presence of certain people. Chupin knew this, and so he quickly resumed: "When I become rich, when I'm a great banker, and have a host of clerks who spend their time in counting my gold behind a grating, I should ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... hangman, one of the ringleaders of the "No Popery Riots;" the other two were Hugh, servant of the Maypole inn, and the half-witted Barnaby Rudge. Dennis was cheerful enough when he "turned off" others, but when he himself ascended the gibbet he showed a most grovelling ...
— 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.
... some time to-morrow, be sure you get out of this island, nor set foot in it again these ten years, unless you would finish your banishment in the next life: for if I find you here, I will make you swing on a gibbet—at least the hangman shall do it for me: so let no man reply, or he ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... and morals—this citizen of consideration in the community—this member in good standing with the church—has qualified himself for twenty years' residence in the penitentiary, even if not for the exaltation of a hangman's halter!" ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... from every part of the Union. The sailors and shipowners of Portsmouth burned Jay and Grenville in effigy, together with a miniature ship of seventy tons. In Charleston, the flags were put at half-mast and the public hangman burned copies of the treaty in the open street. While remonstrating with a disorderly crowd in Wall Street which was vilifying Jay, Hamilton was stoned and forced to give way with the blood streaming down his face. Personal abuse of the coarsest kind was heaped upon Washington ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... wasn't at all surprised at Guy's shrinking and shunning him; what astonished him rather was the man's occasional and incredible fits of effrontery. How that fellow could ever laugh and talk at all among the ladies on deck—with the hangman at his back—simply appalled and horrified the proud soul of a Kelmscott. Granville had hard work to keep from expressing his horror openly at times. But still, with an effort, he kept his peace. With the picture of his ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... passionately returned Afy. "Make myself a companion of my father's murderer! If Mr. Calcraft, the hangman, finished off a few of those West Lynne scandalmongers, it might be a warning to the others. I ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... their little, fat bare legs at the first shrill squeak of Mr. Punch. The three who compose the staff of this tiny attraction have been long in its service—the old harpist, and the good wife of the showman who knows every child in the neighborhood, and her husband who is Mr. Punch, the hangman, and the gendarme, and half a dozen other equally historical personages. A thin, sad-looking man, this husband, gray-haired, with a careworn look in his deep-sunken eyes, who works harder hourly, daily, yearly, to amuse the ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... tobacco, smokers in many countries were condemned to infamous and cruel punishments; had their noses and their lips cut off, and with blackened faces and mounted on an ass, exposed to the coarse jests of the vilest vagabonds and the insults of the multitude. But now the hangman smokes, and the criminal condemned to death smokes before being hanged. The king in his gilt coach smokes; and the assassin smokes who lies in wait to throw down before the feet of the horses the murderous bomb. The human family spends every year two thousand six hundred and seventy ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... disappointed the people by not granting them their coveted rights. A remonstrance against being taxed without representation was burned by the hangman. So that when, after nine years of English rule, a Dutch fleet appeared in the harbor, the people went back quietly under their old rulers. But the next year peace being restored between England and Holland, New Amsterdam became New York again. Thus ended the Dutch rule in ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... There is no need for me to tell you that Mr. Fauntleroy was found guilty, and that he died by the hangman's hand. It was in my power to soothe his last moments in this world by taking on myself the arrangement of some of his private affairs, which, while they remained unsettled, weighed heavily on his mind. They had ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... cross the border to reinforce O'Neil. but the presence of the United States gunboat "Michigan" and several regiments and batteries of American regular troops, prevented the movement. Therefore the Fenians who were marooned in Canada, with visions of a hangman's noose dangling before them, became desperate and despondent. They knew very well that a concentration of the Canadian forces was going on, and that at the first break of day an attack was likely to be made, from which there would be no alternative but to "die in the last ditch" or surrender. ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... possible reasons, because there is nobody else. These men's lives being therefore forfeited to society, belong to us; and it does not follow because they were not all killed in the attempt, that therefore they are not now to be brought out for punishment. And as there is no common hangman here, we, of course, must do this duty as well as every other. I have now clearly proved that I am justified in what I am about to do. But the argument does not stop there— self-preservation is the first law of nature, and if we do not get rid of this man, what is the ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Dict. Canting Crew (by B.E. Gent, 1690): 'Jack Kitch. The Hangman of that Name, but now all his Successors.' He exercised his office circa 1663-87. It was Ketch who bungled the execution of Monmouth. There are innumerable contemporary references to him. cf. Dryden's Epilogue to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... you could not explain, like the banshee; or the Naked Hangman, who strides through the valleys on midsummer's eve with his gallows under his arm; or the Death Coach, with its headless horses and its headless driver. There was no use bringing these matters up to Uncle Robin. Uncle Robin would only laugh and shout: "Havers, bairn! Wha's been filling your ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Kettler again after he was back in the death house. The other cells were empty. In three of them detectives were placed. In the yard beyond the hangman was experimenting with the trap. He himself was under close observation. Nothing was being left ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... liberty to carnal and sensual delights." Rush. vol. vi. p. 817. It is remarkable, that as the parliament abolished all holydays, and severely prohibited all amusement on the Sabbath; and even burned, by the hands of the hangman, the king's Book of Sports; the nation found that there was no time left for relaxation or diversion. Upon application, therefore, of the servants and apprentices, the parliament appointed the second Tuesday of every month for play and recreation. Rush. vol. vii. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... grey cats with gifts— (For uniformity of metaphor, Since Bacchus, Satan, and the Hangman Are not contemporaneous in my mythology) I send you three grey cats with gifts, Queen Guinevere, To warn you, sleekly, silently To ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... women to be transported. When the ship was full, crowded to her utmost, she sailed away with her living cargo. From Sixteen Hundred Fifty to Seventeen Hundred Fifty, over forty thousand people were sent away for their country's good. The hangman worked overtime, all prisons were crowded, and the walls of Newgate bulged with men and women, old and young, who were believed to be dangerous to the stability and well-being of the superior class—that is, those who had the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... screeched out, and alarmed the house, and all run out here. Be careful there, Jovial! Don't be afraid of singing your old wool nor breaking your old neck either! because if you did you'd only be saving the hangman and the devil trouble. Go nearer to that window! dash the water full upon ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth |
