"Headless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... each touching the stern of the one in front of him. The unbroken chain eliminates the leader with his changes of direction; and all follow mechanically, as faithful to their circle as are the hands of a watch. The headless file has no liberty left, no will; it has become mere clockwork. And this continues for hours and hours. My success goes far beyond my wildest suspicions. I stand amazed at it, or ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... was impaled upon the counter by means of a headless hatpin. There was something very largely and badly written on it. Sarah Brown read: "Well Soup it looks like my Night's come and what dyou think Sherry's come too. Im an me as gone off to a place e knows that's a fine place ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... he deemed it no honour nor deemed he it fair to take horses or garments or arms from corpses or from the dead. And then the troops saw the horses of the party that had gone out in advance before them, and the headless bodies of the warriors oozing their blood down on the ribs of the chariots ([6]and their crimsoned trappings upon them[6]). The van of the army waited for the rear to come up, and all were thrown into confusion of striking, that is as much as to say, ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... Gordon set off at once for the place of the murder, and found the nine headless corpses lying as they had fallen. Englishman and soldier though he was, tears of rage forced their way into his eyes at the thought that by this act of treachery on the part of the Chinese his honour and that ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... palaces, and cities fine; Here now, then there; the world is mine, Rare beauties, gallant ladies shine, Whate'er is lovely or divine. All other joys to this are folly, None so sweet as melancholy. Methinks I hear, methinks I see Ghosts, goblins, fiends; my phantasy Presents a thousand ugly shapes, Headless bears, black men, and apes, Doleful outcries, and fearful sights, My sad and dismal soul affrights. All my griefs to this are jolly, None so damn'd as melancholy. Methinks I court, methinks I kiss, Methinks I now embrace ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... are you up to, Hilda?" exclaimed Mrs. Bale, as she entered the nursery where her six-year-old daughter was stuffing broken toys, headless dolls, ragged clothes and general debris into an ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... if he had any, take umbrage at the matter—swore that he had not only seen the ghostly steed pass Vauroque in the dead of night, but that it bore a rider whose head was carried carefully in his right hand. Unfortunately, the headless one passed so quickly that Nikki said he could not distinguish his features—having looked for them first in the wrong place—and so he could not say for certain who the next to die would be; but from ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... of her own age far more interesting than imaginary conversations with dolls. After they were both tired of jumping, in which exercise Sophia Jane's spare form was by far the most successful, the headless body of the murdered doll was dragged out from ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... stirring, apart from the few incidents already briefly mentioned. Executions in the Market Place seem to have had an unenviable notoriety. The most dramatic of these was the beheading of the Duke of Buckingham in 1484. A headless skeleton dug up in 1835 during alterations to the "Saracen's Head," formerly the "Blue Boar," was popularly supposed to be his, though records appear to show that his corpse was in fact taken to the Greyfriars' Monastery in London. In Queen Mary's ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... inducement has a young and beautiful woman to toil early and late for an honest livelihood when by so doing she forfeits the right to be called respectable—is flouted by even the paltry plutocracy of a country town and proclaimed a social pariah by such a headless phthirius pubis as Halliwell! If labor be no longer respectable wherein are our thousands of virtuous working girls superior to prostitutes? Clearly if the dictum of Halliwell be correct it were better for the daughter of poverty ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... added Rh (Sansk. Rhu, a deity to whom eclipses are ascribed) and Ked (Sansk. Ketu, the mythological name of the descending node, represented as a headless demon), monsters who are supposed by the Malays to cause eclipses by swallowing the moon. To denote the points of the compass the Malays have native, Sanskrit, and Arabic terms. Utra (uttara),[21] the ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... saving even in name. Within two months of his having been declared a public enemy, all Italy was at Caesar's feet. Before another year was past, the battle of Pharsalia had been fought, and the great Pompey lay a headless corpse on the sea-shore in Egypt. It was suggested to Cicero, who had hitherto remained constant to the fortunes of his party, and was then in their camp at Dyrrachium, that he should take the chief command, but he had the sense to decline; and though men called him "traitor", ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... of them fixed it, like that of the vilest traitor, on an immense pole, and bore it in triumph all over Paris; while another division of the outrageous cannibals were occupied in tearing her clothes piecemeal from her mangled corpse. The beauty of that form, though headless, mutilated and reeking with the hot blood of their foul crime—how shall I describe it?—excited that atrocious excess of lust, which impelled these hordes of assassins to satiate their demoniac passions upon the remains ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... the wall, at intervals of three or four feet, something like forty paillasses. On each, with half a dozen exceptions (where the occupants had not yet finished their coffee or were on duty for the corvee) lay the headless body of a man smothered in its blanket, only the ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... that the latter was afterwards exhibited at Constantinople; and this may account for some of the details given by Sandras de Courtilz in his 'Memoires du Marquis de Montbrun' and his 'Memoires d'Artagnan', for one can easily imagine that the naked, headless body might escape recognition. M. Eugene Sue, in his 'Histoire de la Marine' (vol. ii, chap. 6), had adopted this view, which coincides with the accounts left by Philibert de Jarry and the Marquis de Ville, the MSS. of whose letters and 'Memoires' are ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... had been set up on London bridge, or on Temple Bar, or some other dreadful place. And then as we went round I was told that here was the spot where Lady Jane Grey was beheaded; and there was the window from which she saw the headless body of her husband carried by; and there stood the rack on which Anne Askew was tortured; and there was the prison where Arabella Stuart died insane; and here was the axe which used to be carried before the ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... cut his own head off before jumping into the river, it was suicide," he said carefully, "for the body is headless. As for myself, I have never witnessed such a phenomenon, and ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... and without her head, was what she deposed and adhered to, supported by a consciousness of the secret sympathy of her mistress under the withering scorn with which Miss Pole regarded her. And not only she, but many others, had seen this headless lady, who sat by the roadside wringing her hands as in deep grief. Mrs Forrester looked at us from time to time with an air of conscious triumph; but then she had not to pass through Darkness Lane before she could bury herself beneath ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... many things are rare and beautiful, and all things are strange and marvellous. Hour after hour I stand—I stand spellbound, as it were—and gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square. [Leicester Square being a horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the centre, the king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better condition.] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII., and Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind which of my ancestors I admire ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and of an oval shape. Battle-axes, lances, and javelins, were strewn about in formidable profusion. Hauberks, or chain-mail, hung at intervals from the walls, looking grim and stalwart from their repose, like the headless trunks of the warriors they ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... immediate cause of depression is removed, and so it was that in half an hour Usanga's band was again beginning to take on to some extent its former appearance of carefree lightheartedness. Thus were the heavy clouds of fear slowly dissipating when a turn in the trail brought them suddenly upon the headless body of their erstwhile companion lying directly in their path, and they were again plunged into the depth of fear ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I, "you remember in Germany how disappointed we were at not finding a ghost in that old castle, which was said to be haunted by a headless apparition? Well, I have heard of a house in London which, I have reason to hope, is decidedly haunted. I mean to sleep there to-night. From what I hear, there is no doubt that something will allow itself to be seen or to be heard—something, ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... my shrewd Sam Weller driver, and away. Here and there about this part of Cornwall are studded rude stone crosses, probably of the time of St. Colomba, as they are similar to those at Iona: about two or three feet high, and very rude. In one place, I noticed what seemed to be a headless female figure, perhaps the Virgin, and as large as life: my Jehu said he had heard that it once had a head. We soon came to a small square inclosure, said to be a most ancient cemetery; I scrambled over the wall, and found among the briars and weeds one solitary tomb of a venerable ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... another servant to the garret for some toys her sister's children had left with her last year, and gave me permission to pull all the flowers I wanted in the garden. I carried three maimed dolls, a headless horse, a three-legged cat, and a Britannia tea-set to a summer-house at the end of a long walk, and made believe that I was Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, of whom I had read in a tattered copy of ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... and one or two religious generally live there. This town is quite exposed to the inroads of the Negrillos and Zambales, and there are continual misfortunes of murders, and it is quite common to find headless bodies in the field. It belongs to the archbishopric of Manila, and lies more than one day's journey from the city, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... There was something awful about this old animal, with patient and laborious stupidity in every line of his plodding body, obeying still that higher intelligence which was no longer visible at his guiding-reins, and perhaps had gone out of sight forever. It had all the uncanny horror of a headless spectre advancing down ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of Thutmosis III. They remained concealed in the new fabric for centuries, but in the year 27 B.C. a great earthquake brought them abruptly to light. We find everywhere among the ruins, at the foot of the dislocated gates, or at the bases of the headless colossal figures, heaps of blocks detached from the structure, on which can be made out remnants of prayers addressed to the Disk, scenes of worship, and cartouches of Amenofches IV., Ai, and Tutankhamon. The work begun by Harmhabi at Thebes was continued with unabated ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... urgency? Think me not a fool and blind. Thou knowest, and Fronto and Aurelian know, that one apostate would weigh more for your bad cause than a thousand headless trunks; and so with cruel and insulting craft you weave your snares and pile to Heaven your golden bribes. Begone, Varus, and say to Aurelian, if in truth he sent thee on thy shameful errand, that, in the Fabrician prison, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... both strained forward in eager expectation. A few blows sufficed to remove the head of the cask. Horror! a sickening stench arose, and there became visible the headless trunk of a human being. That portion of the body which was not immersed in the wine, was putrid. 'Look here!' cried I, in mad triumph, plunging my arm into the cask, and drawing forth the ghastly head of Lagrange. I held aloft the horrid trophy of my vengeance; there were the dull, staring ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... the house. The entrance was somewhat pretentious, and might—for each of the pillars supported a heraldic beast—have seemed to an English eye out of character with the thatched roof. But, as if to correct this, one of the beasts was headless, and one of the gates had fallen from its hinges. In like manner the dignity of a tolerably spacious garden, laid out beside the house, was marred by the proximity of the fold-yard, which had also trespassed, in the shape of sundry offices ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... at the Nine-Stone Rig, Beside the headless cross, And they left him lying in his blood, Upon the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... a remarkable one) of the symbolic form of second-sight is that in which the headless apparition of the person whose death is foretold manifests itself to the seer. An example of that class is given in Signs before Death as having happened in the family of Dr. Ferrier, though in that case, if I recollect rightly, ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... involuntary action. But for a reflex action the brain is not essential. As is well known, a snake's hinder part will move in response to a touch when completely severed from the head end; and movements of considerable complexity can be evoked in a headless frog. ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... taken the officer's head clean off without Filer finding it out on account of the darkness of the night, and the clamour of cannon and musketry mingled with the cries of the wounded. Much it was to Filer's astonishment, then, when the surgeon asked him what he had brought in a headless trunk for; he declared that the lieutenant had a head on when he took him up, for he had himself asked him to take him from the breach, and that he did not know when the head was severed, which must have ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... earlier Aelfled was the widow of Brithnod, a famous Northumbrian chieftain. She gave to the cathedral of Ely, where his headless body lay buried, a large cloth, or hanging, on which she had embroidered the heroic deeds of her husband. She was the ancestress of a race of embroiderers, and their pedigree will be found in the Appendix.[573] At this time a lady of the Queen of Scotland was famed for her ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... snuff-box as I glanced at him, and was offering it with a bow and a flourish to Lord Grey, as unconcernedly as though he were back once more in his London coffee-house. Buyse leaned upon his long broadsword, and looked gloomily at a headless trunk in front of him, which I recognised from the dress as being that of the preacher. As to Reuben, he was unhurt himself, but in sore distress over my own trifling scar, though I assured the faithful lad that it was a less thing than many a tear from ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... breathless wonder, Sees the bodies of two women Lying crosswise, and their heads too; Oh, what horror! which to choose! Then his mother's head he seizes,— Does not kiss it, deadly pale 'tis,— On the nearest headless body Puts it quickly, and then blesses With the sword the pious work. Then the giant form uprises,— From the dear lips of his mother, Lips all god-like—changeless—blissful, Sound these words with horror fraught: "Son, oh son! what overhast'ning! ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... into the brisk little car. As Smythe took the handles and they turned the great corner of the street, Angus was amused to see a gigantesque poster of "Smythe's Silent Service," with a picture of a huge headless iron doll, carrying a saucepan with the legend, "A Cook Who is ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... besides the wreck of thy soldiery perishing on either side, didst bewail, amongst thy spectacles of domestic woe, the luminaries of thy senate extinguished, the heads of thy consuls fixed upon a halberd, weeping for ages over thy self- slaughtered Catos, thy headless Ciceros (truncosque Cicerones), and unburied Pompeys;—to whom the party madness of thy own children had wrought in every age heavier woe than the Carthaginian thundering at thy gates, or the Gaul admitted within thy walls; on whom OEmathia, more fatal than the day of Allia,—Collina, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... sibyl of the Renaissance kept offering her books in vain to feudal Europe. In vain, because the time was not yet. The ideas projected thus early on the modern world were immature and abortive, like those headless trunks and zoophytic members of half-moulded humanity which, in the vision of Empedocles, preceded the birth of full-formed man. The nations were not ready. Franciscans imprisoning Roger Bacon for venturing to examine ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... however, another object for which Smith said the Lord had sent him to Susquehanna; and that was—a wife. Until he obtained one there was no use in trying to get certain buried treasures at Palymra. A headless Spaniard guarded it with great vigilance, but would, it appeared, be driven away if Smith should shake millinery and dry-goods bills at him. Joseph stopped at the house of Isaac Hale, already noticed as having furnished board to the diggers. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... son of Eliphaz and fifty of his men, and he clapped them in chains and carried them off to Egypt. Thereupon the rest of the attacking army led by Eliphaz fled to Mount Seir, taking with them the headless corpse of Esau, to bury it in his own territory. The sons of Jacob pursued after them, but they slew none, out of respect for ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... mildly, and forgiving too easily. But the piece is rather a pantomime than play, and it is impossible to judge of the feelings of St. Columba, when she must leave the stage in half a minute after mistaking the headless ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... seer-craft proved To stay the rushing sword. Three servants next the weapon found Stretched 'mid their armor on the ground: Then Remus' charioteer he spies Beneath the coursers as he lies, And lops his downdropt head; The ill-starred master next he leaves, A headless trunk, that gasps and heaves: Forth spouts the blood from every vein, And deluges with crimson rain, Green earth and broidered bed. Then Lamyrus and Lamus died, Serranus, too, in youth's fair pride: That night had seen him long at play: Now by the dream-god tamed he lay: Ah, had ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... earth, but it was upon hands and knees, and, still retaining his sword, he scrambled to his feet again at the same time as the Gaul, who raised his headless spear on high to bring it down upon the head ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... though it could not believe what had happened, and raised itself a little as if to show there was nothing the least bit wrong. Solem let the body go. It lay still for a moment, then kicked its legs, leaped to the ground and began to hop, the headless body reeling on one wing till it struck the wall and spattered blood in wide arcs before it fell ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... minister appeared worried. He was walking to and fro in an aimless manner like a headless chicken. After having paced backward and forward past a pile of mess-chests several times, each time sizing it up, he suddenly began to mount it, planted himself on the very pinnacle, and with a fog-horn voice ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... obtain a relic of the luckless Masaniello, the fisherman of Naples. After he had been raised by mob favour to a height of power more despotic than monarch ever wielded, he was shot by the same populace in the streets, as if he had been a mad dog. His headless trunk was dragged through the mire for several hours, and cast at night-fall into the city ditch. On the morrow the tide of popular feeling turned once more in his favour. His corpse was sought, arrayed ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... ill of the doldrums, his nurse, thinking it a good opportunity for putting things to rights, had made a grand clearance of all his "rubbish"—as she considered it: his beloved headless horses, broken carts, sheep without feet, and birds without wings—all the treasures of his baby days, which he could not bear to part with. Though he seldom played with them now, he liked just to feel they ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... appears when there is to be a death in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts the corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold fingers on your hand—so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to think of it. And there's a headless man stalks up and down the path and skeletons glower at you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I wouldn't go through the Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I'd be sure that white things would reach out from behind the trees ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... morning Ture Joensson's body was found lying headless in the street, whether thus punished by Christian for his lies or by some Swede for his ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... walls are the church, the white tower, the ordnance office, the jewel office, the horse armory. The church is called "St. Peter in Vincules," and is remarkable as the depository of the headless bodies of numerous illustrious personages who suffered either in the Tower or on the hill. Among these were Anna Boleyn, Thomas Cromwell, Catharine Howard, the Duke of Somerset and the ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... But Yaroslav replied: "Choose a Tsar from among yourselves: I am no Tsar for you." He ceased, however, slaying the people, and taking some of the Tsar's blood, put it into a phial; then mounting his horse, he rode out of the city and away, until he came to Sir Raslanei, and, taking the headless body, he set the head upon it, and sprinkled it with the blood. Thereupon the Knight stood up, as if awakened from a dream; and Yaroslav embraced him, and they called one another brothers: Raslanei was the elder, and Yaroslav ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... portion of the garden of the imperial villa and burying its statues beneath the debris. It was here that excavations had been begun, and as we entered the cave from the beach, our way was bordered by the fragments of many a column and capital, by broken vases and by headless statues. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... discovered the headless trunk of a young man, and the dead body of a girl who had ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... scattered a miscellaneous assortment of the strange instruments I employed. I sat down and fell into a reverie. I thought of the poor queen, whom I had seen in her beauty, glory, and happiness, yesterday carted to the scaffold, pursued by the execrations of a people, to-day lying headless on the common sinners' bier—she who had slept beneath the gilded canopy of the throne of ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... reservist,[71] others that his name was Laecanius. The most common account is that a soldier of the Fifteenth legion, by name Camurius, pierced his throat with a sword-thrust. The others foully mangled his arms and legs (his breast was covered) and with bestial savagery continued to stab the headless corpse. Then they made for Titus Vinius. Here, too, there is a doubt whether the fear of 42 imminent death strangled his voice, or whether he called out that they had no mandate from Otho to kill him. He may have invented this in his terror, or it may have been a confession ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... which the gore still run, All gashed, and grim, and blackening in the sun. These were the gallant troop that passed before, The Indians' vast encampment to explore, Led by Del Oro, now with many a wound Pierced, and a headless trunk upon the ground. The horses startled, as they tramped in blood; 160 The troops a moment half-recoiling stood. But boots not now to pause, or to retire; Valdivia's eye flashed with indignant fire: Follow! he cried, brave comrades, to the hill! And instant shouts the pealing valley ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... S. in the morning and occupied the best room in the hotel, where the whole floor was covered with a grey canvas, and on the table there stood an inkstand grey with dust, adorned with a horseman on a headless horse holding a net in his raised hand. The porter gave him the necessary information: von Didenitz; Old Goucharno Street, his own house—not far from the hotel; lives well, has his own horses, every ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... lady-minus-a-head, and formed itself into a semicircle, with the Queen in the centre. Then the crowd at the brook were seen approaching, and on the shoulders of the multitude was borne a head. They hurried as fast as their heavy load would permit, until they came to the tree under which sat the headless Nerralina, who, bed and all, had fallen here, when the Giant tore down the tower. Then quickly attaching a long rope (that they had put over a branch directly above the lady) to the hair of the head, they all took hold of the other end, and, pulling with a will, soon ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... front of it are the Devereux, Beauchamp, and Bell Towers, the residences of the Lieutenant of the Tower and of the Yeoman Gaoler being in the gabled and red tiled houses between the last two. From one of these windows Lady Jane Grey saw her husband's headless body brought in from Tower Hill, by the route we now traverse; and the leads are still called Queen Elizabeth's Walk, as she used them during her captivity ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie
... heads and lives for him as many As I have manors, castles, towns, and towers!— Treacherous Warwick! traitorous Mortimer! If I be England's king, in lakes of gore Your headless trunks, your bodies will I trail, That you may drink your fill, and quaff in blood, And stain my royal standard with the same; You villains that have slain my Gaveston!— And, in this place of honour and of trust, Spenser, sweet Spenser, I adopt thee here; And merely of our love we ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... fear without more proof To tell of, but that conscience makes me firm, The boon companion, who her strong breast-plate Buckles on him, that feels no guilt within And bids him on and fear not. Without doubt I saw, and yet it seems to pass before me, A headless trunk, that even as the rest Of the sad flock pac'd onward. By the hair It bore the sever'd member, lantern-wise Pendent in hand, which look'd at us and said, "Woe's me!" The spirit lighted thus himself, And two ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... yells were still going on, louder than ever. We cross'd the road, descended another slope, and came all at once on a low pile of buildings that a moment before had been hid. 'Twas but three hovels of mud, stuck together in the shape of a headless cross, the main arm pointing out toward the moor. Around the whole ran a battered wall, patched with furs; and from this dwelling the screams ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... machines he was the first to use the revolving cutter attached to the slide rest. Then, in 1828, he fluted the taps for the first time with a revolving cutter,—other makers having up to that time only notched them. Among his other inventions in screws may be mentioned his headless tap, which, according to Mr. Nasmyth, is so valuable an invention, that, "if he had done nothing else, it ought to immortalize him among mechanics. It passed right through the hole to be tapped, and was ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... gives impulse to violence, envy, and hate, [20] and prolongs the reign of inordinate, unprincipled clans. At this period, 1888, those quill-drivers whose consciences are in their pockets hold high carnival. When news- dealers shout for class legislation, and decapitated reputa- tions, headless trunks, and quivering hearts are held up [25] before the rabble in exchange for money, place, and power, the vox populi is suffocated, individual rights are trodden under foot, and the car of the modern In- quisition rolls along ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... Against this a headless, vague aspiration, however universal, is likely to prove quite ineffective. Of course, it is possible to suggest that the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, but in reality ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... a headless horse, and wearing a chain armor, with a triangular shield flung behind his back, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... coast made all haste to sail away, bearing the wretched Cornelia with them, utterly distracted with grief and despair, while Philip and his fellow-servant remained upon the beach, standing bewildered and stupefied over the headless body of their beloved master. Crowds of spectators came in succession to look upon the hideous spectacle a moment in silence, and then to turn, shocked and repelled, away. At length, when the first impulse of excitement had in some measure spent its force, Philip and his comrades ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... in thy best maturity of Mind A madness of the heart shall seize upon thee;[fq] Passion shall tear thee when all passions cease In other men, or mellow into virtues; And Majesty which decks all other heads, Shall crown to leave thee headless; honours shall But prove to thee the heralds of Destruction, And hoary hairs of Shame, and both of Death, But not such death as fits an aged man."40 Thus saying, he passed on.—That Hour ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... mighty armies of different tongues and peoples who had stood in their pride on this road and looked upon yonder river and the great stone wolf that guarded it, which wolf, so said the legend, howled at the approach of foes. But now he howled no more, for he lay headless beneath the waters, and there he lies to this day. Well, they were dead, everyone of them, and even their deeds were forgotten; and oh! how small the thought of it made them feel, these two young men bent upon a desperate quest in a strange and dangerous land. Masouda ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... nailed on the wall, their wings extended, and their throats with a huge nail through each; a fox's skin, freshly flayed, was spread before the window; and a larder hook, fixed into the principal beam, held a headless goose, whose body ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... lake, swam safely over to the main shore. He had scarcely reached it, when, looking back, he saw amid the darkness the torches of persons come out in search of the new-married couple. He listened till they had found the headless body, and he heard their piercing shrieks of sorrow, as he took his way to the lodge ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... a jet of water, and the salmon burst out in a stream of quicksilver. A Chinaman jerked up a twenty-pounder, beheaded and detailed it with two swift strokes of a knife, flicked out its internal arrangements with a third, and case it into a blood-dyed tank. The headless fish leaped from under his hands as though they were facing a rapid. Other Chinamen pulled them from the vat and thrust them under a thing like a chaff-cutter, which, descending, hewed them into unseemly red gobbets fit ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... hour the headless body crawled, or tried to crawl, always toward the lake. And now they could look at the enemy. Not his size so much as his weight surprised them. Although barely four feet long, he was so heavy that Rolf ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... such beliefs in the supernatural among my men. We had our own "white lady" on the highroad where it turns off to Aldington, though I never met anyone who had seen her; there were, too, signs and wonders before approaching deaths, and a thrilling story of a headless calf in the neighbourhood. ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... two girls came into the hall the Director, Maurice Renaud, the Marquis Assistant, and the stage-manager, Louis de Marset, were the only others who had arrived. The manufacturer of the paper models was arranging the rock, the dragon, and the headless horse in the middle of the room. He held a brush red with dragon's blood, gave it a touch, and recoiled to admire the effect; then taking the sea weed he had gathered from real rocks, began placing it in little bunches on his ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... bench, his sins falling away with the leaves that flew to the ground as he cried, "Hosanna, save us now!" All through the night his father prayed in the synagogue, but the child went home to bed, after a gallant struggle with his closing eyelids, hoping not to see his headless shadow on the stones, for that was a sign of death. But the ninth day of Tabernacles was the best, "The Rejoicing of the Law," when the fifty-second portion of the Pentateuch was finished and the first portion ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... knees, as if in morning prayers. An arrow projected from his head. His left hand was on the earth, fallen forward, his right hand uplifted, invoking Divine aid. Young Verendrye lay face down, his back hacked to pieces, a spear sunk in his waist, the headless body mockingly decorated with porcupine quills. So died one of the bravest of the young nobility in ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... proceeded slowly, for the heavy broken timbers pressed mercilessly on the object beneath, and when at last it lay revealed in the dim lantern light its ghastly appearance caused all to step back in horror. It was a headless corpse! ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... two other women, and six men counting the guide and Weaver. The ship was a red-lit cavern. The "crewman" turned out to be a hairy horror, a three-foot headless lump shaped like an eggplant, supported by four splayed legs and with an indefinite number of tentacles wriggling below ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... done. After this the earls rode back to Kenilworth. Guy of Warwick remained all the time in his castle. He had already taken his share in the cruel act of treachery. It was, however, important that Lancaster should take the responsibility for the deed. Four cobblers of Warwick piously bore the headless corpse within their town. But the grim earl sent it back, because it was not found on his fee. At last some Oxford Dominicans took charge of the body and deposited it temporarily in their convent, not daring to inter it in holy ground, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... health!" said he, touching glasses with the three men. Then, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand: "Say, have you heard of the fuss they're making over the two headless uhlans that they picked up over there near Villecourt? Villecourt was burned yesterday, you know; they say it was the penalty the village had to pay for harboring you. You'll have to be prudent, don't you see, and not show yourselves about here for a time. I'll see the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... The headless bodies of the dead were left where they had fallen. The long Russian winter was just beginning, and for five months they lay unburied, a frightful spectacle for the eyes of the citizens ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... behind you and laid cold fingers on yours. I confess that, to this day, I cannot help fancying its little, furtive footsteps behind me when I come here after nightfall. I'm not afraid of the White Lady or the headless man or the skeletons, but I wish I had never imagined that baby's ghost into existence. How angry Marilla and Mrs. Barry were over that affair," concluded ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... at the seat of government in mid-winter has many advantages. Congress is then in session, the Supreme Court sitting, and society, that mystic, headless, power, at the height of its glory. Being the season for official receptions, where one meets foreign diplomats from every civilized nation, it is the time chosen by strangers to visit our beautiful ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... murmuring incoherent words of French and English strangely mingled; and Cigarette crouched on the ground, with the firelight playing all over her picturesque, childlike beauty, and her large eyes strained and savage, yet with a strange, wistful pain in them; looking out at the moonlight where the headless body lay in a cold, gray ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... had earned its name in earlier centuries from the bloody deeds of its first owners. No gillie would go within a mile of it, even in bright sunshine. Tinker's carelessness of its ghosts, a headless woman and a redheaded man with his throat cut, had won him the deepest respect of the village, or rather hamlet, of Ardrochan. Twice he had constrained himself to wait in the tower till dusk, in the hope that his fearful, but ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... restorations going on that we had no room for the emotions we had come prepared with. With the compassion of a kindly man in a plasterer's spattered suit of white, we did what we could, but it was very little. I at least was not yet armed with the facts that, among others, the headless form of Archbishop Laud had been carried from the block on Tower Hill and laid in All Hallows; and if I had known it, I must have felt that though Laud could be related to our beginnings through his persecution of the Puritans, whom he ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... two slabs, standing exactly thirty paces apart, mark a similar episode, and the headless man is said to have run that distance before falling. This legend—which, furthermore, has many eye-witnesses still living in the town who swear to the truth—is more capable of belief if one takes into consideration the flight of a ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... the roof o'ergrown with moss Has many a tuft of thatch projected, A spider-web is built across The window-jamb, else unprotected; The wing of a gleaming dragon-fly Hangs in it like some petal tender, The body armed in golden splendor Lies headless on the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... and keep your powder dry.' Naseby The Cavaliers and Roundheads fought 1645 In many a field, 'till Naseby brought To Generals Cromwell and Fairfax A crowning victory, though not 'pax.' The King's beheaded, but the State Experiences no headless fate; A commonwealth's forthwith proclaimed And Cromwell's soon Protector named. Dunbar In sixteen-fifty Dunbar sees 1650 The Royal Scots brought to their knees; Worcester And in the second Worcester fight 1651 Cromwell for good asserts ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... refuse, however, to believe that this man—a notorious coward—has performed any such feat, and hasten out to the battle-field. There they find not only the headless dragon, but the unconscious Tristram, and the tongue which proves him the real victor. To nurse him back to health is no great task for these ladies, who, like many of the heroines of the mediaeval epics and romances, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... marvelous. Hour after hour I stand—I stand spellbound, as it were-and gaze upon the statuary in Leicester Square. [Leicester Square being a horrible chaos, with the relic of an equestrian statue in the center, the king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better condition.] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII., and Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind which of my ancestors I admire the most. I go to that matchless Hyde Park and drive all around ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... youth, who, when a full-blown commercial traveller suddenly threw down his samples, bought a colour-box, and became the master whom we have all admired. Marlotte, for a central figure, boasted Olivier de Penne. Only Barbizon, since the death of Millet, was a headless commonwealth. Even its secondary lights, and those who in my day made the stranger welcome, have since deserted it. The good Lachevre has departed, carrying his household gods; and long before that Gaston Lafenestre was taken ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... witch has held the silken threads, which bound her millions of subjects, she has been deaf—deaf to the cries of starvation, injustice and cruelty; heedless to devastation of life by her servants; smiling at piles of headless men; gloating over torture when it ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... have been thrown into dungeon for life, or shot. In France, the idol of the revolutionist of all countries, they would heave been carried before a mob tribunal, their names simply asked, their sentences pronounced, and their bodies headless within the first half hour. In England, they had the benefit of the law in all its sincerity, the assistance of the most distinguished counsel, the judgment of the most impartial tribunal, and the incalculable advantage of a trial by men of their own condition, feelings, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... forwards, his hands behind his back, and a huge cigar in his mouth, the wonder of the little boys of Northam, who peeped in stealthily as they passed the iron-work gates, to see the back of the famous fire-breathing captain who had sailed round the world and been in the country of headless men and flying dragons, and then popped back their heads suddenly, as he turned toward them in his walk. And Ayacanora looked, and looked, with no less admiration than the urchins at the gate: but she got no more of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... bosom. It was veritable murder, a pounding away of human flesh; the whole disappeared in a murky, muddy mash. By the side of the gentleman in the dark jacket, amidst the bright verdure, where the two little wrestlers so lightly tinted were disporting themselves, there remained naught of the nude, headless, breastless woman but a mutilated trunk, a vague cadaverous stump, an indistinct, lifeless ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Ealhstan, when Osric rode up to him, bearing still a headless spear. "Let them bide till Eanulf comes. None can reach ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... looking to see if I am one who will never cross your path again,' he said, in a harsh tone. 'Lady Jane Grey—no! Guildford Dudley has this day expiated his crimes on Tower Hill. His headless trunk is already buried beneath the pavement where ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... of the ancient Gripir, and the forging of the Sword; And there were the coils of Fafnir, and the hooded threat of death, And the King by the cooking-fire, and the fowl of the Glittering Heath; And there was the headless King-smith and the golden halls of the Worm, And the laden Greyfell faring through the land of perished storm; And there was the head of Hindfell, and the flames to the sky-floor driven; And there was the glittering shield-burg, and the fallow bondage ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... and from the knoll, which was really the beginning of the town, I had my first good view of it—one long street of low wooden houses running eastward to the river's brink, where a few decayed mills and wharves straggled to north and south—a T, or headless cross, will give you roughly the shape of the settlement. From the knoll you looked straight along the main street; with a field-gun you could have swept it clean from end to end, and, what's more, you ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... [FN302] This tale is headless as the last is tailless. We must suppose that soon after Mohammed ibn Ibrahim had quitted the Caliph, taking away the ten charmers, Al-Maamun felt his "breast straitened" and called for a story upon one of his Rawis named Ibn Ahyam. This name ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... earthworks or digging trenches. As well as they could surmise, the garrison, like the besieging army, was seeking shelter and rest, and from this fact the keen mind of Colonel Arthur Winchester divined that the defense was confused and headless. ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... make them beg for life;— Spare them, though, if they'd be good And guard me from what haunts the wood— From those creepy, shuddery sights That come round a fellow nights— Imps that squeak and trolls that prowl, Ghouls, the slimy devil-fowl, Headless goblins with lassoes, Scarlet witches worse than those, Flying dragon-fish that bellow So as most to ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Century by the actual commission of a similar deed, struck horror to the hearts of the people, and they were worked up to a pitch that had never been witnessed in this country before. Telephones and telegraph were called into service, and the finding of the headless body of a young and doubtless beautiful woman in a sequestered spot near Fort Thomas, was flashed around the world. So shocked was the country over this ghastly find that the metropolitan papers from one ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... up to this point is simply a headless neck attached to a tow body, supported by natural legs fixed to a perch. I assume that your fragments are sufficiently relaxed, and the feathers cleaned and nearly dried. All the fat must, of course, have been scraped off the inside of each piece of skin. Arrange these ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... friends, for such they might now be styled, walked towards the castle, arm in arm; and stood on the terrace, adorned with headless statues, and backed by a part of the mouldering ruin, half hid ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boom that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Kuklux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the decade closed, ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... on the right Nine headless bodies rose to sight, And on the left, from grim repose, Nine heads that had no ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... his inn or hotel, in Eldeanes-lane for dinner, encountered the mob, and, hearing them shout Traitor, he rode rapidly to St. Paul's for sanctuary, but was unhorsed, taken to Cheapside, stripped and beheaded. About the hour of vespers, the same day, October 15th, the choir of St. Paul's took up the headless body of the prelate and conveyed it to St. Paul's, but, on being informed that he died under sentence, the body was brought to St. Clement's beyond the Temple, but was ejected; so that the naked corpse, with a rag ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... of Pitfoddells, carried the royal banner in Montrose's last battle. It bore the headless corpse of Charles I., with this motto, "Judge and revenge my cause, O Lord!" Menzies proved himself worthy of this noble trust, and, obstinately refusing quarter, died in defence ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... the morning of the 12th of February that Lady Jane Grey was put to death. She was then confined in the 'Brick' Tower, the residence of the Master of the Ordnance. From her window she saw the headless body of her husband brought back from Tower Hill in a cart. She looked upon it without shrinking. 'Oh! Guilford,' she said, 'the antipast is not so bitter after thou hast tasted, and which I shall soon ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... the spot where Triphyna lay dead. After they had all knelt in prayer, St. Gildas said to the corpse, "Arise, take thy head and thy child, and follow us." The dead body obeyed, the bewildered troop followed; but, gallop as fast as they could, the headless body was always in front, carrying the babe in her left hand, and her pale head in the right. In this manner, they reached the castle of Comorre. "Count," says St. Gildas, "I bring back your wife such as your wickedness has made her, and thy child such as Heaven has given it thee. Wilt thou receive ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... from the saddle and given a good blow as a remembrance, flew upon him from behind. The cornet swung his arm with all his might, and brought his sword down upon Borodaty's bent neck. Greed led to no good: the head rolled off, and the body fell headless, sprinkling the earth with blood far and wide; whilst the Cossack soul ascended, indignant and surprised at having so soon quitted so stout a frame. The cornet had not succeeded in seizing the hetman's head by its scalp-lock, and fastening it to his saddle, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... several very remarkable things connected with this discovery. The boots were what are called "rights and lefts," and in a good state of preservation. The crosier was perfect, and a part of the body was hard, and of a copper-coloured hue, whilst the other part was decomposed. The body was headless, and a piece of lead was found lying in place of the skull, ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... night you could most naturally have said 'Let me see—Joe,—it's two pillows that you always have, isn't it? And a double-fold of blanket at the foot?' You mean that you and Joe have been washed and scrubbed together so familiarly all your young childhood that you could identify Joe's headless body twenty years hence by the kerosene-lamp scar across his back? You mean that you and Joe have played house together so familiarly all your young tin-dish days that even your rag dolls called Joe 'Father'? You mean that since your earliest memory,—until a year or so ago,—Life ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott |
