"Highwayman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hands went up from timid women and strong men, until click-dick came in rapid succession from the driver's box, where Arthur sat, and shot after shot followed each other, one bullet grazing the ear of the highwayman at the horses' head, and another cutting through the slouched hat of ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... nobody fetch him to me? pray don't kill me before I see him once more. You durst not use me so if he was here.'—Every accent still rings in my ears. Oh, heavens! to hear this, and at the same time to see the poor delirious creature deriving the greatest horrors from my sight, and mistaking me for a highwayman who had a little before robbed her. But I ask your pardon; the sensations I felt are to be known only from experience, and to you must appear dull and insipid. At last, she seemed for a moment to know me, and cried, 'O heavens! my dearest brother!' upon ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... this change the gentlemen of the road began to favour the gardens with their presence, chief among their number being that notorious highwayman John Rann, otherwise known as Sixteen-String Jack from his habit of wearing a bunch of eight ribbons on each knee. But he came to Bagnigge once too often, for, after insisting on paying unwelcome attentions ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... in love with a fellow she had only seen as a huntsman, a falconer, and a beggar, and who confesses, without any circumstances of excuse, that he is obliged to run his country, having newly committed a murder. She ought reasonably to have supposed him, at best, a highwayman; yet the virtuous virgin resolves to run away with him, to live among the banditti, and wait upon his trollop, if she had no other way of enjoying his company. This senseless tale is, however, so well varnished with melody of words and pomp of sentiments, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... and departed to cart merchandise to market? Was it on the highway that you surrendered your soul to God, or did your friends first marry you to some fat, red-faced soldier's daughter; after which your harness and team of rough, but sturdy, horses caught a highwayman's fancy, and you, lying on your pallet, thought things over until, willy-nilly, you felt that you must get up and make for the tavern, thereafter blundering into an icehole? Ah, our peasant of Russia! Never do you ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... resolved, if his horse could hold out, to push on till nightfall. He, however, was not perfectly satisfied with the manner of his host, and could not help fancying that he suspected him of being either a highwayman or a fugitive from justice; and every time the door opened, he expected to see a bailiff or a Government official of some sort enter, to interrogate him as to what he was about and where he was going. ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the hypocrite's hope: and, in a word, it is positive vice: for it is either a mask to deceive others, or a mist to deceive ourselves. A man that is clothed with negatives, thus argues: I am not such a drunkard as my landlord, such a thief as my tenant, such a rakish fellow, or a highwayman; No! I live a sober, regular, retired life: I am a good man, I go to church; God, I thank thee. Now, through a mans boasts of his virtue in contradiction to the vices mentioned, yet a person had better have them altogether than the man himself; or he is so full of himself, so persuaded that ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... care must be taken that there be no decrease by adding a weaker word to a stronger, as accusing one of sacrilege, and giving him afterward the name of thief; or adding the character of wanton fellow to that of a highwayman. The sense ought to increase and rise, which Cicero observes admirably where he says: "And thou, with that voice, those lungs, and that gladiator-like vigor of thy whole body." Here each succeeding thing is stronger than the one before; but if he had begun with the whole ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... and this is a simple and clear matter. If falling were all that ever happened to a good man, all his days would be a simple matter of striving and repentance. But it is not all. There come to him certain junctures, crises, when life, like a highwayman, springs upon him, demanding that he stand and deliver his convictions in the name of some righteous cause, bidding him do evil that good may come. I cannot say that I believe in doing evil that good may come. I do not. I think that any man who honestly ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... of the corner house, now a grocer's shop. It was originally in the house on the same site occupied for a time by Madame Grisi. The stone itself is very small, about 8 by 6 inches, and, being high up, is rather difficult to see. The story goes that the place was so called in memory of a highwayman, who, being overtaken at the cross-roads, shot himself after flinging his purse into the crowd, and was buried here with a stake driven through his body. Purser's Cross is mentioned in the parish ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... are so long. Parental anxiety goes through so many trials and so various, and they all strike roots into the parent's heart. Yet after twenty years of love and hope and fear comes a handsome young fellow, a charming highwayman to a parent's eye, and whisks her away after two months' courtship. Then, oh, ye young, curb for a moment your blind egotism, and feel a little for the parents who have felt so much for you! You rather like William Hope, so let him help you to pity your own parents. See his sad face as he ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... to a passage which opens into a cavernous recess beneath, to which there is ample room for anybody to descend. The local wiseacres declare that there is, or was, a communication between this secret chamber and another famous highwayman's inn, the old "Magpie" directly on the Bath road, and that those who preyed on travellers used to bolt from one house to the other like hunted rabbits. No one seemingly has himself ever explored ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... Dick Turpin was born in Essex, England, and was originally a butcher. Afterwards he became a notorious highwayman, and was finally executed for horse-stealing, 10 April 1739. He and his steed Black Bess are well described in W. H. Ainsworth's ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... study five months in the year, and lounge all the rest! O where was the common sense of those who instituted such colleges? In the English colleges everyone may reside all the year, as all my pupils did; and I should have thought myself little better than a highwayman if I had not lectured them every day in the year but Sundays.' Wesley's Journal, iv. 75. Johnson lived to see Oxford empty in the Long Vacation. Writing on Aug. 1, 1775, he said:—'The place is now a sullen solitude.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... not, sir. You are simply the bearers of it. Permit me to ask you, however, if it is your recommendation that I yield to the demand of this crude highwayman ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... of adventure is no saving grace. It is no grace at all. It lays a man under no obligation of faithfulness to an idea and even to his own self. Roughly speaking, an adventurer may be expected to have courage, or at any rate may be said to need it. But courage in itself is not an ideal. A successful highwayman showed courage of a sort, and pirate crews have been known to fight with courage or perhaps only with reckless desperation in the manner of cornered rats. There is nothing in the world to prevent a mere lover or pursuer ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... don't know what you are talking about," said Waller, "and I don't know who you are, only that you jumped out at me like a highwayman with a pistol. I say, ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... overreach and take in the other it is a cunning endeavor to obtain by peaceful manoeuvre and the chicanery of cabinets those advantages which a nation would otherwise have wrested by force of arms; in the same manner as a conscientious highwayman reforms and becomes a quiet and praiseworthy citizen, contenting himself with cheating his neighbor out of that property he would formerly ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... of a highwayman, but it was singularly blended with French politeness. He had not always been a privateersman—a calling that implies an undue love of gold; and he was quite capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, in matters in which his own pocket had no direct concern. As soon as he comprehended ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... polite and frank note, stating your purpose and intimating your self-respecting ideas of your profession, may prove effective. Once establish your reputation as an interviewer who is not a highwayman in disguise, and you will achieve tenfold the success your less reputable confreres gain in the long run. Try and remember always that fame, glory, or even crime, do not destroy all human sensibilities, or render the possessor invulnerable ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... clerks and petty magistrates; and the armies of Spain as unbeaten and glorious as they were ragged, with no pay but pillage and in continual mutiny against their chiefs, flooded our country with a swarm of wretched vagabonds, from whence proceeded the bully, the beggar with his blunderbuss, the highwayman, the wandering hermits, the starving nobleman, and all those characters of which picturesque novels ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... half-mutinous crew too near pirate ships, M. Radisson ordered anchor up. With a deck-mop fastened in defiance to our prow, the St. Pierre slipped out of the harbour through the half-dark of those northern summer nights, and gave the heel to any highwayman waiting to attack as ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... the bundle. I saw it was a collection of old plays in manuscript-prompt copies, scored, cut and interlined. The top one I noticed was "The Bloodspot: Or the Maiden, the Miser and the Murderer;" the second, "The Female Highwayman." ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... was not willing to give up so easily things that he had gained as spoils in righteous warfare. He refuted with his fists, as well as by argument, the barber's coarse suggestion that he was a common highwayman; and his master, coming up at this instant, was proud and pleased to hear his faithful squire talk like that, and also to see the barber's teeth gone, which the force of Sancho's blow evidently had carried away. As a matter of fact, Sancho's ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... walk among traps and pitfalls; its daring trustfulness in its own clairvoyance all the time, and declarations that every pit it falls into is a seventh heaven; and that it is pleasant and profitable to break its legs;—with all this it is difficult to have patience. One thinks of the highwayman with his eyes shut in the "Arabian Nights"; and wonders whether any kind of scourging would prevail upon the Anglican highwayman to open "first one and then ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... instruments invent, was whirled up and down the country against me, thinking, as I said, that by that means they should make my ministry to be abandoned. It began, therefore, to be rumoured up and down among the people, that I was a witch, a Jesuit, a highwayman, and the like. To all which, I shall only say, God knows that I am innocent. But as for mine accusers, let them provide themselves to meet me before the tribunal of the Son of God, there to answer for all these things, with all ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... road over Heavy Tree Hill in Sonora County. Near him lay two other bodies, one afterwards identified as John Stubbs, a resident of the Hill, and probably a traveling companion of Wade's, and the other a noted desperado and highwayman, still masked, as at the moment of the attack. Wade and his companion had probably sold their lives dearly, and against odds, for another mask was found on the ground, indicating that the attack was not single-handed, and as ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... perversity, and admits his capacity for criticising England with a certain slight malicious taste for taking the conceit out of her. Seemingly he belongs to that numerous class who think that to admit a fault is to excuse it. As a highwayman might say before taking your purse, "Now, I admit, I have a certain slight taste for thieving," and expect you to smile forgiveness of his depredation, Shaw's bias is evident wherever he discusses the action and qualities of Great Britain. Thus he contrasts ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... as paying the least Complement to the Authors of their Wisdom: No, Gentlemen and Ladies, I am not the Daw in the Fable, that would vaunt and strut in your Plumes. And besides, I know very well you might have me upon the Hank according to Law, and treat me as a Highwayman or Robber; for you might safely swear upon your Honours, that I had stole the whole Book from your recreative Minutes. But I am more generous; I am what you may call Frank and Free; I acknowledge ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... name, nor his habitation, as the felleh says; but he was so conscientious that when a highwayman attackted him onct, he wouldn't holla murder nor he wouldn't holla thief, 'cause he wasn't certain whether the highwayman wanted to kill him or rob him. He was something like George Washington, who couldn't tell a lie. Did you ever hear that story ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... been chief purveyor of comic opera to his generation, and for so ideal a work as "Robin Hood," and such pleasing constructions as parts of his other operas ("Don Quixote," "The Fencing Master," "The Highwayman," for instance), one ought to be grateful, especially as his music has always a certain elegance ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... life had been once or twice endangered by the suspicions to which his horse's conduct gave rise, and his liberty as often threatened by peace officers, who were disposed to apprehend him as a notorious highwayman, he found himself obliged to part with the animal for a mere trifle, and to purchase at a dearer rate a horse of less external figure and action, ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... not be a bad plan to ride after Mr. Conway; accost him on the road; represent my necessities to him, and request a small loan out of his abundant means, to prevent myself from being deprived of my luxuries—liquor and cards. Is that a roundabout way of saying I intended to act the highwayman, perhaps the—murderer—on this occasion? By no means, madam! What is highway robbery? Is it not the brutal and wanton robbery of the poor as well as the rich? Well, I was not going to rob anybody. I was going to request a small ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... for a family carriage, on its way to a country seat, to be attacked about dusk; the old gentleman eased of his purse and watch, the ladies of their necklaces and ear-rings, by a politely-spoken highwayman on a blood mare, who afterwards leaped the hedge and galloped across the country, to the admiration of Miss Carolina the daughter, who would write a long and romantic account of The adventure to her ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Our judges hand out sentences in blissful ignorance of later psychology. Last week a boy of eleven was birched for holding up another boy of nine on the highway and demanding tuppence or his life. The attitude of the bench is that fear of another flogging will prevent that boy from turning highwayman again. I admit that fear will cure him of that special vice, but what the bench does not know is that the boy's anti-social energy will take another form. Every act of man is prompted by a wish, and very often this wish is ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... "Mary, the Maid of the Inn," is supposed, and not without foundation, to be connected with this Abbey. "Hark to Rover," the name of the house where the key is kept, was, a century ago, a retired inn or pot-house, and the haunt of many a desperate highwayman and poacher. The anecdote is so well known, that it is scarcely necessary to relate it. ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... the sudden death of his beloved, and the discovery that she had worn a hair-shirt next her delicate body. Be this as it may, many allusions in his poems suggest that he had lived the wild life of the barbarous Umbrian cities, being a highwayman perhaps, forfeiting his life, and also having to fly the country before the fury of some family vendetta. On the other hand, it is plain at every line that he was a frantic ascetic, taking a savage pleasure in vilifying all ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... inclining westwards to Portsmouth; more so still, through Salisbury to Dorsetshire and Wilts. These great roads were farmed out as so many Roman provinces amongst pro-consuls. Yes, but with a difference, you will say, in respect of moral principles. Certainly with a difference; for the English highwayman had a sort of conscience for gala-days, which could not often be said of the Roman governor or procurator. At this moment we see that the opening for the forger of bank-notes is brilliant; but practically it languishes, as being too brilliant; it demands an array of talent ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... realising what unspeakably revolting spots Saletrousur-Somme, or Saint-Andre-Linfecte were. He was a wonderfully kind-hearted man. Once, whilst playing at the Court Theatre, he noticed the call-boy constantly poring over a book. Cecil, glancing over it, was surprised to find that it was not The Boy Highwayman of Hampstead, but a treatise on Algebra. The call-boy told him that he was endeavouring to educate himself, with a view to going out to India. Cecil bought him quite a library of books, paid for a series of classes for him, and eventually, thanks to Cecil, the call-boy passed second ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... stop thief! a highwayman!" Not one of them was mute; And all and each that passed that way Did join ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... true, a species of commerce, that was called the "forced trade on the Spanish Main" existed under that code of elastic morals, which adapts the maxim of "your purse or your life" to modern diplomacy, as well as to the habits of the highwayman. According to divers masters in the art of ethics now flourishing among ourselves, more especially in the atmosphere of the journals of the commercial communities, the people that "can trade and won't trade, must be made to trade." At the commencement ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Freemantle the Privateersman," and similar works, not often found at the present time on the shelves of the booksellers, though I am sorry to say that their places have been filled with books hardly less pernicious. The hero of these stories was a pirate, a highwayman, a smuggler, or a bandit. He was painted in glowing colors; and in admiring his boldness, my sympathies were with this outcast and outlaw. These books were bad, very bad; because they brought the reader into sympathy with evil and wicked men. It seemed ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... to realize, with a grim sense of humour, that he was aiding and abetting the mischievous schemes of some notorious highwayman, and that his father's two favourite young horses, by which he set such store, were destined to become the property of the gentlemen ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... morning breaks the spell of dud weather, and the pilots fly away; but lucky indeed is the squadron that reaches France without delivering over part of its possessions to that aerial highwayman the forced landing. ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... ship beating to windward, and a scowling fellow of Herculean proportions striding along the beach; he, to be sure, was a pirate. This was further afield than my home-keeping fancy loved to travel, and designed altogether for a larger canvas than the tales that I affected. Give me a highwayman and I was full to the brim; a Jacobite would do, but the highwayman was my favourite dish. I can still hear that merry clatter of the hoofs along the moonlit lane; night and the coming of day are still related in my ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... filled with small change. Here was a chance to save breath as well as carriage hire, and the little Jew charged down on them so fiercely, as they crawled up the hill, that the corporal who sat on the money with a musket across his knees, had nearly shot him for a highwayman before giving ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... shall send a boat—or at least I mean a buggy—to fetch you, as soon as you are off duty, and return you the same way on Monday. Come, girls, 'twill be dark before we are home; and since the patrols were withdrawn, I hear there's a highwayman down this road again. That is one of the blessings of peace, Scudamore; even as Latin and Greek are. 'Apertis otia portis'—Open the gates for laziness. Ah, I should have done well at old Winton, they tell me, if I had not happened to run ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Philippine Islands what a brigand is to Italy, a bandit to Spain, a highwayman to England, and a train-robber to America; a man who lives by his wits, and stops at no means to gain his object. The "banca," by the ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... though my agitation was extreme (the crisis had seemed so favorable!), while she limped forward and accosted me civilly, with a demand as peremptory as a highwayman's for my watch and chain, of which I took ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... guard just whispered in my ear, that he saw you look at the priming of your pistols before getting in; and faith I said four paters, and a hail Mary, before you'd count five. Well, when you got seated, the thought came into my mind that maybe, highwayman as you were, you would not like dying a natural death, more particularly if you were an Irishman; and so I trumped up that long story about the hydrophobia, and the gentleman's thumb, and devil knows what besides; and, while I was telling it, the cold perspiration was running down my head and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... swings the lash on the high mountain trail, And the pipe of the packer is scenting the gale; For the trails are all open, the roads are all free, And the highwayman's whistle is heard on ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... constable, when Mr. Porson had called upon him to ask for one of his men to accompany him to the dealer's, had told him that White bore a very bad reputation. He was suspected of being the medium through whom stolen goods in that part of Yorkshire were sent up to London for disposal. A highwayman who had been caught and executed at York, had in his confession stated that this man had acted as his go between for the disposal of the watches and other articles he took from travelers, and White's premises had then been thoroughly searched by the constables; but ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... here, Humphrey," said my mistress, holding up a brave cloak of dark red cloth, as long as to my knee, "here is what will comfort you against the cold morning air, and change you into a veritable highwayman ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... he's a drunkard, a gambler, and a highwayman," nodded Kiddie. "Well, I'll go along and ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... is difficult for a man in the Van to look to the Rear; still he need not swoop down on pedestrians quite so much like a highwayman, saying, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... openly and quite frankly. Now if we keep 'neutral' to a highwayman—what do we get for our pains? That's the mistake we are making. If we had sent Bernstorff home the day after the Lusitania was sunk and recalled Gerard and begun to train an army we'd have had no more trouble with them. But since they have found out that they ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... backs upon him? Here, for example, is a man engaged in highway robbery, and another man is acting as an accessory, without whose aid the robber cannot succeed. In saying to the accomplice. 'Hands off! Don't aid the villain!' shall I be told that this is enabling the highwayman to rob with impunity? What an absurdity! Are we not trying to save the pockets of all travelers from being picked in seeking to break up all connection ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... had mounted. With his gaunt figure, his short riding-jacket under the broad-brimmed, varnished hat, his yellow breeches over his lean thighs, his high leather boots, his large, heavy spurs, and his whip, he looked like a highwayman. He rode away cursing and swearing, without saying good-by, leading the brown mare by a halter. He never once glanced back at the farm-house, but the mare several times bent her neck around and emitted a doleful neigh, as if complaining because ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... is it; Richard Guy Isshaw, younger son, who went wholly to the bad—who turned highwayman—whom you saved. The only one out of the eight,—the rest were hanged at Tyburn and Kennington, poor devils,—and thought I would ride over and thank you, and see you once more. Your husband would have hanged me, I ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... exercise, in accordance with the higher law of liberty and morality. A large portion of our vices and crimes are created either by law, or its maladministration. These laws exist because organized ignorance, like a highwayman with a club, is permitted to stand in the way of wise legislation and honest administration, and to demand satisfaction from the spoils of office, and the profits of contracts. Of this state of affairs we complain, and on great occasions the community arises ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... great hunter who sleeps with his gun at his pillow is awake in an instant, with all his faculties alert, when the sacred spider breaks a twig in the jungle? You remember how the handsome highwayman, at the first far clatter of hoofs on the great North Road, is up and out on the scullery roof of the inn before you have turned the page, and is deep in Lonely Copse (wearing the serving-wench's stomacher) before his first fat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... we next arrived, we observed, during a saunter around the village, a curious stone erected to the memory of a highwayman rejoicing in the most un-romantic name of Snooks, who its was hanged here at the beginning of the century for robbing the ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes
... magistrates were produced. Those lawyers can hardly have been incompetent in whose school were trained the framers of the Code Napoleon, the model of modern Europe. Internal order and police were maintained with a thoroughness that was remarkable in an age when the possession of a good horse put the highwayman very nearly on an equality with the officer. The worst experts employed by the government appear to have been those connected with taxation and expenditure, from the Controller of the Finances to the last clerk in the Excise. The schemes of most of them were ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... made a slight show of resistance the assailant called to his comrades in the bush to fire upon the first man who showed fight; this threat induced a wise resignation to the inevitable. Having possessed himself in an incredibly short time of his booty, the highwayman backed into the thicket and quickly made off. The procedure from first to last occupied hardly more than ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... frightening him, it is a desperate one. All I can tell you, Stanley, is this, that if I were a man, and an attempt made to extort from me any sort of concession by terror, I would shoot the miscreant who made it through the head, like a highwayman.' ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... wit throughout the Town. Garrick When Garrick as the 'Moody Dane' Drew the Town to Drury Lane, Mrs. Siddons Sarah Siddons was all the rage Tragedy Queen of every age. Highwaymen armed to the teeth Waited for prey on Hounslow Heath; Per contra the Highwayman's pate Was oft strung up at Tyburn Gate. Capt. Cook It's only right a History book 1728-1779 Should mark the feats of Captain Cook; So jot it down in these our Rhymes That round the World he sailed three times. Inventions These are ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... singulto. Hidden kasxita. Hide kasxi. Hide (skin) hauxto. Hideous malbelega. Hiding-place kasxejo. Hierarchy hierarhxio. Hieroglyphic hieroglifo. High alta. Highlander montano. Highness (title) mosxto. High-tide alfluo. Highway vojo. Highwayman rabisto. Hill monteto. Hillock altajxeto. Hilt tenilo. Him lin. Himself sin mem. Hind cervino. Hinder posta. Hinder malhelpi. Hinderance malhelpo. Hindermost lasta. Hindoo Hindo. Hindrance malhelpo. Hindu Hindo. Hinge cxarniro. Hint proponeti. Hip ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... who assembled to see this highwayman, were sagacious enough to discern something very villainous in his aspect; which (begging their pardon) is the very picture of simplicity; and the justice himself put a very unfavourable construction upon some of his answers, which, he said, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... family, had a place on the box, with Mr. Charley by his side. The precious clothes were packed in imperials on the roof. The Colonel's pistols were put in the pockets of the carriage, and the blunderbuss hung behind the box, in reach of Brian, who was an old soldier. No highwayman, however, molested the convoy; not even an innkeeper levied contributions on Colonel Lambert, who, with a slender purse and a large family, was not to be plundered by those or any other depredators on the king's highway; and a reasonable ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said the Master. "A gentleman who is brave without being just may become turbulent; while a common person who is brave and not just may end in becoming a highwayman." ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... disconsolate demeanour of the Post-Office Guard. We were stopping at some station where they take in water, when he dismounted slowly from the little box in which he sits in ghastly mockery of his old condition with pistol and blunderbuss beside him, ready to shoot the first highwayman (or railwayman) who shall attempt to stop the horses, which now travel (when they travel at all) inside and in a portable stable invented for the purpose,—he dismounted, I say, slowly and sadly, from his post, and looking mournfully about him as if in ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... she spoke, some mere Hedon of the court, fluttered in the frank sunshine of her look. "Fair gentlewoman," he began, pomander-ball in hand, "had you a venture in that ship? Then the less beauteous Amphitrite hath played highwayman to your wealth. Now if I might, drawing from the storehouse of your smiles inveterate Courage, dub myself your Valor, and so ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... like you? Scandalous! No, for, after all, you look nineteen or twenty. And who is the highwayman that thinks to rob me of my ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... by more than one local chronicler that John Whitfield, of Coathill, a notorious north country highwayman, about 1777, was gibbeted alive on Barrock, a hill a few miles from Wetherell, near Carlisle. He kept the countryside in a state of terror, and few would venture out after nightfall for fear of encountering him. He shot a man on horseback ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... your cousin's anxiety," Love returned, leading her away from the dark shadows of the trees back to the old church again, where the story of the dreadful highwayman created such a sensation that the gathering was soon broken up, every one departing for home, while many regrets were expressed that Miss Craye could not describe the appearance of her assailant clearly enough to lead ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... better, Harry, though I did not find out where he puts up in London. However, that is of small consequence. In the first place, I found out that our suspicions were right, and that the fellow is a highwayman, and seems to be captain of a gang consisting anyhow of three, and perhaps of more, fellows like himself. In the second place, he intends, with his three comrades, to attack the coach on Friday week, two or three miles out of town. Nothing could better suit our purpose, even if we had planned the ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... King George, in respect of her criminal code and her prison regulations, one of the most bloody-minded and barbarous countries on the earth. If I thought it would do any good to the rising generation, I would cheerfully give my consent to the disinterment of the bones of any genteel highwayman (the more genteel, the more cheerfully), and to their exposure, piecemeal, on any sign-post, gate, or gibbet, that might be deemed a good elevation for the purpose. My reason is as well convinced that these gentry were as utterly worthless and debauched villains, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... pressed upon her the salts and perfumes with which these gentlemen were ordinarily provided for their own use. She regained consciousness. In the excitement of the moment her travelling companions noticed that the highwayman's mask had fallen off, but they ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... escorted them home, dutifully, though they told him not to bother, and they evidently meant it. They seemed capable not only of going home quite unattended but of delivering a pointed lecture to any highwayman or brawler who might ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... with the law while it's in our favour, or we can have it by asking for—and as to the Bold Irishman, don't be brow-beaten, you must summon all your brass, and put on a rugged highwayman's face like his; I expect some work of that kind too, but the ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... aback at so providential an interposition to contradict this highly imaginative statement. My highwayman had turned into a protecting knight-errant of injured innocence. I let the policeman go his way; then I glanced at my preserver. A very ordinary modern St. George he looked, with no lance to speak of, and no steed but a bicycle. Yet his ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... seeing with the mind's eye. False reasoning is owing to some misplacement of the order of objects, or to the omission of some links in the chain, or to the introduction of objects not properly belonging to the series. It is distorted or defective vision. The terrified traveller sees a highwayman in what is really a sign-post in the twilight; and in the twilight of knowledge, the terrified philosopher sees a Pestilence foreshadowed by ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... said that river fords were her greatest danger, she must have forgotten an encounter with a highwayman. She was making a stage journey in Michigan, and noticed with some consternation that the driver carried a brace of pistols. To her inquiries he explained that there had been robberies on the road. "Give me the pistols," she said; "I will take care of them." More in awe ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... it was due at 9.30." The highwayman looked at his watch. "Past ten already," he said to himself. "And when is the local train from ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... more to an honest desire to produce an amusing and interesting book." {93a} Borrow was a great admirer of the "Memoirs" {93b} of Vidocq," principal agent of the French police till 1827—now proprietor of the paper manufactory at St. Maude," and formerly showman, soldier, galley slave, and highwayman. Of this ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... solvency of the retail dealers, occasionally varied by the description of a siege, or battle, in Flanders, which, perhaps, the narrator only gave me at second hand. Robbers, a fertile and alarming theme, filled up every vacancy; and the names of the Golden Farmer, the Flying Highwayman, Jack Needham, and other Beggars' Opera heroes, were familiar in our mouths as household words. At such tales, like children closing their circle round the fire when the ghost story draws to its climax, the riders drew near to each other, looked before and behind ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... along the great road which united London with Berwick, occasionally replenishing his coffers by seizing upon treasure as it was being transported on the road; that there was a self-abandonment and a courtesy in the way in which he proceeded, which distinguishes him from the ordinary highwayman; that he laid down the principle, that he would take from none but those who could afford to lose, and that, if he met with poor persons, he would bestow upon them some part of what he had taken from the rich: in short, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... swam like a golden galleon through Sheila's memory. Never had she felt such well-being of body, mind, and soul. Never had she known such dawns and days, such dusks, such sapphire nights. Sleep came like a highwayman to hold up an eager traveler, but came irresistibly. It caught her up out of life as it catches up a healthy child. Never before had she worked so heartily: out of doors in the vegetable garden; indoors in the sunny kitchen, its windows and door open to the tonic air; never ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... inconvenient moment before undesired listeners, Joan invariably made it, and when the occasion did not present itself she was usually capable of creating it. She was not without a certain popularity, the sort of popularity that a dashing highwayman sometimes achieved among those who were not in the habit of travelling on his particular highway. A great-aunt on her mother's side of the family had married so often that Joan imagined herself justified in claiming cousin-ship ...
— When William Came • Saki
... he was interrupted by a dismayed exclamation from several of the wild band. "A teacher!" As if with one accord they turned and fled into the darkness. For even a highwayman in China respects a man of learning. The travelers went on again, with something of relief and something of the exultation that youth feels in having faced danger. But a second trouble was upon them. One ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... and the three commoners concerned, had caused the greatest excitement in the town. The prints and News Letters were full of them. The three gentlemen in Newgate were almost as much crowded as the bishops in the Tower, or a highwayman before execution. We were allowed to live in the governor's house, as hath been said, both before trial and after condemnation, waiting the king's pleasure; nor was the real cause of the fatal quarrel known, so closely had my lord and the two other persons who knew it kept the secret, but every ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... our regular duties, the neglect of already engrossing relations in our business or profession, the surrender of body and soul, they require for the prey of idlers and strangers! Had our correspondents drawn upon us for a sum of money, had a highwayman bid us stand and deliver our purse, we should not have been so much out of pocket. But we cannot help yielding; there is no excuse or escape. We are under the operation of that most delicate and resistless of powers no successor of Euclid ever explained the principle of, which may be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... of his pockets to the other highwayman, who having opened the box of rufuses and smelt at the phial of plague-water, returned them to him with a look of disgust, and bade him follow his companions. As Leonard was departing, the captain of the band rode after him, and inquired whether he had heard at what hour ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of chicken feed and wot felt like about four one-bone bills." The highwayman's accent was both ominous and contemptuous. "Say, wotcher mean drillin' round dis town in some kinder funny riggin' wit'out no plunder on you? I gotta right to belt you one acrost ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... or without some mighty motive. It is no business of mine to ask that motive or to horn in on your private affairs. And I don't care to. But, from your looks, you're no fool. You know, as well as I do, that that was no panhandler or even a highwayman. It was an enemy whose motive for wanting to murder you, silently and surely, was strong enough to make him willing to risk death or capture. Now, when you say you don't need a bodyguard—Well, it's your own business, of course. Let it go at that, ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... that once having betted twenty pounds on a horse at Newmarket, he won, but at the end of the race could not find the person who had lost. Returning to London the next day, his post-chaise was stopped by a highwayman, whom he immediately recognised as the loser of the day before. He addressed the highwayman as follows: "Sir, I will give you all I have about me if you will pay me the twenty pounds which I won of you yesterday at Newmarket." The man instantly spurred his horse, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... turn you over to the police. You think I found a letter in an abandoned cab at 18th and Massachusetts Avenue early this morning, and instead of coming like a respectable man and asking if I have it and proving your property—do you hear, proving your property—you play the burglar and highwayman. Evidently the letter isn't yours, and you haven't any right or claim to it. I have been injected into this matter; and having been injected I intend to ascertain what can be found from your papers. ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... happy thought suddenly occurs to him, he quickly takes the finest bunch of grapes ready to hand and holds them, out toward me while I am yet a good fifty yards away. The grapes are luscious, and the bunch weighs fully an oke, but I should feel uncomfortably like a highwayman, guilty of intimidating the man out of his property, were I to accept them in the spirit in which they are offered; as it is, the honest fellow will hardly fall to trembling in his tracks should he at any future time again descry the centaur-like ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... to the history of "The Swallows"; one being that a highwayman, known as Steeplechase Jock, the son of a Scottish chieftain, had once plied his trade there and murdered many people, whose bodies were supposed to be buried somewhere on or near the premises. He was said to ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... instantly sought security in flight. The spurs were hardly needed to urge the black stallion forward. A brisk gallop along such ready avenues as Jetty could follow in the darkening woods, rapidly put a safe distance between the traveller and the random highwayman who had shot at him. At any rate, Arlington decided to dismount and take the chances. He tethered the animal, ate a dodger, and slept on ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... repetition of it, I said, I know not why, or how the words came: 'A highwayman notorious for his depredations in the vicinity of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... took possession of the road, and actually stopped the traffic. This was not the generally accepted specimen of a man-eater, old and mangy, but an exceedingly powerful beast of unexampled ferocity and audacity. It was a merciless highwayman, which infested a well-known portion of the road, and levied toll upon the drivers of the native carts, not by an attack upon their bullocks, but by seizing the driver himself, and carrying him off to be ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... with the Quakers who, at their outset, disbelieved in his Divinity and in the inspiration of the Scriptures. Envy at his rapidly acquired reputation brought him baser enemies. He was called a witch, a Jesuit, a highwayman. It was reported that he had 'his misses,' that he had two wives, &c. 'My foes have missed their mark in this,' he said with honest warmth: 'I am not the man. If all the fornicators and adulterers in England were hanged by the neck, ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... committee and general body were powerless. Dale certainly owed his methodical habits to his mechanical training, but whence he derived and how he maintained his exuberance and spontaneity has often puzzled me. He himself accounts for it on the score of heredity, in that an ancestress of his married a highwayman who was hanged at Tyburn ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... is corrupt to the core. The common people dread the policeman as they do the highwayman; for the constable rarely touches a case without making money out of the transaction; and he is expert in ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... coin, which it was impossible to identify. Lord Liverpool, however, had no such fears of highwaymen as the noble earl. He once, when he was a boy, he said, lost all the money he had in his pockets by a highwayman; and it was natural that he should be as much alive to this danger as the noble earl. But still, with all his early associations, he could not help thinking that if danger must revive with a return to a metallic currency, it would have been felt during the last four ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the discovery of Adeline's flight, was cast into prison by the revengeful Marquis, for, in fact, soon after settling in the Abbey, it had occurred to La Motte to commence highwayman. His very first victim had been the Marquis, and, during his mysterious retreats to a tomb in a glade in the forest, he had, in short, been contemplating his booty, jewels which he could not convert into ready money. Consequently, when ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... balancear to balance. balbucear to stammer. balcon m. balcony. balde; de —— gratis, for nothing. ballena whale. ballenero whaler. bambolear vr. to totter. banco bank. banda band. bandera banner. bandido highwayman. bando faction, party, proclamation. bandolero bandit, highwayman. baqueta ramrod. baratura cheapness. barba chin, beard. barbaro barbarous. barco boat. barra crowbar. barranco ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... and detective organisation, and make the transit of a letter between London and Dublin a matter of from five days to nearly as many weeks, and compute how much easier it was then than now for an adventurous highwayman, an absconding debtor, or a pair of fugitive lovers, to make good their retreat. Slow, undoubtedly, was the flight—they did not run, they walked away; but so was pursuit, and altogether, without authentic lights and official helps—a matter of post-chaises and perplexity, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... example was concerned, I had no habits of untruth. I was arrested, and the demand made upon me, "Who do you belong to?" knowing the fatal use these men would make of my truth, I at once concluded that they had no more right to it than a highwayman has ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... of the soul was sealed, and the man once dead, the "lifeless clay" (as the journalist put it—and the Middle Ages was the only source from which he got the idea of clay at all), whether it were that of a Pope or of some random highwayman, had no effect whatsoever upon the fate of the soul. The greatest saint might have offered the most solemn sacrifice on its behalf for years, and if the soul were damned his sacrifice would have ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... very well be old enough to have lived in the days of the highwaymen. Do you feel disposed, from fact, fancy, or both, to do a good winter-hearth story of a highwayman? If you do, I embrace you (per post), and throw up a cap I have purchased for the purpose ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... from discipline. And Lum, the China cook, a freak of a fellar, with coal-black hair all round his head like a girl's, and who'd out-Coe Coe till you'd split. The rest of the crew was just the usual thing—Rotumah boys, an Highwayman or two, and some Nieues—sometimes the same, sometimes ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... brave, and would have cared very little for a highwayman, with a rapier in his hand. But this walking statue, this petrified man, froze his blood. There were then in circulation, strange stories of a surly monk, a nocturnal prowler about the streets of Paris, and they recurred confusedly ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... in his last great triumph. I desired that the senate of Rome might appear before me, in one large chamber, and an assembly of somewhat a later age in counterview, in another. The first seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demigods; the other, a knot of pedlars, pick-pockets, highwayman, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... marine of the enemy to his country, attacking only those weaker than himself, scudding off at the advent of men-of-warsmen, and hovering where the guileless merchantman passed by. The privateersman was a gentleman adventurer, a protected pirate, a social highwayman of the waters. He throve, grew lusty, and prospered,—a robber legitimized by the laws of ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... is delightful! He must be some famous, dashing highwayman. I promise, of course I promise—faithfully." She was glancing constantly toward Manners, and her face was bright with smiles and ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... though he were rugged of face, yet he must be a man that had some power of affection. Well, the woman amended, and all they left that part. I heard no more of them sithence, until late last night, as I was a-riding home, very nigh the same place, all suddenly an hand was laid upon my bridle. An highwayman, thought I; and I remembered that I had little money upon me. But in the stead of easing me of my purse, mine highwayman put unto me a strange question.—'What is your name, and where dwell you?'—'Verily,' said I, 'I might ask the ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... and day till he drew near Baghdad city, and all the troops heard of Kanmakan, and saw what was his of loot and cattle and the horse-thief's head on the point of Sabbah's spear. Also (for he was a noted highwayman) the merchants knew Kahrdash's head and rejoiced, saying, "Allah hath rid mankind of him!"; and they marvelled at his being slain and blessed his slayer. Thereupon all the people of Baghdad came to Kanmakan, seeking to know what adventures had befallen him, and he told them what had passed, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... said Walter, musing, "that Aram should know a man, who, if not a highwayman as we suspected, is at least of rugged manner and disreputable appearance; it is strange too, that Aram always avoided recurring to the acquaintance, though he confessed it." With this he broke into a trot, and the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... translate the deposition of the witness and the defence of the prisoner. This language has many dialects. The sly dexterity of the pickpocket, the brutal ferocity of the footpad, the more elevated career of the highwayman and the deadly purpose of the midnight ruffian is each strictly appropriate in the terms which distinguish and characterize it. I have ever been of opinion that an abolition of this unnatural jargon would open the path to reformation. ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... that," Graham returned, mollified, and then the boys, turning the bend of the road, halted as abruptly as if a highwayman had checked their advance. For hidden from sight by a tangled thicket of underbrush and vines, five girls in white shirt-waists and short skirts were waiting their arrival. The girls shrieked delightedly ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... me, I shall choke! [Aside.] A ruffian, with a crape, puts a pistol to my breast, and robs me of forty shillings;—a scoundrel, with a smiling face, creeps to my fireside, and robs my daughter of her innocence. The judge can't allow restitution to spare the highwayman;—then, pray, Sir Simon,—I wish to speak humbly—pray don't insult the father, by calling money a reparation ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... farm and country horses, with some of finer limb and better blood, managed by young fellows having the air of laird's sons or others of some position. None of these had his face bare. But in place of the black highwayman masks of the followers of Galligaskins, these wore only a strip of white kerchief across the face, though, as I could see, more for the form of the thing than from ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... He met with an adventure while travelling for the Professor, in which a highwayman who undertook to rob him, came off second best, and he was thus enabled to add fifty dollars to his savings. His financial condition at the opening of the present story has already ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... suddenly rang out upon the night in a powerful voice. They struck terror to the heart of the highwayman, whose club was raised high in the air, ready to descend upon ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... highwayman, was taken in the south of Ireland, a banker, whose notes at that time were not held in the highest estimation, assured the prisoner that he was very glad to see him there at last. Brennan, looking up, replied, "Ah! sir! I did not expect that from you: for you know that, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... first time in his life to tamper with the course of justice, in order to shield his wife from persecution by a former husband who reappears after being supposed dead. Bulwer's novel of "Paul Clifford," with its final situation of the worldly-minded judge, Sir William Brandon, learning that the highwayman whom he is in the act of sentencing is his own son, and dying of the knowledge, was also well known to Stevenson, and probably counted for something in the suggestion of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... do sit quiet," at length exclaimed Aunt Deb, who being a strong-minded woman was not influenced by similar fears. "It will be time enough to cry out if a highwayman does come to demand our purses, and we'll hope that the guard will shoot him dead before he has had time to ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... brought envy to the speaker, a kind of glory; and he basked in it and was happy through all his veins. And who was it he stood so close to? The answer would cover all the grades. Sometimes it was a king; sometimes it was a renowned highwayman; sometimes it was an unknown man killed in an extraordinary way and made suddenly famous by it; always it was a person who was for the moment the subject of public interest of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Fanny retired into the garden to gather her parent some flowers; but immediately returned shrieking. She was followed by a Highwayman with a cocked hat, mustachios, bandit's ringlets, a scarlet hunting-coat, and buff boots. This gentleman had shown his extraordinary politeness—although a perfect stranger—by giving Miss Fanny a kiss in the garden; conduct ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... of his watch and money. He begged the highwayman to let him have cash enough to carry him to town, and the fellow said, "Well, master Moody, as I know you, I'll lend you half a guinea; but, remember, honor among thieves!" A few days after, he was taken, and Moody hearing that he was at the Brown ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... growled as he rode along; "if I had not fortunately had my leather portfolio in my breast-pocket, I would be a dead man now! The scoundrel must have eyes like an owl: he aimed as well as if he had been on a rifle range. Hurry along, Margotte, or else a second highwayman may come and conclude what ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... ought to have a warrant before making the arrest, remarking, if a man should shoot another when he was about to commit a felony, such as setting fire to your house, you would not arrest him for a murder; or if a highwayman got on the train to plunder. The officer replied very courteously by the suggestion that there would have to be an inquest. Neagle at once said, "I am ready to go," thinking it better to avoid all controversy, and being perfectly willing to answer anywhere for ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... the life of a profligate milliner's apprentice, who preferred Lord Sandwich's house and carriage, to Mr Hackman's hovel and going on foot. We shall find that all similar acts originate in similar motives—lucre, licentiousness, and rage—the three stimulants of the highwayman, the debauchee, and the ruffian; with only the distinction, that, in the case of those who murder when they cannot possess, the three criminalities ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... been very useful to Rofflash in disposing of some of the trophies of his exploits on the Bath Road. The highwayman never grumbled at whatever commission she chose to take and the arrangement was to their ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... sea-gangs in their raids upon the land were the Danes and "creekmen" of their time, so the land-gangsman was the true highwayman of the century that begot him. He kept every strategic point of every main thoroughfare, held all the bridges, watched all the ferries, haunted all the fairs. No place where likely men were to be found ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... to himself. 'I'll run away and get a situation on my own—something interesting. I wonder if I could learn how to be a pirate captain or a highwayman?' ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... and to call upon the emperor for no pecuniary assistance whatever, if the emperor would allow him to retain the plunder he could extort from the conquered. Upon this majestic scale Wallenstein planned to act the part of a highwayman. Ferdinand's necessities were so great that he gladly availed himself of this infamous offer. Wallenstein made money by the bargain. Wherever he marched he compelled the people to support his army, and to support it luxuriously. The emperor had ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... abroad that he had disinherited Jack. Poor Jack was bemoaning his luck and his debts in prison, and they say that Lord Grimsby spent all his time pacing the walks of his garden cursing Jack and those selfsame debts. That is to say, that is what he did before the episode of the highwayman. Then the man—or devil, whatever he is—appeared quite close behind Lord Grimsby, gagged him and blindfolded him, and would not release him until he had signed a promise to reinstate Jack, pay all his debts and present him with money enough ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... the place and the hour. Suddenly three other horsemen came galloping down upon him, and the leader presenting a pistol at his head, requested him in a stentorial voice for his money or his life. By way of reply, the stranger instantly produced a pistol of his own, and before the astonished highwayman could comprehend the possibility of such an act, discharged it full in his face. With a loud yell the robber reeled and fell from his saddle, and in a twinkling both his companions fired their pistols ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... are the best practical physiognomists, without having read a line of Lavater, who, it is notorious, mistook a highwayman for a philosopher, and a philosopher for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... of Don Q's profession and associates, and a temperament somewhat pessimistic for a highwayman, he is not really a bad sort of fellow. His idiosyncrasies are due, doubtless, to an early disappointment in love, on account of which allowances are to be made, particularly as he retains his courtly manners, a careful regard for the misfortunes of others, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... savage pleasure over the horrid banquet; to hear and see all this, what torture would it give the soul beyond expression!****** Not only a man of humanity, of good morals, and commiseration, but likewise an highwayman, an house-breaker, or a murderer, could feel anxieties ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... about everything which such criminals 'as Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard' say or do; that complete biographies of them are presented to the public; that report after report expatiates upon every refinement and peculiarity in their wickedness," for "the good purpose" of warning the embryo highwayman. We are something more than duberous of this. We can see no difference between the exhibition of the stage and the gloating of the broadsheet; they are both "the agents by which the exploits of the gay highwayman are realised before his eyes, amid a brilliant and evidently sympathising" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... thought, apparently to impress us with the conviction of her perfect happiness; for it is a great point of honour amongst girls similarly situated to look as cheerful and gay as possible; the same feeling, though in a different degree, which induces the gallant highwayman to jest in the presence of the multitude when the hangman's cord is within an inch of his neck, the same which makes the gallant general whose life is forfeited, command his men to fire on him; the same which makes the Hindoo widow mount the funeral ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... masked head-highwayman led two of his men aside. He recognized that having compacted with Jase they could not ignore him. In a whisper he ventured the suggestion, "Mebby Jase hes done come ter grief. Mebby we'd better kill ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck |
