"Piecemeal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about or paced the floor or dropped in chairs and fought as they flung off their clothes piecemeal. She had combed and brushed her hair viciously as she raged, weeping the unbeautiful tears of wrath. But he had not had that comfort of tears; his tears ran down the inside of his soul and burned. She ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... small armies as those the English generals command; but our constant dissensions, and the mutual jealousy between Holkar, Scindia, the Peishwa, the Rajah of Berar, and others, will prevent our ever acting together. It may be that we shall be conquered piecemeal. ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... was, moreover, afflicted with a pending lawsuit; the sums he obtained for his plays from the manager were therefore very disproportionate and uncertain. His letters to Henslowe are urgent in solicitations for payment on account of work in hand; he was often obliged to send his manuscripts piecemeal to the manager, and on one occasion supplied a rough draft of the last scene of a play in order to obtain a few shillings in advance. The amounts paid for new plays at this time were very low. Before 1600 Henslowe never gave more than L8 for a play, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... emperor resorted to new counsellors for new plans of defence. It was now gravely proposed, to build a fleet three times as powerful as that of the British, and station it near Singapore and Anjeer, to intercept the British vessels ere they reached China, and annihilate their fleet piecemeal. The forests were to be felled to supply materials: the only thing wanting was some English men-of-war, to serve as models. Again, Hou-chunn, the Marshal Ney of China, was ready to face the whole British fleet if he had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... to abolish the slave-trade] which has just sprung up, and which has slept for twenty years together, were allowed to sleep one summer longer, it would appear to me rather more wise than thus to take up a subject piecemeal, which it has been publicly declared ought not to be agitated at all till next session of Parliament. Perhaps, by such imprudence, the slaves themselves may be prompted by their own authority, to proceed at once to a 'total and immediate abolition ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... Base villain, vassal, slave to Tamburlaine, Unworthy to embrace or touch the ground That bears the honour of my royal weight; Stoop, villain, stoop! stoop; [198] for so he bids That may command thee piecemeal to be torn, Or scatter'd like the lofty cedar-trees Struck with ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... quietly and shrewdly through different agents at half its value, and the Honorable Milt's contribution was to engineer the Government's purchase of the site. In fact, we obtained the proof that it was he who proposed the whole deal to Nickleby in the first place. The site was purchased piecemeal, at sacrifice prices, from individual lot owners for a total of $50,000. Its market value was $100,000. It was sold to the Government for $200,000. The profit of $150,000 was split three ways between your uncle, Ferguson and Nickleby. These are facts, Mr. Kendrick, ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... piecemeal, however, the author's statements of his own observations and analysis are so thorough and so admirable, his drawings so good, and the interest of many separate portions so great, that it seems hardly fair to complain of the rather fragmentary effect of their combination, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the Chinese ware, one to the set—unique, antique, quaint. No one who had once seen it, could pretend not to know it again. It was no face to lend its countenance to any confusion of persons in a Comedy of Errors. You might have sworn to it piecemeal,—a separate affidavit for every feature. In short his face was as original as his figure; his figure as his character; his character as his writings; his writings the most original of the age. After the literary business had been settled, the Editor invited his contributor ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... sea. Yes, but not all. Much of the preciousness was hidden and the place of its hiding forgotten. Bit by bit the churls found the treasure-trove, but they did not tell their lords. They melted down jewels and sold them piecemeal to Jews for Jews' prices, and what they did not recognise as precious they wantonly destroyed. I have seen the marble heads of heathen gods broken with the hammer to make mortar of, and great cups of onyx and alabaster used as water troughs for a thrall's mongrels.. .. Knowing the land, I ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... against a scarcity of food by slaying and, driven by hunger, straightway devouring, his competitor at nature's table. What happened in the second epoch of civilisation was essentially the same: men were consumed slowly, by piecemeal, and a check put upon their increase by killing them and their offspring slowly through the pains and miseries of servitude. In short, since man has learnt to use his reason he has ceased to be ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... the element carbon! Doubtless, with his extraordinary sleight of hand, he had substituted real diamonds for the shapeless mass that came out of the apparatus, in the interval between handing the pebbles round for inspection, and distributing them piecemeal to the men of science and representatives of the diamond interest. We all watched him closely, of course, when he opened the crucibles; but when once we had satisfied ourselves that something came out, our doubts ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... work was piecemeal, and on separate days, we know from the narrative. Why it was so arranged we do not know. Vast as was the work to be done, almost infinite as was the complexity of the laws required to be formulated, it could have all been done at once, in a ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... spacious, and the architecture and embellishments superior to those of most country churches. There are several ancient monuments of nobility and gentry, over some of which hang funeral escutcheons, and banners dropping piecemeal from the walls. The tomb of Shakespeare is in the chancel. The place is solemn and sepulchral. Tall elms wave before the pointed windows, and the Avon, which runs at a short distance from the walls, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... piecemeal, or over and over again, yet deem herself perfectly loyal.—And perhaps naturally and ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... he set about practicing upon it. At first the meter gave him great difficulty; he could not subdue his strong passion and his wild tropes to the even tenor of the decasyllabic cadence. Then followed his decision to publish his play piecemeal in the Thalia,—an unfortunate decision as it proved. His hope was to profit betimes by what his critics might say. He was in a mood of boundless docility and boundless confidence in the public. Resolved to write 'no verses ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... his, more feared than other rules, He holds his people bound, like tamed bulls. Asia is banded with his paths of war; He is more of a scourge than Attila. He triumphs glorious—but, day by day, The earth falls at his feet, piecemeal away; And the bricks for his tomb's wall, one by one, Are being shaped—are baking in ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... be moving eastward, aiming at Fayetteville. This place he thought he might make the point of concentration for Hardee's troops, coming from Charleston to Cheraw by railroad, and those with Beauregard, which were in the main the divisions of Hood's army, coming forward piecemeal, and now amounting to something over 9000 men. He suggested that Bragg should join him at Fayetteville also. [Footnote: Id., p. 1271. At the end of February, the portions of S. D. Lee's corps which had joined Beauregard had ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... regiments, twenty-four guns, and a single battalion of cavalry, but with all the advantages of position against him. A fluctuating and intermitting attack resulted. The nature of the ground rendered a combined advance impossible. The Union brigades were sent forward and repulsed by piecemeal. A battery was lost by mistaking a Confederate for a Union regiment. Even now the victory seemed to vibrate, when a new flank attack by seven rebel regiments, from an entirely unexpected direction, suddenly impressed the Union troops with the belief that Johnston's ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... truly scientific philosophy because of its slavery to time, its ethical preoccupations, and its predominant interest in our mundane concerns and destiny. A truly scientific philosophy will be more humble, more piecemeal, more arduous, offering less glitter of outward mirage to flatter fallacious hopes, but more indifferent to fate, and more capable of accepting the world without the tyrannous imposition of our ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... more fair than any other fair Met on a holiday. But when she smiled She seemed like Fortune giving away a world. So gracious was her splendor. Thou art revenged, O little demon god so long my scorn! Would I had given my heart by piecemeal out Since I was ten than to have lost it so, For going all at once it takes my life And I must lose my life or follow it. Ah, love should come like waves unto a shore, Soft creeping up and back and up again. Till taught to stand receptive we are firm When the last, highest wave envelops ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... fearful a sight?" Sir James said. "Sure never before was so dense a mass. 'Tis like a sea raging round the edge of a black rock, and eating it away piecemeal. Were there but five thousand Flemings, they might do better; for now their very numbers prevent them from using their arms. Ah, here is a party with whom we may deal," and he pointed to a small body of French knights who were about to fall on the ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... sudden attacks and surprises, above all by the dispatch of armed steamboats up the circuitous waterways into positions from which they could fall upon the enemy in reverse, he was able gradually to force back the rebels, to cut them off piecemeal in the field, and to ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... has descended to the foot of the malign gray slopes. And I, who stood intent to gaze, saw muddy people in that swamp, all naked and with look of hurt. They were smiting each other, not only with hands, but with head, and with chest, and with feet, mangling one another piecemeal with ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... well he him did guard That piecemeal lay his armour scattered; And still fought hard that stalwart lord Until his beamy shield ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise
... watch the progress of events. If we hear that the people of these parts are aroused from their lethargy, we will come back and fight for our home and lands; if not, I will no longer stay in East Anglia, which I see is destined to fall piecemeal into the hands of the Danes; but we will journey down to Somerset, and I will pray King Ethelbert to assign me lands there, and to take ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... melody, delivered in sturdy democratic fashion, had to be endured. It died hard, but did come to an end, piecemeal. Tom Breeks then retired from the front, and became a unit once more. There were flourishes that indicated a termination of the proceedings, when another fellow was propelled in advance, and he, shuffling and ducking his head, to the cries of "Out wi' it, Jim!" and, "Where's your ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thought Marius) for which, as I said, he had caught his "refrain," from the lips of the young men, singing because they could not help it, in the streets of Pisa. And as oftenest happens also, with natures of genuinely poetic quality, those piecemeal beginnings came suddenly to harmonious completeness among the fortunate incidents, the physical heat and light, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... 'Behind me piecemeal gifts I cast, My fleeing self to save; And that's the thing must go at last, For ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... these things we're so proud of having built, including the Mt. Desert cottages and the Wyoming hunting-lodge. It means that we've got to be able to read our book of the Black Art backwards as well as forwards, or the Powers we've conjured up will tear piecemeal both them and us. God! it makes me crawl to think of what ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... niche without breaking through, he had to scrape it out piecemeal, wetting the dried mud as he toiled. He measured carefully just how much of the thickness to leave, because the weed stalks in the adobe could not be trusted to hold too thin a crust, and also he had to take care that the water did not soak entirely through and make a tell-tale blot ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Wilton grew up together friends, though not bound by common sympathies. The latter has known life early, and "earned experience piecemeal:" with the former, thought has already become ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... a practical spirit with time and space; it is not surprising, therefore, that logic, in spite of the show of respect outwardly paid to her, is told to stand aside when people come to practice. In practice identity is generally held to exist where continuity is only broken slowly and piecemeal, nevertheless, that occasional periods of even rapid change are not held to bar identity, appears from the fact that no one denies this to hold between the microscopically small impregnate ovum and the born ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... out on its hands and knees to beg of us. It was a boy of sixteen, struck with another and scarcely less frightful form of leprosy. In this case, instead of hideous swellings and fungous excrescences, the limbs gradually dry up and drop off piecemeal at the joints. Well may the victims of both these forms of hopeless disease curse the hour in which they were begotten. I know of no more awful example of that visitation of the sins of the parents upon the children, which almost always attends ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... know what to make of Mr. BALFOUR, who politely represses his honest endeavours to elucidate the situation in Greece, and actually declared to-day that the difficulties of the Allies would only be increased by the hon. Member's attempts to deal with them piecemeal. Mr. LYNCH was not entirely done with, however. "Is that reply," he asked in a "got-him-this-time" manner, "given by reason of freedom of choice or ineludible necessity?" "Sir," replied the apologist of philosophic doubt ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... whether I'm wrong, but it often seems to me the very best way to gain an idea of the real history of England is thus to take a single district piecemeal, and trace out for one's self the main features of its gradual evolution. By so doing we get away from mere dynastic or political considerations, leave behind the bang of drums or the blare of trumpets, and reach down to the living facts of common human activity ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... taken on board, and who landed with me, broke the egg with hatchets, and having made a hole in it, pulled out the young roc piecemeal and roasted it. I had earnestly entreated them not to meddle with the egg, but they would ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... before the wind like flocks of sheep. Macko ordered the train to move by daybreak. The pitch-burner, who was hired as guide to Buda, affirmed that the horses could pass everywhere, but as to the wagons, provisions and baggage, it would be necessary in some places to take them apart and carry them piecemeal, and that could not be done without tedious work. But people accustomed to hard labor preferred hardship to lounging in the deserted inn. Therefore they moved on willingly. Even the timid Wit was not scared by the words and presence ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... which was sufficient to make the hair stand erect, the blood to freeze, the flesh to melt, the bones to drop from their places—yea, the spirit to faint. What is empaling or sawing men alive, tearing off the flesh piecemeal with iron pincers, or broiling the flesh with candles, collop fashion, or squeezing heads flat in a vice, and all the most shocking devices which ever were upon earth, compared with one of these? Mere pastime! There were a hundred ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... faith than the laws of evidence would warrant. Still, however, to a patient and cautious reader the biography may furnish a much better notion of Rienzi's character, than we can glean from the historians who have borrowed from it piecemeal. Such a reader will discard all the writer's reasonings, will think little of his praise or blame, and regard only the facts he narrates, judging them true or doubtful, according as the writer had the opportunities of being himself the observer. Thus examining, the reader will find evidence ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... from this process of killing by piecemeal by a more theatric spectacle. A brigade commander of the Grays had ticked an order over the wires and it had gone from battery to battery. Not only many field-guns, which are the terriers of the artillery, but some guns of siege calibre, the mastiffs, ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... tragic events reached London piecemeal. First came the news in the fall of 1609 that the Sea Adventure, with Somers, Gates, Newport, and Strachey, had been lost. This was a severe blow to the leaders of the company, who had planned to send De la Warr out with perhaps as many colonists ...
— The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624 • Wesley Frank Craven
... educational provisions, they seem all noble; looking at their schedule of sins and retributions, one wonders how any rational being could endure them for a day. Communities, like individuals, furnish virtues piecemeal. Roger Williams, with all his wise toleration, bequeathed to Rhode Island no such system of schools as his persecutors framed for Massachusetts. But the children who were watched and trained thus carefully might be put to death, if they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... dogged. "Break 'em up piecemeal as we lay our hands on 'em now. We've got one—the man we roped in with Red Ike. He's as tight as an oyster; but while we've got him he can't do anything to help his pals. Then there's the Princess. She's as slippery as an eel; but if the Liverpool people can get hold of her we may reckon she'll ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... beings compose a scattered population, residing too far for the law to reach; or where if it could reach, the power of the government would prove much too weak to enforce obedience to it. To do justice to all parties, America should be examined and portrayed piecemeal, every state separately, for every state is different, running down the scale from refinement to a state of barbarism almost unprecedented; but each presenting matter for investigation and research, and curious examples of ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... I could recall the exact words in which Tom Johnson replied. For in them the greatest of the piecemeal reformers admitted the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... in triumph to her ear: They, to keep firm the seat, sit with flat palms Upon the cushion, nor look once beyond To cheer thee on thy road. In vain are won The spoils; another carries them away; The stranger seeks them in another land, Torn piecemeal from thee. But no stealthy step Can intercept thy glory. Cyrus raised His head on ruins: he of Macedon Crumbled them, with their dreamer, into dust: God gave thee power above them, far above; Power to raise up those whom they overthrew, Power to show mortals that ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... namely, that a vast store of knowledge is already contained in the subconscious mind of man (and the animals) and only needs the provocation of outer experience to bring it to the surface; and that in the second stage of human psychology this process of crude and piecemeal externalization is taking place, in preparation for the final or third stage in which the knowledge will be re-absorbed and become direct and intuitional on a high and harmonious plane—something like the present intuition of the animals as we perceive ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... the mighty queen of good and ill, Fortune; first marry, then enjoy thy fill Of lawful pleasures; but depart ere morn; Slip from her bed, or else thou shalt be torn Piecemeal by fiends; thy blood caroused in bowls, And thy four quarters blown to the top ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... withered within twentyfour hours. But it was not wiped out and not long afterward it was overrun and covered up by a new and vigorous mass. Such a victory early in the fight would have meant something; now it is too late for such piecemeal destruction. We must have a counteragent which communicates its lethal effect to a larger area of the Grass than is actually touched by it—or at very least makes the affected spot untenable for ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... fetch ensnared this Fragment of tested Sooth; And one of the purblind Race of Men peered with a curious Eye Over the Curb as I fetched it forth, and besought me to drop that Lie: But all ye who long for Certitude, and who yearn for the Ultimate Fact, Who know the Truth and in spite of Ruth tear piecemeal the Inexact, Come list to my Lay that I sing to-day, and choose betwixt him and me, And choosing show that ye always know the Lie from the Veritee! —The ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... MacKim, the strong man of Galloway, as he came forward. Stained with the black peat of the morasses, his armour cast off piecemeal that he might run the easier, his under-apparel torn almost from his great body, his hair matted with the blood which still oozed from an unwashed wound above ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... detected in a theft; but as Malicorne saw a great advantage in the proposition which had been made to him, he gave Montalais a sign of assent, which she returned. Malicorne then descended the ladder, round by round, reflecting at every step on the means of obtaining piecemeal from M. de Saint-Aignan all he might possibly know about the famous secret. Montalais had already darted away like a deer, and neither cross-road nor labyrinth was able to lead her wrong. As for Saint-Aignan, he carried off Malicorne with him to his apartments, showing him a thousand attentions, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... his internal qualities, in gross and piecemeal, the diversity of means by which he is united and knit, and the accidents that threaten him. Now those that write lives, by reason they insist more upon counsels than events, more upon what sallies from within, than upon what happens without, are the most proper for my ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Eastern steamship as the amoeba to man, were to declare that the Great Eastern engines were not designed at all, on the ground that no one in the early kettle days had foreseen so great a future development, and were unable to understand that a piecemeal solvitur ambulando design is more omnipresent, all-seeing, and all-searching, and hence more truly in the strictest sense design, than any speculative leap of fancy, however bold and even ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... which they had started, the two that Lewis had taken on to the station were the only survivors; and all their equipment had been abandoned piecemeal in the desert. ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... sequence his supreme negative act, he is a man-eater. "He seized two of my companions and hurled them against the ground as if they were dogs, then he devoured them piecemeal, swallowing all—entrails and flesh and marrowy bones." Surely Ulysses is getting some experience on the ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... Tully's house, Mr. Tener writes to me, "I found it being gutted by his family, who would have carried it away piecemeal. They had already taken away the flooring of one of the rooms." Thereupon Mr. Tener had the house pulled down, with the result of seeing a statement made in a leading Nationalist paper that he was "evicting the tenants ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... enterprise. But we want the light of 'the true definitions' to begin with. There is no use in revolutions till we have it; and as for empirical institutions, mankind has seen the best of them;—we are perishing in their decay, dying piecemeal, going off into a race of ostriches, or something of that nature—or threatened with becoming mere petrifactions, mineral specimens of what we have been, preserved, perhaps, to adorn the museums of some future ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... sections of the country a strong prejudice against patents, which sometimes makes it difficult to get people sufficiently interested to take hold of any patent; especially is this true when the patentee endeavors to sell his patent piecemeal; that is, by county, township, shop, or farm rights. No matter how important or valuable the invention may be, there seems to be a disposition on the part of the public to look upon such rights as a fraud, and to be very cautious how they ...
— Practical Pointers for Patentees • Franklin Cresee
... creatures lay down and died, the gypsum in which their remains occur was soft enough to permit their under sides to sink into it, and that then gradually hardening, it kept the bones in their places; while the uncovered upper sides, exposed to the disintegrating influences, either mouldered away piecemeal, or were removed by accident. The bones of the larger animals of the basin are usually found detached; and ere they could be reconstructed into perfect skeletons, they taxed the extraordinary powers of the greatest of comparative anatomists. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... kinsfolk in Houndsditch and the Minories there was great joy at first, and afterward bitter, endless litigation. They screamed and battled over the heritage like vultures over a mighty carrion, tearing it at length piecemeal. He did not keep a pet dog, and so no living creature regretted him, unless it were the thin, delicate girl, with white cheeks and hollow eyes, who came once, and knelt to pray by his grave for hours, her tears ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... circumstances! There sat the big butcher, smirking and smiling, ever and again dipping his unlovely lips into a steaming beaker of brandy-and-water, regarding himself as triumphant in the courts of Venus. But that false woman who sat at his side would have sold him piecemeal for money, as he would have sold the carcase of ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... that he was off to Newfoundland, 'where I mean to make clean my ships, and revictual; for I have tobacco enough to pay for it.' But he was powerless, as he confesses, to govern his crew, and no one knows how the heartbroken old man spent the next two dreadful months. His ships slunk back piecemeal to English havens, and on May 23, Captain North, who had commanded the 'Chudleigh,' had audience of the King, and told him the whole miserable story. On May 26,[12] Raleigh made his appearance, with the 'Destiny,' in the harbour of Kinsale, and on June 21 he arrived in Plymouth, penniless ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... to call, the show of a piece of meat at once secures its submission and capture. Singular how partial they are to raw meat, and more singular to see the expert way in which they catch up the meat with the claws of either leg, and hold it from them while they devour it piecemeal. I saw the other evening an old bird pounce on a field-mouse, kill it, and then bring and cleverly fix the victim firmly between the two forks of a branch and pull it in pieces. It consumed but a ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... never have any other notion of battles than that eternal flank movement!" cried a young sergeant of the voltigeurs, who had just come up from the army of Italy. "Our general used to split the enemy by the centre, out him piecemeal by attack in columns, and then head him down with artillery at short range—not leaving him time for ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... present. They had cleared nearly half the beds when, yesterday afternoon, one of the men working in the deepest part came upon some bones, the appearance of which excited his suspicion. Thereupon he called his mates, and they carefully picked away the plants piecemeal, a process that soon laid bare an unmistakable human hand lying on the mud amongst the roots. Fortunately they had the wisdom not to disturb the remains, but at once sent off a message to the police. Very soon, an inspector ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... keep quiet. Several times before Calton had been on the point of going to her and trying to get the secret out of her—that is, if she knew it; but now fate appeared to be playing into his hands, and a voluntary confession was much more likely to be true than one dragged piecemeal from unwilling lips. ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... Great Charter, the constitutional basis of her freedoms throughout the rest of her married life, had many practical defects. The chief of these was that it was largely undocumented; it had been made piecemeal, in various ways, at different times and for the most part indirectly through diverse intermediaries. Charterson had introduced large vaguenesses by simply displaying more of his teeth at crucial moments, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... instant example; and utility is appealed to for a verdict only amid the dense crowd of actual conflicting interests. Neither the one nor the other is far-sighted or imaginative. So it comes about that the political system, in England, at least, is built up piecemeal; it is founded on appetites and compromises, and mortared by immemorial habit. To explain this process, and to transfigure it in the pure light of imagination, was the work of the great poet-politician, Edmund ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... he help Dad? So the lad pondered, meanwhile digging the sense piecemeal out of his Ovid ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... unwise, my friend, to rush at a bound to the extremes of friendship? You have drained the cup, offered in all sincerity, at a draught. It is true that a real feeling is never piecemeal; it must be whole, or it does not exist. Monsieur de Mortsauf," she added after a short silence, "is above all things loyal and brave. Perhaps for my sake you will forget what he said to you to-day; if he has forgotten it to-morrow, I will myself tell him what occurred. Do ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... surprising, therefore, that logic, in spite of the show of respect outwardly paid to her, is told to stand aside when people come to practice. In practice identity is generally held to exist where continuity is only broken slowly and piecemeal; nevertheless, that occasional periods of even rapid change are not held to bar identity, appears from the fact that no one denies this to hold between the microscopically small impregnate ovum and the born child that springs from it, nor yet, therefore, ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... Grube, with a touch of modest pride, observes: "People had told us that this hill was most dangerous, and that we would scarcely be able to cross it, for Morgan Bryan, the first to travel this way, had to take the wheels off his wagon and carry it piecemeal to the top, and had been three months on the journey from the Shanidore [Shenandoah] to ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... had adopted the precaution of taking with him a portable India rubber boat. It was twenty feet long and five feet broad. It was placed in the water, and the carts and the baggage were carried over piecemeal. Three men paddled the boat. Still the current was so strong that one of the best swimmers took in his teeth the end of a rope attached to the boat and swam ahead, that, reaching the shore, he might ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... that he was glad to hear all this, but in the meantime what was he to do to prevent his battalion being blown piecemeal ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... in order that it may be seen what further appropriations are involved in a settlement for all these lands upon the basis which Congress has adopted. It does not seem to me to be a wise policy to deal with this question piecemeal. It would have been better, if a remnant of title remains in the Choctaws and Chickasaws to the lands in the leased district, to have settled the whole matter at once. Under the treaty of 1855 the Choctaws and Chickasaws ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... order to survey the union of well-ordered husbandry with the civilities of ancient city-life that we break the journey at Parma between Milan and Bologna. We are attracted rather by the fame of one great painter, whose work, though it may be studied piecemeal in many galleries of Europe, in Parma has a fulness, largeness, and mastery that can nowhere else be found. In Parma alone Correggio challenges comparison with Raphael, with Tintoret, with all the supreme ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... name with never-ending infamy. But so did the divine vengeance rage against the persecutors of the martyr, that in a short time, being carried away from the midst, they nowhere appeared. And some, without confession, or the viaticum, were suddenly snatched away; others tearing piecemeal their own fingers or tongues; others pining with hunger, and corrupting in their whole body, and racked with unheard-of tortures before their death, and broken up by paralysis; others bereft of their intellects; others expiring with madness;—left ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... said, He saede theah thaet thaet land | though, that that land was sie swithe lang north thonan; | [or extended] much north ac hit is eall weste, buton on | thence; eke it is all waste, feawum stowum styccemaelum | but [except that] on few stows wiciath Finnas, on huntothe | [in a few places] piecemeal on wintra, and on sumera on | dwelleth Finns, on hunting on fiscathe be thaere sae. He | winter, and on summer on saede thaet he aet sumum cirre | fishing by the sea. He said wolde fandian hu longe thaet | that he ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... only know that I know nothing, but hope that Christ, who is the Son of Man, will tell me piecemeal, if I be patient and watchful, what I ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... laughing. Exposed, humiliated, doomed, the home throws out a hundred pleas to us. And the Pharisaic community passes by on the other side of the way, in fear of a falling brick. Down come the walls of the home, as quickly as pickaxes can send them. Down they crumble, piecemeal, into the foundations, and are carted away. Soon other walls will be rising—red-brick 'residential' walls, more in harmony with the Zeitgeist. None but I pays any heed to the ruins. I am their only friend. Me they attract so irresistibly that I haunt ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... the executive government of the kingdom. I cannot tell why they nourish suspicion against me, unless it is because I will not deliver this poor innocent army, which has followed me in so many military actions, to be now pulled asunder, broken piecemeal and reduced, so that they who have protected the state at the expense of their blood, will not have, perchance, the means of feeding themselves by their labour; which, methinks, were hard measure, since it is taking from Esau ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... your Bible is no other than an imperfect, mutilated Bible, corrupted by the men who made your religion. The Catholic church, from which the Protestants stole their piecemeal Bible, always regarded the book of Machabeus as the inspired word ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... the land: Again she scower'd through the airy path, Her eyeballs terrible with madden'd wrath: The raven-sorcerer at length she spied, And soon her steel was with his hot blood dyed: The huge black body, piecemeal, found a grave Amid the ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... pondered much on this matter, and have figured to myself what may be the fate of our current literature, when retrieved piecemeal by future antiquaries, from among the rubbish of ages. What a Magnus Apollo, for instance, will Moore become among sober divines and dusty schoolmen! Even his festive and amatory songs, which are now ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... just giving the jobs out piecemeal," the young man said amid the general laughter. "Anybody that wants to tear a building down can get permission. They give so much a building. I undertook three. If I could get some help and do it in a month or so I'd have a little money. I haven't got anybody ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... too, with the wicked relief she has felt in his death. What was his death but the key- stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the arch begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and mangling piecemeal! ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the prison, day or night. A few years ago the time of daily duty was reduced to twelve hours, with one hour at noon for dinner. Besides this, at times they must do a good deal of extra duty. Each is allowed ten days annual holiday, but is frequently obliged to take it piecemeal, a day or two at a time, so that he cannot go far away from the scene of his servitude. Their duties require unflagging attention and never-ceasing vigilance, which must be a heavy tax on the brain, and the twelve hours must be passed ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... flogged, branded, and imprisoned for life, after a time contrived, it is believed by the aid of some of the Rohan family, to escape from prison. She fled to London, where for some time she and her husband lived on the proceeds of the necklace, which they had broken up and sold piecemeal to jewelers in London and other cities; but they were soon reduced to great distress. After the Revolution had broken out in Paris, they tried to make money by publishing libels on the queen, in which they ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... property of the inn itself, of which they were originally tenants, but of some remarkably good meadow-land by the side of the brook, which, when touched by a little pecuniary necessity, the Lairds of St. Ronan's had disposed of piecemeal, as the readiest way to portion off a daughter, procure a commission for the younger son, and the like emergencies. So that Meg Dods, when she succeeded to her parents, was a considerable heiress, and, as such, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... crag, affording passage for the rising sea to thunder back and forth, filling it with tumultuous foam and then leaving its floor of black pebbles bare and glistening. In this chasm there was once an intersecting vein of softer stone, which the waves have gnawed away piecemeal, while the granite walls remain entire on either side. How sharply and with what harsh clamor does the sea rake back the pebbles as it momentarily withdraws into its own depths! At intervals the floor ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... keeping it up, a fleet under Lord Dartmouth was sent out to destroy all the works, and to bring home the garrison. The destruction of the mole, which was admirably built, caused much labour, it being necessary to blow it up by piecemeal. Its ruins, as well as the rubbish of the town, were thrown into the harbour to prevent ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... need some preliminary instruction before they can get all the good possible to be got from the prodigious treasures of art possessed by the country in that form: there also one sees things in a piecemeal way: nor can I deny that there is something melancholy about a museum, such a tale of violence, destruction, and carelessness, as ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... the remains it seems probable that the site of the ruins here designated as the Casa Grande group was occupied a long time, not as a whole, but piecemeal as it were, one part being occupied and abandoned while some other part was being built up, and that this ebb and flow of population through many generations reached its final period in the occupation of the structure here termed the Casa Grande ruin. It is probable that this structure ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... says unto each, This must be; how an inherent Elasticity drives them about Space vagrantly onward; - I shall unfold: thou simply give all thyself to my teaching. Matter mingled and massed into indissoluble union Does not exist. For we see how wastes each separate substance; So flow piecemeal away, with the length'ning centuries, all things, Till from our eye by degrees that old self passes, and is not. Still Universal Nature abides unchanged as aforetime. Whereof this is the cause. When the atoms part from a substance, ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... subjects of the groups are languages, mathematics, English history, and lastly science. One concession is made to girls which is not made to boys. They are allowed to pass in two subjects one year, and two others the next, and thus obtain their certificates piecemeal. Boys have to pass in all four subjects the same year. The High School sent in seventeen candidates for the examination in two or three of the subjects—History, Elementary Mathematics, French, German, and Latin,—and fifteen of these passed ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... attack. Not that the monster was minded to pause! Straightway he seized a sleeping warrior for the first, and tore him fiercely asunder, the bone-frame bit, drank blood in streams, swallowed him piecemeal: swiftly thus the lifeless corse was clear devoured, e'en feet and hands. Then farther he hied; for the hardy hero with hand he grasped, felt for the foe with fiendish claw, for the hero reclining, — who clutched it boldly, prompt ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... instance to which I was a witness, the conflict lasted for the latter part of a day, but towards evening the Caecilia was completely exhausted, and in the morning it had totally disappeared, having been carried away either whole or piecemeal by its assailants. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Social and Civil Wars (Vell. Pat. ii. 9). Cicero thought him superior to his predecessors, but childish (Brut. 228, De Leg. i. 7), and Sallust remarks his want of frankness in speaking of Sulla's career (Iug. 95). He avoided a piecemeal and desultory treatment of events; cf. his own words quoted by Gell. xii. 15, 2, 'Nos una aestate in Asia et Graecia gesta litteris idcirco continentia mandavimus, ne vellicatim aut saltuatim scribendo lectorum animos impediremus.' His translation ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... glinting in the distance. That alluvial stretch was, in the course of years, to be eaten away by the river even to the bastions. The fort itself, built at such expense, would soon be abandoned by its conquerors, to sink, piecemeal, a noble and massive ruin. The dome-shaped powder house and stone quarters would be put to ignoble uses, and forest trees, spreading the spice of walnut fragrance, or the dense shadow of oaks, would ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... barrels. His attention was at once concentrated on the western side, and he was satisfied that only by hard fighting and steady delving could he hope to master the place. To gain Ostend he would be obliged to devour it piecemeal ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... until then I will say nothing about it, not from any wish to disappoint your curiosity, or to make myself important, but simply because the whole story partakes so much of the marvellous, that I am afraid to tell it in a piecemeal, hasty fashion, for fear I should be set down as one of those common fellows of whom there are so many in my profession, who are not ashamed to narrate things they have not seen, and even to tell wonderful ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard
... persuade the "Dictator"—that is, the would-be "Dictator"—to allow him to burn up the wrecked houses wholesale without the tedious bother of pulling them down and handling the debris. The timorous committees would not countenance such an idea. Nothing but piecemeal tearing down of the wrecked houses tossed together by the mighty force of the water and destruction by never-dying bonfires would satisfy them. Yet all of them must come down. Most of the buildings reached by the flood have been examined, found unsafe and condemned. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... not all; but piecemeal thou must break To separate contemplation, the great whole; And as the ocean many bays will make, That ask the eye—so here condense thy soul To more immediate objects, and control Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart Its eloquent ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... great care of my pet, and would curl its long wool over a stick, Finally, it was killed by an angry cow. I have a pair of little stockings, knitted of yarn spun from the lamb's wool, the heels of which have been raveled out and given away piecemeal as mementoes."—Yours truly, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... have something to say about "Resurrection," which I have read not piecemeal, in parts, but as a whole, at one go. It is a remarkable artistic production. The least interesting part is all that is said of Nehludov's relations with Katusha; and the most interesting the princes, the generals, the aunts, the peasants, the convicts, the warders. The scene in the house ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... answer'd old Priam, the godlike in presence: "Be'st thou indeed of the train of the Peleiades Achilles? Come then, discover the truth: be there nothing, I pray, of concealment. Is my son still at the galleys, or has he already been flung forth, Piecemeal torn, for a feast to the dogs, by the hand ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... benefactor? Mackaye vouchsafed no answer, but that I "suld ken better than he." But when he found that I was really utterly at a loss to whom to attribute the mercy, he assured me, by way of comfort, that he was just as ignorant as myself; and at last, piecemeal, in his circumlocutory and cautious Scotch method, informed me, that some six weeks back he had received an anonymous letter, "a'thegither o' a Belgravian cast o' phizog," containing a bank note for twenty pounds, and ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... directed against Otway Bethel, but against Sir Francis Levison. Cowering like the guilty culprit that he was, shivered he, hiding his white face—wondering whether it would be a repetition of Justice Hare's green pond, or tearing him asunder piecemeal—and cursing the earth because it did not open ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood |
