"Relic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... An interesting relic is in the collection of the Bostonian Society. It is a coffee urn of Sheffield ware, formerly in the Green Dragon tavern, which stood on Union Street from 1697 to 1832, and was a famous meeting place of the patriots of the Revolution. It is globular in form, and rests ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Weinsberg, and was familiar with the forgotten dusky paths of mysticism. He had in his house the famous Earl Stanhope crystal, and wished me to sleep with it under my pillow, but I was so afraid lest the precious relic should be injured, that I resolutely declined the honour, for which I am now sorry, for I sometimes have dreams of a most extraordinary character. This Stanhope crystal is not, however, the great mirror of Dr. Dee, though it has been said ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... remarked Price, rousing his mind from a retrospect of its extensive past. And, no doubt, the old man was right; for a relic, answering to Mosey's description, was sold by auction in Melbourne, with other assets of the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... relic of other days, and displayed it to the boys in the shanty. It was received with great applause, and I was unmercifully chaffed. It pleases our community to regard all the comforts and luxuries of a more complete civilization as effeminacies; and it is the received theory among us that we live the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... front line. In the village when the Battalion was in support it held three centres of resistance known from right to left as Petit Moulin, Wailly Keep, and Petit Chateau. Wailly Keep was a fortified farm on the fringe of the village, with loop-holed walls and the adjacent roads barricaded. It was a relic of the French defence ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... the mediaeval hero. Thither went Napoleon, but in no suppliant mood; for when Josephine was offered the arm-bones of the great dead, she also proudly replied that she would not deprive the city of that precious relic, especially as she had the support of an arm as great as that of Charlemagne.[317] The insignia and the sword of that monarch were now brought to Paris, and shed on the ceremony of coronation that historic gleam which was needed to redeem it from ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... did the Rev. Zachariah Sapp subject a piece of paper to such scrutiny. Both with the naked eye and with a microscope,— a relic of collegiate days,—he studied the engravings and filigree work. Detail by detail he compared the supposed imitation with bills of known genuineness without being able to discover the slightest point of variation between them. Paper, printing, and engraving seemed to be absolutely ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... English law, is a phrase used for husband and wife, in relation to each other, who are accounted as one person. Hence, by the old law of evidence, the one party was excluded from giving evidence for or against the other in civil questions, and a relic of this is still ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... Mrs. Newton, who confirmed the whole of the preceding statement. We inquired if she still possessed any writings of her brother's? Her reply was, "Nothing. Mr. Croft had them all," with the exception of one precious relic of no value as a publication, which she meant to retain till death.—The identical pocket book, which Chatterton took with him to London, and in which he had entered his cash account while there, with a ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... very good. The black cook, "a relic of my mother's establishment," as Margaret explained, gave them a few savory family dishes, and there was a light French wine. Margaret ate little and talked little, seeming to enjoy the vivacity ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Court which was known in the 16th century as the Corte del Millioni has been generally understood to be that now known as the Corte Sabbionera, and here is still pointed out a relic of Marco Polo's mansion. [Indeed it is called now (1899) Corte del Milione; ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... round the world. After the dinner, she bade him fall to his knees and with a light touch of the sword gave him the title that was seal of the court's approval. The Golden Hind was kept as a public relic till it fell to pieces on the Thames, and the wood was made into a memorial chair ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... of thirty, forty, or fifty years, if with a tendency to be jealous, cross, and interfering, becomes a great trouble. Still the relative position was the result of good feelings. If the familiarity sometimes became a nuisance, it was a wholesome nuisance, and relic of a simpler time gone by. But the case of the old servant, whether agreeable or troublesome, was often so fixed and established in the households of past days, that there was scarce a possibility of getting away ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... been dead for years, but every season the summer guests at the hotels and farmhouses searched all around the deserted hut, expecting to find some relic to take home and label as a ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... relic," said the old man; "but you're worthy of it, Mary. I'd rather see you have it than any of them. My word, but I'm glad I've got it here safely. Esther would never have forgiven me.' Now, Samuel,' she said, as I left, 'mind you get home before dark, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... in Turkey Oriental splendor! Original first shoddy contract mentioned in history Overflowing his banks People talk so glibly of "feeling," "expression," "tone," Perdition catch all the guides Picture which one ought to see once—not oftener Polite hotel waiter who isn't an idiot Relic matter a little overdone? Room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat Saviour, who seems to be of little importance any where in Rome Self-satisfied monarch, the railroad conductor of America Sentimental praises of the Arab's idolatry ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... thought of the hag's prediction in an instant rose, and banished all softer emotions. In utter contempt of his own weakness, yet with a tremor that deprived his redoubtable kick of half its wonted force, he spurned the relic with his foot. One word alone issued from his lips, elucidatory of what was passing in his mind—it long remained imprinted on the memory of his faithful followers—that word was "Gammon!" The skull bounded across the beach till it reached the very margin of the ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... was overjoyed to recover this ancient and valuable family relic, and instead of greeting Davie with anger and threats of punishment, as he had expected, came near overwhelming him with gratitude, addressing him ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... like the present." Wally took a huge bite out of a scone, and surveyed the relic with interest. Someone put a smoking plateful before him, and his further utterances were lost in ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... of All Hallows in the Wall, where a bit of the old Roman masonry shows in the foundations of the later defences, of which indeed, no much greater length remains. The church, which is so uninterestingly ugly as not to compete with the relic of Roman wall, stands at the base of a little triangle planted with young elms that made a green quiet, and murmured to the silence with their stiffening leaves. It was an effect possible only to that wonderful London which towers so massively into the present that you are dumb before the evidences ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... will soon come when the bayonet shall fail to sustain the last relic of royalty which now lingers on the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... been made known to the world by my predecessors that the United States have on several occasions endeavored to acquire Cuba from Spain by honorable negotiation. If this were accomplished, the last relic of the African slave trade would instantly disappear. We would not, if we could, acquire Cuba in any other manner. This is due to our national character. All the territory which we have acquired since the origin of the Government has been by fair purchase from France, Spain, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... call on an old gentleman, in feeble health, who had lost his money through the failure of a bank, and was now unable to procure any of the comforts which his failing health required; his only son had lately died, and the old man was now alone. The one relic of his past wealth was a store of beautiful old china, which it had been the happiness of ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... known better," grunted Farley, equally enraged with himself. "What on earth made us so absent-minded as to believe that a priceless relic would be kept in an old shed ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... cigarette, looked at it curiously, as at a relic—the relic of the moment of strongest emotion through which he had ever passed—and threw it into the ash-tray. He did not speak, and after a moment Vassili went on, stating his case with ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... been the school-room; nothing there now, however, to recall an academic past, for even the space against which a map of the world (Mercator's projection) had once hung was gone the colour of the rest of the walls, and with it had faded away the last relic of the ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... over footprints, and the village children took the oyster-shells to trim their gardens with; but the year after Tony rode Bucephalus there lingered another relic of Fair-time in which Jackanapes was deeply interested. "The Green" proper was originally only part of a straggling common, which in its turn merged into some wilder waste land where gypsies sometimes squatted if the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... to much the same conclusion," said Hesden, "though I never heard that grandfather had a cousin James until to-night. I should never have thought any more of the document, however, except as an old relic, if it had not gone on to bequeath particularly 'my estate in Carolina to my beloved daughter, Alice E., when she shall arrive at the age of eighteen years,' and to provide for the succession in case of her ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... threw its dark and gloomy shade over the adjacent tombs; the long rank herbage bending over them, and dripping heavily with the moist atmosphere. An ancient cross stood in the graveyard, of a date probably anterior to that of the main building. A relic or commemoration, it might be, of some holy man who had there ministered to the semi-barbarous hordes, aboriginal converts ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... believe. We had near us there a little section of the old world which was trying, in a half-hearted fashion, to maintain itself in the midst of a democracy. It was the manorial life of the patroons—a relic of ancient feudalism which had its beginning in 1629, when The West Indies Company issued its charter of Privileges and Exemptions. That charter offered to any member of the company who should, within four years, bring fifty adults to the New ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... his mouth in an extraordinary smile as he said, "Relic quotha? yea, the soothest relic there be of the Lord ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 1808, among other notabilities on the Rue des Pauvres, we find that, as appears by a notarial deed of transfer, in the Woolsey estate, before J. Plante, N.P., 28th March, 1808, a grand old relic of the Canadian noblesse, la Baronne de Longueuil, the widow of the late Captain David Alexander Grant, of the 94th regiment—to whom she had been united in wedlock at Quebec, on the 7th May, 1781. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... These evils are a relic of the old ideas of woman's inferiority, and their only sure remedy is the destruction of that inferiority by the industrial and professional education, which will make the woman the par of her brother, and enable her to maintain her equal ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... record, a curious relic of what the modern inhabitants of Caermaen called the Dark Ages. A few of the stones that had formed the base of the cross still remained in position, grey with age, blotched with black lichen and green moss. The remainder of the ramous rood had been used to mend the roads, to ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... morning he came in with a beaming face, holding up a sheet of music paper in Beethoven's handwriting, which Brahms had discovered and forwarded to him. It seemed that nothing could have given Buelow greater pleasure than to receive this relic. ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... utterly vicious place. Vice never so much as thought of wearing any disguise here. No glimmer of wit played over the foul substance of the songs that were sung, and hid it in dazzle from too close observation. No relic of youth and freshness, no artfully-assumed innocence and vivacity, concealed the squalid deterioration of the worn-out human counterfeits which stood up to sing, and were coarsely painted and padded to look like fine women. Their fellow ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... many philologists at home in England give," Felix murmured, philosophically, "for a transcript of the words that parrot can speak—perhaps a last relic of the very earliest and most primitive form ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... Lusitanian received his first lessons in agriculture—lessons which have never been entirely superseded. His plough was given him by the Romans, and he has not yet seen fit to alter the pattern. The ox-cart used in town and country for all purposes of draught is another relic preserved intact. Its wheels of solid wood are fastened to the axle, which revolves with them, this revolution being accompanied by a chorus of inharmonious shrieks and creaks and wails which to the foreign and prejudiced ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... letters-patent of nobility were permitted in real life; kings and queens were dethroned from their rank and station in legitimate tragedy or epic poetry, as they were decapitated elsewhere; rhyme was looked upon as a relic of the feudal system, and regular metre was abolished along with regular government. Authority and fashion, elegance or arrangement, were hooted out of countenance, as pedantry and prejudice. Every one did that ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... she would have been already leveled to the ground; and thus the citizens, who raised her again from the ashes to which Attila had reduced her, would have laboured in vain." See Paradise, Canto XVI. 44. The relic of antiquity to which the superstition of Florence attached so high an importance, was carried away by a flood, that destroyed the bridge on which it stood, in the year 1337, but without the ill effects that were apprehended from the loss of their ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... speak, the angel of death may receive the fatal mandate to strike you from the role of existence; and the friends who now surround you may be called upon to perform the last sad duty of laying you in the earth, a banquet for worms, and this fair body become as the relic you now hold in your hand. Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of sorrow; he cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as a shadow and continueth not; in the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succor but of Thee, O Lord, who ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... If you really loved me, to track me like a thief would have been impossible to you. And where have you learned this trick of playing the spy?" he went on with growing wrath, becoming more and more cruel with every word. "It is a relic of your Paris life, I fancy. It is hardly a resource to which a good girl would be driven. I at least believed you when you told me you had been true ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... friend said should have been some illuminated missal. This was somewhat inconsistent, because one would suppose the heart of the antiquary must have grieved to see the actor skirr away so precious a relic of the dark ages, as if, like Careless, in 'The School for Scandal,' he would willingly 'knock down the mayor and aldermen.'" It was at this time, probably, that antiquarianism first stirred itself on the subject of scenic decorations. The solitary banner unfurled by Kemble, as Richard, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... black skull wash'd up by the waves Upon the moaning shore—poor weeping skull, From whose deep-blotted, eyeless socket-holes The dank green seaweed drips its briny tear— If it be so, that round the festering grave, Where yet some earth-brown, human relic moulders, The parting ghost may linger to the last, Till it have share in all the elements, Shriek in the storm, or glide in summer ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... left, however—the Madonnetta which gives its name to a traghetto near the Rialto. But this sweet survivor is a carven stone inserted ages ago in the corner of an old palace and doubtless difficult of removal. Pazienza, the day will come when so marketable a relic will also be extracted from its socket and purchased by the devouring American. I leave that expression, on second thought, standing; but I repent of it when I remember that it is a devouring American—a lady long resident ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the mad flames smote him And stung him on either side; But he clung to the sacred relic,— By his mother's chair ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... the many relics of saints, of which, as has been seen, he had made plentiful prevision during his long reign. Especially a bone of St. Alban, presented to him by Clement VIII., in view of his present straits, was of great service. With this relic, and with the arm of St. Vincent of Ferrara, and the knee-bone of St. Sebastian, he daily rubbed his sores, keeping the sacred talismans ever in his sight on the altar, which was not far from his bed. He was much pleased when the priests and other bystanders assured him that the remains ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... on Mars for anyone to take more than he needs, for selfishness has been entirely eliminated from our planet. Selfishness has no place among really civilized beings. It is a relic of the jungle where it is necessary to ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... religiously preserved there. The head of St. Marnock was frequently borne in procession to obtain fair weather. It was the custom also to have lights placed round it every Sunday and to wash the relic with water, {33} which was afterwards used, greatly to their benefit, by the sick. The Innes family, who chose the saint as their patron, had a ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... requested to offer up a prayer, or even to deliver a suitable discourse to the, parties; but this was a matter of choice, and not of necessity, and had no share in the validity of the ceremony. Even the wedding ring had already begun to be regarded by the Plymouthers as a relic of Popish corruption and superstition, and was, in many cases, dispensed with, and some time afterwards formally forbidden. But on this occasion it was retained, at the wish of both Edith and her mother; who were accustomed to regard it as a beautiful, and almost a sacred, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... pronounced by the Spaniards with a strong aspirate, the x and j having the same force. The vowel d, the queen of letters, reigns supreme in Spain; it is a relic of the old Moorish language. Everyone knows that the Arabic abounds in d's, and perhaps the philologists are right in calling it the most ancient of languages, since the a is the most natural and easy to pronounce of all the letters. It seems to me very mistaken to call such ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... certainly," he said, "a very odd thing to find in the bedroom of an old bachelor like Jeffrey, especially as we know that he employed no woman to look after his rooms. Of course, it may be a relic of the last tenant. Let us see ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... other pretext, namely, that because the "Constitution" has been repaired at national cost, therefore any special claim that Massachusetts may have upon this relic of Massachusetts patriotism is removed. This idea has found crude and unmannerly expression in the words of one of the committee of Congress looking over our navy yards. "The agitation to keep the ship in Boston seems selfish," he is quoted ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... any of course in it," said Madeline. "The death of twenty husbands should not make me undergo such a penance. It is as much a relic of paganism as the sacrifice of a Hindu woman at the burning of her husband's body. If not so bloody, it is quite as barbarous, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... hope did not that paper at once excite! but now it has become, by the premature death of its noble writer, an inestimable relic, and a source of unspeakable regret; for it aggravates, to a peculiar degree in me, the mourning and melancholy that pervade the whole moral and poetical world,—in me, who looked forward (after the success of his great efforts) to the prospect of being ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Now sleep, sleep, your work is done," and slowly he wrapped the relic up in some soft material and ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... forward and thoughtfully examined the split table and the rusty old relic of Valley Forge, but Rockstone did not offer to stir. With what was almost a sneer on his face he met the challenging glance of ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... which formed part of these festivals, the horse was a frequent victim in the offerings to Odin for martial success, just as in the offerings to Frey for a fruitful year the hog was the chosen animal. I venture, therefore, to suggest that hodening (or probably Odening) is a relic of the ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... and among the few remaining is the 6-wheel "Pioneer," on display in the Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution. This locomotive is a true representation of a light passenger locomotive of 1851 and a historic relic of the mid-nineteenth century. ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... of these villages of Champagne—I think it was at Blesmes—I saw one relic which had been spared by chance when the flames of the incendiaries had licked up all other things around, and somehow, God knows why, it seemed to me the most touching thing ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... Pearl Street station, which continued in successful commercial operation until January 2, 1890, when it was partially destroyed by fire. All the "Jumbos" were ruined, excepting No. 9, which is still a venerated relic in the possession of the New York Edison Company. Luckily, the boilers were unharmed. Belt-driven generators and engines were speedily installed, and the station was again in operation in a few days. The uninjured "Jumbo," No. 9, again continued to perform its duty. But in ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... were quite right in wishing to keep you away from the attics; you will understand when I explain why. The hiding-place in the lantern room is a relic of the times of King James I. Have you learnt yet in your history books what severe penal laws were made against Roman Catholics in those days? Any priest found celebrating Mass might be executed, and often he was tortured first to make him tell the ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... dead boy. He had moved in and out among them, the warm, living, breathing thing that had been hers to love, and she had turned her eyes from that youthful comely figure to adore a few feet of painted canvas, a musty relic of a long departed craftsman. And now he was gone from her sight, from her touch, from her hearing for ever, without even a thought to flash between them for all the dreary years that she should live, and these things of canvas ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... perennial interest, and there seems reason to believe, of a work so vital, that long after the present generation has vanished it still will keep its place in the theatre, and sometimes be acted, not as a quaint relic ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... sounded very grand in the ears of all those good people. They bowed very low to him, they contended for the honor of entertaining him, they listened respectfully, almost devoutly, to the stories he told of society as it was. And thus, flattered, caressed, honored as a relic of Versailles, he had the place of honor and the prestige of a lord among them. When he dined with Madame Mutel, a former baker, who had forty thousand francs a year, the hostess left the table, silk dress and all, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... the enthusiasm which your presence excites in a people who cherish, with fond recollection and reverence, the smallest relic of that time, when liberty wrestled with oppression in America, and who hail the anniversaries of her triumphs with such grateful remembrance of those brave and patriotic men who wrought out our full measure of ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... first reissue of the New Paper, dessicated last relic of a vanished age, is like the little piece of identification the superstitious of the old days—those queer religionists who brought a certain black-clad Mrs. Piper to the help of Christ—used to put into the hand of a clairvoyant. At the crisp touch of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... feeble noblemen in Great Britain, between persecution and the deprivation of political power; whereas, there is no more distinction between these two things than there is between him who makes the distinction and a booby. If I strip off the relic-covered jacket of a Catholic, and give him twenty stripes ... I persecute; if I say, Everybody in the town where you live shall be a candidate for lucrative and honourable offices, but you, who are a Catholic ... I do not persecute! ...
— English Satires • Various
... of my grandmother. From all accounts she was everything that a wife and mother should be. My father often referred to her as an example of the affection and love of a wife to her husband, and of a mother to her children. The only relic I possess of her handiwork is a sampler, dated 1743, the needlework of which is so delicate and neat, that to me it seems to excel everything of the kind that ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... their business; that this connection between employer and employed is hereditary, and that clerkships pass from father to son in the same family. I rejoice to hear it. It is pleasant to find anywhere a relic of the old patriarchal bond, the permanent nexus between master and man, which formed so important and so healthful an element of the ancient mercantile system. One would gladly overlook a little favouritism and nepotism, a little sticking square men into round holes, and of round men ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... walk I took one night in Vienne, after having accomplished the examination of an unknown Druidical relic, the Pierre labie, at La Rondelle, near Champigni. I had learned of the existence of this cromlech only on my arrival at Champigni in the afternoon, and I had started to visit the curiosity without calculating ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Pulcheria, did exist at Constantinople, and was so much venerated by the people as to be regarded as a sort of palladium, and borne in a superb litter or car in the midst of the imperial host, when the emperor led the army in person. The fate of this relic is not certainly known. It is said to have been taken by the Turks in 1453, and dragged through the mire; but others deny this as utterly derogatory to the majesty of the Queen of Heaven, who never would have suffered such an indignity to have been put on ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... the family in mourning, crunching a teacup under his heel, oversetting the teapot, and finally tripping backwards over the hamper. The eel flew out at a tangent from his hand and became a mere looping relic on the sward. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... length he was regarded as a perfect fraud, and his sobriquet took a tinge of contempt. He is now utterly played out except in church and chapel, where the sky-pilots still represent him as a roaring lion. Yet, as a curious relic of old times, it may be noted that in the law-courts, where conservatism reigns in the cumbrous wig on the judge's head, and in the cumbrous phraseology of indictments, criminals are still charged with being instigated by the Devil. Nearly all the judges look ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... attention was arrested by the two men bringing up the rear; one, small and of uncertain age, the other, older even than he appeared, and bearing the unmistakable air of an English servant. As Ralph Mainwaring recognized James Wilson, the last relic of the old Mainwaring household, he suddenly grew pale and sank back into his chair, silent, watchful, and determined; while his son and the attorney, quick to note the change in his appearance, made neither inquiries nor comments, but each drew his ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... forming mind and purpose were dependent, and with which they had to conspire—affects the imagination even more than cases where we see nothing. We are tempted less to musing and wonder by the Iliad, a work without a history, cut off from its past, the sole relic and vestige of its age, unexplained in its origin and perfection, than by the Divina Commedia, destined for the highest ends and most universal sympathy, yet the reflection of a personal history, and issuing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... authors, have long since perished. There were no autograph collectors in ancient times. There was no such reverence then paid to the letter of religion, to cause the original manuscript of an apostle to be kept in a church as a sacred relic. We have plenty of pieces of wood claiming to be parts of the true cross, but not a manuscript claiming to be the original writing of an apostle. The earliest manuscript goes only to the fourth century, and that contains the Epistle of Barnabas. If, then, the writers of the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... taking up the head with pitying aspect, accompanied with sobs and sighs; some kissed it with as religious an appetite as ever they kissed the Pax; some cut away all the hair from the head, which they preserved for a relic; some others were practisers to steal the head away, but the executioner gave notice to the sheriffs. Now, when he began to quarter the body, the women thronged about him, and happy was she that could get but her handkerchief dipped in the blood of the ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... ducks) over decoys. The blind had been made by digging a hole in the sand. In the bottom was an armful of dry seaweed, to keep one's toes warm, and just behind the stand was the stump of a ship's mainmast, the relic of some old storm and shipwreck, cast ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... With a brazen pride she boasted that she possessed something worth more than uncut rubies, carpets from Bagdad, and silken petticoats sewn with sequins. And the Ouled Nails could not gainsay her. Indeed, they turned their huge, kohl-tinted eyes upon the relic with envy, and stretched their painted hands towards it as if to a god in prayer. But Halima would let no one touch it, and presently, taking from her bosom her immense door key, she retired to enshrine the foot in her box, ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... be celebrated above the tombs of martyrs'' — an observance probably suggested by the passage in Revelation vi. 9, "I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God.'' This practice developed into the medieval rule that no altar can be consecrated unless it contain a relic or ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... do, he attacked his own Party; so that in seven weeks, before the shoes were old in which he travelled to Sheffield, the Watchman went the way of all flesh, and his remains were scattered "through sundry old iron shops," where for one penny could be purchased each precious relic. To crown all, "his London Publisher was a ——"; and Mr. Coleridge very narrowly escaped being thrown into jail for this his heroic attempt to shed over the manufacturing towns the illumination of ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... for you, of a thing which I hold most precious,—here," she went on, holding towards Philippe a tooth, fastened upon a piece of black velvet embroidered in gold, to which she had sewn a pair of green strings. Having shown it to him, she replaced it in a little bag. "It is a relic of Sainte Solange, the patron saint of Berry," she said, "I saved it during the Revolution; wear ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... is perhaps the most prominent feature of the place. It is a magnificent relic of Egypt, and is one of two obelisks which stood in front of the temple of Thebes. It was erected fifteen hundred and fifty years before Christ, by Sesostris, in the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. Mehemet Ali made a present of the obelisk to the French government. ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... away to obey his orders, and Caleb Gordon went out to the foundry scrap yard. In the heap of broken metal lay an old cast-iron field-piece, a relic of the battle which had one day raged hotly on the hillside across the creek. A hundred times the iron-master had been on the point of breaking it up for re-melting, and as often the old artilleryman in ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... contradistinction to the Dung-tens, which are built in honour of the mortal Buddhas, and which ought to contain some portion of their relies, real or supposed. The first means an offering to the Deity, the latter a bone or relic receptacle. In the Sanscrit these are termed ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... the lateral lines are the ovals of Rameses the Great. It is of red granite of Syene. It bears the name of Cleopatra's Needle, is about seventy feet high, with a diameter at its base of seven feet, seven inches. We can hardly appreciate that we should have standing in New York a relic so ancient—a column upon which Moses and Aaron looked, and doubtless read its hieroglyphic inscription; that Rameses the Great (Sesostris) had his knightly banner carved upon it; that Darius, Cambyses, Alexander ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... surmounted. In a quarter of an hour he had gained a position close to the wreck; but, with the exception of the shattered remnant which was firmly wedged between the rocks, there was nothing to be seen; not a fragment of her masts and spars, or sails, not a relic of what was once life remained. The tide, which ran furiously round the promontory, had swept them all away, or the undertow of the deep water had buried every detached particle, to be delivered up again, "far, far at sea." All ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... for your sorrow. Why should such eyes as yours be permitted to weep? Who is there to wipe those tears away? Oh that I might catch them as they fall! Drop me down a handkerchief that has been wet with them, that I may keep it as a relic. Tell me of some way in which I can console you and spend ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... temple beyond contains no celebrated image, but a shari only, or relic of Buddha, brought from India. And I cannot see it, having no time to wait until the absent keeper of the ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... and lively, though ageing fast. The face was thin, rather wrinkled, dark and weather-beaten, with light untidy wisps of hair round the mouth. I was immediately struck by a curious twitching in his features, perhaps a relic of former bouts of drinking. Otherwise his expression was harsh and melancholy. His hands were red, swollen and calloused as if by ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... out the terms of the surrender. He had gone southward as far as Charlotte to superintend the last movement of his forces as a body and the final disbanding, and before parting with the members of his staff learned that one of them had preserved as a relic a little cavalry guidon of silk in the form of a national flag scarce larger than a handkerchief. The general immediately reclaimed it, and afterward sent it back under the provision of the surrender which agreed that all captured flags in ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... lest he too should become a cult and a convention, and whose main thesis throughout life was that piety is a crime, has been calmly canonized and embalmed in amber by the very forces he braved. He is become a tradition and a sacred relic. You must speak of him under your breath, and you may not laugh near ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... district of Champarun, which in essentials is part of Tirhoot, lies the quaint little cavalry cantonment of Segowlie. It is the last relic of the old Nepaul war, which caused the erection of a chain of cantonments along the frontier all of which save Segowlie, are now abandoned. There is just room for one native cavalry regiment at Segowlie, and the soldiers like the station ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... our reckoning this was the seventh day of the week, and not the first. I find among the papers of an old Justice of the Peace and Deacon of the town of Concord, this singular memorandum, which is worth preserving as a relic of an ancient custom. After reforming the spelling and grammar, it runs as follows: "Men that travelled with teams on the Sabbath, Dec. 18th, 1803, were Jeremiah Richardson and Jonas Parker, both of Shirley. They ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... deed of philanthropy has been accomplished by mankind than the extinction of human servitude. True, that horrible relic of antiquity has not yet been wholly obliterated from the world, but the nineteenth century has dealt upon it such staggering and fatal blows as have driven it from all the high places of civilization and made ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... heavy storm of wind and rain threw down the whole front of the house, and immediately scores of relic-hunters descended upon the house, and, delighted that they no longer need be deterred from satisfying their curiosity, roamed at will over the ruin, carrying away scraps of wood and stone as mementos ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 59, December 23, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of affairs is an anachronism in the nineteenth century, a hideous relic of the barbarism and anarchy of mediaeval times. In America, where every man is a czar, so far as the disposal of himself is concerned, the enslavement of the Russians seems a frightful disregard of the rights of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the half-frozen form in which a flicker still lingered they shook their heads. Death waged a stern battle even for this last relic, but life triumphed, and when the agony of returning animation had ceased the sole survivor told the cruiser's mess how Trawler No. 1 ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... different and more finished; each time that I saw him, he seemed to me to have advanced in learning and judgment. His letters are the fairest memorials of him which I possess, and they are also among the most excellent of his writings. His last letter I preserve as a sacred relic, among my treasures." He rose and fetched it. "See and read it," said ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... which he left in the lock. Luckily the barn was a good distance from the house and Mrs. Barnes and Imogene were sound sleepers. But even with those advantages he did not dare attempt getting the buggy out of the barn, and decided to use the old discarded carryall, relic of "Cap'n Abner," which now stood under the open shed ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... strips of bright yellow cloth, which two clowns held across the ring for the Circus Boy to leap over as his horse passed under. This did not bother him in the least, though he had never tried the act before. It was a relic of the old circus days that few shows ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Neale, who will remain with the Ship's Party, turn out at six and rouse the afterguard for the pumps, a daily evolution, and soon an unholy din may be heard coming up from the wardroom. "Rouse and shine, rouse and shine: show a leg, show a leg" (a relic of the old days when seamen took their wives to sea). "Come on, Mr. Nelson, it's seven o'clock. All hands on ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... we separated for the night the clergyman had a time-honoured little ritual of his own to go through that no one had the heart to deny him. He always did this. It was a relic of his pulpit habits. He glanced briefly from one to the other of us, his face grave and earnest, his hands lifted to the stars and his eyes all closed and puckered up beneath a momentary frown. Then he offered up a short, almost ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... undone? Deep harm to disobey, Seeing obedience is the bond of rule. Were it well to obey then, if a king demand An act unprofitable, against himself? The King is sick, and knows not what he does. What record, or what relic of my lord Should be to after-time, but empty breath And rumors of a doubt? But were this kept, Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings, Some one might show it at a joust of arms, Saying, 'King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, Wrought by the lonely ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... inserted before sealing and signing." This will having been made after conviction and sentence to death, and having but two witnesses, one besides the jailer, was not allowed in Probate, but remains among the files of that Court. As a link in the foregoing story, it is an interesting relic. The legacy clause, although not operative, was no doubt of inexpressible value to the feelings of Margaret: and the circumstance seems to have touched the heart even of the General Court, nearly twenty years afterwards; for they took pains ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... are singularly long-lived birds; and Humboldt mentions the curious fact of a parrot in South America, which spoke the language of {155} an extinct Indian tribe, so that this bird preserved the sole relic of a lost language. Even in this country there is reason to believe[361] that parrots have lived to the age of nearly one hundred years; yet, though many have been kept in Europe, they breed so rarely that the event has been thought worth recording ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... interesting relic in the whole collection was the spry octogenarian who acted as guide and showed us through the place—for he was one of the few living links between the Old West and the New. As a boy-convert to Mormonism he came across the desert with the second ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... the dead suddenly to command them to an awed obedience, Jerseymen could not be more at the mercy of the apparition than at the call of one who cries in their midst, "Haro! Haro!"—that ancient relic of the custom of Normandy and Rollo the Dane. To this hour the Jerseyman maketh his cry unto Rollo, and the Royal Court—whose right to respond to this cry was confirmed by King John and afterwards by Charles—must listen, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the white young men would surely go there soon after and stow the plugs away in their capacious pockets. As the town became settled, visitors would carry off the bones as mementos of the old chief. After they were all gone, some wags would place the bones of some dead sheep for relic-hunters to pick up and carry home as the bones of a ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... where sixty thousand peasants and workmen awaited his arrival at the foot of the tree of Liberty, on the top of which a brass eagle, the relic of some old standard, glistened like gold as it caught the rays ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... great antiquity. Many have been strongly bound with iron, but all are now in a state of decay. This lonely cheerless room, strewn with antique fragments and suggestive of the boy-poet's day-dreams, is certainly the most interesting relic in Bristol. Its comfortless neglect is a true epitome of the life of him who first shaped his course from ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... but not as high, is the jury-box. This is a pen with twelve seats within a high-sided inclosure like an old-fashioned pew. What the object of the inclosure may be is uncertain, unless it is a relic of a time when it was necessary to imprison the jurors. Jury duty has doubtless always been arduous and disagreeable, and in earlier days men were probably as anxious to escape serving on the jury as they are to-day. ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... ruddy face, a white neckcloth, and a large projecting shirt frill—which were all the peculiarities of person and dress that could be distinctly made out. He was smoking a long pipe, and placidly rocking himself to and fro. His appearance, through the two windows, was that of a finely preserved relic of a ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Africa, through the sun-bright cities of Spain, he travelled—unfriended as a man under a curse, lonely as a second Cain. Never for an instant did the remembrance of his ruined projects desert his memory, or his mad determination to revive his worship abandon his mind. At every relic of Paganism, however slight, that he encountered on his way, he found a nourishment for his fierce anguish, and employment for his vengeful thoughts. Often, in the little villages, children were frightened ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... to which in all her thoughts she attributed some consciousness. Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence. And the aged peasant woman most of all believes that her dead are conscious. Decent burial was what Lisbeth had been thinking of for herself through years of thrift, with an indistinct expectation that she should ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... a noted place for pilgrimages. Indeed, it was said that miraculous cures were effected by the agency of a sacred relic of St. Anne, and many a sufferer was brought here in the hope that, by performing his devotions at the shrine of St. Anne, he would ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... excess of my fury, when he took me by the collar, I struck at him; he reeled; and, with the sudden lurch of the vessel, he fell overboard, and sank. Even this fearful death did not restrain me; and I swore by the fragment of the Holy Cross, preserved in that relic now hanging round your neck, that I would gain my point in defiance of storm and seas, of lightning, of heaven, or of hell, even if I should beat about until the Day ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... the ancient Abbey of St. James have been carefully preserved, and the arched ceilings of two or three apartments are interesting examples of the Gothic period. The Servants' Hall is a relic of the monastic buildings, and three other rooms adjacent are in the same style. There is a small doorway with Norman features of architecture, and some roomy vaults and parts of inner walls on which are the effigies of departed monks, indicating the original purpose of the great ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... conclusion that our Peterborough catalogue makes a practice of not entering the main contents of the volumes, but only the short subsidiary tracts, which might else escape notice. And without much hesitation I put down the book before me as a relic ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... kind with deep drawers kept awake by rattling brass handles, its outside veneer so highly polished that you are quite sure it must have been brought up in some distinguished family. The scent of old lavender and spiced rose leaves, and a stick or two of white orris root, haunt this relic: my lady's laces must be kept fresh, and so must my lady's long white mitts—they reach from her dainty knuckles quite to her elbow. And so must her cobwebbed silk stockings and the filmy kerchief she folds ...
— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... stands near the entrance into the chancel of the church. According to village tradition, this rare relic was found on some of the neighbouring hills. It is curiously ornamented with symbolic devices in bold relief. "It has suffered dilapidation from the culpable neglect of those who should have felt an interest in its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... minds of the simple and the savage has survived the Renaissance and still triumphantly flourishes; the Queen of heaven, the Tyrant of heaven, the Woman in heaven; who was so venerated that even her sweat is exhibited as a relic; who was softer than Christ as Christ was softer than the Father; who in becoming a goddess had increased her humanity; who put living roses for a sign into the mouths of fornicators when they died, if only they had been ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... uttered yet more abrupt and scathing criticisms of the present. For them all, that old-fashioned house with its gigantic mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture, powdered footmen, and the stern shrewd old man (himself a relic of the past century) with his gentle daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman who were reverently devoted to him presented a majestic and agreeable spectacle. But the visitors did not reflect that besides the couple of hours during which they saw their host, there were also twenty-two ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... visiting Naples was to view that celebrated relic of antiquity—the city of Pompeii, of which, about one half is now supposed to be cleared. The workmen proceed but slowly, nevertheless something is always being done, and some new remnant of antiquity is almost daily brought to light; indeed, a fine statue was discovered, almost immediately after ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... his place. Shall I be pardoned for saying its aspect was very different from what we now witness? There was an air of decorum, of composure, of reflection, of gentlemanly and polished dignity, which has fled, or lingers only with here and there a 'relic of ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... name; a long, low stone building, whitewashed and covered with a sod roof, but, owing to repeated repairs, now presenting no particular traces of antiquity, although reported to have been built in the eighth century. I have no data in reference to this interesting relic, and am not aware that antiquarians have ever attempted to trace out its origin. The probability is that it was built by some of those Culdee anchorites of whom Dasent speaks as the first settlers ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... awoke, he followed the traces of his horse till he found the remains; and he secured the skin as a relic, cursing the wolves, and then drew his sword, and rushed into the wood in pursuit of them, breaking down the trees and bushes in his way, and destroying all the wild beasts he met with, while those who could fled to distant swamps and thickets. He would have utterly exterminated all the wolves ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... again, the modern Archeologists, Orientalists and Historians, are all Europeans; and they are all Christians, whether nominally or otherwise. However it may be, most of them seem to dislike to allow any relic of archaism to antedate the supposed antiquity of the Jewish records. This is a ditch into which most ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... with which it was filled. I found very little that could enlighten me except pieces of glass, of various metals, of wood, some of which seemed apparently to have been portions of furniture; and one damaged but still entire relic, which I preserved and brought away ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... a queer old stone tenement by the edge of the lake just under Mardykes Hall. Some people said it was the stump of an old tower that had once belonged to Mardykes Castle, of which in the modern building scarcely a relic was discoverable. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... is more or less a relic of the early days of the war, when these two hours were those most favored by the Germans for attack, and so it has become a ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... moved forward, and flung his reins over one of the corral fence posts. Every woodland sound, every discordant note from the heart of the valley was accounted for in his mind, so he hurried toward the flat-roofed hut, that mysterious relic ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... appearance at the bar of the Convention, the commissary Vincent, who had undertaken secretly to convey to the Queen a copy of the King's printed defence, asked for something which had belonged to him, to treasure as a relic; the King took off his neck handkerchief and gave it him; his gloves he bestowed on another municipal, who had made the same request. "On January 1st," says Clery, "I approached the King's bed and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre |
