"Scaffold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lass was taken to York to be hanged; she was brought out on the scaffold, and the hangman said, "Now, lass, thou must hang by the neck till thou be'st dead." But she ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... his wife, and unable to resist the overwhelming proofs against him, the man at length made a similar confession; and six weeks after, the unhappy criminals died on the scaffold, in accordance with the sentence of the Parliament of Toulouse. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... words on the scaffold, for being concerned in the murder of Pierce the gauger, were, that he got the first of his bad habits under Pat Mulligan and Norah—that he learned to steal by secreting at home, butter and meal to paste up the master's eyes to his bad conduct—and that his fondness for quarrelling arose from ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... for every other resource was exhausted. The message of the Directory to the Five Hundred was pressing; its aim was to demand a reprieve, and a decision as to what course to pursue. It ended thus: "Must Lesurques perish on the scaffold because he resembles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... stone dust and broken pieces, were some distance away from them. A company of half a score of children were ascending in single file, along a slanting plane of planks, into the hollow in the cliff upon which work had been renewed. Along the rock-wall ahead of them a scaffold had been erected and here were men drilling holes in the stone, or driving wooden wedges into the holes already made, or pouring water on the wedges as the skins the children bore were passed ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... proper French translator, and revolving in his mind the various arguments that might be used, and the comparative propriety of using or forbearing to use them; but the progress of things superseded the necessity of such deliberation. In a few months, Louis perished on the scaffold; the Bourbon family were murdered, or scattered over Europe; and the French government was changed into a frightful chaos, amid the tumultuous and bloody horrors of which, calm truth had no longer a chance to be heard. Schiller turned away from these ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... him. They were then prepared for execution. They walked to the gallows with entire composure and firmness of step. Rev. J. Richardson walked alongside of Lount, and Rev. J. Beatty alongside of Mathews. They ascended the scaffold and knelt down on the drop. The ropes were adjusted while they were on their knees. Mr. Richardson engaged in prayer; and when he came to that part of the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us," ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... trampled by the thousand footsteps of those who had witnessed the spectacle of that day, all of whom had now retired, leaving the dead to their loneliness. The traveller at length reached the fir-tree, which from the middle upward was covered with living branches, although a scaffold had been erected beneath, and other preparations made for the work of death. Under this unhappy tree, which in after times was believed to drop poison with its dew, sat the one solitary mourner for innocent blood. It was a slender and light-clad little boy, who leaned ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... of torture was raised a scaffold hung with black cloth, and strewed with saw-dust, for the convenience of the executioners, about three feet lower than ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... unmoved, to witness such a crime? While he yet looked round in horror, the doomed man, already apparently almost dead with fear, was dragged forward by his guards. Paralyzed as he was, at sight of the stage which he knew to be the scaffold, he uttered shriek after shriek of frenzied despair, and struggled like a madman to get free. But as well might Laocoon have struggled in the folds of the serpent; they pulled him on, bound him hand and foot, and held his head forcibly down ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... smile once or twice; but the poor soul's spirit was crushed, and doubtless the whole scene was to her like an evil dream—the poor broken-down body could not discriminate what words she was forced to repeat. A troubled, horrible dream must that have seemed to the hapless maiden, standing on that scaffold, with all the shouting mob about, and all her deadly enemies at hand. She made her mark on the parchment—a little cross—and the deed ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... weeks my young friend had become a clever moralist; it is true that Love had been her teacher, and Love alone can work miracles. As I concluded the reading of her letter, I was in the state of a criminal pardoned at the foot of the scaffold. I required several minutes before I recovered the exercise of my will ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... majesty of his god-like form, but there was no joy for me. Dark masses of clouds closed round the present sunshine; the present fled like a mist before them, and they oped, and then—there was still Wallace; but oh! how did I see him? the scaffold, the cord, the mocking crowds, the steel-clad guards—all, all, even as he fell. My children! my children! was there ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... is done by cutting the meat in thin slices, placing it upon a scaffold, and making a fire under it, which dries it and smokes ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... the great hunt of to-morrow, but I know his malicious eye too well to be deceived in his errand. He is silent that he may be sure; and if to- morrow comes, and finds Griffith within these walls, he will be condemned to a scaffold." ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... round the now thoroughly transformed place, with its engine-house, sheds, and scaffold and wheel over the built-up shaft, but he saw nothing, and said so. Still Gwyn was not satisfied, for a peculiar ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the Network.—A type of plot more elaborate than this may be devised by leading up to the culmination along three or more distinct lines of causation, instead of merely two. In the "Tale of Two Cities," Sydney Carton's voluntary death upon the scaffold stands at the apex of several series of events. And a plot may be still further complicated by tying the strands together at other points beside the culmination. In "The Merchant of Venice," the two chief series of events ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... shook his head, then turned the key in the lock and went slowly down the steps. He believed that the judge and the burgomaster would laugh at him should he give them Winkelsee's message. Yet he feared that if the imprisoned man died upon the scaffold, he would feel self-reproach and remorse for not giving him the one ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... to win back for MONMOUTH some of the credit for personal courage of which popular history has been too ready to deprive him. Here you may read how, after the short agony of nerves was over, he faced death with a placid and untheatrical bravery, than which the long records of the scaffold show nothing finer. It is a profoundly moving ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... more fit to die than I am, and a condemned cell, with the thought of the scaffold before him, are not exactly the most favorable circumstances under which a man might ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... stood and see this poor, weak, despairin' victim of rum dragged off to a felon's doom, dragged off to the scaffold, and one of his chief draggers wuz the one that caused his crime—caused it accordin' to law. And the rest of his draggers wuz the ones who had voted to have the trade of murderer makin' and child killin' and villian breedin' perpetuated ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... scaffold is the Bourse! But only small dabblers in money succumb; the great ones are safe from danger. They are supported in their undertakings by such powerful and numerous interests that they cannot fail without involving public credit; even governments are ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... above the ground and running up about six feet, there was a huge knot which grew out of the side of the tree. It was large enough to stand upon, when upon it, but there was not room enough for us to stand upon it and chop. We had to build a scaffold around the tree, up even with the top of the knot to stand upon. In that way we were able to cut the great tree down. It was a hard job and was attended with danger. When the tree started we had to get down very quickly and run back to a place ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... you have said it to me. Now promise me to say naught to him, but just this: 'Rose Gaunt's mother, she lies in Carlisle jail, to be tried for her life for murdering you. She begs of you not to let her die publicly upon the scaffold; but quietly at home, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... weather-tanned face—or perhaps it was the reddening sunlight stealing through some velvet piny space in the forest barrier. If it was a slight blush in recognition of his admiration she wondered at her capacity for blushing. However, Marie Antoinette coloured from temple to throat on the scaffold. But the girl knew that the poor Queen's fate was an enviable one compared to what awaited her if she fell into ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... gratitude which I have felt for your warning and assistance. Had it not been for that, not only should I myself have been taken, but they would have got possession of those papers, which might have brought the heads of a score of the best blood of Scotland to the scaffold. I took a boat that was lying in readiness, and making down the river got on board a ship which was cruising there awaiting me, and got off. It has always been a matter of bitter regret to me that I never learned so much ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... be mentioned on a trial for incest. It is a question of evidence, and the evidence is lost. But the Grand Jury which presented Anne was respectable, the Court which convicted her was distinguished, and neither she nor any of her paramours denied their guilt on the scaffold. Simple adultery in a queen was capital then, if indeed it be not capital now. In an ordinary husband Henry's conduct would have been revolting. It is not attractive in him. Stubbs pleads that we cannot judge him, and abandons ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... to speak of later dramatic incidents in Exeter—the trial and execution of Mr Penruddocke and Mr Grove, leaders of a Royalist rising of Wiltshire gentlemen, whose speeches on the scaffold are given at length by Izacke; nor of the joy that greeted the Restoration, when 'Tar-barrels and Bonefires capered aloft'; nor of Charles II's visit, nor the entrance of the Duke of Monmouth in 1680 with five ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... out fairly [upon the subject of Bacon and Shakespeare], though there is neither the Tower, the scaffold, nor the pile of fagots to deter her. But she is a wonder and a benefactor,— and let us not criticise her style; or rather, it is no matter whether we did or not, so much remains for her. I did not see her. I was just going to take Una and call upon ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... eminent in all these varied accomplishments. Consequently his family had a right to have high hopes of him. The great statesman, Kei-ying,—who has very recently terminated a life of devoted patriotism and heroic virtues by a sublime death on the scaffold,—undertook his instruction in Chinese politics. One lesson completed his education. "Lie, cheat, steal, and honor your parents," were the elementary principles which Kei-ying inculcated. The readiness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... secret, the guilty secret, the forgotten sin, sure to be disclosed? Then if they could not fly from the testimony of His works, if they could not evade even their fellow-man, why did they not first turn to Him? Why, from the penitent child at his mother's knee to the murderer on the scaffold, did they only at THE LAST ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... up his arm with a gesture of ferocious, gleeful malice, the wretches around the scaffold, as one man, broke into intoxicated laughter, joined hands and swayed in and out in ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... lint from damage by the weather. Accordingly the pickers are said to have averaged no more than twenty-five pounds a day. The preparation for market required the greatest painstaking of all. First the seed cotton was dried on a scaffold; next it was whipped for the removal of trash and sand; then it was carefully sorted into grades by color and fineness; then it went to the roller gins, whence the lint was spread upon tables where women picked out every stained or matted bit of the fiber; ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Christopher Harflete, and of the imprisonment and robbery of Cicely Harflete, the daughter of the one and the wife of the other. He bound himself to do those things which she should tell him. He bound himself neither in the confessional nor, should it come to that, on the bed of torture or the scaffold to breathe a word of all their counsel. He prayed that if he did so his soul might pay the price in everlasting torment, and of all these things he took Heaven to be ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... is forced to weaken them by the obstinate facts of life, but because it has learned to strengthen them by the understanding of what is harm and what is good; what is gain and what is loss. Peter shall be delivered out of prison by the skin of his teeth when they are hammering at the scaffold on the other side of the wall, and the dawn is just beginning to show itself in the sky; whilst James shall have his head cut off. Was that because God loved Peter better than James? Was one harmed and the other not? Ah! Peter's turn came all in good time. Peter and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of human activity, man risked all and gained all. The good and the wicked, or at least those who believe themselves and are believed to be such, form opposite armies. The apotheosis is reached by the scaffold; characters have distinctive features, which engrave them as eternal types in the memory of men. Except in the French Revolution, no historical centre was as suitable as that in which Jesus was formed, to develop ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... ungrateful Scotland! had thy desolated Queen, sir, No blue eyes ever known, nor had she beauteous been, sir, The envy of our old rival hag she might have baffled, sir, Nor with her guiltless blood have crimson'd o'er the scaffold, sir. ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... eye over the crowd and stepped forward a pace, as if to speak; but lifted a finger and beckoned instead: and out of the people a man fought his way to the foot of the scaffold. 'Twas the dashing sergeant, that was here upon sick-leave. Sick he was, I believe. His face above his shining regimentals was grey as a slate; for he had committed perjury to save his skin, and on the face of the perjured no ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not drag from me the name of a certain river in the north whose narrow estuary is inhospitable and dangerous, and whose docks are like a nightmare of dreariness and misery. Their dismal shores are studded thickly with scaffold-like, enormous timber structures, whose lofty heads are veiled periodically by the infernal gritty night of a cloud of coal-dust. The most important ingredient for getting the world's work along is distributed there under the circumstances of the greatest cruelty ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... child and ate it, and then went to her neighbors, calling upon them to come and see what she had done, and showing them the remains of her child, whereupon she was arrested and condemned to be hung. When she sat or stood on the scaffold, she cried out to the people, in the presence of the governor, that she was now going to God, where she would render an account, and would declare before him that what she had done she did in the mere delirium ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... that meddling prefect! he shall pay dear for this; I'll have his life if I have to give mine on the scaffold—" ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... the background to the right the Keep of Uri, with the scaffold still standing, as in the Third Scene of the first Act. To the left, the view opens upon numerous mountains, on all of which signal fires are burning. Day is breaking, and distant bells are ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... archaic as a button-hole is employed at the present time by our patent-ridden compatriots. The shirt, for instance, which was formerly such a simple-minded and straightforward garment, knowing no guile, has become, in the hands of the inventors, a mere pretence, a frail scaffold, on which an elaborate superstructure ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... the Queen and Government. It is not to be imagined what uneasiness the wrath of the people gave us upon that head. Two criminals, one of whom was a printer, being condemned to be hanged for publishing some things fit to be burnt and for libelling the Queen, cried out, when they were upon the scaffold, that they were to be put to death for publishing verses against Mazarin, upon which the people ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... not know. St. Catherine has promised me help, but I do not know the form of it. I do not know whether I am to be delivered from this prison or whether when you sent me to the scaffold there will happen a trouble by which I shall be set free. Without much thought as to this matter, I am of the opinion that it may be one or the other." After a pause she added these words, memorable forever—words ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... the extension of the "Inner Circle" Railway was in progress, the site of the permanent scaffold on Great Tower Hill, upon which so many sanguinary executions took place, was discovered in Trinity Square, remains of its stout oak posts being found imbedded in the ground. A blank space, with a small tablet in the grass of the Square ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... then—well, then,—what were jails for, anyway, but for men worth the salt they eat! And if it was worse than jail ... ready for that, too. He might die at sea sometime, anyhow. Well, suppose they did squeeze his gullet up there on a scaffold! He would be dying like a sailor with good boards under his feet. And they would know they were garroting a man, and not ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... neighbors were better inclined to believe that he had driven the horse into a gallop, intending to drag the girl for a short distance, as a punishment, and to rein up before he had done serious mischief. On this supposition he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to die on the scaffold. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... procured." After three years of toil the memorial was still far from completion, and Mr. Scott thought it advisable to give a dinner to the workmen, "as a substantial recognition of his appreciation of their skill and energy." "Two long tables," we are told, "constructed of scaffold planks, were arranged in the workshops, and covered with newspapers, for want of table-cloths. Upwards of eighty men sat down. Beef and mutton, plum pudding and cheese were supplied in abundance, and each man who desired it had three pints of beer, gingerbeer ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... up round a scaffold over which the hungry ravens croak and hover, so here, in the midst of death and horror, joy and hope began to blossom in thankful hearts. Diodoros lived! No word-only a fleeting pressure of the hand and a quick look passed between the elderly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... went to him. She had sought the door of Paradise, and the door of hell had been opened to her! If the frightful idea which, she did not doubt, had already suggested itself to Leopold, should now be encouraged, there was nothing but black madness before her! Her Poldie on the scaffold! God in heaven! Infinitely rather would she poison herself and him! Then she remembered how pleased and consoled he had been when she said something about their dying together, and that reassured her a little: no, she was certain Leopold would never yield himself to public shame! But she must ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... Tower on a scaffold made for the purpose in the King's Hall; and after her condemnation, she was conveyed to ward again, the Lady Kingston, and the Lady Boloigne her aunt, attending ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... her return to Boston until it was too late, appeared before the magistrates, and pleaded with all the eloquence of affection and anguish. But he wept and prayed in vain. His young and lovely wife was led to the scaffold, where she met her fate with a pious and even cheerful resignation; but her blood has left a dark stain on the history of the Church of Boston, that no time will ever efface. This dreadful event occurred about forty years after that period of which ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... "this is not the little bottle of poison; however, I will give it to you, together with another one, when I have obtained what I ask. Nothing for nothing, however; and if I must go to the scaffold, I will do so in ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... relies upon itself, invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, and knows no discouragement. The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat ... the enemy triumphs ... the prison, the handcuffs, the iron necklace and anklet, the scaffold, garrote and leadballs do their work ... the cause is asleep ... the strong throats are choked with their own blood ... the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass each other ... and is liberty gone out of that place? No never. When liberty goes it is not the first to go ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... great Avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... in the eyes of her subjects. The Count de Provence, who afterward wore his murdered brother's crown, was the first to teach the French nation that odiouus epithet of "d'Autrichienne," with which they hooted the Queen of France to an ignominious death upon the scaffold. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... still more astonishing to him that he felt no temptation so to demean himself. He wondered whether the oft repeated story was true, that criminals in English prisons went quietly and with dignity to the scaffold, because they had been drugged. For without drugs he seemed to be behaving with no less dignity himself. His heart was beating very fast, but it was with a sort of excitement. He did not even think of Ethne at that moment; and certainly the great dread that his strong hope would ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... who are compelled by an imperative duty to be present at the private strangling of their fellow-creatures. It is true, however, that use hardens the heart and deadens the nerves. I remember how, on the first occasion of witnessing an execution, as I stood trembling at the foot of the scaffold on which the victim was about to appear, I noticed an old reporter, for whom I entertained a great personal respect, pacing up and down beside me, reading the New Testament. In the passion of horror and pity that filled my young heart, I concluded that ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... clearly through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to see the time this declaration shall be made good. We may die; die colonists; die slaves; die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold. Be it so: be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while I do ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... officials did not transact any business. People were cited as witnesses, without previous notice. I saw two or three taken to the palace in a state of agitation which could scarcely have been greater had they been going to the scaffold. About three in the afternoon the prince passed sentence upon those who had been convicted. Some had their eyes put out, some the tongue split. Some had the ears, nose, and lips cut off; others were deprived of their hands, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... and until Lent, all kinds of knightly feats of arms were performed. "The queen and her ladies," says an old historian, "that they might with more convenience behold this spectacle, were orderly seated upon a firm ballustrade, or scaffold, with rails before it, running all round the lists. And certainly their extraordinary beauties, set so advantageously forth with excessive riches of apparel, did prove a sight as full of pleasant encouragement to the combatants, as the fierce hacklings of men and horses, gallantly ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... this continent, whether the Occidental or the Oriental theory of society is to mould our future, whether we are to recede from principles which eighteen Christian centuries have been slowly establishing at the cost of so many saintly lives at the stake and so many heroic ones on the scaffold and the battle-field, in favor of some fancied assimilation to the household arrangements of Abraham, of which all that can be said with certainty is that they did not ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... acknowledge this, and continued to paint on the scaffold, but his pleasure in creating was spoiled. He thought of nothing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... visage as it glared upon him; and this was the picture so drawn. The Italian said he had struggled long, but life was a burden which he could now no longer bear; and he was resolved, when he had made money enough to return to Rome, to surrender himself to justice, and expiate his crime on the scaffold. He gave the finished picture to my father, in return for the kindness which he had ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... sight!' exclaimed Viney to Watchorn as they sat on their horses, below a rickety green-baize-covered scaffold, labelled, 'GRAND STAND; admission, Two-and-sixpence,' raised against Scourgefield's stack-yard wall, eyeing the population pouring in from all parts. 'Dear, but it's a noble sight!' said he, shading the sun from his ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... shed by each other. The citizen of the nullifying State is a traitor to his country, by obedience to the law of his State; a traitor to his State, by obedience to the law of his country. The scaffold and the battle-field stream alternately with the blood of their victims. Let this agent but once intrude upon your deliberations, and Freedom will take her flight for heaven. The Declaration of Independence will become a philosophical dream, and uncontrolled, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the quotation about "a very parfitt gentil knight," or words to that effect. At the moment of writing it down I felt that my version was so correct that I would go to the scaffold for it; but at this very instant a doubt insinuates itself. Is "parfitt" with two "t's" the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... himself to be mistaken for another, and gives his life that the girl he loves may be happy with that other; the secret being known only to a poor little girl in the tumbril that takes them to the scaffold, who at the moment has discovered it, and whom it strengthens also to die. The incident is beautifully told; and it is at least only fair to set against verdicts not very favourable as to this effort of his invention, what was said of the particular ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... necessary, on the part of my friend, to obtain the consent of the Prefect to make these drawings. A moveable scaffold was constructed, which was suspended from the upper parts—and in this nervous situation the artist made his copies—of the size of the foregoing cuts. The expense of the scaffold, and of making the designs, was very inconsiderable indeed. The worthy Prefect, or Mayor, was so obliging ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... though they charged him with savage threats not to follow them with his eyes, he turned round and continued to warn them of the consequences of a life like theirs. In a few months' time they were captured, and it did actually fall to his lot to attend them to the scaffold. ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... best height for the mortar box and brick pile, and then designed a scaffold, with a table on it, upon which all of the materials are placed, so as to keep the bricks, the mortar, the man, and the wall in their proper relative positions. These scaffolds are adjusted, as the wall grows in ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... only two pillars without a transverse beame, which beame (they say) is to be erected when there is any execution, not else. Betwixt this gallowes malefactors and condemned men (that are to goe to be executed upon a scaffold betwixt the two famous pillars before mentioned at the South end of S. Mark's street, neare the Adriaticque Sea) are wont to say their prayers, to the Image of the Virgin Mary, standing on a part of S. Mark's Church right ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... along the foot of the river hills immence quantities of the hisop. in the course of my walk I killed two deer, wounded an Elk and a deer; saw the remains of some Indian hunting camps, near which stood a small scaffold of about 7 feet high on which were deposited two doog slays with their harnis. underneath this scaffold a human body was lying, well rolled in several dressed buffaloe skins and near it a bag of the same ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... who clamored for instant punishment, and finally succeeded in forcing the doors of the jail and overcoming the officers. The prisoner was hurried forth, amid the shouts and execrations of the multitude, a scaffold was erected, and at nine o'clock the same evening he was hung, with the ceremonies usually observed. An attempt at lynching was made in San Francisco about the same time. Two ruffians, having attempted to rob and murder a merchant of that city, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Monsieur de Nicolai, you will die on the scaffold; you, Monsieur Bailly, on the scaffold; you, Monsieur de Malesherbes, on the scaffold. 'Ah, God be thanked,' exclaimed Roucher, 'and what of I?' Cazotte replied: 'You? you also will die on the ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... on his cousin Cuthbert to reconnoitre and see whether the people would be ready to rise, but Cuthbert found the Scots sunk in despair. All who had taken up arms had perished in the field or on the scaffold. The country swarmed with the English, and further resistance seemed hopeless. Cuthbert had arranged to light a beacon on a point at Turnberry visible at Lamlash Bay in Arran, where the king, with his two hundred ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... Good Old Cause, 'Tis a stirring sound to hear, For it tells of rights and liberties, Our fathers bought so dear; It brings up the Jersey prison-ship, The spot where Warren fell, And the scaffold which echoes the dying words Of murdered ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... jokes—now, alas! very faded and dreary—were made by George Selwyn, and how that amiable favourite of society went to Paris in order to see the cruel tortures inflicted upon Damiens, and was introduced to the chief performer on the scaffold as a distinguished amateur in executions. One of the best of all these vignettes portrays the funeral of George II., and is a worthy pendant to Lord Hervey's classic account of the Queen's death. It opens with the solemn procession to the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Louis XIV, nicely done up in spices, but, to the owner's horror and astonishment, Dean Buckland popped the kingly morsel into his mouth, and swallowed it. We told about the black-letter prayer-book of King Charles the Martyr, used by him upon the scaffold, taking which into our hands, it opened of itself at the Communion Service; and there, on the left-hand page, appeared a spot about as large as a sixpence, of a yellowish or brownish hue: a drop of the King's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Picadilly or Valparaiso or Montreal: or woven into a cord which will fly a kite for some tousle-headed boy in Michigan or for a slant-eyed urchin on the banks of the Yang-Tse Kiang: or, somewhere, it may be looped into ugliest knot by a grim figure standing on a scaffold—though I hope not!" ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... on. I was a slave till 'mancipation. I was born close to Lexington, Kentucky. My master in Kentucky was Master Griter. He was 'fraid er freedom. Father belong to Averys in Tennessee. He was a farm hand. They wouldn't sell him. I was sold to Master Boone close to Moscow. I was sold on a scaffold high as that door (twelve feet). I seen a lot of children sold on that scaffold. I fell in the hands of George Coggrith. We come to Helena in wagons. We crossed the river out from Memphis to Hopefield. I lived at Wittsburg, Arkansas during the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the harm be warded off." The Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences at Metz, to which Minoret belonged, must possess this dissertation in the original. Though, thanks to this friendship, the Doctor's wife need have had no fear, she was so in dread of going to the scaffold that her terror increased a disposition to heart disease caused by the over-sensitiveness of her nature. In spite of all the precautions taken by the man who idolized her, Ursula unfortunately met the tumbril of victims among whom was Madame Roland, and ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... for us to carry our share of the moose flesh with us, we had arranged with the chief that he should build what is called a "sunjegwun," a high scaffold, on the top of which it was to be deposited and then securely covered over, so that no birds of prey could reach it, while, from its height, even bears would not be able to climb up to the top. This is an ordinary method ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... ashes, and would put a barrel on a slanting scaffold and put sticks and shucks in de bottom of de barrel and den fill it wid de ashes. We'd pour water in it and let it drip. Dese drippings made pure lye. We used dis wid cracklings and meat scraps to ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... "Maria Stuarda" within a mile of you, go and see her. Don't chatter: you can do that at home; attend to the scene; the worst play ever played is not so unimproving as chit-chat. Then, when the scaffold is even now erected, and the poor queen, pale and tearful, palpitates in death's grasp, you shall see her suddenly illumined with a strange joy, and hear her say, with a ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... time. From his connection with the militia on this occasion he was wont to trace his fealty to Virginia. He was a non-commissioned officer, and remained at Charleston till after the execution, visiting the old pike man in jail, and his company was selected to form guard around the scaffold when John Brown went, white-haired, to his account. There may be in this a consolation for the canonizers of the first arm-bearer between the sections, that one whose unit swelled the host to crush out that brave ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... backs, voluming in the distance, like some boundary for humanity, with a happier land beyond. Here I might have stood, a few months before, and heard the church bells; and the trees around me might have been musical with birds. But now the parsons and the choristers were gone; the scaffold was erected, the axe bare, and with a good by glance at the world and man, some hundreds of wretches were to drop into eternity. We have all read of the guillotine in other lands; it was now ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the carcasses of a dozen or twenty wolves. Each wolf had his scalp neatly taken off, and his head elaborately bored by the rifle ball. An Indian ladder, that is, a scrubby saplin', trimmed with footholds left on it, was laying against the old tree, at the top of which was a sort of a rude scaffold, contrived, evidently, by a hunter. At a distance, in a hollow, was seen a great profusion of wolf skulls and bones, but no sign of a human being could there be traced. The party made a fire, and as ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... news soon spread through the city, and men and women never tired of calling Gilguerillo an impostor, and prophesying that the end of the three days would see him in prison, if not on the scaffold. But Gilguerillo paid no heed to their hard words, and no more did the king, who took care that no hand but his own should ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... are necessary, whatever track be chosen. The scaffold ought to be raised at least four feet, with rails high enough to support the standers, and yet so low as ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... scaffolds, take out serpents from the vessels, and allow them to bite their arms. Bite after bite succeeds; the arms run with blood; and the Mals go on with their pranks, amid the deafening plaudits of the spectators. Now and then they fall off from the scaffold and pretend to feel the effects of poison, and cure themselves by their incantations. But all is mere pretence. The serpents displayed on the occasion and challenged to do their worst, have passed through a preparatory state. Their fangs have been ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... was shown to her pure spirit's gaze, The future with its sufferings, the shame, the scaffold's blaze; The deaf'ning shouts, the surging crowd, the incense, mounting high, Foreshadowed to her shrinking soul the death ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... of iron," he said afterwards. "They walk to the scaffold with smiling faces; they exist in dungeons that would kill a dog in twenty-four hours, and nothing can tempt them to divulge their secrets; even starvation does not affect them. They are dangerous enemies, but it must be owned that they are brave men and women. This boy, for he is ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... frequently visited him; and his advice was sought on all questions of importance. Yet at this time he undertook a service to the state, more invidious, and perhaps more perilous, than any in which his politics ever involved him. On the very day of the king's execution, and even below the scaffold, had been sold the earliest copies of a work admirably fitted to shake the new government, and for the sensation which it produced at the time, and the lasting controversy which it has engendered, one of the most remarkable known in literary ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... the News Letters, 'some pistols scattered' on the heath, and 'a led horse, with a velvet saddle,' were all the proofs that Cromwell could show that aught had happened on Marston Moor, during the night of the 8th of March. Nor could he solemnize the event, as he desired, by the appearance on the scaffold of a single Yorkshireman. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... go to the scaffold with Mrs. Ketchum," protested Sir Robert gallantly. "What do you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... of phraseology, no unlovely austerity of deportment, could, except to vulgar minds, make that sublime enthusiasm ridiculous, which on either side the ocean ever confronted tyranny with dauntless front, and welcomed death on battle-field, scaffold, or rack with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Sixteenth was certainly a much better and milder Government than that of Louis the Fourteenth; yet Louis the Fourteenth was admired, and even loved, by his people. Louis the Sixteenth died on the scaffold. Why? Because, though the Government had made many steps in the career of improvement, it had not advanced so rapidly as the nation. Look at our own history. The liberties of the people were at least as much respected by Charles the First as by Henry the Eighth, by James the Second as by Edward ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... years have gone by to-day since Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded, in presence of a vast throng of spectators, on the scaffold of Old Palace Yard in Westminster. General Gordon said that England is what her adventurers have made her, and there is not in all English history a more shining and violent specimen of the adventurous type than Raleigh. I am desired to deliver a brief panegyric on this celebrated ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... dies in the time of hunting, they expose his body on a very high scaffold, and it remains there till the departure of the troop, who carry it with them to the village. There are some nations who practice the same with regard to all their dead. The bodies of those who die in war are burnt, and their ashes ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... brotherhood, also in dark garments, with cowls on their heads and their faces masked. A party of officials on horseback, magistrates, and others, with another body of troops, brought up the rear. Slowly the procession wound its way into the Square, on one side of which was now seen a scaffold with a pulpit raised above it, and a booth or stand, covered with cloth, with seats arranged within. At one end were two lofty gibbets; while below, in the open space, two stout posts appeared fixed in the ground, with iron chains ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... with extreme ability; the name that was pronounced, instead of the name which the marquise awaited, had precisely the same effect upon her as the badly sharpened axes, that had hacked, without destroying, Messieurs de Chalais and de Thou upon the scaffold. She recovered herself, however, and said, "I was perfectly right in saying you were a witty woman, for you are making the time pass away most agreeably. This joke is a most amusing one, for I have never seen ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... constantly protested his innocence, but at the moment the verdict was given Couriol had cried out, in firm tones, 'Lesurques is innocent!' He repeated this statement both on the fatal hurdle and on the scaffold. All the other prisoners, while admitting their own guilt, also declared the innocence of Lesurques. It was only in the year IX. that Dubosq, his double, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Borough, when it was proved in evidence that he was in the habit of walking in his somnambulic fits through crowded thoroughfares. He was a plasterer by trade, and it was stated in court that it was not an uncommon thing for him to fall asleep while at work on the scaffold, yet he never met with any accident, and would answer questions put to him as if he were awake. In like manner, we are informed that Dr. Haycock, the Professor of Medicine at Oxford, would, in a fit of somnambulism, preach ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... by marching to the Tuileries, and after a furious conflict with the Swiss guards, they stormed the chateau. The king and his family had fled to the National Assembly. The same evening they were thrown into prison, whence the king and queen only came out on their way to the scaffold. ...
— Burke • John Morley
... III.—The Courtyard with a scaffold and gibbet. A blood-red moon is sailing amid the currant-bushes, and a shower of stars proceeds uninterruptedly. PONSCH discovered ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... for," laughed Forrest. "Corral the horses and fix up some kind of a mounting block. It'll take a scaffold to get me on a horse, but I can fall off. Make haste, because hereafter we ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... himself so great a disgrace as to wait for justification, though he had the scroll of his accounts in his hands, but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. Socrates's condemnation of himself to be maintained in all honor in the Prytaneum, during his life, and Sir Thomas More's playfulness at the scaffold, are of the same strain. In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Sea Voyage," Juletta tells the stout captain and ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the weakest are always the most cruel. Nor had the Companies of Jehu longer an organized existence. The heroes of these ferocious bands, Debeauce, Hastier, Bary, Le Coq, Dabri, Delbourbe and Storkenfeld, had either fallen on the scaffold or elsewhere. The condemned could look for no further assistance from the daring courage of these exhausted devotees, who, no longer capable of protecting their own lives, coolly sacrificed them, as did Piard, after a merry supper. Our brigands were ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Shaftesbury—the mercurial Buckingham—men who would not hesitate to sacrifice to the popular Moloch of the day, whatsoever or whomsoever, whose ruin could propitiate the deity.—Forgive a mother's tears, kinsman; but I see the scaffold at Bolton again erected. If Derby goes to London while these bloodhounds are in full cry, obnoxious as he is, and I have made him by my religious faith, and my conduct in this island, he dies his father's death. And yet upon what ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... his feet). They have gone—and in the morning I have got to die! To-morrow! And on the scaffold, as a thief! To-night I have begun—to-morrow, then, sees how I end! Here, here, I must not think of that. No, no; I will not. That is not for me. Five hours more! The time is very short. Show me, dear God, how I shall spend it well and like a man! For is not Morgan saved! Has not the news gone ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... —[Decapitated 4th June 1568]—there were very remarkable passages, and one amongst the rest, that Count Egmont (upon the security of whose word and faith Count Horn had come and surrendered himself to the Duke of Alva) earnestly entreated that he might first mount the scaffold, to the end that death might disengage him from the obligation he had passed to the other. In which case, methinks, death did not acquit the former of his promise, and that the second was discharged from it without dying. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the first design of Wren, the rejection of which cost him bitter tears. Even in his after work he met with so many rubs and ruffles, and was so insufficiently paid, that the Duchess of Marlborough, said, in allusion to his scaffold labors, "He is dragged up and down in a basket two or three times in a week for an insignificant L200 ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... dense crowd round the scaffold. Sophie heeded them not; she ran girlishly up the steps to where the executioner was leaning on his axe. "Where do I put my head?" she asked simply. The executioner pointed to the block. "There!" said he. "Where did you think you put it?" Sophie reproved him with a look and knelt ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... burlesque axe poised in the air, and then, but not till then, the moment which, like the present winter, is "critical,"—then, I say, enter the Princess with the reprieve? As it is, the effect of this dramatically grouped scene is lessened by the absence of action, and Bulbo is off the scaffold ere the majority of the audience realise the peril in which his life has ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... carried his generosity so far as to behave with courteous dignity even to those who had betrayed him; he even tried to excuse the indifference of the princes whose selfish inertia had been his ruin. He remained great until he reached the scaffold; eleven faithful Chouans died with him, among the number being Louis Picot, Joyaut and Burban, whose names have appeared in ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... the aborigines called upon them for increased exertion. They were wasting away with disease—they were dying on the scaffold—they were being shot down in mistake for native dogs, and their bleeding and ghastly heads had been exhibited on poles, as scare-crows ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... of the matter is," continued the King, "that either thou wilt repair forthwith to my son's chamber, and subsequently to church; or else unto the scaffold." ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... clear that I was mistaken for some one else. Fortunately the carriage-lamps were unlit, the windows still blurred with rain, and the night intensely dark; so, feeling like a wretch reprieved on the scaffold, I shrank farther and farther into the corner, glad to favor a mistake which promised some hope ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Eve, and Malcolm McCrea, just back from the woods, was throwing down some frozen seal meat from the scaffold for his hungry dogs after their long day's hauling. Malcolm was only eighteen, and in winter still lived with his father in their home below the falls of Pike's River. However, now that he had been away for two summers in his ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... learned friend may have proved of equal value to several of the French and American lads who have lately escaped from our prison. No, do not remove him—just yet. Give the rogue a long enough rope and he may find it dangling around his own neck on the scaffold out yonder." He turned to the sheaf of papers before him, pushing back his fine lace ruffles. "Enough of Haym Salomon. He will be my care hereafter. Now go over these lists with me, Heister," and he began to turn the closely ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... is likely that the sombre satire of the pure and beautiful Jeanne-Marie Philipon touched the heart of Paris more than the shedding of tears and shrieking lamentations. The wife of Roland, led to the scaffold, faced with the stern certainty of death, asks with calm dignity for pen, ink, and paper, "so that she might write the strange thoughts that were rising in her." The request was not granted. Then looking at the statue of Liberty, she exclaimed with fierce dignity, "O Liberty! What ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... your present tone would seem to intimate, that they were pacing there to enjoy each other's society, know that they—Carlyle, at any rate—was pacing the walk to keep guard. One was within that house—for a short half hour's interview with his poor mother—one who lives in danger of the scaffold, to which his own father would be the first to deliver him up. They were keeping the path against that father—Carlyle and the young lady. Of all the nights in the previous seven years, that one only saw the unhappy son at home for a half hour's meeting ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... yawned before her! A long, dark, black defile, the more gruesome since it did not run straight but round about; the entire tunnel so like a catacomb, was vaulted, hewn out of the hard quartz. The walls were already as black as a scaffold, with the underground mould, which had so covered everything over that objects lying on the ground could hardly be recognized. And on this mould-covered floor were traces of steps,—fresh distinct traces of steps going and coming. One ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... him the absolution of that murderer's father. Gianpaolo Baglioni, who reigned by parricide and lived in incest, was severely blamed by the Florentines for not killing Pope Julius II. when the latter was his guest at Perugia. And when Gabrino Fondato, the tyrant of Cremona, was on the scaffold, his only regret was that when he had taken his guests, the Pope and Emperor, to the top of the Cremona tower, four hundred feet high, his nerve failed him and he did not push them both over. Upon this anarchy of religion, morals, and conduct breathed suddenly the inspiring breath of ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... universal note, but it is the prevailing key, that in which the writer most naturally thinks and most readily invents. Strafford's devotion to Charles and Pym's to his country were historical; but Browning accentuates Pym's heroism by making the man he sends to the scaffold his old friend; and devotion is the single trait of the beautiful but imaginary character of Lucy Carlisle. "Give me your notion of a thorough self-devotement, self-forgetting," he wrote a few years later to Miss Flower: the idea seems to have been already busy moulding his ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... I have invited the chiefs to see justice done. I am going to pitch them a speech myself from the scaffold—cautionary tales for children, don't you know—and then, if old Fee-Fo-Fum with the mallet don't get too excited and miss his stroke, everything will ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... volumes may be gone through, and the autographs of nearly all the Archbishops and Bishops of England for the last 200 years may be seen, including Juxon, Bishop of London, who attended Charles I. on the scaffold. A book containing photographs of the churches in the diocese reveals that Bishop Longley—the first Bishop of Ripon—was of a distinctly practical character. He started this ingenious index to the state of his churches. As soon as any alteration is made ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... walks only the short distance from his cell to the scaffold or the electric chair, shielded from sight by the prison walls, and it often occurs even then that the short journey is too much ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... Ludar, interposing suddenly betwixt me and this blasphemer. "My comrade here is a servant of Elizabeth, and has no sword. As for me, my queen is dead—dead on the scaffold. I hate the English Queen as you do; but, if I fight against her, it shall be in my own quarrel, and no man else's. Therefore appoint us a duty whereby we may repay the Spanish King his hospitality, without fighting ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... made, and the storm raged fearfully. Thousands of people were wildly staring about for somebody alive to heap reproaches on; and this notable case, courting publicity, set the living somebody so much wanted, on a scaffold. When people who had nothing to do with the case were so sensible of its flagrancy, people who lost money by it could scarcely be expected to deal mildly with it. Letters of reproach and invective showered in from the creditors; and Mr Rugg, who sat ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... hold the time-honored tradition that Guido painted Beatrice in her cell upon the morning of her execution, or as she stood upon the scaffold—for there are two versions of the story—and that the gown and turban which she wears were made by her own hands on the night preceding the fatal day. But no words of mine can give a fair ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... the bricklayers looked down from the scaffold to the speaker below. Something in the lad's upturned face appealed to the man. He ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... of the camp, Smoke came upon what was evidently Snass's fire. Though temporary in every detail, it was solidly constructed and was on a large scale. A great heap of bales of skins and outfit was piled on a scaffold out of reach of the dogs. A large canvas fly, almost half-tent, sheltered the sleeping- and living-quarters. To one side was a silk tent—the sort favored by explorers and wealthy big-game hunters. Smoke had never ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... of the whole circle, as one maliciously disposed to speak 'anger-exciting or factions truths'. Poor Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were obliged to talk of love and duty toward their brutal murderer, Henry VIII, and tell 'peace-making lies' on the scaffold to save their poor children from his resentment. European gentlemen in India often, by their violence surround themselves with circles of the same kind, in which the 'point of honour' demands that every member shall be ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... presses too heavily upon the land-owning classes." I have heard it said that in the French Revolution, if the French nobility, instead of going to the scaffold with such dignity and fortitude, had struggled and cried and begged for mercy, even the hard hearts of the Paris crowd would have been melted, and the Reign of Terror would have come to an end. There is happily no chance of our ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... scenes, his prying into death, How felons and how saints resign their breath; How varying and conflicting passions roll, How scaffold exhibitions ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... from the devil. Stoughton browbeat him through his whole trial. What sealed his condemnation, however, was his offer to the jury of a paper quoting an author who denied the possibility of witchcraft. His fervent prayers when on the scaffold, and especially his correct rendering of the Lord's Prayer, shook the minds of many. They argued that no witch could have gotten through those holy words correctly—a test upon which several had been condemned. Cotton ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... not doubt you nor him, but for such work as ours—of which the aim is to return to France that liberty which has been stifled by the iron hand of Bonaparte and by the Bourbons—we need men who are ready to sacrifice their lives—to walk straight on, even if the scaffold stands at the termination of their road. Is Fanfar ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... cheerfully hobnobbed with a man whom he was about to conduct to the scaffold, lifted ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... impatience," as Bacon calls it, gave his rivals an advantage which, perhaps in self-defence, they could not fail to take; and that career, so brilliant, so full of promise of good, ended in misery, in dishonour, in remorse, on the scaffold of the Tower. ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... consider yourself the suitor of Miss Urquhart," I stammered. "You will marry her, though her parents may be called upon to perish upon the scaffold in an ignominy as great as ever befell two ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... him, he mounted the scaffold with him. The sufferer, who had been so gloomy and cast down on the preceding day, was radiant. He felt that his soul was reconciled, and he hoped in God. The Bishop embraced him, and at the moment when the knife was about to fall, he said ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... heart to see them suffer. I struggled until I reached the front ranks of the crowd, and then waited patiently until a procession, headed by soldiers with solemn music, left the prison and marched towards the scaffold." ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... for a time at his work before they finished stretching all the meat. Then they cleaned the codfish and put them inside the hut, so that the crows could not get them. Over the fresh meat on the scaffold they now spread some damp grass, because it was their intention to leave the place ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... relaxation of the torment and in the rear of silent anguish on its sudden suspense, amidst a continued headlong movement; and also, in looking back, tears, unless checked, might easily arise. But never during the torment: on the rack there are no tears shed, and those who suffered on the scaffold never yet shed tears, unless it may have been at some oblique glance at things collateral to their suffering, as suppose a sudden glimpse of a child's face which they ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... trial the Englishman, whose crimes had been many and black, bore himself with an air of complete indifference and received the sentence of the supreme penalty with a bored yawn. After he had been led on to the scaffold and just as the hood and noose were about to be placed over his head, the attendant priest, still persisting in his attempts to awaken penitence, in spite of the doomed man's deafness to his prayers, asked him ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... you might reason thus: "How will it serve the other cause to send one poor wretch to the scaffold, where there are so many ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... here refreshed his army, he continued his march through Carmania, feasting all the way for seven days together. He with his most intimate friends banqueted and reveled night and day upon a platform erected on a lofty, conspicuous scaffold, which was slowly drawn by eight horses. This was followed by a great many chariots, some covered with purple and embroidered canopies, and some with green boughs, which were continually supplied afresh, and in them the rest of his friends and commanders drinking, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... been the well-timed dissolution of Tuscany into a federal union of free cities. At a later period this scheme, then no more than the dream of a past age, brought (1548) a patriotic citizen of Lucca to the scaffold. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... grant the subsidy, he had, on the contrary, given an answer, in their name, in the affirmative. For these delinquencies, the imaginary and the real, he was inhumanly tortured and afterwards beheaded. "I know, my children," said he upon the scaffold, "that you will be grieved when you have seen my blood flow, and that you will regret me when it is too late." It does not appear, however, that there was any especial reason to regret him, however sanguinary the punishment which had requited ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... an impudent excuse for an impudent assumption. Brissot, in his early ambition, wished to pass himself off as a gentleman, and called himself Brissot de Warville, as Danton did D'Anton, and Robespierre de Robespierre; but when these worthies were endeavouring to send M. de Warville to the scaffold as an aristocrat, he invented this fable of his father's having some landed property at Ouarville en Beauce (not Beance), and that he was called, according to the custom of the country, from this place, where, it seems, he was put out to nurse. When ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... The scaffold's there, and thou art firm; Thou walkest forth upon it now; The thoughts within thy breast are hid, But calm and peaceful ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... of the group of huts, a rude sort of scaffold, four or five feet high, and surrounded by a rustic railing, served for the speaker's stand. It would seat about a dozen persons, and was protected by a roof of pine-boughs, interlaced together so ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... friends,—especially to her husband and to the Duke of St. Bungay,—her absolute conviction of the innocence of the accused man, and had called upon them to defend him. "My dear," said the elder Duke, "I do not think that in my time any innocent man has ever lost his life upon the scaffold." ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... first beams came glancing into the street; and the night's work, which, in its various stages and in the varied fancies of the lookers-on had taken a hundred shapes, wore its own proper form—a scaffold, and ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... was the usual means employed for inflicting punishment on scolding women. At Plymouth, the ducking-stool was erected at the Barbican, a site full of historic interest. From here Sir Walter Raleigh was conducted to his long imprisonment, followed by death on the scaffold. It was here that the Pilgrim Fathers bade adieu to the shores of their native land to establish a New England across the Atlantic. As might be expected, the old municipal accounts of Plymouth contain many curious ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews |
