"Scaffold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... since he came among them, and the lawyer whom these good people employed pointed out the shame and disgrace that would be suffered by a worthy family if one bearing the name of Darcy should die upon the scaffold. It is strange that in such cases the lawyers on the other side do not show that the shame and disgrace come with the commission of the crime, and that honest punishment endured for the same is the one means left the criminal ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... hats to cover lovely heads in 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 ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... where they were not likely to be disturbed. The circulars may not be considered legally treasonable, but the fact that Linnet personally placed the bomb that destroyed the airplane works will surely send him to the scaffold." ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... phenomenal, was adduced as lent him 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 ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... little nearer to the scaffold, and William was raised up to be ready for execution. As he looked round the dense mass of faces his keen sight soon made him aware of his friends. Adam Bell and Clym of the Cleugh stood at one corner ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... admiration of the beauty of the writing of that whole passage in the work. At the same time I regretted that he had omitted "Fils de St. Louis," and also that he has not mentioned the circumstance of the crowd opening and letting the Abbe pass in safety immediately from the scaffold after the execution. This it seems to me necessary to note, as part of the picture of the times: a few days afterwards a price was set upon his head, and hundreds were ready for the reward to pursue and give him up. I copied this from ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... that in England "blasting" was not an amusement that could be indulged in with impunity, and that any such attempt would meet with the consideration of the law and probably end upon a scaffold. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... BUILDERS, ETC.—John E. Bliss, Oxford, Ind.—This invention has for its object to furnish an improved scaffold for the use of carpenters, masons, painters, etc., which shall be simple in construction, strong, durable and easily adjusted to any ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... and the mighty Ruled with an iron rod. Then it chanced in a nobleman's palace That a necklace of pearls was lost, and erelong a suspicion Fell on an orphan girl who lived as maid in the household. She, after form of trial condemned to die on the scaffold, Patiently met her doom at the foot of the statue of Justice. As to her Father in heaven her innocent spirit ascended, Lo! o'er the city a tempest rose; and the bolts of the thunder Smote the statue of bronze, and hurled in wrath ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... successful undertaking. Before entering the princess's apartments he took his comrades aside and said, "There is but one more stroke of luck, dear friends, and then we have succeeded. If we fail, do not forget that our four heads will roll on the scaffold." ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... the crowd, 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Another story and I have done;—the Newgate Calendar makes mention of a notorious housebreaker, who closed his career of outrage and violence by the murder of a whole family, whose house he robbed; on the scaffold he entreated permission to speak a few words to the crowd beneath, and thus addressed them:—"My friends, it is quite true I murdered this family; in cold blood I did it—one by one they fell beneath my hand, while I rifled their coffers, and took forth ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... forgiving his judges. And not only had he 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, was arrested ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... directing their wisdom and influence to the right government of the State. The guillotine was better. He could not imagine his descendants without a House of Lords to sit in. Without the Lords, he was indeed the last of the Runnymedes, and upon the scaffold he might at least die ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... page. Now he is high in favor, braving it with the great Earl of Leicester, now down upon his luck, locked in some royal prison, writing verses to his many friends. His was a strange career; at one time there was no man in England whose favor was more sought, yet at the end he died upon the scaffold charged with treason. Time proved him guiltless of the charge, and almost at once the English people began to realize how great a light had ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... the scaffold where weare 5 men, 3 women, and 2 children captives, and I made the Eleventh. There weare severall scaffolds nigh one an other, where weare these wretches, who with dolefull singings replenished the heavens with their Cryes. For I can say that an houre before ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... quietly in the discharge of the duties of a wife and mother, and of those which devolved upon her when her husband became fifth Earl of Bedford in 1641. In 1683, their eldest son, Lord William Russell, died on the scaffold. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... sometimes "took on airs" and vaunted himself as their patron; he who had been only their equal once. It was only a joke, a witless, mirthless, coarse saloon joke, and they drank on and grew hilarious, never dreaming that they had sent one man to his grave, and another to the foot of the scaffold. ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the multitude on the shorn edge of the wheat field was brief. He spoke from the scaffold on which Sancho Mendez, the blacksmith, sat with a noose around ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... A scaffold was erected at the Tron, just under the tolbooth windows, by Thomas Gimblet, the master-of-work, who had a good penny of profit by the job, for he contracted with the town-council, and had the boards after the business was done to the bargain; ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... should the Warlike Harry, like himselfe, Assume the Port of Mars, and at his heeles (Leasht in, like Hounds) should Famine, Sword, and Fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, Gentles all: The flat vnraysed Spirits, that hath dar'd, On this vnworthy Scaffold, to bring forth So great an Obiect. Can this Cock-Pit hold The vastie fields of France? Or may we cramme Within this Woodden O, the very Caskes That did affright the Ayre at Agincourt? O pardon: since a crooked Figure may Attest ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... ripe. Cut them in half, and take out the stones. It is best not to pare them; as dried peaches are much richer with the skin on, and it dissolves and becomes imperceptible when they are cooked. Spread them out in a sunny balcony or on a scaffold, and let them dry gradually till they become somewhat like leather; always bringing them in at sunset, and not putting them out if the weather is damp or cloudy. They may also be dried ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... those to whom it was addressed. Made with as much courtesy as irony, is it likely his keeper in the Tower would ever forget his remark? "Assure yourself I do not dislike my cheer; but whenever I do, then spare not to thrust me out of your doors." Nor did his quaint humour desert him at the scaffold: "Master Lieutenant," said he, "I pray you see me safe up; for my coming down let me shift for myself." Even with his head on the block he could not resist a humorous remark, when putting aside his beard he said ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... make the prisoner's crime a capital offence—I admit that, of course, your Honour. Very well, we propose to prove that now," and then she had heard her name called. The proof that was to send Rufe Tolliver to the scaffold was to come from her—that was why she was there. Her lips opened and Rufe's eyes, like a snake's, caught her own again and ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... his guilt by confession and expiation. For though I am not, I hope, an unmerciful person, I do not think that the inexorability of the deed once done should be disguised by any ritual, whether in the confessional or on the scaffold. ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... and the populace had crowded round it more with the intention of laughing than of making purchases. The various packets were opened and arranged in front of the platform, I standing on one side of Melchior, Timothy on the other, and Num with his trumpet, holding on by one of the scaffold poles ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... 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
... gallows on this if on no other account. But at the moment the plea of insanity was rejected. The Government made up for its laxity before the rebellion by severity after it; and in November, 1885, Riel was sent to the scaffold. Bitterness rankled in many a French-Canadian heart for long years after; and in Ontario, where the Orange order was strongly entrenched, a faction threatened "to smash Confederation into its original fragments" rather ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... was Marie Antoinette's turn to ascend the scaffold, which she did October 16, 1793. Her daughter, Marie Theresa, was then left alone with her aunt, ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... as guide. Thomas Doughty now fell in disfavor by openly acting as equal in command with Drake. Not in Egypt, but at Port St. Julian—a southern harbor of South America—anchored Drake's fleet. The scaffold where Magellan had executed mutineers half a century before still stood ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... the open air, temporary scaffolds or stages were commonly erected for the purpose; though in some cases the scaffold was set on wheels, so as to be easily moved from one part of the town to another. It appears that the structure used at Chester had two stages, one above the other; the lower being closed in, to serve as a dressing-room for the actors, while the performance ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... to his fate, and appeared[b] on the scaffold with a serenity of countenance and dignity of behaviour, which did honour to the cause for which he suffered. The cruel punishment of treason had been, after some objections, commuted for decapitation, and the dead body was delivered for interment ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... rashness, had on the Queen's death dashed into the arena and boldly asserted his right as the heir of Edward the Fourth. The only way to dispose of him was by making him realise that the crown was beyond his grasp; and that if he persevered, he would find the scaffold and the axe within it. This was accordingly done so effectually that weak, impulsive Basset quailed before the storm, and fled to France to save his own life. He survived the accession of James the First for seventeen ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... mother advised, and the cousin never learned of the deception until many years later. The boy who had stolen the mink went from bad to worse until, during the outbreak of the Mormons, I think, he was implicated in the murder of Colonel Davenport of Iowa. While on the scaffold, he confessed that his first step downward was in taking the mink out of his cousin's trap and telling a falsehood about it. God's Word was verified: "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... a curious fact in the annals of heresy and sedition, that opinions maintained with impunity by one individual, have, in the same age, brought others to the stake or to the scaffold. The results of deep research or extravagant speculation seldom provoke hostility, when meekly announced as the deductions of reason or the convictions of conscience. As the dreams of a recluse or of an enthusiast, ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... infinitely superior, with more soul, more character than he, her superiority only served to inspire him with mischievous counsels. She was at once the charm of his misfortunes and the genius of his destruction; she conducted him step by step to the scaffold, but she ascended ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... think there was any disobedience in looking at the part about Pranzini. The day after his execution I hastily opened the paper, La Croix, and what did I see? Tears betrayed my emotion; I was obliged to run out of the room. Pranzini had mounted the scaffold without confessing or receiving absolution, and the executioners were already dragging him towards the fatal block, when all at once, apparently in answer to a sudden inspiration, he turned round, seized the crucifix which the Priest was offering to him, and ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... farewell to my pious and liberal entertainers, I returned to the settlement, to prepare for the opening of the drama, which would lead some of us either to absolute power or to the scaffold. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Rome from Gaeta, that refuge of destitute sovereigns. It is also, by a strange coincidence, the anniversary of the day on which his Holiness and General Goyon narrowly escaped being killed by the falling of a scaffold, from which they were inspecting the repairs at the church of St Agnese. On that day, in honour of the doubly joyful event, the Pope went to celebrate mass at the convent of St Agnese. The time was one when a popular demonstration in favour of the ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... showed an inclination to acquit him, the Commons passed an ordinance of attainder, declaring him guilty of treason, to which they compelled the Peers to assent, and on the 10th of January 1645 he was brought to the scaffold on Tower Hill. His body was interred in the chancel of All Hallows, Barking, where it remained until 1663, when it was removed to the Chapel of ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... led to the scaffold on the 28th June. He spoke to the people with great calmness, and, in two languages, French and Flemish, declared that he was guiltless of treachery, but that the terror and tears of the women, in an hour of panic, had made a coward of him. He was beheaded, standing. The two ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may run it. We may not live to the time when 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 live, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... 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 ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill. The Butter exchange band. Few years' time half of them magistrates and civil servants. War comes on: into the army helterskelter: same fellows used to. Whether on the scaffold high. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... necessary to my salvation, what should I have become had I died at Liege? Where should I have been now? And even if I had not been taken, and had lived another twenty years away from France, what would my death have been, since it needed the scaffold for my purification? Now I see all my wrong-doings, and the worst of all is the last—I mean my effrontery before the judges. But all is not yet lost, God be thanked; and as I have one last examination to go through, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 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 for ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... but pleading also that there were extenuating circumstances in the case. We all know the story of the convict, who on the scaffold bit off his mother's ear. By doing so he did not deny the fact of his own crime, for which he was to hang; but he said that his mother's indulgence, when he was a boy, had a good deal to do with it. In like manner I had made a charge, and I had made it ex animo; but I accused others ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... that she should purchase it, which she did, on the spot; and Kinch invested all the money in a large cross-bow, wherewith Charlie was to shoot game sufficient to supply both Kinch and his own parents. Had Charlie been on his way to the scaffold, he could not have been followed by a more solemn face than that presented by Kinch as he trudged on with him in the rear the porter who ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... cemented the stones in every monument that man has reared to himself; that woman, the oppressed, woman, the hater of wars, the faithful, quiet drudge of the centuries, watching while others slept, working while others plundered and murdered; woman, who has died in prison and on the scaffold for liberty, should here and now have her audience ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... flower means nothing—appeals to no region beyond the scope of the science that would unveil its growth. He cannot believe that its structure exists for the sake of its laws; that would be to build for the sake of its joints a scaffold where no house was to stand. Those who put their faith in Science are trying to live in the scaffold ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... day, and fed and brought him up as his own son. The curate died in 1804, without leaving enough property to carry on the education he had begun. Ferdinand, thrown upon Paris, led a filibustering life whose chances might bring him to the scaffold, to fortune, the bar, the army, commerce, or domestic life. Obliged to live like a Figaro, he was first a commercial traveller, then a perfumer's clerk in Paris, where he turned up after traversing all France, having studied ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... praised! The joyful tidings are just announced of Land!! Oh! who can conceive our feelings now? The wretch condemned to the scaffold, who receives, at the moment he expects to die, the joyful reprieve, he can best conceive the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... need to remember that religious truth which does not mould and transform character and conduct is a king dethroned; and for dethroned kings there is a short step between the throne from which they have descended and the scaffold on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... that baffled Crown'd and mitred tyranny: They defied the field and scaffold, For their ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... which are used for straw, one for cut hay, and one for muck for the cellar. n and the other small squares are eighteen-feet posts. f, passage to the tool-house, a room one hundred feet long by eighteen wide. o, stairs leading to the scaffold in the roof of the tool-house. i i, benches. g, floor. h, boxes for hoes, shovels, spades, picks, iron bars, old iron, etc. j j j, bins for fruit. k, scuttles to put apples into wagons, etc., in the shed ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... you will become a great one; but to be bad, and at the same time unsuccessful, is a hard fate. It casts a little doubt upon a man's badness if he does not, at least, make a little money. It is a poor business accompanying badness on to a common scaffold, or to see it die in a wretched garret. That was one of my complaints with Mr. Seccombe's Twelve Bad Men. Most of them came to violent ends. They were ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... the judge, "lead them to death instantly." So they were taken out, and the host had to go with them into the circle. When they were taken hold of by the executioner's men, and were just going to be led up to the scaffold where the headsman was standing with naked sword, a coach drawn by four blood-red chestnut horses came up suddenly, driving so fast that fire flashed from the stones, and someone made signs from the window with a white handkerchief. Then said the headsman, "It is a pardon ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... shoe to denote their quality; and here the good, the great, the brave, the wise, and the abandoned have been brought to trial. Here (in the Hall of Rufus) Sir William Wallace was tried and condemned; in this very Hall, Sir Thomas More and Protector Sommerset were doomed to the scaffold. Here, in Henry VIII.'s reign (1517), entered the City apprentices, implicated in the murders on 'Evil May Day' of the aliens settled in London, each with a halter round his neck, and crying 'Mercy, ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... her especially before the scaffold, say that because of her title she had the right of respect, but suppress your accusations when one contents himself with saying that he had been, it was said, the lover of the queen. Can that be so serious that ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... who now govern France began their operations by ridiculing the King's private character—from ridicule they proceeded to calumny, and from calumny to treason; and perhaps the first libel that degraded him in the eyes of his subjects opened the path from the palace to the scaffold.—I do not mean to attribute the same pernicious intentions to the authors on your side the Channel, as I believe them, for the most part, to be only mercenary, and that they would write panegyrics as soon as satires, were they equally profitable. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... the rebellion had passed, Canada had overthrown a system of government by oligarchy. She had ousted special interests forever from her legislative halls. In a blood and sweat of agony, on the scaffold, in the chain gang, penniless, naked, hungry and in exile, her patriots had fought the dragon of privilege, cast out the accursed thing and founded national life on the eternal rocks of justice to all, special privileges to none. Her patriots had ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... than the demolition of the tombs. The coffins containing the remains of kings and queens, princes and princesses, were violated. On Wednesday, the 16th of October, 1798, at the very hour that Marie Antoinette mounted the scaffold,—she who had so wept for her son, the first Dauphin, who died the 4th of June, 1789, at the beginning of the Revolution,—the disinterrers of kings violated the grave of this child and threw his bones on the refuse heap. Iconoclasts, jealous of death, ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... dried fish per day, and taking home a couple of half-rouble pieces in his purse, and sewing the notes into his breeches, or stuffing them into his boots! In what manner came you by your end, Probka Stepan? Did you, for good wages, mount a scaffold around the cupola of the village church, and, climbing thence to the cross above, miss your footing on a beam, and fall headlong with none at hand but Uncle Michai—the good uncle who, scratching the back of his neck, and muttering, 'Ah, Vania, for ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... late years, was common amongst the Buddhists of the Burmese empire. According to an eye-witness, Mr. F. Carey, the puishment was inflicted in two ways. Sometimes criminals were crucified by their hands and feet being nailed to a scaffold; others were merely tied up, and fed. In these cases the legs and feet of the patient began to swell and mortify at the expiration fo three or four days; men are said to have lived in this state for a fortnight, and at last ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... spring of 1625, just a month or two after the accession of the king whose tragical fate was to be the original source of Milton's European fame and very nearly the cause of his mounting a scaffold himself, the future author of Paradise Lost went into residence at Cambridge where he remained for seven years. The college that can boast his name among its members is Christ's. Unlike so many poets he had a successful university career, took the ordinary ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... their houses they have sometimes a scaena or high stage, raised like a scaffold, or small spelts, reeds, or dried osiers covered with mats which gives a shadow and is a shelter ... where on a loft of hurdles they lay forth their corn and ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... units the racial situation was generally poor. Granger regarded the organization of the units as "badly conceived from the racial standpoint." Since base companies were composed almost entirely of nonrated men, spaces for black petty officers were lacking. In such units the scaffold of subordinate leadership necessary to support and uphold the authority of the officers was absent, as were opportunities for individual advancement. Some units had been provisionally re-formed into logistic support companies, and newly authorized ratings were quickly filled. ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... "ho! When Joe Wrench was hanged for shooting the lord's keeper, and he mounted the scaffold wid a nosegay in his hand, he said, in a peevish voice, says he: 'Why does not they give me a tarnation? I always loved them sort o' flowers,—I wore them when I went a courting Bess Lucas,—an' I would like to die with ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... prove, by reasons evidently their own, that the King of France alone imposed the taxes, that the Chambers were convoked to destroy the clergy, that thirteen hundred thousand persons had perished on the scaffold during the Revolution? They frequently discussed the press, without either of them having the faintest idea of what that modern engine really was. Monsieur Birotteau listened with acceptance to Mademoiselle ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... impeached. Pleading guilty at his trial he was attainted and condemned to death. Great efforts were made to obtain a mitigation of the sentence, but the government was obdurate, and Derwentwater was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 24th of February 1716, declaring on the scaffold his devotion to the Roman Catholic religion and to King James III. The earl was very popular among his tenantry and in the neighbourhood of his residence, Dilston Hall. His gallant bearing and his sad fate ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... I. was executed on a scaffold erected in front of the Banqueting House, towards the park. The warrant directs that he should be executed 'in the open street before Whitehall.' Lord Leicester tells us in his Journal, that he was 'beheaded at Whitehall Gate.' ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... to Sheffield Manor House, where she spent fourteen years. It was for the alleged intention of moving her hence that Thomas Duke of Norfolk, an ancestor of the ducal family, still closely connected with Sheffield, suffered on the scaffold. The grandson of this Duke of Norfolk, at whose trial the Earl of Shrewsbury presided as High Steward, afterwards married the granddaughter of the Earl, and thereby became possessed of this castle and estate." And now, in 1851, another son of Norfolk is about to acquire a large fortune ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... held in Covent Garden, a large market-place in the open air. There was a scaffold erected just before the door of a very handsome church, which is also called St. Paul's, but which, however, is not to be ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... ready, before I said much: for she is very quick—and ten to one but the first word of such a thing turns her blood to gall. Sir, I once knew a poor woman—she was a carpenter's wife—a-nursing her child in the afternoon—and in runs a foolish woman, and tells her he was killed dead, off a scaffold. 'Twas the man's sister told her. Well, sir, she was knocked stupid like, and she sat staring, and nursing of her child, before she could take it in rightly. The child was dead before supper-time, and the woman was not long after. The whole family was ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... to the master, "this letter," waving it in his hand, "is like a reprieve to a man on the scaffold." Maclise stood gazing in amazement ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... unwittingly selected an "off-night" for her journey; neither horrible accident nor raid of bold marauders enlivened the occasion; and undisturbed, the reckless passengers slept throughout the night, as men have slept who knew that a scaffold waited for them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... laughter; it was a laugh of enjoyment at a pleasing recollection. Then he suddenly flung himself down on his knee at the feet of his sovereign. "Give me leave, your Majesty," he cried passionately. "Let me go upon this errand. If I fail, if the scaffold's dressed for me, why where's the harm? Your Majesty loses one servant out of his many. Whereas, if I win—" and he drew a long breath. "Aye, and I shall win! There's the Princess, too, a prisoner. Sir, she has ventured much. I beg you give ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... God is with us and we shall triumph. "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 watch above ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... till the breath was clean gone out of him, and then, if man coveted vengeance, let him take it on the silent dust. But no sooner was it known to the Queen—to her, a woman and a mother!—than she gave command to have the scaffold run up with all speed, and that dying man drawn of an hurdle through the city that all men might behold, with trumpets going afore, and at last hanged of the gallows till he were dead. Oh, the pity of it! the ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... power. The ruin or death of all the King's adherents was resolved on; and in proof that the fanatics could not only threaten but act, the venerable Archbishop Laud, after suffering a long imprisonment, was dragged to the scaffold. Thus the Parliamentary commissioners set out for Uxbridge with their banners dipped in the blood of the highest subject in the realm, the head of the Anglican church, and His ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... care of his animals. Sometimes he came over and talked with my mother about his trials with his wicked sister-in-law. He said he often went to the barn in the morning, and found his poor cattle had walked up to the top of the scaffold; and how could they do that ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... so particular about all this? I hardly know. The place made an unaccountably vivid impression on me, and I can't help writing about it. If I end badly—suppose we say on the scaffold?—I believe the last thing I shall see, before the hangman pulls the drop, will be the little shining pool, and the long, misty grazing-grounds, and the cattle winding dimly home in the thickening night. Don't be alarmed, you worthy creature! My fancies play me strange tricks sometimes; ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... forcible, and intelligible, and very often possesses a rude sort of majesty, which perhaps would be ill-exchanged for mere elegance." "They are the very words and accents of our early Reformers—sung by them in woe and gratitude, in the fields, in the churches, and on the scaffold." "The parting with this very association of ideas is a serious loss to the cause of devotion, and scarce to be incurred without the certainty of corresponding advantages. But if these recollections are valuable to persons of education, they are almost indispensable to the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... were to be executed in the court of the castle, August 12th. The scaffold was erected, the tribunes were filled, the duke took his place, and the unfortunate wretches were led to the block. Alfonso made a signal—he was about to show mercy to his brothers. They lost consciousness and were carried back to prison. Their punishment had been commuted to ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... November, 1640, and began its work—brought Strafford to the scaffold, clapped Laud into the Tower, Archbishop though he was, and secured as best they could the permanency of Parliamentary institutions. None of these things specially concerned John Milton. But there also uprose the eternal ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end on every road pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that lurked but here and there until nature ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... to itself, the tree branches near the ground, making many strong secondary scaffold trunks; but the plant does not habitually have more than one bole, even though it may branch from the very base; it is a real tree, even though small, and not a huge shrub. In the natural condition, the trunk often rises only a foot or two before it is lost in the ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... Chichester's illustrious sons is Archbishop Juxon, who stood by the side of Charles I. on the scaffold and bade farewell to him in the words "You are exchanging from a temporal to an eternal crown—a ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... cessation of all restoration on the church. I received the thanks of the Italian ministry and the formal request to inform it of any other similar operations which should fall under my attention, and when a few weeks later I saw the scaffold raised around the beautiful pulpit of Donatello at Prato, a note to the ministry had the effect of telegraphically stopping operations. The indignation of the good people of Florence at the cessation of the house-cleaning brought me a request from a high quarter to undertake the defense ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... not by death. Instead, he ordered a nobleman named Villejo to take them at once to Spain. When Villejo, with some soldiers, entered the cell in order to remove the prisoners to the ship, Columbus thought he was to be escorted to the scaffold. "I see I am to die," he said calmly. Villejo, who seems to have been the only man in San Domingo with an ounce of humanity in him, answered kindly, "I am to escort you to a ship, Your Excellency, ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... was certain that La Salle would not allow it to go unavenged. Though punishment might be postponed until they should emerge from their long and perilous journey through the wilderness, there could be no doubt that as soon as they should reach a French military post they would all die upon the scaffold. ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... Habsburg or Bourbon or Stuart. They knew that their guilders and shillings could beat the clumsy feudal armies which were the only weapons of the King. They dared to act, where others were condemned to suffer in silence or run the risk of the scaffold. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... breaches were mending and the thunder showr arose, one standing in the church-yard observed a black cloud to come sayling along towards the steeple, and called to the workman as he was on the scaffold; and wisht him to beware of it and to make hast. But before he went off the clowd came to him, and with a terrible crack threw down the steeple, sc. about the middle, where he was at worke. Immediately they lookt up and ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... who was Archbishop of Canterbury in Charles the First's time, and, like him, died on the scaffold, was also greatly interested in collecting books. He gave generously to Oxford University, and his books are in the Bodleian Library, with many other ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... How would the bets be decided? Who would go to see him executed, and who would not go, and how could it be done? The position of the localities, which in Limoges spares a criminal the anguish of a long distance to the scaffold, lessens the number of spectators. The law courts which adjoin the prison stand at the corner of the rue du Palais and the rue du Pont-Herisson. The rue du Palais is continued in a straight line by the short ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... tell he may tell it out boldly, in books or otherwise. A blessing from God! one which we should reverence, for God knows it was dearly bought. Before our forefathers could buy it for us, many an honoured man left house and home to die in the battle-field or on the scaffold, fighting and witnessing for the right of every man to whom God's Word comes, to speak God's Word openly to his countrymen. A blessing, and an awful one! for the same gate which lets in good lets in evil. The law dare not silence bad books. It dare not root up the ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... me a Bible in French, and bade me read it, was a Franciscan like yourself. And therein I learned the religion that I now hold, which is the only true religion. Having lived in it ever since, I wish, by the grace of God, to die in it to-day." On the scaffold, after a touching address to the spectators, he recited in a loud voice the Apostles' Creed, in the confession of which he protested that he died, and then, "having made his prayer to God after the manner of ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... 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 ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... peace of the nation had been disturbed rather than endangered, were quenched by the vigilance and severity of that able monarch; during the wars of the Roses, the noblest blood in England had been poured out on the field or on the scaffold, and the wealth of the most opulent proprietors had been drained by confiscation. The parties of York and Lancaster were no more—the Episcopal and Puritan factions were not yet in being—every day diminished the influence of the nobles—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... the scaffold? Then nobody would kill. Besides, debauchees, whether they stop short at vice or roll down the descent into crime, have no foresight of the future. Present sensation is too strong for them; its image abolishes ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... favourable chances, would have 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
... his own bed. But he had to be buried secretly in the dead of night, for, ten years after Eugene Aram had died on the scaffold, the hatred of the world survived for his accomplice. Rowland Lester did not live long after Madeline's death. But when Walter returned from a period of honourable service with the great Frederick of Prussia, it was with no merely ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... traffic. The prisoners were released through some favor of the authorities, but Brisbau and his men were imprisoned. In the hands of the king's officers their lives were in great jeopardy, but they finally escaped the scaffold. ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... of the following year, war being declared against Austria, the Duke made his first campaign, fighting with gallantry under Kellerman at Valmy, and with Dumouriez at Jemappes. But the horrors of the Revolution were progressing with giant strides; the unfortunate Louis XVI. was carried to the scaffold, and within a few months after, the Duke of Orleans was seized on a plea of conspiracy against the French nation, and after a mock trial, consigned to the executioner. A short time previously to the death of his father, the Duke de Chartres had effected ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... anger and alarm. This is the usual temper of the odium theologicum. It would, if it could, grasp the thumbscrew and the rack of mediaeval Inquisitors, and would, in the last resource, hand over all opponents to the scaffold or the stake. Those whose intellects have thus been petrified by custom and advancing years are, of all others, the most hopeless to deal with. They have made themselves incapable of fair and rational examination of the truths which they impugn. They think that they can, by mere assertion, ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... ugliness of some docks is appalling. Wild horses would 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 ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the learning of a clerk, the life of a saint, and the death of a malefactor for her parents' offences." These parents worried her into accepting the crown—they played for high stakes and lost—and her father and father-in-law, her husband and herself, all perished on the scaffold. We are told that this unfortunate lady still haunts Bradgate House, and on the last night of the dying year a phantom carriage, drawn by four gray horses, glides around the ruins with her headless body. The old oaks have a gnarled and stunted appearance, tradition ascribing it to the woodsmen ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... against her inclination, for she was naturally tender-hearted: and, as for myself, although I abhorred such kind of spectacles, yet my curiosity tempted me to see something that I thought must be extraordinary. The malefactor was fixed in a chair upon a scaffold erected for that purpose, and his head cut off at one blow, with a sword of about forty feet long. The veins and arteries spouted up such a prodigious quantity of blood, and so high in the air, that the great jet d'eau at Versailles was not equal to it for the time it ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... It hath sent its ruthless ploughshare through hundreds of families, until the wife sat in rags, and the daughters were disgraced, and the sons grew up to the same infamous practices, or took a short cut to destruction across the murderer's scaffold. Home has lost all charms for the gambler. How tame are the children's caresses and a wife's devotion to the gambler! How drearily the fire burns on the domestic hearth! There must be louder laughter, and something to win and something to lose; an excitement to drive ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... 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 whose meaning ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... mysteries of the Grand and Petit Trianon and of the Parc aux Cerfs, with Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Montespan, with Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, that beautiful courtesan who on the scaffold so pathetically asked the executioner: "Mr. Hangman, I beseech you, do spare me." We are all familiar through Thackeray's "History of the Georges" with the chronique scandaleuse of the Hanoverian ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... taken Jock and Hurry to see him off. And all three, I was told by an eye-witness, had wept openly and without shame. My informant, Mrs. Deering, said that she had been reminded of Louis XVI leaving his family for the scaffold. But when I saw them five minutes later (you could still hear the far-off coughing of the northbound train) only Hurry looked grave, while Jock and his mother were illustrating to perfection the old adage, "Out of sight out ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris |
