"Skeleton" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before we can begin, by short stages. You have got on wonderfully in the last few days. How do you think he is looking, Amy?' finished Guy, with an air of triumph, that was rather amusing, considering what a pale skeleton face he was regarding ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and was supposed to have gone another voyage, but no one ever saw or heard of him again, and the matter was soon forgotten. When, however, certain excavations were being made for some improvements or additions to the Bank, the skeleton of a young man was discovered; and local tradition couples the circumstance with the probability of the murder of the ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... of the place, and attended the subscription school; and the acknowledged leader of the band, who, belonging to the permanent irreducible staff of the establishment, was never off duty. We used to be very happy, and not altogether irrational, in these little skeleton parties. My new friend was a gentle, tasteful boy, fond of poetry, and a writer of soft, simple verses in the old-fashioned pastoral vein, which he never showed to any one save myself; and we learned to love one another all the more, from the circumstance ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... great Republic, the only Republic that ever existed upon this earth; in the name of all her defenders and of all her supporters; in the name of all her soldiers living; in the name of all her soldiers dead upon the field of battle, and in the name of those who perished in the skeleton clutch of famine at Andersonville and Libby, whose sufferings he so vividly remembers, Illinois—Illinois nominates for the next President of this country, that prince of parliamentarians—that leader ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... tossing her arms in wild despair, and uttering piteous cries. It is thought that his punishment consists in nightly visits to the cell in which Bernardo died, and nightly endurance of the sight of his daughter's anguish; some also say that the skeleton of his victim is presented to his eyes, beaming with light, and that every ray eats into his soul like a canker. I do not answer for all these tales, but this is the universal belief. I merely relate to your favors the common talk of the peasantry, ever ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... wood road, left the car behind the dunes, and skulking through the woods, had successfully carried out a daring robbery. Perhaps he had been lingering concealed about the gardens all day or even many days. Who could tell? At any rate, he had chosen a propitious moment, provided himself with a skeleton key, and carried Lola away in the waiting motor car. Where they were now, who could tell? A car travels fast and a long distance could be covered in the two hours that had elapsed. Certainly no more time must ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... know that pimento tree anywhere on account of its odd shape. It had three branches leaving the trunk, one of which ran up several feet higher than the others, a dead branch pointing to the northward like a skeleton finger. There was a rim of mountains around the lake, except for a break in the range ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... Emu; and Eva, when she saw her, confirmed our opinion by recognising some of the cabin furniture, which had been washed out of her. We now set out to explore the woods. We had not got far when I came upon the body of a man, or rather a skeleton, covered with clothes. A few paces on was another; and not far-off we found a rude hut, with a blackened spot, where a fire had been lit before it. In the hut were two more bodies, and we afterwards ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... a jimmy and a centrebit and an acetylene welding plant and a bunch of skeleton keys? I shall want a forge, and a smithy, and a shop, and fittings. I can't hardly do it ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... exceedingly delighted at heart, and they were not satiated by beholding that monarch of mountains. Thereafter they saw the hermitage of the royal sage Arshtishena, furnished with flowers and trees bearing fruits. Then they went to Arshtishena versed in all duties of rigid austerities, skeleton-like, and having ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... well as in Marlborough's times, have owed much of their knowledge of classical antiquity to the study of Plutarch's Lives. Other writers may be read with profit, with admiration, and with interest; but few, like Plutarch, can gossip pleasantly while instructing solidly; can breathe life into the dry skeleton of history, and show that the life of a Greek or Roman worthy, when rightly dealt with, can prove as entertaining as a modern novel. No one is so well able as Plutarch to dispel the doubt which all schoolboys feel ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... idea of being tortured. I went gladly to bed every night to imagine myself a slave, chained, beaten, made to carry loads and do ignominious work. One of my imaginings, I remember, was that I was chained to a moldering skeleton." As she grew older these fancies were discontinued. At the same time there was a trace of sadistic tendency: "I used to frighten and tease a young child, driven to it by an irresistible impulse, and experiencing a certain pleasurable ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... able to creep upon my hands and one knee, dragging the wounded limb after me. When I had got about half-way through the underwood, I came upon an object that almost congealed the blood in my veins. It was a human skeleton. I knew it was not that of a ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... window with a feeling of depression that was terrible, and, try how I would, to keep from thinking, I kept on seeing the fierce-looking lancers of Ny Deen making furious charges at perhaps a mere skeleton of a regiment of foot, which grew gradually less and less, till the men ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... Spinrobin in some skeleton of a voice. "Skale has begun to utter...!" He said it ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... or caterpillar, or, as scientists call it, a larva. This creature feeds and grows until finally it settles down and spins a home of silk, called a cocoon (Fig. 145). If we open the cocoon we shall find that the animal is now covered with a hard outside skeleton, that it cannot move freely, and that it cannot eat at all. The animal in this state is known as the pupa (Figs. 145 and 146). Sometimes, however, the pupa is not covered by a cocoon, sometimes it is soft, and sometimes it has some power of motion (Fig. 141). After a rest in the pupa ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... it conserved natural energy, and it protected the catch. For if the traps were set in the jungle and trustfully confided to its care until the break of day, the ants would leave a beautifully cleaned skeleton, ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... arrow toward the south-west. A red trail indicated the path of the arrow, which hissed as it flew. At that moment Pi Yuen, a servant of Shih-chi Niang-niang, happened to be at the foot of K'u-lou Shan (Skeleton Hill), in front of the cave of his mistress. The arrow pierced his throat, and he fell dead, bathed in his blood. Shih-chi Niang-niang came out of her cave, and examining the arrow found that it ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... concentrating its heat in withering blasts which they could not face, or focusing its intensity upon some mass of foliage that seemed to shrink at its touch and open a scathed and quivering aisle to its approach. The enormous skeleton of a dead and rotten redwood, not a hundred yards to their right, broke suddenly like a gigantic ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... before. In the year 1854 a gang of navvies who were excavating a dock between the railway station and the Corsini Canal, some two hundred yards perhaps from the mausoleum, and on the site of an old cemetery, came upon a skeleton "armed with a golden cuirass, a sword by its side, and a golden helmet upon its head. In the hilt of the sword and in the helmet large jewels were blazing." Most of this booty they disposed of, but a few pieces were recovered and these are now in the Museo. ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... gone into quite a vulgar extreme to-day," she said. "It is distinctly too hot for propriety. One wants to sit about in one's skeleton. I wonder what Mr. Amarinth's skeleton would be like—not quite nice, I fancy. I have had ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... limestone caves hold the prehistoric hippopotamus, elephant, rhinoceros, lion, hyena, bear, reindeer, &c.; Pls Heaton cave, the glutton; Pont Newydd, felstone tools and a polished stone axe (like that of Rhosdigre); Carnedd Tyddyn Bleiddian, "platycnemic (skeleton) men of Denbighshire" (like those of Perthi Chwareu). Clawdd Coch has traces of the Romans; so also Penygaer and Penbarras. Roman roads ran from Deva (Chester) to Segontium (Carnarvon) and from Deva ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... influence and are possessed of a vast deal of audacity. They are cognizant of many a family secret that comes under the jurisdiction of their peculiar vocation; and this fact enables them successfully, if they like, to dare these parties to treat them any other than respectfully. There is a skeleton in every house, a secret in every family; and too often the doctor, midwife, and accoucheur have to be treated publicly, socially, and pecuniarily in accordance with this fact. It is such men as these who, by their nefarious practices, have been ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... of mammalia allied to the sloth, some 18 or 20 ft. in length and 8 ft. in height, with an elephantine skeleton. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... one in a civilization steadily becoming more temperate and more circumspect. Moreover, both of them seemed vaguely weaker in fibre, not so much in what they did as in their subtle reactions to the civilization about them. In Gloria had been born something that she had hitherto never needed—the skeleton, incomplete but nevertheless unmistakable, of her ancient abhorrence, a conscience. This admission to herself was coincidental with the slow ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... skeleton key into the lock of the gate, opened it (the charwoman protesting in the interests of her employer) and went up the flagged path. The door of the cottage was a more difficult proposition, being fitted with a patent lock. Tarling did not stand on ceremony, but smashed one of the windows, ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... looking at some bad and complicated wound, and then stare steadily at the ceiling. Though they had been married over a year, she did not yet know what he thought about many things, and she waited with a queer sinking at her heart. This skeleton in the family cupboard was a test of his affection for herself, a test of the quality of the man she had married. He did not speak for a little, and her anxiety grew. Then his hand sought hers, and gave it a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had evidently been used as a dwelling for many years past, they came upon the corpse of another man, in a sitting posture, propped up against the wall. One arm rested upon an empty spirit-keg, beside which were a tin pannikin and a few rude cooking utensils. At his feet lay the skeleton of a dog. The whole group had evidently been dead for a considerable time. Further search revealed large supplies of clothes, saddlery, arms, and ammunition—all placed in recesses of the cave—besides other articles which would appear to have been deposited in that ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... and the poodle, resisting all attempts to eject him, forbade our banns with sepulchral barks. . . . It was our wedding-day, and at the critical moment the poodle leaped between us and swallowed the ring. . . . Or we were at the wedding-breakfast, and Bingo, a grisly black skeleton with flaming eyes, sat on the cake and would not allow Lilian to cut it. Even the rose-tree fancy was reproduced in a distorted form—the tree grew, and every blossom contained a miniature Bingo, which barked; and as I woke I was desperately trying to persuade the ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... to depart. Then that mute coma of horror, that suspense of two foes in the conflict of death; for the subtle, prying eye of Olivier Dalibard sees that he himself is suspected,—further he shuns from sifting! Glance fastens on glance, and then hurries smilingly away. From the cup grins a skeleton, at the board warns a spectre. But how kind still the words, and how gentle the tone; and they lie down side by side in the marriage-bed,—brain plotting against brain, heart loathing heart. It is a duel of life and death between those sworn through life and beyond ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sculptor of no less celebrity, "the question lies in a nutshell. The Cholera is a detestable colorist, but a good draughtsman. He shows you the skeleton in no time. By heaven! how he strips off the flesh!—Michael Angelo ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... separately; for, with the constant flow of liquid stuff into the deep grave, we could not see to preserve them in their places. At length great loads of coarse clothes, blanketing, plaiding, etc. appeared; we tried to lift these regularly up, and, on doing so, part of a skeleton came up, but no flesh, save a little that was hanging in dark flitters about the spine, but which had no consistence; it was merely the appearance of flesh without the substance. The head was wanting, and, I being very anxious to possess the skull, the search was renewed among ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... minutes there was, so far as the soldier could see, not a living thing left upon the common, and every bush and tree upon it that was not already a blackened skeleton was burning. The hussars had been on the road beyond the curvature of the ground, and he saw nothing of them. He heard the Martians rattle for a time and then become still. The giant saved Woking station and its cluster of houses until the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... things the young soldier will bring from home with him, in spite of the pooh-poohs of practical parents, and carry with him, in spite of the sneers of thoughtless comrades. I know a fellow who carries in his breast pocket the withered, odorless skeleton of a bouquet, that was given him on the day he left home, and who will carry it till he returns, or till it is reddened with his blood. And when I see a man, in the face of ridicule and brutal scoffing, through ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... old French story of the lawyer who began avant le creation du monde, and the judge who asked him to pass on au deluge, down to the usual modern method of nagging the lawyer into stating only the skeleton of the action, there are various degrees of eloquence, varying naturally according to ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... said the old lady, softly; but Ella was too much struck to make reply. She was thinking of the dreadful changes which had come over that frail being since last they met. Worn down to a skeleton, her lips compressed, as if in agony, her dark hair thrown back upon her shoulders, while her cheeks were pale as the marble so soon to be raised in her memory, which, with the glimmering of the lights, served to make it ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... you skeleton. Make time for the house and help get supper for me and the men. If you don't run like a red deer, I'll ride ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... yonder, In the blaze of the ball-room gay, My lady sits; while round her flits A skeleton slender and grey. And the ghastly spectre standeth By the side of my lady fair So mournfully bland, and with bony hand It plays with her costume rare. And this is the song the ghostly guest Sings, out ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... which we now are, is equal in strength of situation, in the wildness of the adjacent country, and in the plenty and elegance of the domestic entertainment, to a castle in Gothic romances. The sea with a little island is before us; cascades play within view. Close to the house is the formidable skeleton of an old castle probably Danish, and the whole mass of building stands upon a protuberance of rock, inaccessible till of late but by a pair of stairs on the sea side, and secure in ancient times against any enemy that was likely to invade the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... set the quarrymen to work, with pick and basket, at the north-western angle of the old fort. The latter shows above ground only the normal skeleton-tracery of coralline rock, crowning the gentle sand-swell, which defines the lip and jaw of the Wady; and defending the townlet built on the northern slope and plain. The dimensions of the work are fifty-five metres each way. The curtains, except ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... government in Alaska, with power to regulate such matters as are usually in the States under municipal control. These local civil organizations will give better protection in some matters than the present skeleton Territorial organization. Proper restrictions as to the power to levy taxes and to create debt ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... his studies, was content with looking into the works of Dr. Willis. He was possessed of very few books, insomuch that when Dr. Bathurst, head of Trinity College, asked him once with surprise, where his study was? he pointed to a few vials, a skeleton, and a herbal, and said, "Sir, this ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... Werter-Guskov in the middle of a tiny kitchen-garden, a few steps from the lodge, near the old framework of a never-finished hut, overgrown with nettles. On the mildewed upper beams of this skeleton hut some miserable-looking turkey poults were scrambling, incessantly slipping and flapping their wings and cackling. There was some poor sort of green stuff growing in two or three borders. The ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the sand-hills where the cradle of the boat was, fine rushes grew, and tufts of ragwort, and stalks of last year's thistles, and sea-osiers where the spring oozed down. Through these the white ribs of the rising boat shone forth like an elephant's skeleton; but the builder entertained some hope, as well as some fear, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... a rough sketch of the future wing-case; but how different from the mature structure! The disposition of the radiating nervures, the skeleton of the structure, is not at all the same; the network formed by the cross-nervures gives no idea whatever of the complex final arrangement. The rudimentary is succeeded by the infinitely complex; the clumsy by the infinitely ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... more into the hall he advanced to the door just closed behind the Professor and tried it, only to find it locked. Out of a pocket came several articles best known to the "profession"—a piece of stiff wire, a skeleton key and other paraphernalia calculated to reduce the obstinate mechanism to submission. For a minute, two, three, he worked at the ancient lock; then, without a creak, the door swung open. A touch of oil to the hinges had insured their silence. Jimmie O'Hara believed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... over; the pompous black pyramid at the Louvre is only a skeleton now; all the flags have been miraculously whisked away during the night, and the fine chandeliers which glittered down the Champs Elysees for full half a mile, have been consigned to their dens and darkness. Will they ever be reproduced for other celebrations of the glorious 29th ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the dickens of a walk of it, just with knapsacks—had started somewhere in the Ardeche and tramped south through the vines and almonds and olives—Montelimar, Orange, Avignon, and a fortnight at that blanched skeleton of a town, Les Baux. We'd nothing to do, and had gone just where we liked, or rather just where Carroll had liked; and Carroll had had the De Bello Gallico in his pocket, and had had a notion, I fancy, of taking in the whole ground of the Roman conquest—I remember he lugged ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... Dispensary as Roger told about David. Martin Drengo listened without interruption. He was a thin man from top to bottom, a shock of unruly black hair topping an almost cadaverous face, blue eyes large behind thick lenses. His whole body was like a skeleton, his fingers long and bony as he lit a cigarette. But the blue eyes were quick, and the nods warm and understanding. He listened, and then he said, "It couldn't have ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... be possible to prevent certain common errors and confusions, that tend to become engrained in juvenile minds by the fluctuating or contradictory usage of their own language, to their great let and hindrance in the subsequent stages of language-learning. The skeleton outline of grammatical theory with concrete examples afforded by Esperanto would shield against vitiating initial mistakes, in much the same way as the use of a scientific phonetic alphabet, when a foreign language is presented for the first time to the English beginner in written form, ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... the cave I looked whither her shaking hand pointed and saw what I took at first for a monstrous egg and beyond this the staves of a small barrel; then, bending nearer, I saw these were the skull and ribs of a man. And this man had died very suddenly, for the skeleton lay face down one bony arm folded under him, the other wide-tossed, and the skull, shattered behind, showed a small, round hole just above and betwixt the cavernous eye-sockets; about the ribs were the mouldering remains of a ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... just before he went to India," Mrs. Ashborne said. "It's strange I have never heard the story before; although I have had whispers of the scandal from several quarters. It seems to be a sort of skeleton in the closet' ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... posts for the two-foot piles and verandah supports could be had for the cutting, and therefore did not give out; but the man used joists and uprights with such reckless extravagance, that by the time the skeleton of the building was up, the completion of the contract was impossible. With philosophical indifference, however, he finished one room completely; left a second a mere outline of uprights and tye-beams; apparently forgot all about the bathroom and office; covered the whole roof, including ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... great night By Iceland and Norway. After him Gloom swallowed up the universe. He stood A sovran kingdomless, a lonely ghost Confronted with Immensity. He saw The awful Infinite, at whose portal pale Lightning sinks dying; Darkness, skeleton Whose joints are nights, and utter Formlessness Moving confusedly in the horrible dark Inscrutable and blind. No star was there, Yet something like a haggard gleam; no sound But the dull tide of Darkness, and her dumb And ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... what folks say, though where they'll find any more water than they can here gets me. You know how some folks is. The fishin' 's always better somewheres else. Yes," continued Mrs. Lem sagely, "we don't know what we're doin' when we're envyin' folks. There's a skeleton in most family closets. Most everybody's got somethin' to contend with. I used to think," she lowered her voice, "that the Creator sent 'em for our good. Thinkright says not; so I humor him, and I hope it won't be visited on me. I apologize reg'lar in my prayers at night. It's jest as well to ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... into the muscle, and therefore, conducing to prevent discomfort, only serve to delude the girl into the belief that they hold up her skirts. This weight, evidently, should be borne by the shoulders, where the firmly-jointed skeleton, upheld from below, offers a firm and safe support. But give a girl shoulder-straps, and she finds the pressure over so small an area on the shoulders unbearable, and besides, the process of dressing becomes then a matter of almost as much complication as the harnessing of a horse, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... of the river was filled from rim to rim with a rolling brown flood. The bars, sand-spits, gravel-banks had all disappeared. Whole trees bobbed and sank and raised skeleton arms or tangled roots as they were swept along by the current or caught back by the eddies; and underneath the roar of the waters we heard the dull rumbling and crunching of boulders rolled beneath the flood. A crowd of men was watching in idle curiosity. We learned that all the cradles ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... seems full of pretty fancies. (He looks through another peephole.) Girl looking at skeleton. Any other domestic subjects on view? (He suddenly sees Miss TROTTER and CULCHARD with their backs to him.) Hal—lo, this is luck! I must go to the rescue, or that beggar CULCHARD will bore her to death in no time. (To Guide.) ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... in the eye of the blast, To Deadman's Isle, she speeds her fast; By skeleton shapes her sails are furled, And the hand that steers is not of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... glimpse of another figure, she exclaimed, "Oh, there comes Miss Huntress!" and immediately settled herself with an air of elegant leisure to receive her former superior. Miss Huntress was a source of continual satisfaction to Lena, the opposite of a skeleton at the feast, a continual reminder of present prosperity as compared with past nonentity. To meet her gave Madame Cecropia the same thrill of satisfaction that it still did to draw her dainty skirts around her and step into her carriage, half hoping that some envious girl was viewing her perfections ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... found Willett pensively rapping at the front door with a cycle-spanner. Thorndyke took a last glance, with his hand in his pocket, at an open window above, and then, to the coachman's intense delight, brought forth what looked uncommonly like a small bunch of skeleton keys. One of these he inserted into the keyhole, and as he gave it a turn, the lock clicked, and the door ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... of this door-arbor, garlanded with the old rose-vine, into a great yard, skirted beyond the driveway with four great flowering cherry-trees, so old that many of the boughs would never bud again, and thrust themselves like skeleton arms of death through the soft masses of bloom out into the blue. One tree there was which had scarcely any boughs left, for the winds had taken them, and was the very torso of a tree; but Squire Eben ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... unbroken forest, growing thinner and more stunted toward its upper edge, succeeded by a zone of scattered trees, which may form a cluster perhaps in some sheltered gulch where soil has collected and north winds are excluded, and higher still the whitened skeleton of a tree to show how far the forest once invaded the domain ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... couch with nettles, and all wholesome food shall be poison to him. His blood shall be as water, and his flesh shrink from his bones. He shall waste away slowly—slowly—slowly—till he drops like a skeleton into the grave ready digged for him. All connected with him shall feel my fury. I would kill thee now, if ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... gibbet! How dismal 'tis to see The great tall spectral skeleton, The ladder, and the tree! Hark! hark! It is the clash of arms— The bells begin to toll— He is coming! he is coming! God's mercy on his soul! One last long peal of thunder— The clouds are clear'd away, And the glorious sun once more looks down ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... Because Moses at the bush called God, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, they cannot have ceased to be. The personal relations, which subsist between God and the soul that clasps Him for its own, demand an immortal life for their adequate expression, and make it impossible that Death's skeleton fingers should have power to untie such a bond. Anything is conceivable, rather than that the soul which can say 'God is mine' should perish. And that continued existence demands, too, a state of being which shall correspond to itself, in which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... on a long table. To hide the revolting spectacle of a corpse whose extreme decrepitude and thinness made it look like a skeleton, the embalmers had drawn a sheet over the body, which covered all but the head. This mummy-like figure was laid out in the middle of the room, and the linen, naturally clinging, outlined the form vaguely, but showing its stiff, bony thinness. The face already had large purple spots, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... passed on his way one of the three or four solitary rocks which rose from the sand, the skeleton remnants of larger masses worn down by wind, wave, and weather, he heard his own name uttered by an unpleasant voice, and followed by a ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... of wooden buildings, giving place to stone. Over its streets hung a wire network, raised high on lofty poles, which would have destroyed the beauty of a much fairer city. Back of the city rose the somber forest over which at intervals towered the blasted skeleton of some ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... killer not only of malefactors but of "keres" or bogeys, such as "Old Age" and "Ague" and the sort of "Death" that we find in this play. Thanatos is not a god, not at all a King of Terrors. One may compare him with the dancing skeleton who is called Death in mediaeval writings. When such a figure appears on the tragic stage one asks at once what relation he bears to Hades, the great Olympian king of the unseen. The answer is obvious. Thanatos is the servant of Hades, ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... mighty Liberal leader. And what support had Lord Spencer against all these foes—before him, around him—on all sides of him? On the benches immediately behind him there was a small band of men—not forty all told—looking strangely deserted, skeleton-like, even abashed in all their loneliness and isolation. These were the friends—few but faithful—amid all the hundreds, who alone had a word of cheer for Lord Spencer in a long and trying speech he had to address to his irreconcilable foes. ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... hands lay on the black cloth like huge white spiders; their long, thin legs of fingers turned up at the tips—stealthy, creeping fingers. Sometimes, too, in their nervous workings, they drooped together like a bunch of skeleton keys. On one of these lock picks he wore a ring studded alternately ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Hamburg museum the skeleton of one of these creatures thirty feet in length. Am I then fated - I, a denizen of earth - to be placed face to face with these representatives of long extinct families? No; surely it cannot be! Yet the deep marks of conical teeth upon the ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... ran up the hillock, and stood by his father's side. The marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on its surface, in the midst of the circle,—snow-white too, and thoroughly converted into lime,—lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a person who, after long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the ribs—strange to say—was the ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... simple application of the Becky gauge than by the most vehement use of all ten commandments. Thanks to Mr. Thackeray, the world is now provided with an idea, which, if we mistake not, will be the skeleton in the corner of every ball-room and boudoir for a long time to come. Let us leave it intact in its unique fount and freshness—a Becky, and nothing more. We should, therefore, advise our readers to cut out that picture of our heroine's "Second Appearance as ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... links uniting the most ancient period—at present, c. 4000 B.C.—to the final destruction of the Babylonian empire by Cyrus, in the middle of the sixth century B.C., are far from being complete. For entire centuries we are wholly in the dark, and for others only a few skeleton facts are known; and until these gaps shall have been filled, our knowledge of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians must necessarily remain incomplete. Not as incomplete, indeed, as their history, for religious rites are not subject to ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... executed brickwork, covered sometimes by a coating of stucco. The bricks were large, measuring from one to two feet square where used for quoins or arches, but triangular where they served only as facings. Bricks were also used in the construction of skeleton ribs for concrete vaults of ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... his strength utterly gave way, and on October 23, reduced to a living skeleton, he reached Ujiji, after a perilous journey of six hundred miles taken expressly to secure supplies. He was bitterly disappointed to find that the rascal to whom the delivery of the goods had been charged had disposed of ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... added for the purpose of guiding and guarding the spiritually untrained seer from possible error in fundamental conceptions only. They must not by any means be taken as a complete revelation of the tablets, but only as a series of skeleton keys by means of which all things may be revealed to the earnest seeker thereof. To have added more than is given would only be to defeat the object of this work. Each seeker for the truth must excavate the mines of knowledge, and dig further ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... Perhaps no quality is more human than that of subterfuge. She might unveil her body, but she could not unveil her soul. We may only lift a corner of the veil; he who would strip human nature naked and exhibit it displays a rattling skeleton, no more: where there is no subterfuge there is ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... a month after the announcement of Laura's engagement did she come face to face for the first time with the ugly skeleton which lies hidden beneath the most beautiful of dreams. The spring had passed in a troubled rapture; and it was on one of the bright, warm days in early June that she found awaiting her on the hall table when she came in from her walk ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... reckon," was the reply. "Chesapeake Bay can kick up some pretty didoes when in the mood. You'd never believe how suddenly a storm can strike, nor how much trouble it can make. You see that skeleton lighthouse ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... For the information of such of our readers as prefer a skeleton of the Puseyite system of the sacraments, rather than wade through volumes of Semi-romish discussion, we ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... now opposite the bootblack's stand on the skeleton uprights which supported his rainy-day awning, and the platform upon which his patrons sat enthroned in ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... hunting carnivorous animals. She would then carelessly wind a thread or two about it, in a perfunctory way, bury her jaws in its body, and in less than half a minute suck out its juices to the last drop, leaving the empty shell unhurt, like a dry skeleton or the slough of a dragon-fly larva. But when wasps or other large and dangerous insects got entangled in the webs, the hunters proceeded with far greater caution. Lucy, indeed, who was a decided coward, would stand and look anxiously at the doubtful intruder for several seconds, feeling the ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... the framework or skeleton of all forms of disputation; for to this every kind of controversy may be ultimately reduced. The whole of a controversy may, however, actually proceed in the manner described, or only appear to do so; and it may be supported by genuine or spurious arguments. It is ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... namesake. Each of these substances, the white coral and the red, however, has a relationship to the other. They are, in a zoological sense, cousins, each of them being formed by the same kind of animals in what is substantially the same way. Each of these bodies is, in fact, the hard skeleton of a very curious and a very simple animal, more comparable to the bones of such animals as ourselves than to the shells of oysters or creatures of that kind; for it is the hardening of the internal tissue ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley
... anything was ever found. They dropped clean out of sight. It became one of the mysteries of the country. Steve and I plugged away up the Stewart, and six weeks afterward that Spot crawled into camp. He was a perambulating skeleton, and could just drag along; but he got there. And what I want to know is who told him we were up the Stewart? We could have gone a thousand other places. How did he know? You tell me, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... together, like beasts of the stall which lie down in their own filth. Vermin are over them in abundance. Nearly every man was darkened by scurvy, or black with rough scales, and with scorbutic sores. One in particular was reduced to the merest skeleton; his face, neck, and feet covered with thick, green mould. A number who had Government clothes given them on the boat were too feeble to put them on, and were carried ashore partially dressed, hugging their clothing with a death-grasp that they could not ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... Aryan race; and, although the idea comes to nothing when examined strictly, its existence is an acknowledgment of the special Aino race-type. Mention must also be made of an anatomical peculiarity of the Aino skeleton, consisting of a remarkable flattening of the arm-and leg-bones. On the whole it is evident that the Ainos are an ancient race in this part of Asia, and so far isolated that anthropology has not yet the means of settling their physical connection with other Asiatic ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... Whence he came no one knew: it was rumored that he had been in the mountains of the Alpuxarras and on the coast of Barbary endeavoring to rouse the Moslems to the relief of Granada. He was reduced to a skeleton; his eyes glowed like coals in their sockets, and his speech was little better than frantic raving. He harangued the populace in the streets and squares, inveighed against the capitulation, denounced the king and nobles ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... both; I have not leisure now; A crown is come, and will not fate allow: And yet I feel something like death is near, My guards, my guards,— Let not that ugly skeleton appear! Sure destiny mistakes; this death's not mine; She dotes, and meant to cut another line. Tell her I am a queen;—but 'tis too late; Dying, I charge rebellion on my fate. Bow down, ye slaves:— [To the Moors. Bow quickly down, and your submission ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... interrogation of the words cut her to the heart. She went up the step and into the car as if drawn by an irresistible magnetism, seeing neither Crowther nor Victor, aware only of a prone, gaunt figure on a stretcher, white-haired, skeleton-featured, that reached a trembling hand to ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... simultaneously at, perhaps, the second, eighth, and fifteenth floors, working upwards from each point, the intervening floors being in the meanwhile left untouched. He explained that, in the system of steel construction, the walls did not support the building; that being done by the skeleton framework of metal, on which the walls were subsequently hung as a screen. They might, theoretically, be of paper; though as a matter of fact the material used was generally terra-cotta or some fire-proof ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... reality nobody moves—a glance is enough to both ask and answer a question. A marvelous new self-possession seems to have come to everybody which bridges over a natural despair and forms, at least, a skeleton framework by which we keep ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... foreign gent produced his skeleton keys, and after several ineffective trials, opened the door softly and ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... frame, from the Lat. quadrum, a square), a framework or skeleton, particularly the permanent establishment of a military corps, regiment, &c. which can be expanded ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... advantages. For one thing, the group of rocks was the ready skeleton of the house Steenie wanted. Again, if the snow sometimes lay deeper there than in other parts of the hill, there first it began to melt. A third advantage was that, while, as I have said, the valley was protected by higher ground everywhere ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... well as their subjects, into fragments. Osteology treats of the skeleton, myology of the muscles, angiology of the blood vessels, splanchology the digestive organs or department of ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... else to do while the snow lay on the ground, established himself as my nurse. A doctor was sent for, who, being homaeopathic, gave me as much medicine, in the course of a fortnight's attendance, as would have laid on the point of a needle. They fed me on water-gruel, and I speedily became a skeleton above ground. But, after all, I have many precious recollections connected with ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... They got to Jacob Warnstaff's first day—had night meeting in Bethel meetinghouse, near by; meeting at Chlora Judy's, on Mill Creek, next night; meeting at James Parks's, on Looney's Creek, the night following. I will dress up the skeleton of the sermon Brother Kline preached here, as best I can. Romans 14:7. TEXT.—"For none of us liveth ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... am I to find my destruction in this? My death in a skeleton seeking?" From the skull of the courser a snake, with a hiss, Crept forth, as the hero was speaking: Round his legs, like a ribbon, it twined its black ring; And the Prince shriek'd aloud as he felt the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... cherry trees gleamed—not with flowers, but with icicles—as they leaned against the windows of the bed-chamber under the roof. Sometimes as the winter blast stirred them, they knocked against the panes with a sound the knuckles of a skeleton might have made. There was not the slightest suggestion of the soft-voiced "Ligeia" ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... his pocket, swung it round several times by the long gold chain, smashed it into smithereens against the wall with a single blow, and then walked into his laboratory next door, and hung its broken body on the bones of the skeleton in the corner of ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... as thin as a homeless cat, and I turned the skeleton out of doors, but she watches for me in the streets, hides herself, so that she may see me pass, stops me in the evening when I go out, in order to kiss my hand, and, in fact, worries me enough to drive me mad; and that is why I never ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... his mind linger long and with thrilling joy through the interlude in the dance. Every detail of that scene stood clearly limned before his mind. The bare skeleton of the new harp, the crowding, eager, tense faces of the listeners, his mother's and Margaret's in the hindmost row, his brother standing in the centre foreground, the upturned face of the singer with its ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... go in the vessel, I knew pretty much all that happened. You see, Colonel Jones he went to work with the fortin-teller again; and he jest puts her to sleep, and tries her out and out, on Jewell's Island, where she found a skeleton fixed between two trees, and the walls of a hut, all grown over with large trees, and all the things he'd buried there; and then too, while we was at sea, she told him what we were doing, day by day, and they ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... device, where contemporaries are concerned, of disembowelling the victim's name, and leaving it a skeleton of consonants, is a formal concession which in effect concedes nothing. Nor is there any reason why it should; for the only valid objection to the medium of dialogue is in cases where its form might mislead the reader into mistaking fiction for fact, and ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... swelling and puffing out of his broad chest, contrasted shockingly with the shrinking of the body at the pit of the stomach, by which the arch of the ribs was left as well defined as if the skin had been drawn over a skeleton, and the distortion of the muscles of the cheeks and throat evinced the fearful strength of the convulsions which had preceded his dissolution. It was evident, indeed, that throughout his whole person above the waist, the nervous system had been utterly ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... inquiry, and many day's watching about Forty-nine's cabin, called and was admitted to see the prisoner, who by this time, though weak and worn to a skeleton, was convalescing. The coarse and insolent intruder started back with dismay. There sat the girl he so hoped and longed to possess, talking to him tenderly, soothing him, giving her ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... at first was but little regarded; in after-times, to appease his ghost and expiate his curse, divine honours were awarded to his memory; and in the most polished age of his descendants, his supposed remains, indicated by an eagle in the skeleton of a man of giant stature, with a lance of brass and a sword by his side, were brought to Athens in the galley of Cimon, hailed by the shouts of a joyous multitude, "as if the living Theseus ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... grandmother's family, and I 'll alter your face a wee bit, and nobody'll recognise you like that. Now come, Meg, you won't refuse? I 'd do it myself, and do it well; only I might be discovered, but you wouldn't. Who'll think of Meg Drummond turning into the ghost? You must clasp your skeleton hands and say very mournfully, "Dry my locks, sweet maid of England!" That's all. She'll be sure to go out into the grounds, and the rest of us will be close by, ready to catch her up if she swoons; and she 'll never guess to her dying day but that she ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... may waste it to a shadow, and then introduce it into the society of flesh and blood an object of scorn and derision. You may sweat and reduce it to a thing of skin and bone, and then place the ominous skeleton beside the ruddy and healthful members of the Union, that it may have leisure to mourn the lamentable difference between itself and its companions, to brood over its disastrous promotion, and to seek in justifiable discontent an opportunity for separation, and insurrection, and rebellion. What ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... Quelch, a man of resource, hoisted what he called "Old Roger" over the Charles—a brigantine which had been equipped as a privateer to cruise against the French of Acadia. This curious flag of his was described as displaying a skeleton with an hour-glass in one hand and "a dart in the heart with three drops of blood proceeding from it in the other." Quelch led a mutiny, tossed the skipper overboard, and sailed for Brazil, capturing several merchantmen on the way and looting them of ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... have finished breakfast, I reckon, Snaggs will have found me subjects for at least a dozen effusions, neatly arranged with a few skeleton suggestions for the treatment of each. I shall first decide which are to be handled in prose and which in verse, and in the case of the latter shall jot down a few words and phrases that will obviously have to be dragged in as line-endings. Then I shall ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... Rajput pride, and pride in his Rajput heritage, were wounded to the quick. If all English girls felt that way, he would see them further, before he would propose to another one, or 'confess' to his adored Mother, as if she were a family skeleton or a secret vice. Instantly there sprang the thought of Aruna—her adoration, her exalted passion; Aruna, whom he might have loved, yet was constrained to put aside because of his English heritage; only to find himself put aside by an English girl on account of his Indian blood. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... of Ancient English Poetry (1705), brought poets back to the original sources of terror in popular tradition, and helped to revive the latent feelings of awe, wonder and fear. In Coleridge's Ancient Manner the skeleton-ship with its ghastly crew—the spectre-woman and her deathmate—the sensations of the mariner, alone on a wide, wide sea, seize on our imagination with irresistible power. The very substance of the poem is woven of the supernatural. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... full of dust and foul with the scent of rank tobacco, the reek of struggling French humanity; and the gaunt Eiffel Tower looks down upon it all from the sky over Paris (so, at least, I am told) like a skeleton at a feast. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... whose curiosity was roused, promised, and the man, politely requesting him to follow, led the way to a cottage that stood near by, in the heart of a gloomy wood. To Mr. Vance's astonishment the treasure proved to be the skeleton of a hand—a hand with abnormally large knuckles, and the first joint—of both fingers and thumb—much shorter than the others. It was the most extraordinarily shaped hand Mr. Vance had ever seen, and he did not know in the least ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... had repeated as the gossip of the cafes was in part, if not wholly, true. She and Mathilde had long known that any mention of France had the instant effect of turning their father into a man of stone. It was the skeleton in this quiet house that sat at table with its inmates, a shadowy fourth tying their tongues. The rattle of its bones seemed to paralyze Sebastian's mind, and at any moment he would fall into a dumb and stricken apathy which terrified those about him. At such times ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... apparent liberty and real violence by which he had attained it. The semblance of a free Constitution was preserved in all its forms: Crown, Parliament, Press, continued to figure as heretofore. But each only served to clothe the skeleton of a dictatorship as absolute as that of any Caesar. King Alexander, without experience or character, weak, frivolous and plastic, obediently signed every decree presented to him. When recourse ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... things which prevailed on the border between England and Scotland within recent times, and which is brought back in the flesh by the ballad of the Fray O'Suport, is very like that which in an earlier century left its skeleton in the folk-laws of Germany and England. Cattle were the principal property known, and cattle-stealing the principal form of wrongful taking of property. Of law there was very little, and what there was depended almost wholly ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... thair stockings fell down ower thair clog tops; but hasumever th' silence wur brokken by a Haworth Parish chap 'at they call Bob Gimlet, he happen'd to be thare an' he said, na lads, look daan th' valley, for I think I see th' skeleton at ony rate, an' Bob wur reight, for it wur as plain to be seen as an elephant in ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... seems more a mausoleum of the dead than a place of worship for the living, the level rays of the afternoon sun come through the richly-painted windows of the choir; and the warm glory rests first upon a strange monument of the sixteenth century at the entrance, where a ghastly human skeleton sculptured in yellow marble looks through a grating, and then upon a medallion on a tomb, representing a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, illumining the inscription, "Ut Phoenix multicabo dies." And this old expressive symbol speaks to us of death ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the explosion area. The 90-mm gun, forward, must have been knocked loose and carried away; it was gone, and so was the TV-pickup and the radar. Something, probably the gun, had slammed against the front of the bridge—the metal skeleton was bent in, and the armor-glass had been knocked out. The cutter was vibrating properly, so the contragravity-field had not been disturbed, and her jets ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... have done: You've made your phiz a skeleton, From the long distance of your crown, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift |
