"Bowie" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your bowie-knife out of your boot, Governor? It looks like he's making fun of your wife, to me. Isn't anybody ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... not inform my readers how soundly our hero slept in his shelter tent that night, nor how his slumbers were disturbed by a horrid rebel with a bowie-knife, and a horrid feminine monstrosity which seemed to be called Sue by her attendant demons; but he slept as a tired boy ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... others drew their pistols and bowie knives and rushed down from the stand into a congregation, Boynton saying he would blow out the brains of the first man who dared lay hands on him.... Amid screams and shrieks, the policemen in ejecting the belligerents knocked down a stove pipe, which fell helter-skelter ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... huts, locating them wherever there was need among the camps. They have a hut at Camp Grant, one at Camp Funston, one at Camp Travis, San Antonio, one at Camp Logan, Houston, Texas, one at Camp Bowie, Fort Worth, one at Camp Cody, Deming, New Mexico, one at Camp Lewis, Tacoma, a Soldiers' Club at Des Moines, a Soldiers' Club with Sitting Room, Dining Room, and rooms for a hundred soldiers just opened at Chicago. There is a charge of twenty-five cents ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... Wesley African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was organized in 1849 at the home of John Brent on Eighteenth and L Streets. Among the founders were John Brent, W. H. Johnson, John Brent, Jr., William V. Ingram, Arnold Bowie, Charles Wilson, Joseph Conner, Edward Curtis, and Gilbert Joy. These communicants then purchased property on Connecticut Avenue and built thereon a simple frame building into which they moved in 1851.[24] This church finally bought the old Berean Baptist Church property on Eighteenth ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... pale with anger; his heavy brows worked and knit themselves over eyes that flashed like fire, and he was muttering slowly to himself in broken expressions, while his fingers played unconsciously about the handle of the bowie-knife which slightly protruded from beneath his vest. Having taken a sudden turn in the undergrowth, he unexpectedly stood immediately before the horse, which, seeing him indistinctly, became affirighted, and ran back with an impetuosity that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... attention. Before I met this man my temper was mild and amiable: I believed in doing by my fellows as I would be done by. Now I am changed. I never visit the Vienna restaurant but I dwell in thought on battle, murder, pistols, bowie-knives, blood, bullets and sudden death. After eating a meal it requires another hour to pay for it. A nobleman, dressed de rigueur, condescends to take my money after he has made me wait long enough. There are two of these officials at the hotel. One in general manner resembles ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... races in Arizona. No more betting could be got against him around Tucson; but the colonel went off on leave, and he was borrowed down at Camp Bowie awhile, and then transferred to Crittenden,—only temporarily, of course, for no one at head-quarters would part with him for good. Then, when the regiment made its homeward march across the continent in 1875, Van somehow turned up at the festa races at Albuquerque and Santa ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... frequency and heartiness; and, when the guest sat down alone at a table within, where la vieille—the wife—was placing half-a-dozen still sputtering fried eggs, a great wheaten loaf, a yellow gallon bowl of boiled milk, a pewter ladle, a bowie-knife, the blue tumbler, and a towel; and out on the galerie the callers were still coming: his simple neighbors pardoned the elation that led him to take a chair himself a little way off, sit on it sidewise, cross his legs gayly, and with a smile and wave of his ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... southern type never became so prominent in New Mexico, Arizona, and California as in Texas. Nevertheless, the fact glares out that the code of conduct—the riding and shooting tradition, the eagerness to stand up and fight for one's rights, the readiness to back one's judgment with a gun, a bowie knife, money, life itself—that characterized the whole West as well as the Southwest was southern, hardly ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... important blood-feuds, I had preferred to employ them. But 'Abd el-Nabi, of the Tagayt-Huwaytt clan, had been spoilt by over-kindness during my reconnaissance of 1877; besides, I had given him a bowie-knife without taking a penny in exchange. In my first volume he appears as a noble savage, with a mixture of the gentleman; here ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... from his bosom the bowie-knife commonly worn in those regions, and bending forward, he aimed a blow at the ruffian, which, as he had anticipated, was expertly eluded—the assailant, sinking under the neck of the steed, and relying on the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... specially remember, as to whom the only natural remark would be that one would not like to meet him alone on a dark night. He was burly and big, unwashed and rough, with a black beard, shorn some two months since. He had sharp, angry eyes, and sat silent, picking his teeth with a bowie knife. I met him afterward at the Rolla Hotel, and found that he was a gentleman of property near Springfield. He was mild and meek as a sucking dove, asked my advice as to the state of his affairs, and ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... and a Catholic; yet it was noted with surprise that she was the only person outside of the Mormon ring who could get favors from the Mormons. She asked kindnesses of them often, and always got them. It was a mystery to everybody. But one day as she was passing out at the door, a large bowie knife dropped from under her apron, and when her mistress asked for an explanation she observed that she was going out to "borry ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mebbe," said the stranger darkly. He paused, and then suddenly, as if recklessly accepting a dangerous risk, unbuckled his revolver and handed it abstractedly to the young girl. But the sheath of the bowie-knife was a fixture in his body-belt, and he was obliged to withdraw the glittering blade by itself, and to hand it to her in all its naked terrors. The young girl received the weapons with a smiling complacency. Upon such altars as these the skeptical reader will remember that Mars had ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... Clark Russell, pistols, and Dumas; Jack London, poignards, bowie knives, Stanley Weyman, Captain Marryat, and Dumas; sword canes, Scottish claymores, Cuban machetes, Conan Doyle, Harrison Ainsworth, dress swords, and Dumas; stilettos, daggers, hunting knives, Fenimore Cooper, G. P. R. James, ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... lynch-lawed may not belong to the people. If the European scribblers were not past any honest impulse, they would know that the South is the generator and the congenial region for the mob, the filibusters, the revolver and the bowie-knife rule. In the South the proportion of mobs to decency is the reverse of that prevailing in the free States. The slavery gentleman is a scarcely varnished savage, for whom the highest law is his ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... shooting him with a pistol, with a revolver, shotgun, rifle, repeater, breech-loader, cannon, six-shooter, with a gun, or some other, weapon; with killing him with a slung-shot, a bludgeon, carving knife, bowie knife, pen knife, rolling pin, car, hook, dagger, hair pin, with a hammer, with a screw-driver; with a nail, and with all other weapons and utensils whatsoever, at the Southern hotel and in all other hotels and places wheresoever, on the thirteenth day of March ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... violences of the Slave Power. It is its conscious and admitted weakness that has made Texas and Mexico and Cuba, and our own Northwestern territory, necessary to be devoured. It is desperation, and not strength, that has made the bludgeon and the bowie-knife integral parts of the national legislation. It has the American Government, the American Press, and the American Church, in its national organizations, on its side; but the Humanity and the Christianity of the Nation and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... made especially for San Francisco, with heels long enough to raise a man up to the Hoadley grades, and nails to ensure against being carried over by a land slide; legs wide enough to carry two revolvers and a bowie-knife, and the upper of the very best horse leather. A man in these boots can move about as easy as the State Capitol. Who says twenty dollars? All the tax-payers ought to buy a pair to kick the council with, everybody ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... an attempt was made to assassinate the Secretary of State in his own house, where he was in bed suffering from the effects of the late accident. The attempt failed, but Mr. Seward was severely cut, on the face especially, it is supposed with a bowie knife. Mr. F.W. Seward was felled by a blow or blows on the head, and for some time afterwards was apparently unconscious. Both the Secretary and Assistant Secretary are ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... evidently not a person to be trifled with. There was a fixed look about him, and a deliberate coolness, sufficiently indicating a determined character; and a belt around his waist supported a six-shooter and revealed the glittering hilt of a bowie knife. ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... on the same plan as Wolfe's Highlanders. We had our rendezvous within a short march of Quebec and on the eventful night numbered about 1,500 men, two hundred of whom had come from Montreal and the rest from St. Jerome, Three Rivers and other places. Each man was armed with a pair of pistols and a bowie- knife, and carried on his shoulders ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... make their homes in Texas were the Bowie brothers: James, Rezin and Stephen. They were Georgians, but raised in Louisiana. The United States claimed Texas as a part of the Louisiana Territory that had been bought from France. Before ever ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... "have manifested more courage, enterprise, invention; but in the dispositions which Christianity particularly honors, how inferior are they to the African? When I cast my eyes over our Southern region,—the land of bowie-knives, lynch-law, and duels, of 'chivalry,' 'honor,' and revenge; and when I consider that Christianity is declared to be a spirit of charity, 'which seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and endureth ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Stanley says, [Footnote: Coomassie and Magdala. New York, Harpers, 1874.] 'mostly every other man is here so styled.' They talked professionally of the 'Whig ticket' and the 'Re-publican party,' but they neither 'guess'd' nor 'kalklated,' and if they wore they did not show revolvers and bowie-knives. They did not say, 'We air a go-ahead people,' they were not given to 'highfalutin',' nor did they chew their tobacco. They were, however, accompanied by an extremely objectionable 'infant,' aged seven, who lost no time in laying hands upon Miss M.'s trinkets, ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... and were still several miles from home, when, passing through a bit of woods, a sudden turn of the road brought them face to face with a band of mounted men, some thirty or forty in number, not disguised but rough and ruffianly in appearance and armed with clubs, pistols and bowie knives. ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... came on. He had had "blood on his feet," as they used to say, all the way from Lickitysplit to Lewis County in his flight, having attacked and slightly wounded two men with a bowie knife who had tried to detain him at Rainy Lake. He had also shot at an officer in the vicinity of Lowville, where his arrest was effected. He had been identified by all these men, and so his character as a desperate man had ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... typifies it better than any other. It has clearly tended to extravagance in remedies and trust in remedies, as in everything else. How could a people which has a revolution once in four years, which has contrived the Bowie-knife and the revolver, which has chewed the juice out of all the superlatives in the language in Fourth of July orations, and so used up its epithets in the rhetoric of abuse that it takes two great quarto dictionaries ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... two of them were Americans. They were mutinous from the start, half of them blacklegs of the vilest type who swore to get the upper hand of him. His mates, boatswain, and carpenter had broken open their chests and boxes and had removed a collection of slung-shots, knuckle-dusters, bowie-knives, and pistols. Off Rio Janeiro they had tried to kill the chief mate, and Captain Waterman had been compelled to jump in and stretch two of them dead with an iron belaying-pin. Off Cape Horn three sailors fell from aloft and were lost. This accounted ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... and Enfield rifles at that time in Johnston's army. Half of the soldiers were armed with shotguns and squirrel rifle and the greater part of the other half with flintlock muskets. But nearly every man, thinking he was in for a rough-and-tumble fight, had a bowie knife and a revolver ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... apparently very bitter in their denunciations of each other. They suddenly threw off their coats, which they wrapped around the left arm, and each grasping a long Spanish knife, the original of the murderous "bowie-knife,"—attacked each other with a ferocity terrible to behold. Every muscle seemed trembling and convulsed with passion, their eyes flashed with desperation, and their muscles seemed endued with superhuman power, as ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... work, With a kris or bowie-knife, Poniard, assegai, or dirk, I would make them beg for life;— Spare them, though, if they'd be good And guard me from what haunts the wood— From those creepy, shuddery sights That come round a fellow nights— Imps that squeak ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... recognized me. If I had not felt strengthened, you know, as of course one ought to be in all trials, by the sense of my holy calling, I think I should have bolted at once. However, I took the precaution of bringing my Bowie and revolver with me, in case the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... were occupied in the effort to strengthen their position by throwing up the best defenses they could with the implements at hand, which consisted of a very few picks and spades, some rough bowie-knives, and the bayonets of the muskets.... The position was a very weak one, as the banks on the opposite side of Bull Run overlooked and commanded those on the south side, which were but a few feet above the water's ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... James Bowie, of Paisley, to whom we are under obligations for supplying curious and interesting information regarding several of the bards of the west, kindly furnished the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... to a man who was leisurely approaching. He was dressed roughly in a red shirt, trousers tucked in his boots, and a hat with a broad flapping brim. As he strode along, his revolver and bowie-knife were carelessly exposed. His complexion was dark; he wore an abundant beard, and whatever he might be, he looked like a desperado, whom one would not care to meet on a dark night, unless well armed and on ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... he yells, or more emphatic. And off he whizzed. I see him go and fetched a long breath. Thanks to a merciful Providence, I'd come so fur without bein' buttered on the undercrust of that automobile or scalped with its crazy shover's bowie-knife. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... He took out his pistols, cocked them, and thrust them so back into the holsters, without knowing what he was about. He cocked his rifle, holding it with the muzzle directed anywhere, but principally our way; grasped his bowie-knife between his teeth, and cut his tongue trying to talk; spurred his nag into the fire, and backed him out across our blankets; and finally sat still, utterly unnerved, while we roared with the laughter we could no ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... had no more to say, except that I should instruct my friends to abide by the weapons I had mentioned. On this he lost his temper and exclaimed that it was murder. I said that was my desire; that they were hard to please; and that bowie-knives exhausted the list of weapons ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... launched themselves on Santa Anna's breastworks like an avalanche. Then there was three minutes of smoke and fire and blood. Then a desperate hand-to-hand struggle. Our men had charged the breastwork, with their rifles in their hands and their bowie-knives between their teeth. When rifles and pistols had been discharged they flung them away, rushed on the foe, and cut their path through a wall of living Mexicans with their knives. 'Remember the Alamo!' 'Remember the Goliad!' were ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... college professor to a coal passer. Mr. Hennage lived in his shirtsleeves, paid cash and hated jewelry. He had never been known to carry a derringer or a small, genteel, silver- plated revolver in his waist-coat pocket. Neither did he appear in public with a bowie knife down his bootleg. Not being a Mexican, he did not carry a knife, and besides he always wore congress gaiters. Owing to the fact that he was a large florid sandy person, with a freckled bristly neck and a ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... "Bowie, bring these gentlemen some sherry!" cried Claude, turning over his portfolio. "Now then, my worthy friends, is that the sort of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... didn't have a hard time then. Ma had to work when she wasn't able. Pa stole her out and one night a small panther smelled them and come on a log up over where they slept in a canebrake. Pa killed it with a bowie knife. Ma had a baby out there in the canebrake. Pa had stole her out. They went back and they never made her work no more. She was a fast breeder; she had three sets of twins. They told him if he would stay out of the woods they wouldn't make her work no more, take ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... American people, rather than the American government, who make peace and war; and the first American war with England will be one of the most formidable in which this country has yet been engaged. The bowie-knife is no trifling weapon; and the English writer laughs at a very considerable expense, if his satires have the effect of whetting it. At present, however, the war between the two countries is but a war of libel and pasquinade, and ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... devout, poetical clergyman, receives an heir from heaven, and straightway devotes him to the Christian ministry. But lo! the boy proves a young war-horse, neighing for battle, burning for gunpowder and guns, for bowie-knives and revolvers, and for every form and expression of physical force;—he might make a splendid trapper, an energetic sea-captain, a bold, daring military man, but his whole boyhood is full of rebukes and disciplines for sins which are only the blind effort of the creature to express ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... smaller and shorter than those now in use; for, indeed, swords seem to have increased in length, weight, and formidable aspect, now that the weapon has almost ceased to be used in actual warfare. The short Roman sword was probably more murderous than any weapon of the same species, except the bowie-knife. Here, too, were Parliamentary cannon-balls, etc. . ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Brinton took the precaution to have put in the centre of the cage, as part of the decorations, a stump of a tree, which was hollow, and contained a navy revolver and a bowie-knife. When he gave the command to Brutus to leap forward against the spears, Brinton stood alongside of the stump with one hand inside of it, his forefinger playing with the trigger of the revolver. The apprehension of a recurrence of the critical ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... impossible; but it lacked very much of proving that they would usually do this. Moreover, even the stalwart fighters who followed Clark and Sevier, and who did most important and valorous service, cannot point to any one such desperate deed of fierce courage as that of the doomed Texans under Bowie and Davy ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... which the doctors tell us must be studied by themselves, and which are rarely treated with great success until near the period of their natural cessation. After a time Fabius learns how to handle the hot Southern invaders, and Crassus the way of fighting the fierce gladiators with their classical bowie-knives. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... creature thou art!' continued I, in monologue, cutting neat slices of that viand with my bowie-knife, and laying them fraternally, three in a bed, in the frying-pan. 'Blessed be Moses, who forbade thee to the Jews, whereby we, of freer dispensations, heirs of all the ages, inherit also pigs more numerous and bacon cheaper! O Pork! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Not so. Chaske was too honorable and noble to kill an unarmed man, and especially one who had put up such a brave fight as had this man. Chaske advanced and picked up the empty gun. The Toka (enemy) drew from a scabbard at his belt a long bowie knife, and taking it by the point handed it, handle first, to Chaske. This signified surrender. Chaske scalped the dead Toka and motioned for his prisoner to follow him. In the meantime Pretty Feather had gotten up and stood looking at the duel. When she heard the first shot she jumped ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... the inhabitants. At the period in question, the plantations in that part of the country were very few and far between, but nevertheless by the afternoon of the next day we had got together four-and-thirty men, mounted on mustangs, each equipped with rifle and bowie-knife, powder-horn and bullet-bag, and furnished with provisions for several days. With these we started for San Antonio de Bexar, a march of two hundred and fifty miles, through trackless prairies intersected with rivers and streams, which, although not quite so big as the Mississippi ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... gallant frigate, the "Repudiator," was sailing out of Brest Harbor, the gigantic form of an Indian might be seen standing on the binnacle in conversation with Commodore Bowie, the commander of the noble ship. It was Tatua, the Chief ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sent with a remonstrance to Santa Anna—was in the dungeons of the Inquisition in Mexico; but Houston, Lamar, Burleson, Burnet, Bowie, Crockett, Sherman, and many another name able to fire an army, were on the ground. Besides which, the sympathy of the whole land was with the little band of heroes. For the idea of Texas had been carried in the American heart for two generations. As far back as 1819, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... out a huge slice with his bowie, sprinkled it over with salt, and began to devour it by very large mouthfuls. All hands proceeded to follow his example, and the noonday meal was dispatched in silence. After each man had fully satisfied his appetite and the mules and Fearless Frank's horse had ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... head and saw riding toward them a man who might have sat for the photograph of a bandit without any alteration in his countenance or apparel. He wore a red flannel shirt, pants of rough cloth, a Mexican sombrero, had a bowie-knife stuck in his girdle, and displayed a revolver rather ostentatiously. His hair, which he wore long, was coarse and black, and he had a ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... used a trick, doubtless learned in a hundred barroom fights, of thrusting his foot forward and tripping the master, who fell on his back. In a flash the fellow had him by the throat, forcing back his head with his left hand while his right fumbled under his coat. I guessed he was after his bowie-knife. I gripped his arm and gave it a twist that made him let out a yell. Jumping straight up, he made to grab me, when Allan, who had just appeared, swung out his right arm and dealt him a terrific blow ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... go on such hunts. Before going it is necessary that some preparation should be made. Bear hunting is very dangerous, and is sometimes attended with difficulty. Before starting you should provide yourself with a cowboy suit, a good rifle, a pair of revolvers, a bowie knife (16 inch blade) and sub-marine armor. When thus equipped you can enter the Swamp. You proceed cautiously along listening to hear the bears lapping, when you go in the direction of the sound. Bears move very cautiously, and you should be sure to keep ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... law-abiding, but a peace-loving people. The report of the revolver was not heard in our streets, nor was the glitter of the bowie-knife seen in our bar-rooms. We deprecated mob-violence, and disliked the summary proceedings of Judge Lynch. We took no pains to conceal our horror of unnecessary bloodshed, and shared the views of civilized Christendom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... to rise, bowie-knife in hand, to the conflict. Jerry Swinger was about to put his threat in execution, when Maxwell, released, by the fall of the woman, from danger in that quarter, struck him a heavy blow upon the head with the pistol in his hand. The woodman sunk back, with a groan, and Vernon, ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... and they managed to slip through the Mexican lines and join the defenders within the walls. The bravest, the hardiest, the most reckless men of the border were there; among them were Colonel Travis, the commander of the fort, and Bowie, the inventor of the famous bowie-knife. They were a wild and ill-disciplined band, little used to restraint or control, but they were men of iron courage and great bodily powers, skilled in the use of their ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... misunderstood and misrepresented by Canadian historians. In the thirties of the nineteenth century western New York was the 'frontier,' and it was peopled by wild, illiterate frontiersmen, familiar with the use of the rifle and the bowie-knife, bred in the Revolutionary {26} tradition and nourished on Fourth of July oratory to a hatred of everything British. The memories of 1812 were fresh in every mind. These simple souls were told by their own leaders and by political refugees from Canada, such as William Lyon Mackenzie, ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... Drillford. "Look here! I've got it. What sort of thing is that for an innocent, harmless man to carry about him? It's an American bowie-knife!" ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... clever trick, but it won't hold water. That blaze which was done to muddle you was cut with an axe; this which I made was done with a bowie-knife. It's the real one. We're not ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... eloquence which heretofore captivated the Babylonish mind. He was "raised a leettle too far to the west of sun-down" to be snubbed by Down-easters, any how; he's a cock of the woods, he is; an "etarnal screamer," "and that's a fact"—with a bowie knife under his waistcoat, and a patent revolver in his coat pocket, both very much at the service of any gentleman who may dispute his claims ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the inroads of the Underground Rail Road, they provided themselves with the following weapons of defense: three revolvers, three double-barreled pistols, three single-barreled pistols, three sword-canes, four butcher knives, one bowie-knife, and one paw.[A] Thus, fully resolved upon freedom or death, with scarcely provisions enough for a single day, while the rain and storm was piteously descending, fathers and mothers with children in their arms (Aaron Cornish had two)—the entire party started. Of ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... know all this," said George. "I do run a risk, but—" he threw open his overcoat, and showed two pistols and a bowie-knife. "There!" he said, "I'm ready for 'em! Down south I never will go. No! if it comes to that, I can earn myself at least six feet of free soil,—the first and last I shall ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Texas and Mexico, and General Sam Houston led the Texan soldiers in their fight for independence. He had many noted American pioneers[4] and hunters in his little army: one of them was the brave Colonel Travis[5] of Alabama; another was Colonel Bowie[6] of Louisiana, the inventor of the "bowie knife"; still another was Colonel David Crockett of Tennessee, whose motto is a good one for every young American—"Be sure you're right, then—go ahead." These ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... posted quick an with a look. As sharp as winkin' Cherokee has a nine-inch bowie in his hand an' with one slash cuts the hoss-ha'r clost up by Silver ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... bowie-knife, a relic of the civil war, which he had carried on his person for many years for a definite purpose, and which he had kept sharpened to a razor edge, he reached the line of the crowd. All but the bravest shrank back. Like a wedge he dashed through the mob, which ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the direction of any promised excitement. Horse-racing was among the most favored amusements. Prize rings were formed, and brawny men engaged in fisticuffs until their sight was lost and their bodies pommelled to a jelly, while hundreds of onlookers cheered the victor.... Pistols flashed, bowie knives flourished, and braggart oaths filled the air, as often as men's passions triumphed over their reason. This was indeed the reign of unbridled license, and men who at first regarded it with disgust ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... in those days everyone went armed; it would be more correct to say that this was true in the mining regions of the State and when travelling. I, myself, carried a Derringer pistol and a Bowie-knife until the Summer of 1854, though of course out of sight. I did so by the advice of Judge Mott, of the District Court, who remarked that, though I never abused a witness or a juror, or was discourteous to any one in court, there were desperate men in the ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... blue-woolen shirt, no 30 suspenders, no vest, no coat; in a leathern sheath in his belt, a great long "navy" revolver (slung on right side, hammer to the front), and projecting from his boot a horn-handled bowie knife. The furniture of the hut was neither gorgeous nor much in the way. The rocking-chairs and sofas were not present and never had been, but they were represented by two three-legged stools, a pine-board bench ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... hair, which grew very nearly down to his eyes, while his beard grew almost up to his eyes. It seemed as if the hair and beard had had a struggle for the possession of his face, and were kept apart by the deep chasm in which his small gray eyes were set. He was armed with a huge bowie-knife, which he carried slung like a sword. It was at least two feet long, heavy as a butcher's cleaver, and was thrust into a sheath of undressed hide. He called this pleasant instrument an Arkansas toothpick. He bestrode, as well as his diminutive legs would let him, an Indian pony ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... a brother of Joseph Purcell, entered the employ of Bowie Dash & Co. as a boy. From there he went to Williams, Russell & Co., then to the Union Coffee Co., and later to Hard & Rand. He is now head of the firm of Alex. H. Purcell ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... to you straight that he was out to-day and went down to the nearest gun store," declared Dorman. "Collins says he bought a Winchester rifle, a shotgun, two revolvers, a bowie knife, a slungshot, and a set of ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... York Keyhole Reporter! Here's the New York Rowdy Journal! Here's all the New York papers! Here's full particulars of the patriotic Locofoco movement yesterday, in which the Whigs were so chawed up; and the last Alabama gouging case; and the interesting Arizona dooel with bowie knives; and all the political, commercial, and fashionable news. Here they are! Here they are! Here's the papers! Here's the papers! Here's the Sewer! Here's the New York Sewer! Here's some of the twelve thousand of today's Sewer, with the best accounts of the markets, and four whole columns of ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice |
