"Coign" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... columns. He estopped a proposed visit from one of his influential countrymen; in the absence of his fair entertainers at their domestic duties, he extracted infinite satisfaction from Foo-Yup, the Chinese servant, who was particularly detached for his service. From his invalid coign of vantage at the window he was observant of all that passed upon the veranda, that al-fresco audience-room of The Lookout, and he was good-humoredly conscious that a great many eccentric and peculiar visitors were invariably ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... Wade, of Ohio, President pro tempore of the Senate, was already acting Vice-President. If the Impeachment trial had ended in the conviction of President Johnson, Mr. Wade would have succeeded him for the unexpired term, and from this coign of vantage would doubtless have secured the nomination for the second office. The failure of Impeachment, though fatal to his success, did not dissipate the support which his long services and marked fidelity had commanded, without any of the adventitious ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the place, ten altogether, so Birkin had found out: two artists, three students, a man and wife, and a Professor and two daughters—all Germans. The four English people, being newcomers, sat in their coign of vantage to watch. The Germans peeped in at the door, called a word to the waiter, and went away again. It was not meal-time, so they did not come into this dining-room, but betook themselves, when their boots were changed, to ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... was exactly suited to Aleck's taste; and as old practice and acquaintance with the coast had made giddiness a trouble he never felt, he was not long in lowering himself down to this coign of vantage. Here he perched himself with a sigh of satisfaction, and watched for a time the great white-breasted gulls which floated down to gaze with curious watchful eyes at the intruder upon their wild domain. The puffins kept darting ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... the members of the Guard that they were to proceed to the redoubts of their respective Sections to prepare a greeting. Over at the Sanatorium, facing the suburb of Beaconsfield, the movements of the enemy were being closely watched. A conning tower soared high above the De Beers mine, from which coign of vantage a keen eye swept the horizon for signs of their advance. At the Reservoir, a look-out was on the qui vive. The Infantry were encamped in a central position, ready for instant despatch to wherever their services might be needed most. The Kimberley Regiment ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... At eighteen—thanks to the comprehensive visual education in the business of life which she could hardly have failed to assimilate from a coign of vantage overlooking every table of a Soho restaurant—there were precious few things she didn't understand. But her insight into Papa Dupont's mind in respect of herself was wholly devoid of sympathy. She was just a little bit afraid of him, and she despised him ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... longer. The game was up. He rushed from his coign of observation, out of the bank building, and dashed into a ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... and, with a terrible glance at the men, descended to the cabin. From this coign of vantage she obstinately refused to budge, and sat in angry seclusion until the vessel reached Ipswich late in the evening. Then she appeared on deck, dressed for walking, and, utterly ignoring ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... homestead, and here she came in full contact with a mass of rock which shook her, crushed in her stem, and made her recoil. The next wave threw her back again, but luckily more steadily, so that I was enabled to throw my coil of rope down upon her deck from my coign of vantage. I quickly whipped the shore end round the stem of a huge furze bush, which grew within ten feet of the brink of the cliff, and to my joy found that the man had seized the end which I had thrown ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... bank, about four-thirty, he walked soberly up town to the Coign Hotel and ascended to his room. It was a nice room for the teller of a town bank to occupy, boasting a wicker chair, a leather couch and a brass bed. A couple of rather pretentious pictures hung on the walls, otherwise decorated with pennants. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... abroad. If Saratoga, why not Krakatoa? Mr. Prichard was entrenched in a stronghold of total ignorance of literary matters, and his position, that mere differences of words ought not to tell upon a healthy mind, was difficult to shake, especially as he had the coign of vantage. He had only to remain inanimate, and what could a (presumably) widow lady with one small daughter do against him? So at the end of the first seven years, what had been Saratoga became Krakatoa, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... stands on top of the steep hill that dominates the junction of the Saint Charles River with the Saint Lawrence. That is Cape Diamond—a natural stronghold. Indians and French, and British, and Americans have fought for that coign of vantage. For a century and a half the Union Jack has floated there, and under its fair protection the Province of Quebec, keeping its quaint old language and peasant customs, has become an important part of the ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... between the brothers-in-law; but they had hitherto avoided clashing. Now, however, the Colonel's outraged feelings of propriety wound him up to the determination of administering a solemn rebuke to Du Meresq, and he stood on that coign of advantage, the hearthrug, waiting ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Coignet or Coign['e]res, an advocate-general in the reign of Philippe de Valois, who stoutly opposed the encroachments of the Church. The monks, in revenge, nicknamed those grotesque figures in stone (called "gargoyles"), pierres du coignet. At Notre Dame de Paris there were at one time gargoyles ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... over the Ridge since 1857, and thought how wonderfully we were aided by finding a ready-made position—not only a coign of vantage for attack, but a rampart of defence, as Forrest[9] describes it. This Ridge, rising sixty feet above the city, covered the main line of communication to the Punjab, upon the retention of which our very ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... Sometimes in dizzy steps descending, Sometimes in narrow circuit bending, Sometimes in platform broad extending, Its varying circle did combine Bulwark, and bartisan, and line, And bastion, tower, and vantage-coign: Above the booming ocean leant The far projecting battlement; The billows burst in ceaseless flow Upon the precipice below. Where'er Tantallon faced the land, Gateworks and walls were strongly manned; No need upon the sea-girt side; The steepy rock, and frantic ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... tides—where one may pause in the midst at will, compared with the deadly expanses of Fifth Avenue, with their rush of all manner of vehicles over the smooth asphalt surface. There I stand long at the brink; I look for a policeman to guide and guard my steps; I crane my neck forward from my coign of vantage and count the cabs, the taxicabs, the carriages, the private automobiles, the motor-buses, the express-wagons, and calculate my chances. Then I shrink back. If it is a corner where there is no policeman to bank the tides up on either hand and lead me over, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... as the rest of the company. I strode aimlessly to and fro, striving at every coign to pierce with my eyesight the white drift. I pushed back my hat; I gnawed my knuckles; I felt that I could not stay still, yet knew not for what point to make. Almost I felt that in another moment I should screech out—when a breath of sea air caught the skirt of the cloud, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... running parallel with its northern shore at the distance of a mile; nothing but a low plain stretching from its western shore far away towards the Mpwapwa Mountains and Marenga Mkali, then apparent to us from our coign of vantage, from which extensive scene of dun-brownness we were glad to rest our eyes on the quiet grey ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... land side, too, over the hills, up the old road called Giro della Foce, and before the villages commanding the town, spread a cloud of witnesses; while the multitude in possession of permessos for the dock-region stretched across a hundred and sixty acres, perched on every coign, and murmuring ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... that foreknowledge, it misses the specifically dramatic effect of the scenes. The author invites it to play at blind-man's-buff with the characters, instead of unsealing its eyes and enabling it to watch the game from its Olympian coign of vantage. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Zero, 'you behold this field of city, rich, crowded, laughing with the spoil of continents; but soon, how soon, to be laid low! Some day, some night, from this coign of vantage, you shall perhaps be startled by the detonation of the judgment gun— not sharp and empty like the crack of cannon, but deep-mouthed and unctuously solemn. Instantly thereafter, you shall behold the flames break forth. Ay,' he cried, stretching ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... must be marshalled, of course, about the guidon of a hypothesis, but that guidon can lead on to victory only when the facts themselves support it. Once planted victoriously on the conquered ramparts the hypothesis becomes a theory—a generalization of science—marking a fresh coign of vantage, which can never be successfully assailed unless by a new host of antagonistic facts. Such generalizations, with the events leading directly up to them, have chiefly occupied ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep square slope of the blossomless bed ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... evidently perceived my state of mind, for he stole away silently, leaving me rather penitent and ashamed, and, as I presently discovered on looking out of the window, resumed his vigil on the doorstep. From this coign of vantage he returned after a time to take away the tea-things; and thereafter, though it was now dark as well as foggy, I could hear him softly flitting up and down the stairs with a gloomy stealthiness that at length reduced ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... a corner of land, a furze-fringed rag of a by-way, Coign of your foam-white cliffs or swirl of your grass-green waves, Leaf of your peaceful copse, or dust of your strenuous highway, But in our hearts is sacred, dear as our cradles, our graves? Is not each bough in your orchards, each ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... angle-worms one of his dietetic staples and looks upon a fat grub as a rare tidbit. Then his nesting-habits are the most diverse of all. Now he is a tree-builder in the fork of a trunk or on a horizontal branch, then a builder in vines or rosebushes around your porch, then on some coign of vantage about your house or barn, or under the shed, or under a bridge, or in the stone wall, or on the ground above a hedge. I have known him to go into a well and build there on a projecting stone. He even nests beyond the Arctic ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... was for Rembrandt and Velasquez. That he was called the Rembrandt of Architecture is but another testimony to the impression he made upon his contemporaries, though the title is an unhappy one. Piranesi even in his own little fenced-off coign of art is not comparable to the etcher of the Hundred Guilder print, nor are there close analogies in their respective ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... verily!—Ah, how much will you bid, An hour hence, for the coign abandoned now! The battle's ours.—It was, then, their rash march Downwards to Tilnitz and the Goldbach swamps Before dawn, that we heard.—No hurry, Lannes! Enjoy this sun, that rests its chubby jowl Upon the plain, and thrusts its bristling beard Across the lowlands' fleecy ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... of the wall stood a watch-tower, and from this coign of vantage the guards saw the fleeing fugitives, outlined by ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... materials accessible to a man like me to form a judgment from. But in such a case I verily believe that a little is as good as a feast—perhaps better. If one has a taste for that kind of thing the merest starting-point becomes a coign of vantage, and then by a series of logically deducted verisimilitudes one arrives at truth—or very near the truth—as near as any circumstantial evidence can do. I have not studied de Barral but that is how I understand him so far ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... survey the whole prospect from a secure coign of vantage upon the mainland, and trust my impressions thereof may prove of some slight service to you. As I have disclaimed all intention of making this portion of my work a handbook of bowing ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... more and he would be in a little by-street which would take him out of the uproar. The thought of his little protege crossed his mind. He turned to look for him. He saw him at the very moment when Emmanuel had slipped down from his coign of vantage and was rolling on the ground being trampled underfoot by the rabble: the fugitives were running over his body: the police were just reaching the spot. Olivier did not stop to think: he rushed down the steps and ran to his aid. A navvy saw the ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... many indisputable signs of the instability of her affairs. And of all those the foremost, the most glaring, was her personal success, at once actual and impossible. She saw herself (from that remote and weather-beaten coign of scepticism) moving freely to and fro in the great world of the socially elect, unhindered, unquestioned, tacitly accepted, meeting, chatting, treating and parting with its denizens with a gesture of confidence that ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... some coign of vantage in the system of low hills that permeates the forest, you will see many different tracts of country, each of its own cold and melancholy neutral tint, and all mixed together and mingled the one into the other at the seams. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
