"Cudgel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Theirs is a true immortality, for it is their soul, and not their talent, that survives in their work. Dante's concise forthrightness of phrase, which to that of most other poets is as a stab[260] to a blow with a cudgel, the vigor of his thought, the beauty of his images, the refinement of his conception of spiritual things, are marvellous if we compare him with his age and its best achievement. But it is for his power of inspiring ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... Edinburgh by the way of the Pentland Hills. By eight o'clock they had word of them - a shepherd had seen four men "uncoly mishandled" go by in the last hour. "That's yin a piece," says Clem, and swung his cudgel. "Five o' them!" says Hob. "God's death, but the faither was a man! And him drunk!" And then there befell them what my author termed "a sair misbegowk," for they were overtaken by a posse of mounted neighbours come to aid in the pursuit. Four sour faces looked on the reinforcement. "The Deil's ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her—scarcely dry on her living lips? Who am I who speak, asses of the common? Gentilla Stanley, whose father was Pharaoh before her, and who can call up the ghosts of dead Egyptian kings, with a tent for a palace, and a cudgel for a sceptre, and the wisdom of our people at the service ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... tribune was selected for his military qualities and experience: none was appointed to this important office, "nisi barb plen" The centurion's truncheon, [Footnote: Vitis: and it deserves to be mentioned, that this staff, or cudgel, which was the official engine and cognizance of the Centurion's dignity, was meant expressly to be used in caning or cudgelling the inferior soldiers: "propterea vitis in manum data," says Salmasius, "verberando scilicet ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Don't even box his ears in the street, but give a street-porter ten shillings to cudgel him well as he comes out of the ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... ever such yeomen as the sevenscore merry men that roamed with him through the greenwood shades. Right merrily they dwelled within the depths of Sherwood Forest, suffering neither care nor want, but passing the time in merry games of archery or bouts of cudgel play, living upon the King's venison, washed down with draughts of ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... culprit may be altogether innocent. If a composer plays with fire, he is fairly sure to burn some one's fingers, even if he successfully avoids burning his own. And anyhow it is waste of time, and worse, for us to cudgel our brains to fits of entirely unnecessary inventiveness when the composer has left his music unlabelled. We sometimes hear of children being encouraged to give verbal or dramatic expression of their own to instrumental music; that is not ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... climbed up to the roof of a building, and frisking about there, broke in the tiling. The owner went up after him and quickly drove him down, beating him severely with a thick wooden cudgel. The Ass said, "Why, I saw the Monkey do this very thing yesterday, and you all laughed heartily, as if it afforded ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... through the gloom. Harding, Gideon Spilett, Herbert, Pencroft and Neb posted themselves in impregnable line. Top, his formidable jaws open, preceded the colonists, and he was followed by Jup, armed with knotty cudgel, which ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... by this time. Sir, says I, pray be advis'd by a friend, and make the best of your speed out of my doors, for I hear my wife's voice, (which by the by, is pretty distinguishable) and in that corner of the room stands a good cudgel, which somebody has felt e're now; if that light in her hands, and she know the business you come about, without consulting the stars, I can assure you it will be employed very much to the detriment of your person. Sir, cries he, bowing with great civility, I perceive ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... with O'Riley?" said Fred, pointing to that eccentric individual, who was gazing intently at the bears, muttering between his teeth, and clenching his cudgel nervously. ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... flattered himself that the report on his habitat would be a favourable one. Ned's appearance gave him a pleasant shock: it was just as if Polly herself, translated into male terms, stood before him. No need, now, to cudgel his brains for her image! In looking at Ned, he looked again at Polly. The wide-awake off, the same fine, soft, black hair came to light—here, worn rather long and curly—the same glittering black eyes, ivory-white skin, short, straight nose; and, as he gazed, an offshoot of Mahony's consciousness ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the air. It was a heavy cudgel. Whack! whack! whack! the three fellows retreated as their shoulders ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... fustis, a staff, cudgel, gave also Old Fr. fust, a kind of boat, whence obsolete Eng. foist in the same sense. Both meanings seem to go back to a time when casks and boats were "dug out" instead of ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... reached him not because purposely misaimed, others, sincerely designed for his person, were eluded by his activity, and the few that fell upon his back and shoulders he took without either complaint or reply. The noise and riot was the greater, that the inexperienced cudgel players, among whom Hayraddin ran the gauntlet, hit each other more frequently than they did him, till at length, desirous of ending a scene which was more scandalous than edifying, the Prior commanded the wicket to be flung open, and the Bohemian, darting through it with the speed of lightning, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... so that there was no further risk of his losing his way. The solitude and the dismal appearance of the country, together with its ill repute, made him quicken his pace, though he had no fear of molestation; having nothing to lose, he would be but poor prey for a highwayman, and he trusted to his cudgel to protect him from the attentions of any single footpad ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... professed to be puzzled. "Hem!" said he. "What would you do, Adele? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How would a white or a pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think? And one could cut a pretty enough ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... scoundrel has drawn money, in Dresden yonder, for my Bill on Paris,—excellent to him for trade of his own! What is to be done with such an Ass of Balaam? He has got the bit in his teeth, it would seem. Heavens, he too is capable of stopping short, careless of spur and cudgel; and miraculously speaking to a NEW Prophet [strange new "Revealer of the Lord's Will," in modern dialect], in this enlightened Eighteenth Century itself!—One thing the new Prophet, can ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... loves alike a short sermon and a long play; one that goes to a play, to a whore, to his bed, in circle: good for nothing in the world but to sweat nightcaps and foul fair lawn shirts, feed a few foggy servingmen, and prefer dunces to livings—this old Sir Raderic, Furor, it shall be thy task to cudgel with thy thick, thwart terms; marry, at the first, give him some sugarcandy terms,[103] and then, if he will not untie purse-strings of his liberality, sting him with terms laid in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... resentment in the newspapers by epigrams or invectives. Ducket, indeed, being mentioned as loving Burnet with "pious passion," pretended that his moral character was injured, and for some time declared his resolution to take vengeance with a cudgel. But Pope appeased him, by changing "pious passion" to "cordial friendship," and by a note, in which he vehemently disclaims the malignity of the meaning imputed to the first expression. Aaron Hill, who was represented as diving for the ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... and she showed off the girl's advantages like a horse-couper with a horse. My face flamed that she should think me so obtuse. Now I would fancy the girl was being innocently made a show of, and then I could have beaten the old carline wife with a cudgel; and now, that perhaps these two had set their heads together to entrap me, and at that I sat and gloomed betwixt them like the very image of ill-will. At last the match-maker had a better device, which was to leave the pair of us alone. When my suspicions ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The stick is meant partly to hold a man up, partly to knock a man down; partly to point with like a finger-post, partly to balance with like a balancing pole, partly to trifle with like a cigarette, partly to kill with like a club of a giant; it is a crutch and a cudgel; an elongated finger and an extra leg. The case is the same, of course, with the fire; about which the strangest modern views have arisen. A queer fancy seems to be current that a fire exists to warm ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... descended, and Dick with him, to find the front garden of the old farm-house full of great swarthy black-bearded fellows, everyone armed with a cudgel or a pick-axe handle, some having only the parts ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... last, by turning his back, he managed to speak his base and foolish thought. She, thinking this a jest, at first made light of it, but when he faced her once more, frowning this time, like a thunder-cloud, and brandishing the cudgel above his head, she was filled with fear and could hardly keep her feet. She denied the charge. She begged that he would tell the names of her accusers that she might ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... calcitration[obs3]; ruade[obs3]; arietation|; cut, thrust, lunge, yerk|; carom, carrom[obs3], clip *, jab, plug*, sidewinder* [U.S.], sidewipe[obs3], sideswipe [U.S.]. hammer, sledge hammer, mall, maul, mallet, flail; ram, rammer[obs3]; battering ram, monkey, pile-driving engine, punch, bat; cant hook; cudgel &c. (weapon) 727; ax &c. (sharp) 253. [Science of mechanical forces] dynamics; seismometer, accelerometer, earthquake detector. V. give an impetus &c. n.; impel, push; start, give a start to, set going; drive, urge, boom; thrust, prod, foin[Fr]; cant; elbow, shoulder, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... get a brand of fire or a cudgel at the camp," she said with some remorse in her voice, "and run for the river bank." With that she ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... thee." I replied, "Very well, Friend Franchise" (we gave him that nickname in our party); "you are a coward" (I told a lie, for he was certainly a brave man), "and I am a priest; but dueling is not allowed us." M. de Brissac threatened to cudgel him, and he to kick Brissac. The President, fearing these words would end in blows, got between us. The First President conjured the Prince pathetically, by the blood of Saint Louis, not to defile with blood ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... attention to these facts. The Pullman Company paid no attention to it, but the railroad journals did. With one accord they seized the cudgel which Bok had raised, and a series of hammerings began. The Pullman conductors began to report to their division chiefs that the passengers were criticising the cars, and the company at last woke up. It issued ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... encouraged Miss Webling to hope that she could remember a little farther back to the contents of the letter and the telephone number written there. But her memory would not respond. The effort to cudgel it seemed to confuse it. She kept on forgetting more and ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... substance, it is an admirable one for method, and for so much of style as is attainable by example. It is the same school in which the writers of what used to be called our classical period learned the superior efficacy of the French small-sword as compared with the English cudgel, and Mr. James shows the graceful suppleness of that excellent academy of fence in which a man distinguishes by effacing himself. He has the dexterous art of letting us feel the point of his individuality without making us obtrusively ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... must cudgel his brains and seek elsewhere. Now, with other work to be done, he should go back the shortest, quickest way. So he set his feet into the trail which they had made, and turned his back upon the grove. Where he crossed streams he took stock of pools; there were trout there if ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... cried Red, whose cudgel was as long as a walking stick, and almost as thick through ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... reach them before the dog reached him? Would they afford him a refuge or a cudgel? He threw out his ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... the eye was the half-length of Robert M'Queen, of Braxfield, Lord Justice-Clerk. If I know gusto in painting when I see it, this canvas was painted with rare enjoyment. The tart, rosy, humorous look of the man, his nose like a cudgel, his face resting squarely on the jowl, has been caught and perpetuated with something that looks like brotherly love. A peculiarly subtle expression haunts the lower part, sensual and incredulous, like that of a man tasting good Bordeaux with half a fancy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had great cheeks, and a big nose and flat, big nostrils and wide, and thick lips redder than steak, and great teeth yellow and ugly, and he was shod with hosen and shoon of ox-hide, bound with cords of bark up over the knee, and all about him a great cloak two-fold; and he leaned upon a grievous cudgel, and Aucassin came unto him, and was afraid when he ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... the sort characteristic of such a gathering—wrestling and foot-races, target-shooting and bouts at cudgel-play and night-stick. Towards the middle of the afternoon, when the athletic prowess of the young men had been fully exploited, came the great spectacle, the bull-fight, and of this it will be necessary to ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... floundered on, my companion wearied me with constant reproaches that I had not brought a pilgrim's staff: telling me that I could never get into the house without one, and boastfully flourishing a heavy-headed cudgel, which I understood to be so denominated. For a moment I considered it absurd that I should need such a weapon to gain admittance into my own residence. Then a new idea flashed across me. I was not going there: ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... embarked in commercial venture, is respected in civilized maritime war. Conversely, as we all know, the rule on land is by no means invariable, and private property receives scant consideration when its appropriation or destruction serves the purposes of an enemy. The man who trudges the highway, cudgel in hand, may claim for his cudgel all the sacredness with which civilization invests property; but if he use it to break his neighbor's head, the respect for his property, as such, quickly disappears. Now, private property borne upon the seas is engaged in promoting, in the most ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... has been for many generations of boys a book even more terrible than Caesar's Commentaries or the Aeneid of Virgil—the dull thud of a mysterious cudgel upon the shoulders of youth which you bore as courageously ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... evident: to cross the border was, for the Scotsman, to come home to Skelt; there was the inn-sign and there the horse-trough, all foreshadowed in the faithful Skelt. If, at the ripe age of fourteen years, I bought a certain cudgel, got a friend to load it, and thenceforward walked the tame ways of the earth my own ideal, radiating pure romance - still I was but a puppet in the hand of Skelt; the original of that regretted bludgeon, and surely the antitype of all the bludgeon kind, greatly improved from ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cry among the children, and Walter made such a violent gesture, that Rose, covering her face with her handkerchief, whispered to him, "Walter dear, take care." Walter relieved his mind by returning, "Oh that I could cudgel the rogue soundly!" ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exposing all the thick sinewy throat beneath it. His eyes were half open and looked bleared and unhealthy, while his thick lips puffed out with a whistling sound at every expiration. His dirty brown coat was thrown open, and out of one of the pockets protruded a short thick cudgel ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... end in a great passion. And with every deference to the feelings of certain of Mr. Pierce's gentry, who have so recently figured upon the stage of London and Paris fashionable life, I may add that he would testily declare nothing would so please him as to cudgel every diplomatic dandy that brought disgrace upon his country abroad and left his countrymen to bear the smart. Indeed, he once honestly admitted that foreigners were just foolish enough to look for exponents of our national character among ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... brown frieze jerkin with stone buttons, and purple hose, his head was covered with a montero cap, with a cock's feather stuck in it. He was armed neither with sword nor dagger, but carried a large cudgel or club, the well-known and formidable weapon, of the London 'prentices, in the use of which, whether as a quarterstaff or missile, they were remarkably expert. Even a skilful swordsman stood but poor chance with them. Besides this saucy-looking personage, who was addressed as Dick Taverner by ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... wisdom enough to manage their own estates, and are they now to teach the King {84} and Your Highness how to govern the country? By the living God, if my advice were taken, their petition should have a cudgel for a commentary, and we would make them go down the steps of the palace a great deal faster than ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... exquisites, who aped the London cockneys in the first French Revolution. Their dress was top-boots with thick soles, knee-breeches, a dress-coat with long tails and high stiff collar, and a thick cudgel called a constitution. It was thought John Bull-like to assume a huskiness of voice, a discourtesy of manners, and a swaggering vulgarity of speech ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... it! Cudgel your brains for the answer. We don't want any mixed-anatomy Sphinxes rampaging around here," ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... a steam engine. At the last moment I started to run, my legs sinking beneath me. He was upon me with my first few steps, and had me by the scruff of the neck, and brought down the cudgel over me. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... of your calling him a cockroach on a mast, he will grind your ribs to a paste with a cudgel (os moliesen las costillas a puros palos)!" observed a pale, sharp-faced lad in a shabby doublet. The sailor who had made the comparison ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... me to be a lazy, indolent, and harmless race of human beings; and they formed, in all their habits, a striking contrast with their enslaved brethren. Whilst the latter devote their spare hours to the culture of their own little spots, to cudgel-playing, dancing, or other gambols, the former appear to spend their whole time in a state between sleeping and waking, at the doors of their huts, or under the shelter of trees. Some of the Maroon females, I observed, were really ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... thee, Adam of Wills!" said a stout woman, to one of the speakers; "thou wert ever a tough fighter; and the cudgel and ragged staff were as glib in thine hands as a beggar's pouch on alms-days. Show thy mettle, man. I'll spice thee a jug of barley-drink, an' thou be for the bout ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... about the year 1805 that we were first ushered into the dining-house called the Cheshire Cheese, in Wine-office-court. It is known that Johnson once lodged in this court, and bought an enormous cudgel while there, to resist a threatened attack from Macpherson, the author, or editor, of Ossian's Poems. At the time we first knew the place (for its visiters and keepers are long since changed for the third or fourth time,) many came there who ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... muv han' or fit, I'll brain him wi' 's ain stick," he cried, as he wrenched a cudgel from the grasp of one of them. Then catching up a lantern, and hurrying behind the projecting rock —"Haste ye, an' come," he shouted. "The w'y 's clear, but only for ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... whites of your eyes off my supper-table, or by Allah I'll send you all to Jehanum. I see you are longing to put your fingers on the kid; but if you do, I've a bone-softener, which, by the blessed Prophet, shall break every bone in your three skins." So saying, the man, taking a large cudgel from the corner of the room, laid it by the dish of kid, into which he then plunged his fingers, and commenced ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... castle. Then a sudden fury filled his soul, and, leaving the sheep to go whither they would, he ran swiftly down the hill, and never stopped till he reached the castle gate. Here the porter, to whom the countess had given much gold, tried to stop him, but Bevis only knocked him down with his cudgel, and on into the hall he went, and there he beheld his mother and Sir Murdour feasting ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... what he's afraid of, Monsieur Louis. Give me a good sickle and a good cudgel, and I'm not afraid of a wolf; give me a good gun and I'm not afraid of any man, even if I knew he's waiting to ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... consign, to record contrato social, articles of partnership cordoban, morocco leather despacio, slowly despreciable, despicable dinero efectivo, cash discutir, to discuss especulacion, speculation, venture garrote, cudgel, stick *impedir, to hinder, to preclude ladron, thief (el) matiz, shade *mover, to move, to actuate mozalbete, beardless youth *quebrantamiento, breakage, break down reflejo, reflection *seguir, to pursue sin ton ni son, without ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... sorely cheated. Nor is it at all certain that the average inhabitant of Puerto Rico is worth coddling, protection, prosperity, "and the immunities and blessings" accorded him by his new rulers. A thick, stout cudgel or a bright, sharp axe will be more effective than honeyed words in helping him cheerfully to assimilate new ideas; though no one will believe it here at home until the hurrah is all over and some of the truth gets into ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... a nice set of puppets, and they were very simple to manipulate. They fitted easily on to the hand, the forefinger controlling the head, and the thumb and second finger the arms. The old fellow's cudgel was a dream. ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... young lawyer thinks it all very right,' said Summertrees, looking at Fairford—'an OLD lawyer might have thought otherwise. However, the cudgel was to be found to beat the dog, and they chose a heavy one. Well, I kept my spirits better than my companion, poor fellow; for I had the luck to have neither wife nor child to think about, and Harry Redgauntlet had both one and t'other.—You have ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Two men came and knelt down near him. They understood, as most Spaniards do, how most effectually to attack a man, and how to kill him quickest. Therefore one of them suddenly disabled him on one side by a blow on the left arm. The other swung his cudgel at the back of his head, just below the edge of the steel cap, and laid him prone. He never spoke again, but expired in a few hours. This murder, as might be expected, was well made use of by the priests, serving them to plead the necessity of an inquisition to repress violence; and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... spring, and then, my dear fellow, you must try and come over, and we will walk and talk together 'amid these storm-reared temples of the gods.' I have felt a new man since I arrived here. Instead of having to 'cudgel my brains,' as we say, thoughts crowd upon me. This work will make ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... asked her also what he had best to do further to them. So she asked him what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound, and he told her. Then she counselled him, that when he arose in the morning he should beat them without mercy. So when he arose, he getteth him a grievous crabtree cudgel, and goes down into the dungeon to them, and there first falls to rating of them as if they were dogs, although they never gave him a word of distaste. Then he falls upon them, and beats them fearfully, in such sort that they were not able to help themselves, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... "Perhaps to cudgel his brains in order to remember whether he could have taken it with him when we ran out of camp that night; or, perhaps, to give another look ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... gave orders for a combat between the chevalier and the dog. The lists were appointed in the Isle of Notre Dame, then an unenclosed, uninhabited place. Macaire was allowed for his weapon a great cudgel, and an empty cask was given to the dog as a place of retreat, to enable him ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... three jack-an-apes dressed like soldiers, a mountebank with an Andrew and a Master Merriman, and such lots of booths with toys, and beads, and ribbons; more cakes and sweetmeats than I could eat in a year; besides a merry-go-round and two flying ships. Then, there will be wrestling and cudgel-playing, foot-ball, jumping in sacks, and dancing on the church-green to the pipe and tabor, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... robe to acquire the fruitfulness of its owner. The Caffres of Sofala, in East Africa, had a great dread of being struck with anything hollow, such as a reed or a straw, and greatly preferred being thrashed with a good thick cudgel or an iron bar, even though it hurt very much. For they thought that if a man were beaten with anything hollow, his inside would waste away till he died. In eastern seas there is a large shell which the Buginese of Celebes call the "old man" (kadjwo). On Fridays they turn ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... carom, carrom^, clip [Slang], jab, plug [Slang], sidewinder [U.S.], sidewipe^, sideswipe [U.S.]. hammer, sledge hammer, mall, maul, mallet, flail; ram, rammer^; battering ram, monkey, pile-driving engine, punch, bat; cant hook; cudgel &c (weapon) 727; ax &c (sharp) 253. [Science of mechanical forces] dynamics; seismometer, accelerometer, earthquake detector. V. give an impetus &c n.; impel, push; start, give a start to, set going; drive, urge, boom; thrust, prod, foin [Fr.]; cant; elbow, shoulder, jostle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... have a little fine breeding, and not be bred up a musty, humdrum Puritan. I do hate those she-precise hypocrites, that go about in close stomachers and ruffles of Geneva print, and cannot so much as cudgel their maids without a Scripture to back them. Nobody likes them, you know. Don't grow into one of them. You'll never be married ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... he thundered. "Lend me a cudgel, some one," and he looked around as if seeking for the weapon he asked for..Villon snatched up a mug and flung the heel taps in the soldier's face, spotting his cheeks with drops of crimson that trickled on to his breast plate. With a choking cry of rage ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... answered I—If thou takest a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death—Well! a minute is but a minute, and if it saves a fellow-creature a drubbing, it shall not be ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... there was a sort of melee in school, and the teacher was flung upon the floor in the scuffle. By the time Samuel found himself on his back, the teacher stood over him with what the young rebel called a cugel (cudgel) ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... near to the place where Charles awaited him, he saw the Prince approaching him with a short thick cudgel (not a very feminine appendage) in his hand. "Are you," cried Charles, "Mr. Macdonald of Kingsburgh?" "Yes, sir," replied Kingsburgh. "Then," said Charles, "all is well; come let us be going." Macdonald, however, first begged ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... he is going to Ascot. I do not care a straw whether he is going to Ascot or not. He says he is not quite sure, but asks me what chance Passion Flower has for the Thousand Guineas. I know he doesn't value my opinion on the subject at a brass farthing—he would be a fool if he did, but I cudgel my brains to reply to him, as though he were going to stake his shirt on my advice. We reach the first floor, and are mutually glad to get rid of one another. I catch my hostess' eye. She looks ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... true to my master.' However, the wolf thought he was in joke, and came one night to get a dainty morsel. But Sultan had told his master what the wolf meant to do; so he laid wait for him behind the barn door, and when the wolf was busy looking out for a good fat sheep, he had a stout cudgel laid about his back, that combed ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... buttons from the hip to the knees, and a pair of russet leather bottinas or spatterdashes. He was an active fellow, though uncommonly taciturn for an Andalusian, and strode along beside his horse, rousing him occasionally to greater speed by a loud malediction or a hearty thwack of his cudgel. ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... nothing could shake. Jack's reasoning never once came into my mind. I took down the knapsack that hung on a nail ready packed for the intended fishing expedition of the morrow. I buckled it on; put on my thickest shoes, and, seizing a stout cudgel, issued softly from my apartment, and ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... whether or no there is sound in you!" roared the troll. Thereupon he caught the Prince by the hair and dragged him out into the middle of the room. Then he snatched up a great cudgel and began beating the Prince as though he were a sack of barley-flour; but the Prince said never a word. At last the troll had to give over beating him, for the morning had come and the troll was afraid the sun would catch him; and if that ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... cloth has got its fold, The smelling-pot its scent, In vain your efforts and your care To make them other than they are. To work reform, do what you will, Old habit will be habit still. Nor fork[27] nor strap can mend its manners, Nor cudgel-blows beat down its banners. Secure the doors against the renter, And through the ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... minister: "I have charged Blainvilliers to show him a cudgel and tell him that with its aid we can ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to appear in their likeness. Whether the puppet show of Punch and Judy inspires our street-urchins to have instant recourse to their fists in a dispute, after the fashion of every one of the actors in that public entertainment who gets possession of the cudgel, is open to question: it has been hinted; and angry moralists have traced the national taste for tales of crime to the smell of blood in our nursery-songs. It will at any rate hardly be questioned that it is unwholesome for men and women to see themselves as they are, if they are no better than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... vehement botcher, And deacon also, I cannot dispute with you: But if you get you not away the sooner, I shall confute you with a cudgel. ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... out, for here we sit in justice: Give to each one a cudgel, a good cudgel: And now attend your sentence. That you are rogues, And mischievous base rascalls, (there's the point now) I ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... again. He told himself he withdrew because he would not allow himself to be jealous; but in truth he did so because he knew he could not have brought himself to be civil to the man he hated. So he sat down, and took up his pen, and began to cudgel his brain about the scientific article. He was intent on raising a dispute with some learned pundit about the waves of sound,—but he could think of no other sound than that of the light steps of Colonel Osborne ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... buff, 305 And tho' not sword, yet cudgel-proof; Whereby 'twas fitter for his use, Who fear'd no ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... misery of the night, to let them in, and he came, fierce with rage, crying, "Ah, bold and sturdy vagabonds, now I will pay you," and caught them by the hood, and hurled them into the snow, and belaboured them with a knotty cudgel; and if still, in despite of all pain and contumely, they endured with gladness, thinking of the pains of the blessed Lord Christ, which for love of Him they too should be willing to bear—then might it be truly written down that therein ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... voices, "Kill! Kill! this for Captain Fracasse, from the Duke of Vallombreuse." Meantime de Sigognac had wound his large cloak several times round his left arm for a shield, and receiving upon it the first blow from Azolan's cudgel, returned it with such a violent lunge, full in his antagonist's breast, that the miserable fellow went over backward, with great force, right into the gutter running down the middle of the street, with his head in the mud and his heels in ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... so he thought to himself: "This ant-hill is surely full of golden denars; I'll kill the serpent, and take them all for myself." So next day, while he was giving the milk to the serpent, the Brahman's son struck it on the head with a cudgel. But the serpent escaped death by the will of fate, and in a rage bit the Brahman's son with its sharp fangs, and he fell down dead at once. His people raised him a funeral pyre not far from the field and burnt ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... large shrubbery, where the bushes grew up close to it; and Charlie decided that here, if anywhere, the man would take up his post. As soon, then, as he knew that the servants were clearing away the supper, he took a heavy cudgel and went out. He walked straight away from the house, and then, when he knew that his figure could no longer be seen in the twilight, he made a circuit, and, entering the shrubbery, crept along close ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... still whistling cheerfully. She peered around the tree and watched him as he retreated—a broad-shouldered man, swinging a cudgel. A hundred yards or less beyond her tree he halted, with his back to her, in the middle of the road, and stayed his whistling while he made two or three ludicrous cuts with his cudgel at the empty air. This pantomime over, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... periscopes in the first few days. Now this was awkward. Periscopes are life-savers, for the periscope prevents a man pushing his head above the parapet to see if Johnny Turk is coming over to say "Good morning." Something had to be done, so the famous quartette began to cudgel their brains. ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... genius, and such is my friend Clarke, when a booby father presents him with his booby son, and insists on lighting up the rays of science in a fellow's head whose skull is impervious and inaccessible by any other way than a positive fracture with a cudgel: a fellow whom in fact it savours of impiety to attempt making a scholar of, as he has been marked a blockhead in the book of fate, at the almighty fiat of ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... said he, "I am Hugh Morrison from Glenae, come of the Manly Morrisons of auld langsyne, that never took short weapon against a man in their lives. And neither needed they; they had their broadswords, and I have this bit supple (showing a formidable cudgel)—for dirking ower the board, I leave that to John Highlandman. Ye needna snort, none of you Highlanders, and you in especial, Robin. I'll keep the bit knife, if you are feared for the auld spae-wife's tale, and give it back to you whenever ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... all over the State are discussing pro and con. The whole thing is working just right. If Beecher is chosen delegate at large to your Constitutional Convention, I think the word male will go out before his vigorous cudgel. I do not want to stay here after the 4th, but Wood and Harry have arranged other meetings up to the 18th or 20th of May, so that we shan't be back ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... slopes. On its crest was the Pirate's Tower—did not the senor remember? It was a fortification dating from the time of the corsairs. Don Jaime had scrambled up to it many times when a child, shouting like a young warrior, flourishing a cudgel of juniper wood, giving orders for the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... directly opposed to those of the Cabal and differed little from those of the Country Party. He bitterly lamented the degraded situation to which England was reduced, and declared, with more energy than politeness, that his dearest wish was to cudgel the French into a proper respect for her. So little did he disguise his feelings that, at a great banquet where the most illustrious dignitaries of the State and of the Church were assembled, he not very decorously filled his glass to the confusion ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... name was Saevuna. She was wise in many things, and foresighted; but she was then very old, and Njal's sons called her an old dotard, when she talked so much, but still some things which she said came to pass. It fell one day that she took a cudgel in her hand, and went up above the house to a stack of vetches. She beat the stack of vetches with her cudgel, and wished it might never thrive, ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... something. I pray thee, think of something, Harry." He looked at me with such exceeding wistfulness that I was forced to cudgel my brains for something which, having a slight savour of truth, might be seasoned to pungency at fancy. "Often have I heard her say that she liked a fair man," I replied, and indeed I had, and believed her to have said it ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... "Cudgel your brains, my good fellow! this is very important. Did he make no allusion to his engagement to marry Miss Silvester at Craig Fernie? Didn't he try to pacify her by ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... just in time. Where did you come from? I never saw you before—and where did you learn to handle the cudgel so well?" ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... not disgrace L No. I for life. We will prove on his body whether he has any honorable feelings left. L No. I. himself shall choose whether he wishes us to report him or whether we shall keep the matter to ourselves cudgel him thoroughly for it, and then ...
— Good Blood • Ernst Von Wildenbruch
... as the throstle's note; Quick in dance as thought can be; Deft his tabor, cudgel stout; O, lie lies by the willow-tree! ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... "Cudgel your brains a bit, gentlemen," he chided good-humouredly. "You will soon see my drift. This is one of those occasions when the psychic elements involved are such that, without doubt, it were best if you reacted naturally to whatever ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... first: I fancy you'll agree Not frenzied Dennis smote so fell as he; For El-n's Introduction, crabbed and dry, Like Churchill's Cudgel's {3} marked ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... of the soldiers almost touched the breasts of Crispus Attucks and Samuel Gray. The negro was still leaning upon his cudgel, and Gray stood proudly before them with folded arms, a free citizen, in the dignity of his manhood protesting against the system of government instituted by King ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... narrowly while he spoke. Skill with the rapier did not necessarily imply skill with the cudgel. He bore Evander no grudge for overcoming him at fence, but if Sir Blaise proved the better man with the batoon, there would be a kind of compensation in it. He had heard that Sir Blaise was apt at country-sports and now Sir ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... handy," he whispered to Robin, at the same time grasping more firmly a stout cudgel which ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... Barebones had been let loose upon him. He soon found, however, that they were merely the "select men" of the settlement, armed with no weapon but the tongue, and disposed only to meet him on the field of argument. Stoffel had but one mode of arguing—that was with the cudgel; but he used it with such effect that he routed his antagonists, broke up the settlement, and would have driven the inhabitants into the sea, if they had not managed to escape across the Sound to the mainland by the Devil's Stepping-stones, which remain to this day monuments ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... doubt of her integrity. I could have staked my life that she was clear of blame, and, though all was dark at the present, that the explanation of the mystery would show her part in these events to be both right and needful. It was true, let me cudgel my imagination as I pleased, that I could invent no theory of her relations to Northmour; but I felt none the less sure of my conclusion because it was founded on instinct in place of reason, and, as I may say, went to sleep that ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... to contend with." He seems to have been altogether indifferent to athletic exercises; for though he gave more prizes than any one else to be contended for by dramatists, flute players, harp players, and even by rhapsodists,[397] and though he delighted in all manner of hunting and cudgel playing, he never seems to have taken any interest in the contests of boxing or the pankratium.[398] When ambassadors from the King of Persia arrived in Macedonia, Philip was absent, and Alexander entertained them. His engaging manners ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... art, yet for lack of proof spoke not of it to my mistress. But now thy vileness is so clearly shown that I shall in no sort conceal it; and thou, foul renegade, who hast wrought such shame in this house by the undoing of this poor wench, if it were not for the fear of God, I would e'en cudgel thee where thou liest. Get up, in the devil's name, get up, for methinks even now ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... one, till I come," and runs in great haste to play with the madcap, she has disappeared. She has gone into her hole, hides herself there, rolls herself up, and retires. Take the poker, take a staff, a cudgel, a cane, raise them, strike the wench, and rave at her, she moans; strap her, she moans; caress her, fondle her, she moans; kiss her, say to her, "Here, little one," she moans. Now she's cold, now she is going to die; adieu to love, adieu to laughter, adieu ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... terrible surprise to find himself in the hands of his old persecutors, from whom he had suffered so much, and hoped that he had been delivered; he lamented the rigour of his destiny, and trembled when he saw Bostava enter with a cudgel, a loaf, and a pitcher of water; he was almost dead at the sight of that unmerciful wretch, and the thoughts of the daily sufferings he was to endure for another year, when he was to die the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... no further than the end of other people's noses? Let us live merrily. Life is all. That man has another future elsewhere, on high, below, anywhere, I don't believe; not one single word of it. Ah! sacrifice and renunciation are recommended to me; I must take heed to everything I do; I must cudgel my brains over good and evil, over the just and the unjust, over the fas and the nefas. Why? Because I shall have to render an account of my actions. When? After death. What a fine dream! After my death it will be a very clever person who can catch me. Have ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... kindred spirit, has illustrated the cockney song, 'If I had a donkey as vouldn't go, do you think I'd wallop him?' etc., as follows: 'The herbaceous boon and the bland recommendation to advance, are more operative on the ansinine quadruped than the stern imprecation and the oaken cudgel: ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... rustic encounter, and in such he was frequently engaged, being of a very irascible temper, and turbulent disposition. He was clad in a holiday suit of dark-green serge, which fitted him well, and carried a nosegay in one hand, and a stout blackthorn cudgel in the other. This young man was James Device, son of Elizabeth, and some four or five years older than Alizon. He did not live with his mother in Whalley, but in Pendle Forest, near his old relative, Mother Demdike, and had come over ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... lamp of Aesculapius. He could not therefore be other than an enemy of Dr Thorne. But he was a prudent, discreet man, with a long family, averse to professional hostilities, as knowing that he could make more by medical friends than medical foes, and not at all inclined to take up any man's cudgel to his own detriment. He had, of course, heard of that dreadful affront which had been put upon his friend, as had all the "medical world"—all the medical world at least of Barsetshire; and he had often expressed his sympathy with Dr Fillgrave ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... that I had done nothing but blunder and talk nonsense in his house. I will ask him for an explanation—that is, I will ask him to explain my mistake. After all is done and said, I am in the wrong perhaps—— Upon my word, it is very good of me to cudgel my brains like this. What ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... he had made a mistake; but, knowing that at such close quarters the stick would avail him little, and that strength of thews and sinews would avail him much, he dropped the cudgel, and grappled with the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... cat, or cat, is an ancient English game, thus described in Strutt's Sports and Pastimes:—The game of cat is played with a cudgel. Its denomination is derived from a piece of wood, about six inches long and two thick, diminished from the middle to form a double cone. When the cat is placed on the ground, the player strikes it smartly—it matters not at which end—and it will rise ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... maliciously depreciatory as Pope's unprovoked attack on Addison. Dryden's satire is often coarse, but where it is coarsest, it is commonly in defence of himself against attacks that were themselves brutal. Then, to be sure, he snatches the first ready cudgel, as in Shadwell's case, though even then there is something of the good-humor of conscious strength. Pope's provocation was too often the mere opportunity to say a biting thing, where he could do it safely. If his victim showed fight, he tried to smooth ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Neighbours pour into the street, men and women in night-attire; finally, the heavy burghers arrive, the masters themselves, noisy, almost disorderly, in their attempts to restore order. Beckmesser, singing at the top of his lungs, does not wake to consciousness of his surroundings until a cudgel falls across his back, wielded by David. He flees—but is at every few steps overtaken again and beaten. The two figures, in flight and pursuit, waving lute and brandishing cudgel, disappear and reappear at intervals among the swaying crowd. In vain Magdalene from ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... person, with a certain dare-devil expression of countenance, not altogether unprepossessing. His face, greatly sunburnt, was more than half hidden by whisker and mustachio. He had with him a huge oaken cudgel, but appeared to be otherwise unarmed. He bowed awkwardly, and bade us "good evening," in French accents, which, although somewhat Neufchatelish, were still sufficiently indicative ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... forbidden by the law of the land in which we are, even as it is forbidden for a gipsy to enter the mercado? I tell you what, friend, if I hear another word of Calo come from your mouth, I will cudgel your bones and send you flying over the house-tops with a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... spank, thrash, batter, conquer, pommel, strike, vanquish, belabor, cudgel, pound, surpass, whip, bruise, defeat, scourge, switch, worst. castigate, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... had swiftly formed his squad in a single rank, ordering the soldiers to fix bayonets. Prescott formed his own squad as a second platoon. As Tom Halstead hastened up he carried a stout cudgel, while Hank Butts carried the hitching weight that had ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... the interval between the cudgel-stroke of Johnson and the mud-throwing of Carlyle, America had grown strong enough to bear the assaults of literary bullies and mountebanks without serious annoyance. The question which had been so superciliously asked was at last answered. Everybody reads ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... and shut up shop, Was still a barber, so the wise is best In every craft, a king's among the rest." Hail to your majesty! yet, ne'ertheless, Rude boys are pulling at your beard, I guess; And now, unless your cudgel keeps them off, The mob begins to hustle, push, and scoff; You, all forlorn, attempt to stand at bay, And roar till your imperial lungs give way. Well, so we part: each takes his separate path: You make your progress to your farthing bath, A king, with ne'er a follower in your train, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... by the rye-field, and the cow stood still almost at the same moment. It snapped at a few ears, and moved its head slowly to choose its direction. In a couple of leaps Pelle was up to it and had hold of its tail. He hit it over the nose with his cudgel, it turned quickly away from the rye, and set off at a flying pace down toward the others, while blows rained down upon its bony prominences. Every stroke echoed back from the dunes like blows upon the trunk of a tree, and made Pelle swell with pride. The cow tried to shake Pelle off as it ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... compared to this, I have generally heard such trite and coarse stuff from our race of would-be wits, that what they say may be compared to the fawnings and salutations of the ass in the fable, who, emulating the lap-dog, merited a cudgel rather than encouragement. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... away, before we hear worse," said Dierich hastily. "He is not in the chimney. Plaster will mend what a cudgel breaks; but a woman's tongue is a double-edged dagger, and a girl is a woman with her mother's milk still in her." And he beat a hasty retreat. "I told the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... there's an end of Loving; Do, marry him, and be curst by all his Family: Marry him, and ruin him, that he may curse thee too. —But hark ye, Friend, this is not fair; 'tis drawing Sharps on a Man that's only arm'd with the defensive Cudgel, I'm for no such dead doing Arguments; if thou art for me, Child, it must be without the folly, for better for worse; there's a kind of Nonsense in that Vow ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... started on his walk, taking with him a thick cudgel and his own thoughts. He went away across the demesne and down into the road that led away by Gortnaclough and Boherbue towards Castleisland and the wilds of county Kerry. As he went, the men about the place refrained from speaking ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... to the Pasiegos, (52) are the best cudgel-players in Spain, and in the world. Francisco held in his hand part of a broomstick, which he had broken in the stable, whence he had just ascended. With the swiftness of lightning he foiled the stroke of Chaleco, and, in ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... four-year-old Lennie there were eight small Josephs in all in the little log house on the prairie; so that when each little Joseph wanted to give a Christmas box to each of the other little Josephs, and something to Father and Mother Joseph besides, it is no wonder that they had to cudgel their small brains ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... no help for it, said the Master Thief; he should go whether he would or no; and if he did not go by fair means, he would soon make him go by foul. But the man was still loath to go; so he stepped after him, and rubbed him down with a good birch cudgel, and kept on till the man came crying and sobbing inside the ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... three dollars a day at honest work of quarrying or cutting stones,—or breaking them, for that matter,"—she added under her breath, "but I'm not saying he would be any relation of yours—than a man who doesn't know what a day's toil is except to cudgel his brains tired, with contriving the quickest means of making his millions double themselves at other people's ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... her subjects were fond of the savage pastime of bear and bull baiting. It cannot be denied that this people had a taste for blood, took delight in brutal encounters, and drew the sword and swung the cudgel with great promptitude; nor were they fastidious in the matter of public executions. Kiechel says that when the criminal was driven in the cart under the gallows, and left hanging by the neck as the cart moved from under him, his friends and acquaintances pulled ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that's something like the truth; but you are, not quite at the truth yet, my lad; those apples are mine, and I'll trouble you to come down as fast as you please; when you're down we can then settle our accounts; and," continued the man, shaking his cudgel, "depend upon it you shall have your receipt ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... other races of men. It is exactly the reverse of that of the American Indian. The Indian will murder any man who strikes him with a switch, a cowhide, or a whip, twenty years afterward, if he gets an opportunity; but readily forgets blows, however severe, inflicted on him with the fist, a cudgel, or a tomahawk. A remarkable ethnological peculiarity of the prognathous race is, that any deserved punishment, inflicted on them with a switch, cowhide, or whip, puts them into good humor with themselves and the executioner of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the man being roused, he longed to throw himself on his antagonist to grasp his throat, but the successful use of the cudgel against the sword indicated that this was an adept at quarter-staff and a man with naked hands would have easily been beaten if pitted with him. Sendlingen, warily and rapidly surveying the limited field of combat, caught ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... laggards keep step.—In the first place, they order women of every condition, work-girls and servants, to attend mass performed by the sworn cure, for, if they do not, they will be made acquainted with the cudgel.—In the second place, all the suspected are disarmed; they enter their houses during the night in force, unexpectedly, and, besides their gun, carry off their provisions and money. A certain grocer who persists in his lukewarmness is visited a second time; seven or eight ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... wended along this I saw a man upon a donkey riding towards me. The man was commonly dressed, with a broad felt hat on his head, and a kind of satchel on his back; he seemed to be in a mighty hurry, and was every now and then belabouring the donkey with a cudgel. The donkey, however, which was a fine large creature of the silver-grey species, did not appear to sympathize at all with its rider in his desire to get on, but kept its head turned back as much as possible, moving from one side of the road ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... learn on the virginals,[56] because of their affinity with organs, but is reconciled to the bells for the chimes sake, since they were reformed to the tune of a psalm. She overflows so with the bible, that she spills it upon every occasion, and will not cudgel her maids without scripture. It is a question whether she is more troubled with the Devil, or the Devil with her: She is always challenging and daring him, and her weapon [[57]is the Practice of Piety.] Nothing angers her so much as that women cannot preach, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... she mean by it? Such nonsense! But then he made up his mind to go. He scolded and cursed as he got out of bed. "Psia krew, what nonsense it was to get poison for the sake of those few rats; they could easily be killed with a cudgel." He proposed to her that he should spend a whole night in the ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... that if a secret is to be kept at all, it must be worth the keeping; if a riddle is propounded, its answer must be pleasing and ingenious, or the audience will resent having been led to cudgel its brains for nothing. This is simply a part of the larger principle, before insisted on, that when a reasonable expectation is aroused, it can be baffled only at the author's peril. If the crux of a scene or of a whole play lie ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... to declare with affectionate cynicism that the arm had been broken by the cudgel of a Polish peasant while Castro was trying to filch a pig from a stable.... "I cut his throat out, though," Castro would grumble darkly; "so, like that, and it matters very little—it is even an improvement. See, I put on my blade. See, I transfix you that fly there.... See how astonished he ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... I cannot remember them, try I never so hard to cudgel my brains for their meaning and sequence. Sometimes, indeed, at night, in sleep, I seem to see them plain and staring before me on a smooth page of parchment, every word clear, every rhyme legible, the ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... further still, that he did not inspire it. And further still, the Ministerial Union of Elmira did not write it. And finally, the Ministerial Union did not ask me to write it. No, I have taken up this cudgel in defense of the Ministerial Union of Elmira solely from a love of justice. Without solicitation, I have constituted myself the champion of the Ministerial Union of Elmira, and it shall be a labor of love with me to conduct their side of a quarrel in print for them whenever they desire me ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... carpets, torn sofa-covers, squealing brats, cross husbands, would ever discompose either of you. You ought never to marry a good-tempered man, it would be mingling honey with sugar, like sticking white roses upon a black-thorn cudgel. With this very picturesque metaphor I close my letter. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... carelessly down the two steps from the door, as, with a gracious wave of the hand, and swinging his cudgel as if he were just going out for a stroll, he coolly greeted his visitor. But the other, instead of returning the salutation, stepped quickly up ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... out of sight of the house and the black dog, he went into the woods on the other side of the way and emerged after an interval trimming a very tolerable cudgel with his pocket-knife. Presently he saw an attractive-looking rock by the track and picked it up and put it in his pocket. Then he came to three or four houses, wooden like the last, each with an ill-painted white verandah (that was his name for it) and all standing ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... guess; but he did know that the beast must have ripped the clothes partly off the aeronaut's back, and in turn he could see that one of the animal's eyes was partly closed, from a vigorous whack which the desperate man had given with his cudgel, no doubt. ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... so few Christians, to escape their hands vsed a stratagem, farre against his owne disposition, being as hee was very francke and open: and though it grieued him very much that any Indian should be so bold, as with reason, or without reason to despise the Christians, he tooke vp a cudgel, and tooke their parts against his owne men; which was a meanes to quiet them: And presently he sent word by a man very secretly to the Campe, that some armed men should come toward the place where he was; and hee tooke the Cacique ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... heavens comes the vibrant note of a bell; whereupon, the hubbub ceases and at the same moment a young Cossack with a face studded with freckles, and, in his hands, a cudgel, makes ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... novelist with the controversy which presently arose out of Cibber's well-known letter to Pope. In August 1742, the month following its publication, among the pamphlets to which it gave rise, was announced The Cudgel; or, a Crab-tree Lecture, To the Author of the Dunciad. "By Hercules Vinegar, Esq." This very mediocre satire in verse is still to be found at the British Museum; but even if it were not included in Fielding's general disclaimer as to unsigned work, it would be difficult to connect it with him. ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... but you should see it in winter," retorted Kate. "Great, bare, snake-like things all over the—now, don't cudgel your brains to bring 'plates' or 'crumbs' into that!" she broke ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... the senior officer, pleasantly. "The smugglers of this coast are too wise, and I hope too kind-hearted, for that sort of work. They are not like those desperate scoundrels of Sussex. When these men are nabbed, they give up their venture as soon as it goes beyond cudgel-play, and they never lie in wait for a murderous revenge. In the south I have known a very different race, who would jump on an officer till he died, or lash him to death with their long cart-whips; such fellows as broke ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... declared that they were unable to go further, found out, after receiving a few ticklings of the stick, that they had been mistaken. The application of Golah's cudgel awakened dormant energies of which they had ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... they sounded the first few notes on their guitars than Michele, whom Signor Pasquale had thoughtlessly forgotten to apprise of his design, burst forth from behind the door, highly delighted at finding that the opportunity which was to bring him in the promised reward had at last come, and began to cudgel the musicians most unmercifully, with the results of which we are already acquainted. Of course there was no further mention made of either Splendiano or Pitichinaccio's accompanying Signor Pasquale to Nicolo's ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann |
