"Decapitation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was always one or two beef cattle to kill. Sheep had also to be slaughtered, with the turkeys, geese and ducks, which had been getting ready for decapitation. After home wants were provided for, the rest were ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... fore foot, with her claws, however, sheathed, and not in anger, but in the way of philosophic inquiry and examination. To prevent her falling a victim to so laudable an exercise of her talents, I interposed in a moment with the hoe, and performed on him an act of decapitation which, though not immediately mortal, proved ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... squeaking of scrannel pipes; a feminine 'break-down' of the most effrenee description, and a general libation to the Bacchus of Blackland. A debauched and drunken Ashanti, who executed for our benefit a decapitation-dance, evidently wishing that we had been its objects, thanked us ironically for a sixpence. We met some difficulty in seeing the swords, which were not to be sold. They were the usual rusty and decayed fish-slicers; Cameron, however, was kind enough to sketch them for ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... to entertain the spectators with the tortures of St. Dennis, and at length, when more than dead, they mercifully behead him: the Saint, after his decapitation, rises very quietly, takes his head under his arm, and walks off the stage in all ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... subject of the Porte. His offers were at once accepted; and he now displayed singular activity in the extirpation of all the other popular chiefs, who still held out in the woods and fastnesses, and sent their heads to the Pasha; but the decapitation of Glavash, who was, like himself, supporting the government, showed that when he had accomplished the ends of Soliman Pasha, his own turn would come; he therefore employed the ruse described in page 55, made his escape, and, convinced that it was impossible ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... audience burst into a roar of laughter). Besides, he liked our family, we suited him in every respect; and especially because we so much reminded him of John the Baptist (we inwardly hoped that the resemblance would not extend to decapitation). If Miss Greeley would not marry him, he kindly added, he would take her cousin Marguerite instead, but he must positively marry one of the family. He was now perfectly wild, and when he remarked, with a reproachful glance at Ida, that ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... Venetians in one campaign, was mortally wounded in the next, against the Germans, at the battle of Peterwaradin (in the plain of Carlowitz), in Hungary, endeavouring to rally his guards. He died of his wounds next day [August 16, 1716]. His last order was the decapitation of General Breuner, and some other German prisoners, and his last words, "Oh that I could thus serve all the Christian dogs!" a speech and act not unlike one of Caligula. He was a young man of great ambition and unbounded presumption: on being told that ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... begins with the death of our hero. The manner of it was decapitation, the instrument a mowing machine. A young son of the deceased, dumb with horror, seized the paternal head and ran with it ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... Smothered his nephews in the Tower, He murdered them the Crown to gain; A heavy price for three years' reign. The Scutcheon's blotted terribly Of this King Richard number Three, For it seems his recreation Was ordering decapitation. 1485 On Bosworth Field when sorely pressed He made a bid th'uncommonest 'My kingdom for a horse' he cried; No ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... manuscript it is stated of the magician: "He knoweth how to bind on a head which hath been cut off; he knoweth how to make a lion follow him, as if led by a rope; and he knoweth the number of the stars of the house (constellation) of Thoth." The decapitation trick is thus no new thing, while the experiment performed with the lion, possibly a hypnotic feat, ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... knife into the defenceless young throat, he nevertheless controlled his sentiments and looked up for instructions. Since the splendid decapitation which Coronado had performed, Texas respected him as he had never heretofore hoped ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... clearly a limitation of the law of revenge. These laws of Ieyasu also describe the old methods of punishing criminals, and then add: "Criminals are to be punished by branding, or beating, or tying up, and, in capital cases, by spearing or decapitation; but the old punishments of tearing to pieces and boiling to death are not to be used." Torture was finally legally abolished in Japan ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... at about the same hour. It was a most evident attempt to establish an alibi; it was as much as to say, "If you miss any wheat, we didn't take it; we are honest birds, and stay at home o'nights, Dr. Percival." The next morning, however, a general decapitation overtook the flock of feathered hypocrites. "It was a curious instance of the domestic goose reverting to its wild habit of nocturnal feeding," remarked my narrator, dwelling characteristically upon the natural-history aspect of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... he wanted to die, and that the Shah of Persia wrote a letter to Uncle, all in his own writing, except the longest words, and said that he had ordered Uncle's speech on America to be printed and read aloud by all the schoolmasters in Persia under penalty of decapitation. Nearly ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... taken in popular life by the scenes of the Greve. It was the theatre of the day. The gibbet and the wheel did their work almost periodically, and people looked on while poor wretches writhed in slow agony all day long. Sometimes the programme was varied by decapitation and even by the stake. Torture had its legends and its heroes—the everyday talk of the generation which, having begun by seeing Damiens torn by red-hot pincers, was to end by rending Foulon limb from limb." (Carne, Monarchie francaise ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... decked with garlands of flowers; at the conclusion of the ceremonies the King is allowed a short start, and is then pursued by the armed attendants. If he is not overtaken he holds office for a year, but if overtaken, he suffers a mock decapitation, head-dress, or crown, being struck off, and the pretended corpse is then borne on a bier ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... with Aten (i.e., the solar disk), the eyes with Hathor, and the deceased exclaims triumphantly, "There is no member of my body which is not the member of a god." Chapter XLIII. A spell to prevent the decapitation of the deceased, who assumes in it the character of Osiris the Lord of Eternity. Chapter XLIV. An ancient and mighty spell, the recital of which prevented the deceased from dying a second time. Chapters ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... show as much nerve in striking the blow, as I can in meeting it." To cut down such a man, under such circumstances, was of course a very dreadful duty, even for a Roman soldier, and the executioner faltered greatly in the performance of it. The decapitation should have been effected by a single blow; but the officer found his strength failing him when he came to strike, so that a second blow was necessary to complete the severance of the head from the body. The tribune was afraid that ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... be off—both of you!" he said sternly to madam, who stood upon the pier, squawking like an old hen on the eve of decapitation. ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... magistrates and their rules; only those who cultivate the royal land have to pay (a portion of) the grain from it. If they want to go, they go; if they want to stay on, they stay. The king governs without decapitation or (other) corporal punishments. Criminals are simply fined, lightly or heavily, according to the circumstances (of each case). Even in cases of repeated attempts at wicked rebellion, they only have their right hands cut off. The king's body-guards and attendants all have salaries. Throughout ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... daughter of Sir John Evelyn and widow of Sir John Wray. [Footnote: The ancient Lincolnshire family of Wray is mentioned in the Introduction of "King Monmouth" in connection with the remarkable portrait of the Duke after decapitation, which formerly was in the possession of Sir Cecil Wray. Since writing on this subject it occurs to me that it is very possible that the picture may have come originally to the Wrays through Lady Sarah Fanshawe, her husband being a cousin of the Duke's sister's second ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... Rev. Mizraim Ham made his exit from the boards I could not see—perhaps he rolled or crawled off. But he did not suffer decapitation, like "ole Golly": since in ten minutes, his woolly pate suddenly popped up among the other sacred heads that were visible over the front railing of the rostrum, as all kept moving to and fro in the wild tossings ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... claimant of the Messianic office may have been to the Jews—a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to the people whom he came to bring to a new birth. His civil and ecclesiastical reforms, with the seeming decapitation of the Church by the abrogation of the patriarchate, were to the mass of the people an enigma only one shade less disreputable than the demeanor of himself and his courtiers. The repudiation of his legitimate wife, Eudoxia, and his adulterous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... the ground as a moor-hen scuppers across the water, the mechanics having assisted her initial progress by pushing the lower stays and then ducking under the planes, as she gathered way, and just missing decapitation. It's a way they have. She took a run for it, her engine humming like a top, and then rose, and gradually climbed the sky. Peter gazed at her wistfully. "And he promised to take me up ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... untimely absence. Like the old gentleman who visited nightly Van Amburg's exhibition of the head-in-the-lion's-mouth feat, in the moral certainty that a single absence would fall inevitably upon the one night when Leo would vary the programme by decapitation,—so we lost the one afternoon when that dull discourse diversified the pious eloquence of Jotham Baxter, D.D., disciple of Dr. Hopkins and believer in Cotton Mather. Many a refreshing slumber has sealed our eyes under subsequent outpourings of divinity, but never with that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the public mind may readily be conceived. The capital exhibited a scene of confusion and excitement only exceeded by that displayed four years afterward, when the decapitation of Louis XVI. was announced ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... Paris. But at night the Duke de Liancourt forced his way into the King's bedchamber, and obliged him to hear a full and animated detail of the disasters of the day in Paris. He went to bed fearfully imprest. The decapitation of de Launay worked powerfully through the night on the whole Aristocratic party; insomuch that in the morning those of the greatest influence on the Count d'Artois represented to him the absolute necessity that the King should give up everything ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... would dispute their monopoly of exploitation. The defection of certain of their members who had found it to their advantage to go over bag and baggage to the rival house had roused them, to the wildest fury. They talked of decapitation. "... Burked.... ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... stupidly at me. He staggered, and made as if he would charge down the hill. The old 'Major Capt[a]n,' as they called our sporting host, was shouting out to me not to fire. The mahouts and beaters were petrified with horror at my presumption. I fancy they expected an immediate order for my decapitation, or for my ears to be cut off at the very least, but feeling I might as well be 'in for a pound as for a penny,' I fired again, and tumbled the huge brute over, with a bullet through the skull behind the ear. The old officer was horror-stricken, and would allow no one ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... incantation directed against reptiles and noxious creatures in general. The chief of these was Apep, the great enemy of Ra, who took the form of a huge serpent that "resembled the intestines," and the spell doomed him to decapitation, and burning and backing in pieces. These things would be effected by Serqet, the Scorpion-goddess. The second part of the spell was directed against the poison of Apep, and was to be recited over anyone who was ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... designs. But you must study long ere you have won all the secret of their beauty. To comprehend them, one should spend a whole day, lying on his back, under each one. Mateo spread his cloak for me in the fountain in the Hall of the Abencerrages, over the blood-stains made by the decapitation of those gallant chiefs, and I lay half an hour looking upward: and this is what I made out of the dome. From its central pinnacle hung the chalice of a flower with feathery petals, like the "crape myrtle" of our Southern States Outside of this, branched ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... years, these have been—beating with the light bamboo, beating with the heavy bamboo, transportation for a certain period, banishment to a certain distance, and death, the last being subdivided into strangling and decapitation, according to the ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... their inclination tempts them. In this country it is every person's interest, however wealthy, to exhibit an appearance of abject poverty; as the suspicion of wealth instantly produces from the Sultan or Pasha a demand for some large sum, which must be forthwith paid or decapitation or torture are the severe alternatives. Here justice is indeed an empty name, the most atrocious criminals escaping unpunished if able to offer a bribe sufficient to tempt the cupidity of those whose duty it is to administer it. Here money ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... and had then thrown it in the sea-basin solely because nothing else would contain it. Notwithstanding this defence, the judge decided that, since he took the boys away and did not bring them back, he was guilty of murder, and sentenced him to decapitation. He entreated leave to pay one visit to his aged mother before his execution, and this was granted. He went alone and told his brothers of his doom, and the second brother returned in his stead to the judge, thanked him for having given him permission ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... Dane; Gillott, and all family names beginning with Gill-, may be from Gillian (see p. 46), or from Fr. Guillaume. A famous member of the latter family was Guillotin, the humanitarian doctor who urged the abolition of clumsy methods of decapitation. His name is a double diminutive, like Fr. diablotin, goblin. Leggatt is a variant of Lidgate, swing gate, and of Legate. Lovell is an affectionate diminutive or is for Old Fr. louvel, little wolf. It was also in Mid. English a dog's name, hence ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... that country that "in some places all powers both executive and judicial were delegated for a fixed period to natives by the sovereign. This institution was styled Thalavettiparothiam or authority obtained by decapitation. . . . It was an office tenable for five years during which its bearer was invested with supreme despotic powers within his jurisdiction. On the expiry of the five years the man's head was cut off and thrown up in the air amongst a large concourse of villagers, each of whom vied with the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Oude, one morning just after breakfast I was told there was something to show me in a basket. The cover was removed, and there I saw sixteen human heads. Their late proprietors were a famous brigand and his merry men, only looking quite the reverse of merry in the grim ghastliness of decapitation. I scarcely recovered my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... her commands; and to the eldest she intrusted Solyman's signet-ring and the pass-key which Aischa had sent her. The slaves bowed three times to the empress mother—laid their hands on their heads to imply that they would deserve decapitation if they neglected the orders they had received—and then withdrew. There was something terribly sinister in their appearance, as they retired noiselessly but rapidly through the long, silent and darkened corridors of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... amplification of the "story of meeting and Prescott marriage." And of course, the frivolous Jaffery, now that one really wants him, is sitting astride of a cannon, and smoking a pipe and, notebook and pencil in hand, is writing a picturesque description of the bungling decapitation by shrapnel of the general who has just been unfolding to him the whole plan of the campaign, and consequently is provokingly un-getatable ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... sycophants to mislead the monarch, and all became his sycophants who received his favors. Coke is no exception to the rule. It is true enough that to him we are mainly indebted for the movement which, beginning on the 30th of January, 1621, ended that very day eight-and-twenty years with the decapitation of the king; but it is likewise undeniable that the nation's difficulties would have waited some time longer for solution had not the defender of the people's rights been inoculated with a love of liberty by the sudden application of the royal lancet, whose sharp edge his judicious ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... happiness and honor without the sentiment of religion." This is the language of La Place, the author of "La Mecanique Celeste," one of the greatest books of the world. He spoke from real experience. He had seen religion "abolished by law." He had seen the "worship of Reason" established with the decapitation of seven thousand innocent citizens of France. He had heard one of the apostles of Reason arise in the Constituent Assembly and demand two hundred and ninety thousand corpses instead of seven thousand. ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... of you; my dear friends, who glance graciously over this, was ever shut up in a dungeon under expectation of bearing the unpleasant operation of decapitation within half an hour. It never happened to myself, either, that I can recollect; so, of course, you or I personally can form no idea what the sensation may be like; but in this particular case, tradition saith ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... the gallows for the decapitation decreed by the first judge, inasmuch as the latter punishment was reserved for criminals of noble birth, while hanging was inflicted ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... had exerted its power eccentrically with the poorhouse poet. His legs and neck were elongated out of all proportion to the rest of his body. His small, pale face was raised unnaturally high in the air, as if he had suffered decapitation and his head had been posted as an assurance that offended law had been avenged. Unconscious of his own peculiarities, the persistent rhymer went about pleased with himself and all the world. Now he was particularly happy, for ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... in finding him guilty of the acts recorded in their narrative, but three of them had held out for some time in favour of a sentence of perpetual imprisonment rather than decapitation. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... little girl, Minnie. She had promised the head this year. Next Christmas they would buy a body for it. Molly Brandeis's quick sympathy went out to the little girl who was to lavish her mother-love on a doll's head for a whole year. She saw the head, in ghastly decapitation, staring stiffly out from the cushions of the chill and funereal parlor sofa, and the small Minnie peering in to feast her eyes upon ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the cab. Job's understudy came last, and Uncle Noah, tightly pressing the precious fowl in his arms, watched the carriage drive slowly away. Then, after an interval in the kitchen devoted to hiding his purchases, he sought the library, striving to simulate a decent depression over the assumed decapitation of Job. ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... would look in vain for justice, but there is plenty of cruelty. We visited the execution yard, a circumscribed space in the very heart of the city. Here, our guide told us, twenty condemned prisoners were executed weekly, by decapitation, each Friday being devoted to clearing the docket. The executioner takes off a head with one stroke of the sword, and the guide said he had witnessed the decapitation of eleven heads in seven minutes. Through a grating in the wall of the yard, an open area was seen where ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... chance of a successful haul, he had made fervid promises, after the fashion of his race, to the shoemaker Mahommed Nafar. At first the shoemaker would have nothing to do with it: helping prisoners to escape meant torture and decapitation; but then he hated the Khalifa, whose Baggaras had seized his property, and killed his wife and children; and in the end Macnamara prevailed. Mahommed Nafar found some friendly natives from the hills of Gilif, who hated the Khalifa and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... involved in the affair.... I replied that if there were enough to go around and the men didn't become too meddlesome, their presence wouldn't spoil the 'adventure.'... He assured me that the men were 'fine fellows,' the ladies the loveliest on earth, but the 'adventure' was one that might mean decapitation for me if I failed in the undertaking.... I told him that just suited me.... 'I expect to meet Colonel Z—— S—— von T—— at the track. If he takes a liking to you he'll invite you to Koenigergratzerstrasse ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... culprit out and inflict condign punishment? In savage states, whenever anything untoward happens to the king or chief, it is the business of the witch-finder to disclose the wrong-doer; and sooner or later, you may be sure, "somebody gets whopped for it." Whopping in Dahomey means wholesale decapitation. ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... taught a trade. The tiny fellow is small for his eight years, and his little wizened face, sallow and delicate, has a plausible tale to tell. He is always fretting and grieving for those whose heads were shown to him after decapitation. However, he is being cared for, and it is doubtful whether the authorities—or even the emperor himself—will mete out punishment to him when he grows older. He did nothing; he knew nothing. At the present time he is going through ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... forecast the first stages of the End's approach: Rioting. Disaffection of constabulary and troops. Subversion of the Government A policy of decapitation. Upthrust of the serviceable Anarchist. His prompt effacement by his victorious ally and natural enemy, the Socialist. Free minting and printing of money—to every citizen a shoulder-load of the latter, to the printers a ton ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... stone-work; and upon the wide transom-stone over the door, is sculptured the genealogical tree of Christ, arising from the root of Jesse. The carving over the north entrance is yet more peculiar, and evidently far older. It represents the decapitation of the Baptist, with "Salome dancing in an attitude, which perchance was often assumed by the tombesteres of the elder day; affording, by her position, a graphical comment upon the Anglo-Saxon version of the text, in which it is said, that she tumbled ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... policemen was there as usual, and saluted me profoundly. He had carried the last baby over the crossing, and guided all the venturesome small boys through the maze of trucks and horse-cars,—a difficult and thankless task, as they absolutely courted decapitation,—it being an unwritten law of conduct that each boy should weave his way through the horses' legs if practicable, and if not, should see how near he could come to grazing the wheels. Exactly at twelve o'clock, and again at two each ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the Presidency. When he entered the Elysee, the executive authority went out of it. The Third French Republic, such as it now exists, was constituted on that day—the anniversary, by the way, oddly enough, of the decapitation of Charles I. of England ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... all taken place so quickly that Jack had barely jerked his Mauser pistol from his holster when all was ready for the decapitation of their guide. But as the gleaming blade flashed above the head of the little man in blue, Jack laid the muzzle true for his ribs and pulled the trigger. The heavy bullet tore its way through the headsman's body, and with a wild cry he pitched forward on the captive's prostrate form. His ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... air with its imprecations against Capet, which, on the 2d of December, 1804, acclaimed the Emperor and the Empress, and which, on this occasion, welcomed with cries of joy the orphan of the Temple after having applauded the decapitation of his father and his mother." When this same populace, turned Republican again, thronged along the boulevards and into the Place Vendome in 1831, singing the Marseillaise, Marechal Lobau, unwilling to fire on them, contented himself by ordering the hose of the fire-pumps ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... instance, however, the prisoner was prodigal of words. He did not seem to think that there was any danger of his being the medium of accomplishing his own decapitation. He did not hesitate like those who are afraid of misplacing a word of the romance they are substituting for the truth. Under other circumstances, this fact would have been a strong ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... madness culminated on Giovedi Grasso, the last Thursday before Lent, when the Piazzetta became the scene of ceremonies in which the Doge himself took part. These opened with the decapitation of three bulls: a rite said to commemorate some long-forgotten dispute between the inveterate enemies, Venice and Aquileia. The bulls, preceded by halberdiers and trumpeters, and surrounded by armed attendants, were led in state before the ducal ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Pandora's books Eve's apple; I, B: Moses in the ark the exposed the fatherless the persecuted the deluge hero [the one floating in the ark]. II, A: Eve's apple Moses in the ark Onan's seed fire soma draught of knowledge, etc. III, B: Tearing open of the womb decapitation or dismemberment exposure separation of the first parents. IV, B: The dismembered [man or woman] the rejuvenated the reborn [m. or w.]. VI, A: Potiphar motive separation of first parents Onan motive. VII, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... nature at the most tender point. At that moment, Knox, with peculiar mal-appropriateness, "in a foolish, incoherent sort of speech," says Jefferson, "introduced the pasquinade, lately printed, called The Funeral of George Washington"—a parody on the decapitation of the French king, in which the president was represented as placed on a guillotine. "The president," says Mr. Jefferson, "was much inflamed; got into one of those passions [which only for a moment and very rarely occurred] where he can not control himself; ran on much on the personal ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... forth; and the head being picked up was placed on Miss Winifrede's body again. It became fixed, and she lived for many years afterwards, a little red mark round her white throat being the only token of her decapitation! So the story goes. ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... long dead the Empress decreed upon him posthumous decapitation, so that he walks for ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... instincts and the most heroic courage. On the 20th of August, 1191, five weeks after the surrender of St. Jean d'Acre, he found that Saladin was not fulfilling with sufficient promptitude the conditions of capitulation, and, to bring him up to time, he ordered the decapitation, before the walls of the place, of, according to some, twenty-five hundred, and, according to others, five thousand, Mussulman prisoners ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... trust. He took me a long carriage journey, where to I know not, for we never spoke of that day again; I was led through a prison, into a closed court-yard, where, decently draped in the last robes of death, concealing the marks of decapitation, lay M. de la Tourelle, and two or three others, whom I had known ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... great Gichi-Kuktai was Mikado he condemned to decapitation Jijiji Ri, a high officer of the Court. Soon after the hour appointed for performance of the rite what was his Majesty's surprise to see calmly approaching the throne the man who should have been at that time ten minutes dead! "Seventeen hundred impossible ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... protecting genii of Canton, a small temple to whom stands close to the potter's field, and who have power to restrain those feelings of revenge and violence which the spirits of the decapitated persons may be supposed hereafter to cherish against all who were instrumental in their decapitation. Last of all follows a herald on horseback, carrying a yellow banner inscribed "By Imperial Decree," an indispensable adjunct on such occasions, as without it the county ruler would not be justified in commanding the executioner to give the death stroke. This ruler ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... was the great object of their solicitude. They now endeavored to obtain a minor grace. They represented that in the Netherlands, and in Germany, there was an important difference in the public mind as to the mode of inflicting the punishment of death upon persons of quality. That decapitation had no influence on the fortunes of the family of the executed, but that the punishment of the wheel was such an infamy, that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters of the criminal, and his whole ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... Ranch who seems undisturbed by Peter's departure is Whinstane Sandy. He reminds me of a decrepit but robustious old rooster repossessing himself of a chicken-run after the decapitation of an arrogant and envied rival. He has with a dour sort of blitheness connected up the windmill pump, in his spare time, and run a pipe in through the kitchen wall and rigged up a sink, out of a galvanized pig-trough. It may not ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... to his surviving relatives, Henry consented to change the place of execution to the court of the Bastille, where the Marechal accordingly was beheaded at five o'clock in the evening. The circumstances attending his decapitation are too painful for detail; suffice it that his last struggles for life displayed a cowardice which ill accorded with his previous gallantry, and that it was only by a feint that the executioner at length succeeded in performing his ghastly ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... employer, to discover that, invariably, these same lamenting young men were those who, from the employer's point of view, were either greatly overpaid or so entirely worthless as to be marked for early decapitation. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... Constantinople. The Christian powers of Europe immediately remonstrated, and it was hoped that the law against apostates from Mohammedanism would be permitted to become a dead letter. In a few months, however, a firman issued from the government ordering the decapitation of a young man near Brooza, who was put to death for having promised in a passion, but had afterwards refused, to become a Mohammedan. Lord Aberdeen, the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, then demanded ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... the death penalty to be inflicted by means of electricity. The object was to deter evildoers by surrounding the penalty with scientific horror, [Footnote: Hence also the new lingual atrocity, the word "electrocute," derived from "execute" by decapitation and the addition of "electro"] and the idea had its origin in the accidents which formerly occurred much more frequently than now. The "death current" is now almost everywhere, though the care of the men who continually work about "live" wires has grown to be much like that of men who continually ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... my old friend Du Chaylu. Old Murat is perhaps your high water mark; 'tis excellently human, cheerful and real. Do it again. Madame de Maintenon struck me as quite good. Have you any document for the decapitation? It sounds steepish. The devil of all that first part is that you see old Dumas; yet your Louis XIV. is DISTINCTLY GOOD. I am much interested with this book, which fulfils a good deal, and promises more. Question: How far a Historical Novel ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that the Astrologer Royal was not only absent, but incapable of such a liberty; it really was the boar's head that had spoken, as animals in Maerchenland would on rare occasions—even after suffering decapitation. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... to tell how eager spirits not only groped after God, but sought the living Christ—though often this meant to them imprisonment, suicide enforced by the law, or decapitation. Yet over all Japan, long before the broad pennant of Perry was mirrored on the waters of Yedo Bay, there were here and there masses of leavened opinion, spots of kindled light, and fields upon which the tender green sprouts of new ideas could ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... "barrow-ghost" was formidable; he could rise and slay and eat, vampire-like, as in the tale of Asmund and Aswit. He must in such case be mastered and prevented doing further harm by decapitation and thigh-forking, or by staking and burning. So criminals' bodies were often burnt ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... brook are said to be spotted with gore—a phenomenon which had never occurred previously. And, according to another strange Cornish belief told of St. Denis's blood, it is related that at the very time when his decapitation took place in Paris, blood fell on the churchyard of St. Denis. It is further said that these blood stains are specially visible when a calamity of any kind is near at hand; and before the breaking out of the plague, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... leisure, to pitch backward as before. Emilia found herself thinking with great seriousness that it was not wonderful for boys to be always teasing and killing flies, whose thin necks and bobbing heads themselves suggested the idea of decapitation. She said to her hostess: "I don't like flies. They seem never to sing but when they are bothered." The woman replied: "Ah, indeed?" very smoothly, and thought: "If you was to bust out now, which of us two would be strongest?" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of Ciaran, Darerca, St., dates of Ciaran's life, dates of documents, deafness cured, decapitation, Decies, Deece, Delbna, Derercha. See Darerca. Dermag (Durrow, King's Co.), Dermicius. See Diarmait (deacon). Desi, Dessi, Diarmait, deacon, See also Iustus. Diarmait, St., Diarmait mac Cerrbeil, king, Dompnanus. See Donnan. doors open automatically, ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... was under sentence of decapitation, and was about to be instantly decapitated, and an express arrived with a pardon for the condemned convict Grewgious if he wrote a play, I should be under the necessity of resuming the block, and begging the executioner to proceed ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... have chosen a more effective way of crippling the expedition. The resolution of the most wealthy of the armed housekeepers were shaken. They feared a confiscation more than hanging or decapitation. One hundred and seventy of the followers of Bacon obeyed the order and ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... the weakest were pushed to the side; the centre was filled up with baggage, carts, and horses; and vessels were moored along the river, with the warps crossing each other, to which we had to bow continually to avoid decapitation. When we reached the wharf, quantities of people were waiting to go to the other side; and directly the gangway-board was laid, there was a simultaneous rush of two opposing currents, and, the insecure board slipping, they were all precipitated into the water. Fortunately it was not deep, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... he had stormed and taken towns and castles, and shed much blood. "Traitor," said Wallace, "was I never." The rest of the charges he confessed and proceeded to justify them. He was condemned, and executed by decapitation, 1305. His head was placed on a pinnacle on London bridge, and his quarters were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various |
