"Firebrand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... juncture, Jim Nance walked over; with a burning brand in hand, to look at the cat's fastenings. The lion jumped at him. Jim poked the firebrand into the animal's face, which sent the cat back the full length of his tether. After examining the fastenings carefully, Nance pronounced them so secure that the beast would not ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... court in August only. To drive them out, the Jews in the night of August 10-11 made a sortie, but were compelled to retire, the enemy forcing their way behind them into the inner court. A legionary flung a firebrand into an annexe of the temple, and soon the whole structure was in flames. A terrible slaughter of the defenders ensued, but John with a determined band succeeded in cutting his way out, and by means of the bridge over the Tyropceon valley made his escape ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... with the pursuit of the Inquisition, took every means to escape the action of that tribunal: they left the soil of Spain and went to Rome. Would those who imagine that Rome has always been the hot-bed of intolerance, the firebrand of persecution, have imagined this? The number of causes commenced by the Inquisition, and summoned from Spain to Rome, is countless, during the first fifty years of the existence of that tribunal; and it must be added that Rome always inclined to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... able to hear the smallest discord in the orchestra. Yet again, we hear of insignificant, hardly controllable habits that become accidentally significant in a criminal case. Thus the crime of arson was observed by the firebrand's neighbor, who could have seen the action through the window, only if he had leaned far out of it. When he was asked what he wanted to see in the cold winter night, he replied, that he had the habit daily ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... saw a pine stick of candlewood to fall down, a stone, a firebrand; and these things he saw not what way they came, till ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the besieged. Yet were the assailants not wholly inactive. Having suffered severely by the galling fire poured upon them from the house, they determined on reducing it to ashes. For this purpose, when all was quietness and silence, a savage, with a firebrand in his hand crawled to the kitchen, and raising himself from the ground, waving the torch to and fro to rekindle its flame, and about to apply it to the building, received a shot which forced him to let fall the engine of destruction and hobble howling away. The vigilance of Sam had detected ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... "And now Grimhild goes and takes a great brand, where the house had burnt, and goes to Gernot her brother, and thrusts the burning brand in his mouth, and will know whether he is dead or living. But Gernot was clearly dead. And now she goes to Gislher and thrusts the firebrand in his mouth. He was not dead before, but Gislher died of that. Now King Thidrec of Bern saw what Grimhild is doing, and speaks to King Attila. 'See how that devil Grimhild, thy wife, is killing her brothers, the good warriors, and how many men have lost their lives for ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... that Tim would be all right in a day or so. If this firebrand scout convinced himself that he had been tricked, and if he kept ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... a ticket? Perhaps. What would come of arraying section against section? Suppose slavery could be put to a vote. In 1840 the Abolitionists had polled 7,000 votes in the country. In 1844, 60,000. This proved that it was not difficult to throw a firebrand into America's affairs. Suppose this vote grew and an Abolitionist President should ultimately be elected? What of American progress in such a contingency? What of a wrecked republic before the greedy eyes of England, the ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... knew it. A man had been badly hurt; so badly that he would never know anything any more. They could have used him, only the superintendent had just passed that way and outstripped him. They were too busy, therefore, with sober work, too harmonious among themselves, to risk a firebrand. ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... fury, and his speech like that of sailors in a storm, a thousand businesses at once; yet, in all this tumult, he does not love combustion, but will be the first man that shall go and quench it. He is never a good christian till a hissing pot of ale has slacked him, like water cast on a firebrand, and for that time he is tame and dispossessed. His cunning is not small in architecture, for he builds strange fabricks in paste, towers and castles, which are offered to the assault of valiant teeth, and like Darius' ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... wounds. A womanly woman that lives a lovely appealing life right in a man's own home has a perfect right to gain his love, especially if she is beautifully unconscious of her appeal. Besides, why should a man want to take an independent, explosive, impudent firebrand with all sorts of dreadful plots in her mind to his heart? He wouldn't ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... under the same symbol; but it is the weakest of all the figures in the Arena Chapel. The "Wrath" of Spenser rides upon a lion, brandishing a firebrand, his garments stained with blood. Rage, or Furor, occurs subordinately in other places. It appears to me very strange that neither Giotto nor Spenser should have given any representation of the restrained Anger, which ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... principle, of Force and Authority, whose prototypes in bygone times would undoubtedly have sent him to the scaffold or to the stake; nor is it improbable that both Carlyle and Newman, though in all other opinions they differed widely, would have agreed that a revolutionary firebrand and a pestilent infidel deserved some such fate. The poet might console himself with the reflection that they must have abhorred each other's principles quite as much as ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... perfected? Mr. Speaker, excuse my zeal in this case; for my mouth cannot imprison what my mind intends to let out; neither can my tongue conceal what my heart desires to promulge. Behold the Archbishop [Laud], that great incendiary of this kingdom, lies now like a firebrand raked up in the embers; but if ever he chance to blaze again I am afraid that what heretofore he had but in a spark, he will burn down to the ground in a full flame. Wherefore let us begin, for the kingdom is pregnant with expectation on this point. I confess there are many more delinquents, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... Connaught. His grandfather was a German, whence he got his name. But the lad grew up in the image of his mother's people. He became an intense patriot even for Ireland, an extremist among extremists, a notorious firebrand in a land where no wood glows dully. Equipped with a good education and natural parts, he had become a passionate leader in the "Young Ireland" movement; was a storm-centre all during the Home Rule agitations; and ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... scarcely know Grey Town. There will be squalls, of course, and plenty of fighting. But when I get to work I'll make the old place boom. Ran a paper in the States, and divided the town into friends and enemies. I was just over the last libel action brought against 'The Firebrand' by the last enemy on my list when I sold out. The paper went like wildfire, and the town all but doubled itself in my time. Nothing like a little mustard and pepper if you want ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... said Hilyard; "when the bombard explodes, the match has become useless; when the flame smites the welkin, the firebrand is consumed!" ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hard to say it, but, in my opinion, he is better under lock and key, for everybody's good, at present. He'd be a firebrand in the town if he got away. Meantime, let us go to our room. It is about the time when everybody is taking a siesta, and for two hours, thank Heaven! we're ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... think about that long hide-and-seek cruise of Nelson's in the Mediterranean, in search of the French expedition, without a feeling of disappointment. Why, oh why was it ordained that he should not catch Napoleon with his fleet and his army at sea? Could he have but sent the firebrand to the bottom of the salt ocean, what conflagrations Europe would have been spared, what shedding of blood, what hopeless sorrow ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... no mistaking the significance of those words and that look; and his wrath redoubled. Anger in him, when once roused, was terrible; he had small need of words to vent it. His eye withered, his gesture appalled. Conscious but of one burning firebrand in brain and heart—of a sense that youth, joy, and hope were for ever gone, that the world could never be the same again—Arabella left the house, her character lost, her talents useless, her very means of existence stopped. Who henceforth would take her to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... readers are assumed to be politicians of the type which consider the Millennium only delayed by the existence of the Church, the House of Lords, and a few other institutions. Yet our English working man is not a firebrand, and though he listens to an immense quantity of fiery oratory, and reads endless fiery articles, he has the good sense to perceive that none of the destructive measures recommended by his friends are ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... at "the firebrand of the mountains," as he was called at Court, Feagh Mac Hugh O'Byrne. The truce made with him expired in 1594, and his application for his renewal was not honoured with an answer. On the contrary, his sureties at Dublin, Geoffrey, son of Hugh, and his own son, James, were committed ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... knows nothing of pneumonia or delirium tremens. It knows nothing of what we call natural death. To the savage all death means murder, for like other men he judges of the unknown by the known. In the Indian's experience normal death was by tomahawk or firebrand; abnormal death (such as we call natural) must come either from poison or from witchcraft. So when the honest chronicler Hubbard tells us that Philip suspected the Plymouth people of poisoning his brother, we can easily believe him. It was long, however, before he was ready to taste ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... were disastrous in a high degree to Montenegro. Even the famous Mirko, the father of Prince Nicolas, after sixty battles, could do no more, and the Convention of Scutari (1862) brought the war to a close. It was settled that Mirko, as the firebrand, must leave the country, and various other clauses appear in the Convention, few of which seem to have been strictly adhered to. It needed another war to settle ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... subjects so earnestly grappled there, would hinge around these. The field was somewhat widely examined and much discussion awakened,—discussion earnest, though courteous. The religious element largely predominated, and great harmony prevailed. True, an atheist attempted to throw in a firebrand by making a cat's paw of the Jew, but wholly failed, not exciting a single remark in reply. A U. S. judge was present, several State judges, a number of governors and ex-governors, lawyers, clergymen, philanthropists ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... to Catherine, with a sense of something tumbling about his ears; while Mr. Longstaffe, eyeglass in hand, surveyed the table with a distinct sense of pleasurable entertainment. He had not seen much of Elsmere yet, but it was as clear as daylight that the man was a firebrand, and should be ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... parliamentarism, the Norwegian party champions became in need of new programmes upon which to fling themselves. It was then, that the Norwegian radicals through the demand for their own Minister of State for Foreign Affairs cast a firebrand into the very midst of the Norwegian people[5:1], who to that time had stood unanimous towards the claim of a mutual Foreign Minister of State for the Union. In the struggle for the political ascendency chauvinistic strongwords became more and more rife. ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... you say, witch? And what are you doing there?" he cried. Meg dropped a firebrand steeped in spirit upon some loose flax. Instantly a tall column of brilliant wavering light ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... of control. And the further misfortune of this was that Adam, though detecting Jerrem's influence in all this opposition, was unable to speak of it to Eve. It was the single point relating to the whole matter on which the two kept silent, each regarding the very mention of Jerrem's name as a firebrand which might perchance destroy the wonderful harmony which for the last week or so had reigned between them, and which to both was so sweet that neither had the courage to endanger ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... movables, while Le Loutre and a few of his supporters went from house to house with great coolness, deaf to all entreaties, and behind the feet of each sprang up a flame. A few of the more stolid or more courageous of the villagers still held out, refusing to move even at the threat of the firebrand; but these gave way when the Indians came up, yelling and brandishing their tomahawks. Le Loutre proclaimed that anyone refusing to cross the lines and take refuge at Beausejour should be scalped. The rest, he said, might retain ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... masterful bearing, too, was a pleasure to the spirited Elspie, who had no liking for milksops, and had sent off more than one lover because he came crawling too humbly to her feet. Elspie had none of the gentle, quiet blood which ran in Katie's veins. She had even been called Firebrand in her younger, childish days, so hot was her temper, so hasty her tongue. But the firm rule of the Scottish household and the pressure of the stern Scotch Calvinism preached in their kirk had brought her well under her ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... price, was carried from camp to camp, and the sword itself became the cause and centre of a little war all its own. Once a man stole it, and on a swift camel he fled by night only to fall into the power of still greater thieves and wickeder men. Thus the sword, like a firebrand, was passed from hand to hand. At one time it even got as far south as Abyssinia, in Africa, and became by purchase the property of a Hamran Arab, one of the most daring, reckless, fearless, skilful hunters ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... working among the people of the back country. If the tense nervous energy of the American people is the transmitted characteristic of the border settlers, who often slept with loaded rifle in hand in grim expectation of being awakened by the hideous yells, the deadly tomahawk, and the lurid firebrand of the savage, the very buoyancy of the national character is in equal measure "traceable to the free democracy founded on a freehold inheritance of land." The desire for free land was the fundamental factor in the development of the American democracy. No colony exhibited this tendency ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... become an institution. Woodford, previously a dull and law-abiding spot, was illuminated by a lurid light of modern progress about three years ago, upon the transfer thither in the summer of 1885 of a priest from Loughrea, familiarly known as "the firebrand priest." ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... not, but the utmost kindness cannot impart what is requisite to make the advice useful. We must accept or refuse one another as we are. I could tame a hyena more easily than my Friend. He is a material which no tool of mine will work. A naked savage will fell an oak with a firebrand, and wear a hatchet out of a rock by friction, but I cannot hew the smallest chip out of the character of my Friend, either ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... was truly a firebrand, and so well did he handle his people, so well did he stir them by his disgust and righteous horror at the employment of a sheriff in their midst, that by nine o'clock the camp was loud in its clamor for retribution to be visited upon those who had ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... returned to find it at its height, and was received by his wife with passionate tears, and by his relations with sharp recriminations. His brother, especially, took it upon himself to upbraid him, in the name of all his family, for bringing into their home-circle such a firebrand of discord. Charges and counter charges followed in rapid succession, and hasty words soon led to blows. From blows the appeal to the knife was swiftly made, and when Madame Ossoli, attracted by the unusual clamor, entered upon the scene of action, she found that blood had been already drawn, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the Theses of Harms created a great sensation. At a time when the union of the two churches became so desirable to many, they seemed to be a firebrand of destruction. Plainly, it would be best to return to the faith of the Reformers, but some of the most evangelical men claimed that the speediest method of return was through the Union. There appeared replies to the Theses from all quarters of the country, almost every theologian of distinction ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Dallas could not drag his eyes from the horrible features of their enemy, about which the dog was sniffing in a puzzled way. But at last he turned to where Tregelly was waving the great firebrand, which shed a ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... as he slipped the weapon back into his blouse. He was beginning to like this little firebrand. In truth, Grim had rather fairly described him as a gamecock. His stature, the bristly red hair that flamed above a freckled face, the lightest of blue eyes that snapped with excitement, the peculiar ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... "Softly, old firebrand; 'twas you who said the public matter must take precedence of the private. Moreover, if this be Francis Falconnet whom I have seen, your sweetest revenge on him will be to let him live—as ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... of Nevada and Arizona, of lonely nights spent out prospecting, the slaughter of deer and the chase of men, of woman—lovely woman—who is a firebrand in a Western city and leads to the popping of pistols, and of the sudden changes and chances of Fortune, who delights in making the miner or the lumber-man a quadruplicate millionaire and in "busting" ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... friend been continually exploring new fields for missionary labors. Her description of a body of men on any platform, complacently deciding questions in which woman had an equal interest, without an equal voice, readily roused me to a determination to throw a firebrand into the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... are still in town, are you?" she remarked frigidly in lowered tones. "I thought you had taken that young firebrand down to the Eastern Shore to ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to rouse the disheartened Macedonians by his own personal exertions, and trusting to his swiftness of foot, ran up to the nearest fire, struck down with his sword two men who wore watching beside it, and brought a burning firebrand back to his own party. They now made up an enormous fire, which terrified some of the enemy so much that they retreated, while others who had intended to attack them, halted and forbore to do so, thus enabling them to pass ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... faithfully. Thus the planters were freed from the terror of the forest which haunted their neighbors, north and south. They could found cities in the wilderness and till their scattered farms without fear of tomahawk or firebrand. Penn himself went twenty miles from Philadelphia, near the present Bristol, to lay out his country place ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... that moment two sprang up in its place; moreover, a huge crab came out of the swamp and began to pinch his heels. Still he did not lose heart, but, calling his friend Iolaus, he bade him take a firebrand and burn the necks as fast as he cut off the heads; and thus at last they killed the creature, and Hercules dipped his arrows in its poisonous blood, so that their least wound became fatal. Eurystheus said that it had not been a fair victory, since Hercules had been helped, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... in midwinter, when his men were out hunting, he saw his fort suddenly fill with armed Assiniboines bent on massacre. They jostled him aside, broke into the armory, and helped themselves to weapons. Saint-Pierre had only one recourse. Seizing a firebrand, he tore the cover off a keg of powder and threatened to blow the Indians to perdition. The marauders dashed from the fort, and Saint-Pierre shot the bolts of gate and sally-port. When the white hunters returned, they quickly ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... whether they should proceed further, spend the remainder of the night in the village ale-house, or return to Paris. Their leader ordered spirits to be distributed to his associates, and exhorted them in a loud voice to proceed in their glorious work. Tossing his firebrand over his head he declared that he would never return to Paris till he had razed to the ground the Chateau de Fleury. At these words, Victoire, forgetful of all personal danger, ran out into the midst of the mob, pressed her way up to ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... who remained near the chimney approached the window, a firebrand in his hand. "Ah, ah!" said he, "it gets warm." Then, turning to his companion: "There is the signal," added he; and he immediately applied the burning brand to the wainscoting. Now, this cabaret of the Image-de-Notre-Dame was not a very newly-built house, and therefore did not require ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... yam-field or a cemetery or touch sea-water for three days. On the third day a man stationed on a mound chants an invocation or incantation in a loud voice. Next all the men go down to the shore, each of them with a firebrand in his hand, and separating into two parties engage in a sham fight. Afterwards they bathe and repairing to the charnel-house deposit coco-nut leaves beside the skulls of their ancestors. They are then free to ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... the son of a clothier, but his ambition led him into the Church, as being at that time the fairest field for the display of talent; and he rose from one station to another till he reached the high post of Bishop of Alexandria. The fickle, irritable Alexandrians needed no such firebrand to light up the flames of discontent. George took no pains to conceal the fact that he held his bishopric by the favour of the emperor and the power of the army against the wishes of his flock. To support his authority, he opened his doors to ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Gods, ah Gods of heau'n! To see from loue such hatefull frutes to spring? And is't not pittie that this firebrand so Laies waste the trophes of Philippi fieldes? Where are those swete allurements, those swete lookes, Which Gods themselues right hart-sicke would haue made? What doth that beautie, rarest guift of heau'n, Wonder ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... master, and begged me to wait in the lodge, but at the end of a moment he returned for me; we crossed the court, and entered a chamber. There was only a single candle burning. The notary was seated at the chimney-corner, where smoked the remains of a firebrand. What a hovel! I have never seen M. Ferrand. Isn't he horrid? Here is another one who might in vain have offered me the throne of Araby ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... fillip, whip, goad, ankus^, rowel, provocative, whet, dram. bribe, lure; decoy, decoy duck; bait, trail of a red herring; bribery and corruption; sop, sop for Cerberus. prompter, tempter; seducer, seductor^; instigator, firebrand, incendiary; Siren, Circe; agent provocateur; lobbyist. V. induce, move; draw, draw on; bring in its train, give an impulse &c n.; to; inspire; put up to, prompt, call up; attract, beckon. stimulate &c (excite) 824; spirit up, inspirit; rouse, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... flung bursting into the jungles of the laurel. Instead, all the clifty defiles of the ranges were filled with the roar of flames and the crackling of burning timbers as town after town was given to the firebrand, and the homeless, helpless Cherokees frantically fleeing to the densest coverts of the wilderness,—that powerful truculent tribe!—sought for shelter like those "feeble folk the conies" in the hollows of ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... comes to England, and finds, that, by means of this secret, he still has it in his power to procure the downfall of the family. It would be something similar to the story of Meleager, whose fate depended on the firebrand that his mother had ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on the day of rejoicing, and be crowned as Emperor in honour of the Idea. There was only one little bit of dissent in the Lower House; and that was when Mr. Corderoy, M.P. for the Rattenwell Division of Strikeston, moved, as an amendment, that Bill Firebrand, dismissed by his employer for blowing up his factory, should be allowed ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... said Cappen, regretfully but firmly. "'Twould be ill for my health. No, I will but trouble you for a firebrand and then the princess and ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... again when we play to-night, Darnley," answered Mr. Riddle, crossly. "And as for the seat in the coach, you are welcome to it. That firebrand of a lad ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... The Education Act had not long been passed, for it was the spring of '72 when Ishmael began to take an active part in its administration in the West. He was still a young man, but the happenings and circumstances of his life had made for thoughtfulness, and association with his firebrand brother-in-law was turning that thought into more definite channels than formerly. Ishmael was becoming less a philosophic dreamer, and he began to feel within himself the stirring of desire to do things. Not that he had ever been idle, but his own little corner of the world and the definite ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... rather, on ears that had determined not to hear. From London and Paris came proposals for conference, for arbitration, with welcome for any suggestion from the other side which might lead to a peaceful solution of the disputed demands, already recognised by Europe as a firebrand wantonly flung into the midst of dangerous and inflammable material. Over that burning firebrand, preventing and warding off all the eager hands that were stretched to put it out, stood the figure of the nation at whose bidding it had ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... looking down at her and liking her better with every word she said. "You scare me out of my boots. You're a firebrand on a mountain." ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... the offense. This is done by witnesses who give, as far as I have been able to judge, truthful testimony. Whenever the veracity of a witness is doubted he may be obliged to take a kind of oath which consists in the burning of beeswax. A little beeswax is melted by holding a firebrand over it. While this is being done, the person whose veracity it is desired to test, utters a wish that in case of falsehood his body may be melted like the wax. In the case of suspects, ordeals are employed. They ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... should be my lot to die a martyr.' The early part of the eighteenth century abounds in indications that amid a great deal of superficial talk about the excellence of toleration the older spirit of persecution was quite alive, ready, if circumstances favoured it, to burst forth again, not perhaps with firebrand and sword, but with the no less familiar weapons of confiscations and imprisonment. Toleration was not only very imperfectly understood, even by those who most lauded it, but it was often loudly vaunted by men whose lives and opinions were ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... charge, and walk like a fury with a firebrand in my hand: every one goes by the light, and we'll go by ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... a question whether we ought to sit still and see a firebrand flashed in our faces,' General Pierson remarked as the curtain fell. He was talking to Major de Pyrmont outside the Duchess of Graatli's box. Two General officers joined them, and presently Count Serabiglione, with his courtly semi-ironical smile, on whom they ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the same just severity; in his eyes there is the same fire of deep yet governed wrath that I remember in them six months ago, when Mrs. Huntley first threw the firebrand between us. ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... the people said he was a martyr and died gloriously patient. This caused the bishop shortly after to make a sermon in the cathedral church, and therein he affirmed, that the said Marsh was a heretic, burnt as such, and was a firebrand in hell.—Mr. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... door of my room was open. He made such a noise in running downstairs that the waiter came out and caught hold of him, thinking he had stolen something; but Clairmont, who was pursuing him with his firebrand, had him released. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... stove lighted them. Then they lounged back and puffed with an air of such perfect, speechless bliss that for the first time in his life Bob felt a desire to smoke. He drew from his pocket the pipe Douglas had given him and filled it from a plug of the tobacco. When he reached for a firebrand to light it Dick noticed what he was doing ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... many horses were taken that the Campeador had to his share of the good ones a thousand and five hundred. Well might the others have good store when he had so many. And my Cid won in this battle from King Yucef, his good sword Tizona, which is to say, the firebrand. The tent of the King of Morocco, which was supported by two pillars wrought with gold, he gave order not to be touched, for he would send it to Alfonso the Castillian. The Bishop Don Hieronymo, that perfect one ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... when the vemencie of y^e fire was over, smoke was seen to arise within a shed y^t was joynd to y^e end of y^e storehouse, which was watled up with bowes, in y^e withered leaves wherof y^e fire was kindled, which some, ru[n]ing to quench, found a longe firebrand of an ell longe, lying under y^e wale on y^e inside, which could not possibly come their by cassualtie, but must be laid ther by some hand, in y^e judgmente of all that saw it. But God kept them from this ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... acquiescently. "That's true," he said. "It's quite true. He was a copperhead and a firebrand. We detested him. He insulted me at my own table by refusing to sit down under the Southern flag, and the ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... proceed from? Not from the burnt cottage,—he had smelt that smell before,—indeed, this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... asked the red-hot iron, when it glimmered on the anvil, 'Wherefore glowest thou longer than the firebrand?'— 'I was born in the dark mine, and the brand in the pleasant greenwood.' Kindness ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... bar the stable doore, and never ceased beating me till she was so weary that the bar fell out of her hands, whereupon she (complaining of the soone faintnesse of her armes) ran to her fire and brought a firebrand and thrust it under my taile, burning me continually, till such time as (having but one remedy) I arayed her face and eies with my durty dunge, whereby (what with the stinke thereof, and what with the filthinesse that fell in her eies) she was welnigh blinded: so I enforced ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... sheets of paper, not only more amusing than Ralph or Miss Reid, but more like flesh and blood, and more alive now than they. Is not Amelia preparing her husband's little supper? Is not Miss Snapp chastely preventing the crime of Mr. Firebrand? Is not Parson Adams in the midst of his family, and Mr. Wild taking his last bowl of punch with the Newgate Ordinary? Is not every one of them a real substantial HAVE-been personage now—more real than Reid or Ralph? For our parts, we will ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... solemn, breathless hush as the speaker leaned forward, shaking an uplifted finger at the audience. Then some one on a front seat cried out, "Emerson Mead! He ought to be lynched!" The cry was a firebrand thrown into a powder box. The whole mass of men broke into a yell: "Emerson Mead! Lynch him! Lynch the murderer!" The speaker stood with uplifted hands, demanding further attention, but the crowd was beyond his control. Moved by one impulse, it had sprung to its feet, clamoring and yelling, ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... given him a remarkable appraising eye. Within ten minutes he had read much more than had greeted his eye. A wave of pity went over him—pity for the patient, the girl, and his friend. The poor old imbecile! Why, this child was a firebrand, a wrecker, if ever he had seen one; and the worst kind because she ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... definite—the final dispositions will be taken in two or three years.[36] And perhaps then some part of the counsel of Radi['c] may be adopted—Radi['c], whose critics are never weary of denouncing him for being a demagogue, a firebrand and various other things, but who by that time may very likely be a Cabinet Minister. He advises that there should be a compromise, that the ownership of land in Yugoslavia should not be strictly individualist nor strictly ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... glanced hurriedly around for ammunition, but he could not see any open, and he had left his belt of cartridges with his clothes. Outside the men and women were circling in contrary directions, each with a spear, a knife or a firebrand in hand, around the fire beside which, trussed like bundles of faggots, were the four servants, their feet singeing on ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... Mr. Gladstone, though warmly reprobating the prime minister's recommendation of a divine so sure to raise the hurricane, took no leading part in the strife that followed. 'Never in my opinion,' he said to his father (Feb. 2, 1848), 'was a firebrand more wantonly and gratuitously cast.' It was an indication the more of a determination to substitute a sort of general religion for the doctrines of the church. The next really marking incident after the secession of Newman was a decision of a court ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... she would become vain and gave her some energetic lectures on the evils of conceit. There was a sort of fury of good about the pale woman that carried everything before it. She was just, but her righteous anger was a ready firebrand, and when it burst into flame, as often happened, her eloquence was extraordinary. Her face might have been carved out of white ice, but her eyes glowed like coals and her words came low, quick, and clear, and wonderfully to the point. As a girl, her temper had been terrific, ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... himself, "I shall there have a firebrand of joy wherewith to warm myself, and I can sup on some crumbs of the three great armorial bearings of royal sugar which have been erected on the public ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... well-kempt, and, as I ween, With sothery[48] butter their bodies anointed; I never saw devils so well appointed. The master-devil sat in his jacket, And all the souls were playing at racket. None other rackets they had in hand, Save every soul a good firebrand, Wherewith they played so prettily That Lucifer laughed merrily, And all the residue of the fiends Did laugh thereat ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... with wooden forks. The north parts of the country are reported to be so cold, that the very ice or water which distilleth out of the moist wood which they lay upon the fire is presently congealed and frozen, the diversity growing suddenly to be so great, that in one and the selfsame firebrand a man shall see both fire and ice. When the winter doth once begin there it doth still more and more increase by a perpetuity of cold; neither doth that cold slake until the force of the sunbeams doth dissolve the cold and make glad the earth, returning to it again. Our mariners ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... boast of, but also no crimes to blush for. With inferior capacity, he is only considered by Talleyrand as an inferior intriguer, employed in a country ruled by an inferior policy, neither feared nor esteemed by our Government. His secretary, Desaugiers the elder, is our real and confidential firebrand in the North, commissioned to keep burning those materials of combustion which Grouvelle and others of our incendiaries have lighted and illuminated in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... that steady old "machiners," broken for years to double harness, will encourage and countenance their "flippant" progeny in kicking over the traces? How otherwise could the name of mother-in-law, on the stage and in divers domestic circles, have become a synonym for firebrand? Look at your wife's maid, for instance. She will spend two thirds of her wages and the product of many silk dresses ("scarcely soiled") in furnishing that objectionable and disreputable suitor of ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... If a firebrand had fallen into a barrel of gunpowder, it could not have caused a greater explosion in the hall than that cry; for after a short pause, in which every one stood silent as if thunderstruck, there arose from all the nobles, young and old, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... had made that way so singularly persuasive, the little remnant of doomed and hunted fugitives who seem to belong to earth only by the spiritual bond of their love to him, as his own physical life is now a firebrand all but extinct,—"all ashes save the tip that holds a spark," but that still glowing with undiminished soul. The material fabric which enshrines this fine essence of the Christian spirit is of the frailest; and the contrast is carried ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... And on the other hand, when some of the Suffragettes say in their pamphlets and speeches, "Woman, leaping to life at the trumpet call of Ibsen and Shaw, drops her tawdry luxuries and demands to grasp the sceptre of empire and the firebrand of speculative thought"—in order to understand such a sentence I say it over again in the amended form: "Mrs. Buttons, leaping to life at the trumpet call of Ibsen and Shaw, drops her tawdry luxuries and demands to grasp the sceptre ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... also to have been a green tree. God had planted and tended it; it had enjoyed every advantage; but, when He came seeking fruit on it, He found none. It was withered; the sap of virtue and godliness had gone out of it; it was dry and ready for the burning; and, when the enemy came to apply the firebrand, why should God interpose? Thus did Jesus attempt once more to awaken repentance. He wished to thrust the impressions of the daughters of Jerusalem down from the region of feeling into a deeper place. They had given Him tears ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... please themselves to see how just God is to punish the rogue at such a time as this; he being now one of the King's Serjeants, and rode in the cavalcade with Maynard, to whom people wish the same fortune. There was also this night in King-street, [a woman] had her eye put out by a boy's flinging a firebrand into the coach. Now, after all this, I can say that, besides the pleasure of the sight of these glorious things, I may now shut my eyes against any other objects, nor for the future trouble myself to see things of state and show, as being sure never to see ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... game declined. All gazed at length in silence drear, Unbroke, save when in comrade's ear Some yeoman, wondering in his fear, Thus whispered forth his mind:- "Saint Mary! saw'st thou e'er such sight? How pale his cheek, his eye how bright, Whene'er the firebrand's fickle light Glances beneath his cowl! Full on our lord he sets his eye; For his best palfrey, would not I ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... the lumberman. The jacks take a hand. Hippy uses a firebrand as a weapon. Overlanders badly punished. Shots from the forest shatter Peg's wooden leg. Henry paws his way into the fight. The Overlanders meet a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... man of sense; he will laugh at the joke to-morrow, and accept his defeat gracefully. What a firebrand your cousin is! Did you notice his eyes flash? I thought he meant to make mincemeat of me! It is a pity you are always against him; he will take quite a dislike ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... little squad approached Broadway from a side-street, hastening to headquarters, the Hibernian firebrand and his supposed ally stood on the curbstone, A moment later Merwyn struck his companion such a powerful blow on the temple that he fell in the street, almost in front of the officers of the law. The young fellow then sprung upon the stunned and helpless man, and took away his weapons, ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... was really, when all things are considered, one of the drollest spectacles I have ever seen. That venerable political firebrand had been adjudged guilty of contempt of court and had been sentenced to seven days' imprisonment as a first-class misdemeanant. He was mulct in some inconsiderable fine as well, and he was allowed to suit his own convenience and fancy as to the ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... black huts. "Knock at the door of one of these," said I to the guide, "and inquire of the people whether they can shelter us for the night." He did so, and a man presently made his appearance, bearing in his hand a lighted firebrand. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... "At Vilna we took twenty thousand prisoners—poor devils who came and asked us for food—and I don't know how many officers. And if you see Wilson there, remember me to him. If Napoleon has need to hate one man more than another for this business, it is that firebrand, Wilson. Yes, you will assuredly find your cousin at Vilna among the prisoners. But you must not linger by the road, for they are being sent back to Moscow to rebuild that which they have ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... least possible evil amidst the contrariety of interests and passions in which he and all public men are placed. This, however, is but a poor apology for one who lent his powerful talents to wage wars that involved the happiness of millions, who became a willing firebrand among nations, and who, as a tool or a principal, was foremost in every work of contemporary mischief. The love of office, and a passion for public speaking, were, doubtless, the predominant feelings of his soul. To gratify the former, he became the instrument ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... about, why we may pretermit the question, as the old professor used to say at the Hall; and as to Summertrees, I will say nothing, knowing him to be an old fox. But I say that this fellow the laird is a firebrand in the country; that he is stirring up all the honest fellows who should be drinking their brandy quietly, by telling them stories about their ancestors and the Forty-five; and that he is trying to turn all waters into his own mill-dam, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... Sawed-Off, and Pretty, as right-end, center, and left-end, responded at just the right moment, and how Pretty dodged and ran with the alertness he had learned in many a championship tennis tournament; and how Reddy, as left half-back, flew across the field like a firebrand, or hurled himself into the line with a fury that seemed to have no regard for the bones or flesh of himself ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... Bruce. He signed a declaration of belief in James's narrative; public apologies in the pulpit he would not make. He was banished to Inverness, and was often annoyed and 'put at,' James reckoning him a firebrand. ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... at that time for people to avenge the death of their kindred, and her only thought was how to punish the murderer of her brothers. In her madness she forgot that Meleager was her son. Then she thought of the three Fates and of the unburned firebrand which she had locked up in her chest so many years before. She ran and got the stick and threw it into the fire that was burning on ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... well, I'll look a little further. Mas, he is a little slave, if a be here. Why, here's no body. All this goes well yet: but if the old trot should come for her pot—aye, marry, there's the matter, but I care not; I'll face her out, and call her old rusty, dusty, musty, fusty, crusty firebrand, and worse than all that, and so face her out of her pot: ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... a march till tattoo sounded. Each had its trained pet animals, and the soldiers exhausted their skill and patience in teaching these varied tricks. One regiment had a pair of bull-terrier dogs that played a game which never failed to amuse. At a signal one of the dogs would seize a firebrand by the unburnt end and start off on a run through the camp; the other would follow at speed, trying to trip up the first, to collar him or push him over, and so force him to drop the brand. The second would then ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Capper went on. "She never tried to account for him. He was her husband's son. She made him hers. But he's been a tiger's cub all his life, a hurricane, a firebrand. He and Bertie are usually at daggers drawn and Lucas spends his time keeping the peace; which is about as wearing an occupation for a sick man as I can imagine. I want to put a stop to it, Lady Carfax. I speak as one family friend to another. Lucas seems ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... American Revolution. The terms of peace made between England and the Colonies granted amnesty to Paine and his colleagues in rebellion, but his acts could not be forgotten, even though they were nominally forgiven. This new firebrand of a book was really too much, and the author got a left-handed compliment from the Premier on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... each performance of "Ha-Ha Hortense!" half-a-dozen seats were kept from sale and occupied by six of the worst-looking vagabonds that could be hired from the streets, further touched up by the Triangle make-up man. At the moment in the show where Firebrand, the Pirate Chief, pointed at his black flag and said, "I am a Yale graduate—note my Skull and Bones!"—at this very moment the six vagabonds were instructed to rise conspicuously and leave the theatre with looks of deep melancholy and an injured dignity. ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... monarchs: on returning to his frontier post, therefore, he sent Boabdil a reinforcement of Christian foot-soldiers and arquebusiers, under Fernan Alvarez de Sotomayor, alcayde of Colomera. This was as a firebrand thrown in to light up anew the flames of war in the city, which remained raging between the Moorish inhabitants for the space ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Had a firebrand been wanted to stir up strife, none better could have been found than Don Bernardino de Cardenas, who was just then appointed ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... His name is now scarcely known, even in France, but I venture the prophecy that when the French Army marches down the Champs Elysees after the war is over, when the vanguard passes under the Arch de Triomph, de Maud'Huy—a nervous little firebrand—will be right up in the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... defect of the eye of the perceiving person, and to the mysterious influence of merit and demerit, the light and the earth are not apprehended, while the water is apprehended.—In the case again of the firebrand swung round rapidly, its appearance as a fiery wheel explains itself through the circumstance that moving very rapidly it is in conjunction with all points of the circle described without our being able to apprehend the intervals. The case is analogous to that of the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... a compliment to his plump wife. She was not offended at all. Burman women love to be well-rounded. But the mahout was not weighing the effect of his words. He was busy lighting his firebrand, and his features seemed sharp and intent when the beams came out. Rather he was already weighing the profits of little Muztagh. He was an elephant-catcher by trade, in the employ of the great white Dugan Sahib, ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Dr Grantly should regard Bold as a firebrand, falling, as he has done, almost in the centre of the quiet ancient close of Barchester Cathedral. Dr Grantly would have him avoided as the plague; but the old Doctor and Mr Harding were fast friends. Young Johnny ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Sir Mungo Malagrowther, were of the party. The latter complimented Lord Glenvarloch upon the impression he had made at Court. "One would have thought ye had brought the apple of discord in your pouch, my lord, or that you were the very firebrand of whilk Althea was delivered, and that she had lain-in in a barrel of gunpowder, for the king, and the prince, and the duke, have been by the lugs about ye, and so have many more, that kendna before this blessed day that there was such a man living on the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... a firebrand!" whispered Irais. I got up and went in. They were sitting on the sofa, Minora with clasped hands, gazing admiringly into Miss Jones's face, which wore a very different expression from the one of sour and unwilling propriety I have been used ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... heard a troop of jackals barking so furiously that I said to myself directly they had attacked a human being, and I knew too who it was, though no one had told me, and the woman could not call or cry out. Frantic with terror, I tore a firebrand from the hearth and the stake to which the goat was fastened out of the ground, rushed to her help, drove away the beasts, and carried her back senseless to the hut. My mother helped me, and we called her back to life. When we ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... my surprise, I called myself a thousand fools, for being afraid to see the devil one moment, who had now lived almost twenty years in the most retired solitude. And therefore resuming all the courage I had, I took a flaming firebrand, and in I rushed again. I had not proceeded above three steps, when I was more affrighted than before; for then I heard a very loud sigh, like that of a human creature in the greatest agony, succeeded with a broken noise, resembling words half ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... apparently attracted as much by the noise as the light, while they answered the shouts by a curious hooting; from which reason, and from their blindness, the men called them sea-owls. After this, the boats were frequently sent over, and by simply waving, a firebrand, sea-fowls invariably collected round them, so that they in a short time could kill as many with their sticks as would fill ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... searching glance from the stranger's eye made him regret his answer, but in the silence that ensued the red-bearded miner, evidently still rankling at heart, saw his opportunity. Slapping his huge hands on his knees, and leaning far forward until he seemed to plunge his flaming beard, like a firebrand, into the controversy, ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... imaginatively transported to the borders of the Rhine at the end of the eleventh century, when in the ears listening for the signals of the Messiah, the Hep! Hep! Hep! of the Crusaders came like the bay of blood-hounds; and in the presence of those devilish missionaries with sword and firebrand the crouching figure of the reviled Jew turned round erect, heroic, flashing with sublime constancy in the face of torture and death—what would the dingy shops and unbeautiful faces signify to the thrill of contemplative emotion? But the fervor of sympathy with which we contemplate a ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... seat; nor did he make any reply, until after he had examined the firebrand which had been struck by the bullet that had nearly proved fatal to himself. After which he was content to reply, holding a single finger up to ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... With a firebrand in one hand and a revolver in the other, the big, burly man crept forward; his mates alert to fire over him at any object he might discover. His search was haphazard, and his feet were naturally uncertain among the debris which had accumulated ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... cannot give all men their deserts, or we should want all the rope on board the ships in the harbour for the purpose. The bishop is a firebrand of the most dangerous kind; and I suppose we shall have him here in a day or two, for he said in his letter that he was on his way. There is one comfort: he will be too busy in quarrelling with the authorities to have any time to spend on his quarrels with us. Then I shall ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... crash, so that he thought both heaven and earth shook. Then he looked into the west "airt," and he thought he saw thereabouts a ring of fiery hue, and within the ring a man on a gray horse. He passed quickly by him, and rode hard. He had a flaming firebrand in his hand, and he rode so close to him that he could see him plainly. He was as black as pitch, and he sung this ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... am aware that my authority is of little weight, on account of my enmity with his father. But I both rejoice that Hamilcar perished, for this reason, that, had he lived we should have now been engaged in a war with the Romans; and this youth, as the fury and firebrand of this war, I hate and detest. Nor ought he only to be given up in atonement for the violated treaty; but even though no one demanded him, he ought to be transported to the extremest shores of earth or sea, and banished to a distance, whence neither his name nor any tidings of him can reach ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... and slackers, who thought her escapades funny, and were ready to act chorus to her lead, and though she had never done anything specially outrageous, her reputation at headquarters was not good. Every teacher realized only too plainly that Netta was the firebrand of the Form, and that while she might preserve a smug exterior it was really she who was responsible for any outbreaks of ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... wonted resolution, so much so that she dared not talk aloud, and only inquired of Macko in a whisper about those wonderful things which dazzled her eyes. But when the old knight assured her that there was as much difference between Sieradz and Krakow as there is between a firebrand and the sun, she would not believe her own ears, because it appeared to her an impossibility that another city could be found in the world which ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Clifford's eloquence and convincing arguments had lighted in my breast. Another reason for my refusing to make one of the Wimbledon parties was, the probability that I should there meet with Sir Francis Burdett, whom I was induced to look upon almost as a political madman, a dangerous firebrand in the hands of Mr. Tooke, who appeared to me to be nothing less than a designing incendiary. Mr. Clifford took some pains to persuade me out of my ridiculous notions; yet, in the account which he gave me of Mr. Tooke's character, he in some measure confirmed me in the opinion that I ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... hanged at Armagh; and his youthful wife was found by a soldier, 'stripped of her apparel, in a wood, where she perished of cold and hunger, being lately before delivered of a child.' M'Davitt, the firebrand of the rebellion, was convicted and executed at Derry. At Dungannon Shane, Carragh O'Cahan was found guilty by 'a jury of his kinsmen' and executed in the camp, his head being stuck upon the castle of that place—the castle from which his brother was mainly instrumental in ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... they hate us, because we compel them to act honestly; but they will soon find that honesty, after all, is the cheapest course,—for we shall take d—d good care to make them pay through the nose for their knavery. We know they have a gang of firebrand agitators and hungry lawyers at their back; but we shall make them feel that the law is stronger than any treasonable combination that can be ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... collected for the Governor, but even before they were presented to him the Rabbi, in mortal terror of that firebrand of a David, had rushed to inquire whether Self-Defence was legal, and might the Talmud-Torah Hall be legitimately used for drilling. Sharp came an order that Jews found with firearms or in conclave for non-religious purposes should be summarily shot. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... of the Visayas (Aglipayan), held a command under Martin Delgado. Father Agustin Pina, the parish priest of Molo and the active adviser in the operations around Pavia—Jaro district, was caught by the Americans and died of "water-cure." [222] The firebrand Pascual Macbanua was killed at Pototan; and finally came the most decisive engagement at Monte Singit, between Janiuay and Lambunao. The insurgent generalissimo, Martin Delgado, took the field in person; but after a bold stand, with a slight loss on the American ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of ...
— A Message to Garcia - Being a Preachment • Elbert Hubbard
... sent her aff like ane o' Samson's foxes, wi' a firebrand at her tail. It's a pity it wasna tied atween ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... far end, dropping a light ash and sending up a thin cloud of odorous smoke. These burning sticks they dropped as they rose. They had seemed so silent, so contented, so happy, sitting there with backs to trees, a firebrand in each mouth, I felt a love for them! Luis thought the lighted sticks some rite of their religion, but after a while when we came to examine them, we found them not true stick, but some large, thickish brown leaf tightly twisted ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... was a good deal sacrificed, and rather represented in the light of a firebrand of a fellow whom my cloud of lawyers had restrained with difficulty from extremes. But I let it pass, and made but the one suggestion, that I should be described as ready to deliver my own evidence and adduce that of others before any commission of inquiry —and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Charlestown, but somehow found his way to Savannah. His father was hanged, for murder I have heard, and his mother has married another man, and abandoned the child. A woman here took charge of him, but treated him most cruelly. Once she became angry with him, took a firebrand, and beat him until half his body was burned; another time she bound him, and then slashed him with a knife across the back, and might have injured him still more if a man had not come by and rescued him. The magistrates then gave him to other people, but they did not take ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... represented in these victims. To one, a beautiful young lady of wealth and rank, barely twenty-three years old, the favor was granted of being strangled before her body was consigned to the flames. Yet even in her case the cruel executioner had not abstained from first applying a firebrand wantonly and indecently to different parts of her person.[638] Her companions were burned alive. One of them was an advocate in parliament; both were elders of the reformed church. Five days later a physician and a solicitor met the same fate, but endured greater sufferings, as the wind blew ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... her alone and get out o' here," said Strong. His voice was like a firebrand to Douglas. He turned upon him, white ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo
... sleep nor slumber. Their footsteps are even now to be seen wherever mischief can be perpetrated—and it may be that while the people of Kentucky are reposing in the confidence of fancied security, the tocsin of rebellion may resound through the land—the firebrand of the incendiary may wrap their dwellings in flames—their towns and cities may become heaps of ashes before their eyes and their minds drawn off from all thoughts of reforming the government to consider the means necessary for their self-preservation—the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... towers on the Continent with their meurtrieres and frowning machicolations, bristling on every hill, frequent as church spires, now gutted and ruinous, proclaim a protracted reign of oppression and then a sudden upheaval in resentment and a firebrand applied to them all. The old English mansion has its cellars, but never an oubliette, its porch-door always open to welcome a neighbour and to relieve the indigent. It was not insulated by a dyke, and its doors ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... If such a thing was true, by what a narrow margin had he escaped a horrible death.... Across the room the object of his suspicions continued to sit calmly figuring in a notebook, never glancing around. His attitude was a declaration of the fact that the young man behind him was an excitable firebrand, whose behaviour was scarcely worth troubling about. Let him alone, he will come to his senses, that broad, imperturbable back ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... her a look sparkling and venomous. All the grace of his youth had vanished. As he sat there, Eleanor in a flash saw in him the conspirator and the firebrand that a few more years would make ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... make dangerous sacrifices. But the conduct of Gaius Gracchus cannot be wholly explained from this necessity; along with it there worked in him the consuming passion, the glowing revenge, which foreseeing its own destruction hurls the firebrand into the house of the foe. He has himself expressed what he thought of his ordinance as to the jurymen and similar measures intended to divide the aristocracy; he called them daggers which he had thrown into the Forum that the burgesses—the men of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... overloaded bosom; but when applied to the purposes of indulgence and debauchery, it rends the nerves, destroys the strength, weakens the intellect, and undermines life. But fear not thou to use its virtues in the time of need, for the wise man warms him by the same firebrand with which the madman burneth the tent." [Some preparation of opium seems to ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... low-born insolence to that aristocracy with whom he would in vain claim the alliance of one illustrious friendship—to his paid panderism to the vilest passions of that mob of which he is himself a firebrand—to the leprous crust of self-conceit with which his whole moral being is indurated—to that loathsome vulgarity which constantly clings round him like a vermined garment from St. Giles'—to that irritable temper which ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... he slipped out softly and silently. Our little fire had sunk to embers. A dozen sticks radiated from the centre of coals. Each made a firebrand with one end cool to the grasp. Captain D. hurled one of these at the ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... that is, "Firebrand burn; every branch a basketful!" In some villages the people also run across the sown fields and shake the ashes of the torches on the ground; also they put some of the ashes in the fowls' nests, in order that the hens may lay ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... below stairs a good portion of the day, and made her accept James' invitation to ride with him in the afternoon. Then when it was night again, and she saw Eunice carrying through the hall a smoking firebrand, which she knew was designed for the parlor fire, she changed her mind about staying alone upstairs with the books she had commenced to read, but brought instead the white, fleecy cloud she was knitting, and sat with the family, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... grandfather of Cyrus, dreamt that his daughter was brought to bed of a vine, whose branches overspread all Asia; and Hecuba, while big with Paris, dreamt that she was delivered of a firebrand that set all Troy in flames; so did the mother of our great man, while she was with child of him, dream that she was enjoyed in the night by the gods Mercury and Priapus. This dream puzzled all the learned astrologers of her time, seeming to imply in it a contradiction; ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... 1696, when he publicly absolved Sir John Friend and Sir William Perkins, at their execution, for being concerned in a plot to assassinate King William. His 'Essays on Moral Subjects' were published in 1697; 2nd vol., 1705; 3rd vol., 1709. But the only way to put out a firebrand like this is to let it alone, and Jeremy, being, no longer persecuted, began, at last, to think the game was grown stupid, and gave it up. He was a well-meaning man, however, and as long as he had the luxury of a grievance, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... seeking for conclusive evidence against Mortimer he should prove him innocent? He was treading upon dangerous ground, pushing out of his path with a firebrand a fuse closely attached to a mine that might explode and shatter the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... way, and proceeding up a gravelled and beautifully decorated walk, was terrified at catching a glimpse of a number of soldiers thronging a garden. He made an instant retreat before being espied in turn. No wild creature of the American wilderness could have been more panic-struck by a firebrand, than at this period hunted Israel was by a red coat. It afterwards appeared that this garden ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... words and gestures for use in the room, and all this was changed outside the room, into the most commonplace and human. Sometimes, in the room, they all blazed up like a huge woodpile, and Yozhov was the brightest firebrand among them; but the light of this bonfire illuminated but faintly the obscurity of Foma ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... expiation she sought for in exposure to the thousands she had disappointed and deceived, in offering herself to be trampled to death and torn to pieces. She might have suggested to him some feminine firebrand of Paris revolutions, erect on a barricade, or even the sacrificial figure of Hypatia, whirled through the furious mob of Alexandria. She was arrested an instant by the arrival of Mrs. Burrage and her son, who had quitted the stage on observing ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... chorus, listen for the lingering "'tsee, 'tsee, 'tseet" (usually twelve times repeated in a minute), that the redstart sweetly but rather monotonously sings from the evergreens, where, as his tiny body burns in the twilight, Mrs. Wright likens him to a "wind-blown firebrand, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... of the Britannia, Trafalgar, Vengeance, Rodney, Betterophon, Queen, Lynx, Sphynx, Tribune, Sampson, Terrible, Furious, Retribution, Highflyer, Spiteful, Cyclops, Vesuvius, Albion, Arethusa, London, Sanspareil, Agamemnon, Firebrand, Triton, Niger, constituting a most powerful navy. At that juncture, so great were the maritime resources of England, that a naval authority thus reported concerning her resources:—"From our ships in reserve and building, we could form a naval force far ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan |
