"Gunpowder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a time the copper was found to have become coated with sulphide, while the tin was largely converted into the explosive basic nitrate. The conditions are obviously the same as those found in the powder machinery, where bronze and tin solder are constantly in contact with moist gunpowder. The chemical action is probably this: the sulphur of the powder forms, with the copper of the bronze, copper sulphide; this is oxidized to sulphate, which reacts with the niter of the powder, forming potassium ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... disclosures of interest that day, but after that Chris spent all the time he could, both day and night, watching the young sailor. He was determined to discover if he could what Zachary intended to do with the gunpowder. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... you look upon as soaped poles in a bear- garden, which you set yourselves to climb and slide down again, with "shrieks of delight." When you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... shop. There are few boys who have not at some time of their boyhood had a mania for pyrotechnics—in plain English, fire-works—and there are few parents, and parents' neighbours, who can say that they relish the smell of gunpowder on their premises. ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... that the war should be fought out in France and not in England.[20] Then, in 1346, he won his famous victory of Crecy against overwhelming numbers of his enemies. It has been said that cannon were effectively used for the first time at Crecy, and it was certainly about this time that gunpowder began to assume a definite though as yet subordinate importance in warfare. But we need not go so far afield to explain the English victory. It lay in the quality of the fighting men. Through a century ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... we have spoken, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed the invention or wide application of a considerable number of practical devices which were unknown to the Greeks and Romans. Examples of these are, besides printing, the compass, gunpowder, spectacles, and a method of not merely softening but of thoroughly melting iron so ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... the House still further embarrassment, advis'd the governor not to accept provision, as not being the thing he had demanded; but he repli'd, "I shall take the money, for I understand very well their meaning; other grain is gunpowder," which he accordingly bought, and they ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... likely spot in which to find a pirate's nest—just a group of some five- and-twenty rocks, they are not much larger, and one island about ten miles long and six wide, with reefs and shoals all round. Did you ever smell gunpowder, Six-foot?" ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... had it not been for the intervening stairs and Stodger's and my quick interposition of our bodies between the two men, matters certainly would have gone hard with the private secretary. Maillot's temper was like gunpowder; the quiet question seemed to sting him to an ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... and hands were not a little grimed with the gunpowder, washed himself, combed out his curly black hair, and found all the party in the fore-cabin. Gascoigne, who had not been asked in the forenoon, was, by the consideration of Captain Sawbridge, added ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... an explosion of gunpowder on board the Oxford during a banquet of Morgan's captains off ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... and lime, they could not make a piece of glass, and their crockery is rather primitive. A water-clock is their nearest approach to a watch; indeed, ours delighted them exceedingly. They know nothing about steam, electricity, or gunpowder, and mercifully for themselves nothing about printing or the penny post. Thus they are spared many evils, for of a truth our age has learnt the wisdom of the old-world saying, 'He who increaseth knowledge, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... me, and receive my soul.' Then they fetched fresh faggots, but that fire was spent also. He did but say softly, 'For God's love, good people, let me have more fire.' This was the worst his agony could wring from him. The third fire kindled was more extreme, and reached at last the barrels of gunpowder. Then, when he saw the flame shoot up toward them, he cried, 'Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me! Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!' And so, bowing forward his head, he died at last as quietly as a child ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... the pastor were like a spark to gunpowder. The countenances of the mournful retinue suddenly expanded, and, accepting what had fallen from him as an omen and a light from heaven how they were to interpret their present situation, they uplifted, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... during the final days of our journey I no longer invoked his aid to my reflections upon this especial topic: What would the Virginian do to Trampas? Would it be another intellectual crushing of him, like the frog story, or would there be something this time more material—say muscle, or possibly gunpowder—in it? And was Scipio, after all, infallible? I didn't pretend to understand the Virginian; after several years' knowledge of him he remained utterly beyond me. Scipio's experience was not yet three weeks long. So I let him ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... miserable rascals always run away as soon as they smell gunpowder," said Thugut, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... sent to attempt a settlement at Nansemond, on the south side of the James below Jamestown, while Captain Francis West, brother of Lord De La Warr, was sent to settle at the falls of the James. Returning to Jamestown after an inspection tour at the falls, Captain Smith was injured by burning gunpowder and incapacitated. Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin seemingly used this opportunity to depose him and to compel him to return to England to face their charges against him as had been the fate of previous presidents. These three men, failing to agree ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... the sun went round the earth. He is aware that there is a place called New Holland: Columbus and Gama went to their graves in ignorance of the fact. He has heard of the Georgium Sidus: Newton was ignorant of the existence of such a planet. He is acquainted with the use of gunpowder: Hannibal and Caesar won their victories with sword and spear. We submit, however, that this is not the way in which men are to be estimated. We submit that a wooden spoon of our day would not be justified in calling Galileo ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... afternoons—sun out an' a blue wind blowin'—they'd troop at his heels over the roads an' hills o' the Tickle. They'd have no festival without un. On the eve o' Guy Fawkes, in the fall o' the year, with the Gunpowder Plot t' celebrate, when ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... and his mind with instinctive reverence, were raised for other purposes than those of becoming auxiliary to the ferocity of war. That genius and taste, and toil and cost, had not thus expended their unrivalled powers, and lavished their munificent resources, in erecting gothic magazines of gunpowder, and saxon sheds for the accommodation of atheistic fabricators of ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... forth from all quarters. Peregrine had greased the already slippery oak stairs, had exchanged Oliver's careful exercise for a ribald broadsheet, had filled Mr. Horncastle's pipe with gunpowder, and mixed snuff with the chocolate specially prepared for the peculiar godly guest Dame Priscilla Waller. Every one had something to adduce, even the serving-men behind the chairs; and if Oliver and Robert did not add their quota, it was because absolute silence at meals was the rule ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Silas McClish, (27), was born April 24, 1833; in 1854 went to California gold mines where he lost an eye by a premature explosion of gunpowder in blasting in a mine; returned to Putnam County, Ohio, married Mary Ellen Wagoner, by whom he had four ...
— The Stephens Family - A Genealogy of the Descendants of Joshua Stevens • Bascom Asbury Cecil Stephens
... ready for a start at six to-morrow,—put Mr. Forester's Manton alongside my Joe Spurling in the top tray of the case, my single gun and my double rifle in the lower, and see the magazine well filled—the Diamond gunpowder, you know, from Mr. Brough's. You'll put up what Mr. Forester will want, for a week, you know—he does not know the country yet, Tim;—and, hark you, what wine have ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... curling over his head, Well powder'd with white smoking ashes; He drinks gunpowder tea, melted sugar of lead, Cream of tartar, and dines on hot spice gingerbread, Which black from ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... they had themselves been frightened until they saw the Blackrobe holding the calumet. A long-haired tribe, somewhat resembling the Iroquois, but calling themselves Tuscaroras; they were rovers, and had axes, hoes, knives, beads, and double glass bottles holding gunpowder, for which they had traded with ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... be,' said Colonel Halkett. 'That's a young man who's an Englishman without French gunpowder notions in his head. He works for us down at the mine in Wales a good part of the year, and has tided us over a threatening strike there: gratuitously: I can't get him to accept anything. I can't ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... castle, received intelligence that M. de Kersin was a few leagues to windward, and certainly intended to attack Cape-coast, his whole garrison did not exceed thirty white men, exclusive of a few mulatto soldiers: his stock of ammunition was reduced to half a barrel of gunpowder; and his fortifications were so crazy and inconsiderable, that, in the opinion of the best engineers, they could not have sustained for twenty minutes the fire of one great ship, had it been properly directed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... spontaneous growth in each separate breast, not propagated by agitation, but springing self sown, the expression of the honest anger of honest men at a system which had passed the limits of toleration, and which could be endured no longer. At such times the minds of men are like a train of gunpowder, the isolated grains of which have no relation to each other, and no effect on each other, while they remain unignited; but let a spark kindle but one of them, and they shoot into instant union in a common explosion. Such a spark was kindled in Germany, at Wittenberg, on the 31st of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... full of foul smells. The smell of drugs and of mouldy gunpowder, the smell of dirty rags, of unwashed bodies, the smell of stale smoke, of scorching sealskin, of soaked and rotting canvas that exhaled from the tent cover—every ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... in fer the war; He don't vally principle more 'n an old cud; Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood? So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... committing other irregularities. Seeing that the French did not, or could not, prevent them, and that all the baggage which could not be transported on the shoulders of his troops would fall into the hands of these savages, Washington ordered it to be destroyed, as well as the artillery, gunpowder, and other military stores. All this detained him until ten o'clock, when he set out on his melancholy march. He had not proceeded above a mile when two or three of the wounded men were reported to be ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Baltimore the country is more rolling than from Perryville to Wilmington, and there are many picturesque points. One could find at Gunpowder River and Stemmer's Run several beautiful points of view, but by the time he reaches these places the traveler begins to get impatient for the great city, the terminus of his wanderings, which soon begins to announce itself by more thickly congregated houses, and roads cut straight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... the 'bossing' element will be absent from the school we shall choose. I doubt it would work very well with you, Beverly. Sparks and gunpowder are apt to lead to pretty serious explosions and I dislike pyrotechnics which are likely to spread disaster. Now go change your clothes and make yourself presentable for I hear Uncle Athol calling and I dare say the momentous question is about to be answered. But ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... he asked with dull apathy. "The gold vessels from the Catholic Cathedral of Quebec, after—after trying to blow up Government House with gunpowder." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Damon. "Bless my gunpowder! What do you mean?" and he looked down at the earthen floor of the tent as though expecting it to open ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... why has God permitted us to discover gunpowder?" said Brother Tobias, whistling merrily. "I say to you that by the power of gunpowder and the naked sword Silesia will soon be in possession of the faithful believer Maria Theresa. Is it not manifest that God is with her? The devil in the beginning, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... tea-root, and succeeded in producing a bottle of ardent spirits. This induced one Quintal to 'alter his kettle into a still,' and the natural consequence ensued. Like the philosopher who destroyed himself with his own gunpowder, M'Coy, intoxicated to frenzy, threw himself from a cliff and was killed; and Quintal having lost his wife by accident, demanded the lady of one of his two remaining companions. This modest request being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... pause in the curiously picturesque place, which looked no more than a village, with its gray-brown houses and gray brown shadows huddled confusedly together. Probably it looked much the same when the Camisards used to hide themselves and their gunpowder in caves near by; and certainly scarce a stone or brick had been added or removed since Stevenson's eyes saw the town, and his pen wrote of it, as he turned away there from the Tarn region, instead of being the first Englishman to explore it. And what a wild region it looked ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... action and that he was not. It would have been about as rational to suggest that the lighted match should not be taken out of the hand of Guy Fawkes till a committee had formally reported on the probable effects of gunpowder if ignited in large quantities beneath the chamber in which the Parliament was sitting. Strafford would not have respected forms in the midst of what he must have well known was a revolution. He would probably ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... of a prohibition of gunpowder, at this moment some Europeans are popping away incessantly at Embabeh just opposite. Evidently the Pasha wants to establish a right of search on the Nile. That absurd speech about slaves he made ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... understood in western Europe, and for centuries the secret was carefully preserved in the eastern capital. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it was used by the Moslem against the Christian, but the discovery of gunpowder soon made the earlier substance obsolete. In the 16th century cannon had already reached considerable dimensions, but in a naval battle between galleys these weapons were not used after the first volley or so. The ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... of foreign vessels trading with this port are American, principally from New York and Salem. After the American come the German, then come the French and English. They arrive loaded with American sheeting, brandy, gunpowder, muskets, beads, English cottons, brass-wire, china-ware, and other notions, and depart with ivory, gum-copal, cloves, hides, cowries, sesamum, pepper, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... bridle. This is a rare curiosity, which is kept in the vestry. It would seem, from all that can be learned, that two hundred years ago there were in England viragoes so virulent, women so gifted with gab and so loaded and primed with the devil's own gunpowder, that all moral suasion was wasted on them, and simply showed, as old Reisersberg wrote, that fatue agit qui ignem conatur extinguere sulphure ('t is all nonsense to try to quench fire with brimstone). For such diavolas they had made—what ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... the ground. Merton came back with his load in time to see how it was done, and nodded his head approvingly. I now felt rested enough to dig awhile, and Merton started off to the barn-yard again. We next sowed, in even shallower drills, the little onion seed that looked like gunpowder, for my garden book said that the earlier this was planted the better. We had completed only a few rows when Mr. Jones appeared, and said: "Plantin' onions here? Why, neighbor, this ground is too dry and light ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... not tell tales against them or claim a share of the treasure in this vessel? Of all desperate villains I never met the like of Barros. He loved blood even better than money. He'd quench his thirst before an engagement with gunpowder mixed in brandy. I once saw him choke a man—tut! he is very well—leave him to ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... he accidentally trod as he was pacing up and down the room. He swore an oath that emanated from his fear, and thought that the lower regions had actually opened to receive the gold he was meditating upon, since fire and smoke accompanied the noise, together with a smell of gunpowder. He rushed out of the room, just as his mother, alarmed by ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... rewards of the soldier were small; he was paid in glory. No profession brought so much honor as the military; and it was from the undivided attention of a great people to this profession, that it was carried to all the perfection which could be attained before the great invention of gunpowder changed the art of war. It was not the number of men employed in the Roman armies which particularly arrests attention, but the genius of organization which controlled and the spirit which animated ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... as well as I could, but very shortly—for I was terribly wearied, and only persuaded to talk at all through fear of offending one so powerful if I refused to do so—what were the properties of gunpowder, and he instantly suggested that I should illustrate what I said by operating on the person of one of the prisoners. One, he said, never would be counted, and it would not only be very interesting to him, but ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Bacon was thus used for the very reason that he had been the friend of Essex. He was not commonly called upon in such prosecutions. He was not employed by Cecil in the Winchester trials of Raleigh, Grey, and Cobham, three years afterwards, nor in those connected with the Gunpowder Plot. He was called upon now because no one could so much damage Essex; and this last proof of his ready service was required by those whose favour, since Essex had gone hopelessly wrong, he had been diligently seeking. And Bacon acquiesced in the demand, apparently without surprise. No record ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... thrice true, indeed, because of the ridicule showered on her as a woman trying to do a man's work. No man ever had the courage of his convictions as much as she. It takes a bold spirit to stand up against the dangers of gunpowder in the old-time, legitimate way; but it is a braver one that withstands ridicule and that mean cunning which makes wit of every act looking toward the advancement of women. The Free Press has perhaps had as ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... to smell gunpowder?" ejaculated Rob, firing a pistol immediately under his nose, whilst the ball perforated the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... nephew Finot," he said. "You see, Philippe, the reign of phrases and quill-drivers is upon us; we may as well submit. To-day, scribblers are paramount. Ink has ousted gunpowder, and talk takes the place of shot. After all, these little toads of editors are pretty good fellows, and very clever. Come and see me to-morrow at the newspaper office; by that time I shall have said a word for you to my ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... was necessary for the dilapidated walls; and the whole effect would be materially increased by a plantation of spruce fir, the present rugged and broken ascent being first converted into a beautiful slope, which might be easily effected by blowing up a part of the rock with gunpowder, laying on a quantity of fine mould, and covering the whole with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... entertainments, the more so as they were required to pay for them, and they naturally preferred the public rejoicings, which cost them nothing. They were particularly fond of illuminations and fireworks, which are of much later origin than the invention of gunpowder; although the Saracens, at the time of the Crusades, used a Greek fire for illuminations, which considerably alarmed the Crusaders when they first witnessed its effects. Regular fireworks appear to have been invented in Italy, where the pyrotechnic art has retained its superiority ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... after the unhappy battle of Dunbar, distinguished himself by the obstinate defence of the Castle against the arms of Cromwell, who, incensed at the opposition which he had unexpectedly encountered in an obscure corner, caused the fortress to be dismantled and blown up with gunpowder. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... was suddenly abated, either by the increasing violence of the storm or by the change in Vere. It would have been difficult to say by which. The lightning flashed. The thunder at moments seemed to split the sky asunder as a charge of gunpowder splits asunder a rock. The head wind rushed by, yet had never passed them, but was forever coming furiously to meet them. On the roof of the little cabin the rain made a noise that was no longer like the rustle of silk, but was ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... they were but resolute—eventually beat back the mob. And then, even as his courage was rising at the thought, a deafening explosion seemed to shake the entire Chateau, and the gates—their sole buckler, upon whose shelter he had been so confidently building—crashed open, half blown away by the gunpowder keg that had been ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... men and women, then I am ready in the Lord's name to look you in the face. When two armies have rushed into battle the officers of either army do not want a philosophical discussion about the chemical properties of human blood or the nature of gunpowder; they want some one to man the batteries and swab out the guns. And now, when all the forces of light and darkness, of heaven and hell, have plunged into the fight, it is no time to give ourselves to the definitions and formulas and technicalities ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... many ways money is as dangerous to handle as gunpowder. You can't be too careful either as to who you are working with. Anyhow there was a mighty flashy burst up, a sensation, and—his familiar haunts knew him no more. But before he vanished he went to see Miss Moorsom. That very fact argues for his innocence—don't ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... man of great weight among the peaceable members of the club, by reason of his military character, and of the gunpowder scenes which, by his own account, he ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... from which either shot or shell could be thrown with effect into any of the lanes or passes near. It is probably needless to add that the interior arrangements of this house of God had undergone a change as striking as that which affected its exterior. Barrels of gunpowder, with piles of balls of all sizes and dimensions, now occupied the spaces where worshippers had often crowded; and the very altar was heaped up with spunges, wadding, and other implements necessary ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... clear of trouble. As the ice drive jammed and held them in Hudson Straits, they were aghast to see, sailing full tilt with the roaring tide of the straits, a fleet of English frigates, the Hudson's Bay Company's annual ships; but Iberville sniffed at danger as a war horse glories in gunpowder. He laughed his merriest, and as the ice drive locked all the ships within gunshot, ran up an {163} English flag above his French crew and had actually signaled the captains of the English frigates to come aboard and visit ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... is engaged on a History of the Art of War, of which the above, though covering the middle period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the general use of gunpowder in Western Europe, is the first instalment. The first battle dealt with will be Adrianople (378) and the last Navarette (1367). There will appear later a volume dealing with the Art of War among the Ancients, and another covering the 15th, 16th, and ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... to hang at the top of the mast, the gunpowder and pistols which we had brought from the frigate. We made signals by burning a large quantity of cartridges; we even fired some pistols, but it seems the fire we saw, was nothing but an error of vision, or, perhaps, nothing more than the ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... unfortunate expedition; and there is still more misfortune, for that ship which was admiral of his fleet [the "Edgar"] is blown up in the Thames by an accident and carelessness of some rogue, who was going, as they think, to steal some gunpowder: five hundred men ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... them with faces of consternation, asking one another what had happened. The ground was covered with scattered fragments of wooden pillars, mats, and bamboo cane-work; I looked and saw that one end of the gallery in which I had been walking, and the alcove, were in ruins. There was a strong smell of gunpowder. I now recollected that I had borrowed a powder-horn from one of the soldiers in the morning; and that I had intended to load my pistols, but I delayed doing so. The horn, full of gunpowder, lay upon the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... "I beg you to go to the Convention and ask them to send us orders to dig up the floor of cellars, to wash the soil and flag-stones and collect the saltpetre. It is not everything to have guns, we must have gunpowder too." ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... in degree to hold even their favour steadily; and many of the nobles always envied and hated him, because they were as proud and not as high as he. He was at this time building a great Palace in the Strand: to get the stone for which he blew up church steeples with gunpowder, and pulled down bishops' houses: thus making himself still more disliked. At length, his principal enemy, the Earl of Warwick—Dudley by name, and the son of that Dudley who had made himself so odious with Empson, in the reign of Henry the Seventh—joined with seven other members of the Council ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... all the officers thoroughly enjoyed themselves for five minutes. The little marquis went into the drawing-room to get what he wanted, and he brought back a small, delicate china teapot, which he filled with gunpowder, and carefully introduced a piece of German tinder into it, through the spout. Then he lighted it, and took this infernal machine into the next room; but he came back immediately and shut the door. The Germans all stood expectantly, their faces full of childish, smiling curiosity, and as soon ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... the Gunpowder Treason. By Wm. Harrison Ainsworth. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by George Cruikshank. ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... how a machine could be constructed to work with gunpowder as fuel. His arrangement was to explode the gunpowder in a closed vessel provided with valves, and cool the products of combustion, and so cause a partial vacuum to be formed. By the aid of such a machine, water could be raised. ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... the siege a welcome addition was made to the Spanish forces. Three vessels from Hispaniola arrived at Vera Cruz, and the two hundred men, artillery, gunpowder, and quantity of horses they brought placed the Spaniards again in possession of superior arms. Previous to this the brigantines had arrived, transported by the Tlascalans, eight thousand bearers loaded with timbers and appliances, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... age-long witness to the presence and keen activity of that during the Age of Pericles in Athens. It was built at almost break-neck speed, yet remains a thing of permanent inimitable beauty, defying time and the deliberate efforts of men and gunpowder to destroy it. The work in it which no eye could see was as delicate, as exquisite, as that which was most in evidence publicly; every detail bore the deliberate impress of the Spirit, a direct spiritual creation. There is no straight ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... on very slender pay, and to the utter ruin of their fortunes, all those who are not noble have their lands heavily taxed. Does he not know that wine, brandy, soap, candles, leather, saltpetre, gunpowder, are taxed in France? Has he not heard that government in France has made a monopoly of that great article of salt? that they compel the people to take a certain quantity of it, and at a certain ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... convinced me that I had to do with a madman. He had some idea of making a ship go against the wind and against the current by means of coal or wood which was to be burned inside of her. There was some other nonsense about floating barrels full of gunpowder which would blow a ship to pieces if she struck against them. I listened to him at the time with an indulgent smile, but now looking back from the point of vantage of my old age I can see that not all the warriors and statesmen in that room—no, not even the Emperor himself—have ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the other holds of the country, for the rock which forms its base serves for little else than a solid foundation. I presume one of the requisites of such a site was the difficulty or impossibility of undermining the walls, a mode of attack that existed long before gunpowder was known. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... moving in the same direction forever or until something changed their motion), you could not throw a ball; the second you let go of it, it would stop and fall to the ground. You could not shoot a bullet any distance; as soon as the gases of the gunpowder had stopped pushing against it, it would stop dead and fall. There would be no need of brakes on trains or automobiles; the instant the steam or gasoline was shut off, the train or auto would come ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... out of her by force, with a rhythmical swaying of her body to right and left. She did not smile, and indeed knitted her brows, her delicate, high, rounded eyebrows, between which a dark blue mark, probably burnt in with gunpowder, stood out sharply, looking like some letter of an oriental alphabet. She almost closed her eyes but their pupils glimmered dimly under the drooping lids, fastened as before on Kuzma Vassilyevitch. And he, too, could not look away from those marvellous, ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... water, we know that there is bound up a latent force beside which steam and electricity are powerless in comparison. To release that force it is only necessary to apply the sympathetic key; just as the heated point of a needle will explode a mine of gunpowder and lay a city in ashes. That force is asleep. The atoms which could give it reality are at rest, or, at least, in a condition of quasi-rest. But in the stupendous mass of incandescent gas which constitutes the nebula ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... of melinite are the leading idea in France. It is manufactured at Bourges and is said to be a hundred times as powerful as gunpowder, or ten times nitroglycerine, and reduces what it strikes to a fine powder. They have also a new rifle powder ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... appoint officers of sovereign justice, who should be commissioned by the crown; and nominate military officials by sea and land over ships, troops, and fortresses, the king agreeing to appoint their nominees. They were empowered to build forts, forge cannon, make gunpowder, and do all things necessary for the security of the ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... join them, and as he went a bullet sang past him and his left wrist dropped nerveless at his side. He scarcely felt the wound. The brutal jar of the repulse had stunned every sense in him but that of thirst. The reek of gunpowder caked his throat, and his tongue crackled in his mouth like a ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a trick that I should care to have played upon me,' said Lord Grey, amid a general murmur of applause and surprise. 'Od's bud, man, you have lived two centuries too late. What would not your thews have been worth before gunpowder put ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... by the provisions he had laid in, he purchased a sufficient stock of coals and fagots to last him during the whole period of his confinement; and he added a small barrel of gunpowder, and a like quantity of ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it was not proposed to use steam in connection with the cylinder and piston which now really constitutes the steam-engine. Reverting again to the example of the gun, it was suggested to push a piston forward in a tube by the explosion of gunpowder behind it, or to repeat the Savery experiment with powder instead of steam. These ideas were those of about 1678-1685. The very earliest cylinder and piston engine was suggested by Denis Papin in 1690. These early inventors only went a portion ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... exit at the black mouth of the tunnel and reward his success with a cheer? Was it not Speug, with Duncan Robertson's military assistance, who constructed a large earth-work in a pit at the top of the Meadow, which was called the Redan and was blown up with gunpowder one Saturday afternoon, seven boys being temporarily buried beneath the ruins, and Peter himself losing both eyebrows? And when an old lady living next the school laid a vicious complaint against Speug and some other genial ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... the cartridge," said he to Phil Evans, "I took some gunpowder as well. With the powder I will make a fuse that will take some time to burn, and which will lead into the fulminate. My idea is to light it about midnight, so that the explosion will take place about three or four ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... and Church politics. He was rarely seen in Convocation, and he always regarded its revival as a misfortune. He proposed, however, in it a petition for the discontinuance of the use of the State services commemorating the martyrdom of Charles I., the restoration of Charles II., the discovery of the gunpowder plot, and the Revolution of 1688; and Parliament soon after adopted his view. He also sat on the Royal Commission in 1864 for considering the subject of clerical subscription. He took on this occasion a characteristic line, advocating a complete abolition of the subscription of the ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... A mine charged with gunpowder, it appeared, had been laid beneath its vaults by Demdike, with a view to its destruction at some future period, and this circumstance being known to Nance, she ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of Tartarin of Tarascon had to the Franco-German war. It has been devised merely to make flesh creep in certain tabernacles of fanaticism in the less civilised parts of England and Scotland. So far as action goes it will end in smoke, but not in gunpowder-smoke. There will no doubt be riots in Belfast and Portadown, for which the ultimate responsibility will rest on learned counsel of the King. But there have been riots before, and the cause of Home Rule has survived all the blackguardism and bloodshed. It ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... the invention as a wonder toy. Gunpowder was discharged from the point of the finger by persons charged on an insulating stool. Electrical kisses passed from bold lips to lips in social circles. Even timid people mounted up on cakes of resin that their friends might see their hair stand on end. Sir William Watson, of London, completed ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... us very apprehensive for the health of the fleet. Contrary, however, to expectation, the number of sick in the ship I was embarked on was surprisingly small, and the rest of the fleet were nearly as healthy. Frequent explosions of gunpowder, lighting fires between decks, and a liberal use of that admirable antiseptic, oil of tar, were the preventives we made use of against impure air; and above all things we were careful to keep the men's bedding and wearing apparel dry. As we advanced towards the Line, the weather grew gradually ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... fabrics; in making shoes; in furriery; in hat making; in making toys; in the flax, shoddy and hair industries; in watchmaking and housepainting; in the making of spring beds, pencils and wafers; in making looking-glasses, matches and gunpowder preparations; in dipping phosphorus match-sticks and preparing arsenic; in the tinning of iron; in the delicacy trade; in book printing and composition; in the preparation of precious stones; in lithography, photography, chromo-lithography and metachromotype, and also in the founding ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... which have naturally, and probably rightly, been taken as allusions to the Jesuit Garnet's appeal to the doctrine of equivocation in defence of his perjury when, on trial for participation in the Gunpowder Plot, do not stand alone in Macbeth. The later prophecies of the Witches Macbeth calls 'the equivocation of the fiend That lies like truth' (V. v. 43); and the Porter's remarks about the equivocator who 'could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God's ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... had been reduced to his unenviable situation; and, that all passers-by might take note that the execution had not been done without authority, there was painted upon the smooth white bark of the tree, in large black letters, traced by a finger well charged with moistened gunpowder, the ominous name—JUDGE LYNCH,—the Rhadamanthus of the forest, whose decisions are yet respected in the land, and whose authority sometimes bids fair to supersede that of ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... would seem as if dame Nature, who will sometimes be partial, had given him brass enough for a dozen ordinary braziers. All this he had contrived to pass off upon William the Testy for genuine gold; and the little Governor would sit for hours and listen to his gunpowder stories of exploits, which left those of Tirante the White, Don Belianis of Greece, or St. George and the Dragon quite in the background. Having been promoted by William Kieft to the command of his whole disposable forces, he gave importance ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... Indians rushed out of the wood with a hideous shout, at about the distance of a hundred yards; and as they ran towards us, the foremost threw something out of his hand, which flew on one side of him, and burnt exactly like gunpowder, but made no report: The other two instantly threw their lances at us; and as no time was now to be lost, we discharged our pieces, which were loaded with small shot. It is probable that they did not feel ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... the British Channel, which formed the natural defence of the realm. The opening of the Atlantic had revolutionised war and seamanship. Long voyages required larger vessels. Henry was the first prince to see the place which gunpowder was going to hold in wars. In his first years he repaired his dockyards, built new ships on improved models, and imported Italians to cast him new types of cannon. 'King Harry loved a man,' it was said, and knew a man when he saw one. He made acquaintance with sea captains at Portsmouth and Southampton. ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... insisted, he could by his inventions have aided Saint Louis in his crusade more than his whole army. [Footnote: Emile Charles, Roger Bacon. Sa vie et ses ouvrages, 17.] Nor is this assertion altogether fantastic. Bacon understood the formula for gunpowder, and if Saint Louis had been provided with even a poor explosive he might have taken Cairo; not to speak of the terror which Greek fire always inspired. Saint Louis met his decisive defeat in a naval battle fought in 1250, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... than actually to persuade the Pope to punish an Italian writer, named Reboul, for publishing an apology for the English Roman Catholics who refused to take the oath of allegiance required by the English monarch in 1606, after the discovery of the gunpowder plot. This certainly was a singular and remarkable performance, and must have required much tact and diplomacy. It is conjectured that the artful King so flattered the Pope as to induce him to protect the English sovereign from the attacks of his foes. ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... a brass falcon to be charged with a sufficient quantity of gunpowder well purged from its sulphur, and curiously made up with fine camphor, he then had a suitable ball put into the piece, with twenty-four little pellets like hail-shot, some round, some pearl fashion; then taking his aim and levelling it at a page of his, as if he would have ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... nests, trepang, ornamental woods, pearls, pearl-shells, tortoise-shell, and the skins of birds of paradise. At Singapore, there are hundreds of Chinese shopkeepers, who sell all kinds of miscellaneous articles, such as penknives, cotton thread, writing-paper, gunpowder, and corkscrews, often at a price which would be ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... sea became greater than ever, several new ships of war were put in commission, and many others taken into the service of the government; the exportation of gunpowder was forbid; the bounties to seamen were continued, and the number of those that either entered voluntarily, or were pressed, increased daily, as did also the captures from the French, among which was the Esperance, of seventy guns, taken ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... to make the first act relate to tree-felling or tree planting, or, say, a performance by Mr. Tree; the second to a son or the sun; and the third to some treasonable situation, such as, for example, the Gunpowder Plot. On account of the time which is occupied in preparing and acting it is better to choose two-syllabled words—which, with the whole word, make three scenes—than three- or four-syllabled ones; although there are ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... followed on the same ground and duly had their day. Indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about Gunpowder Plot. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... that the beauty of antiquity is the expression of those virtues which were useful at the time of Theseus, as Stendhal rightly tells us. Individual force, which was everything of old, amounts to almost nothing in our modern civilization. The monk who invented gunpowder modified sculpture; strength is only necessary now among subalterns. No one thinks of asking whether Frederick the Great and Napoleon were good swordsmen. The strength we admire, is the strength of Napoleon advancing alone upon the First Battalion of the royal troops near Lake Loffrey ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... informing him that Miss Drake was having the pond at the foot of her garden emptied into the Lythe by means of a tunnel, the construction of which was already completed. They were now boring for a small charge of gunpowder expected to liberate the water. The process of emptying would probably be rapid, and he had taken the liberty of informing Mr. Faber, thinking he might choose to be present. No one but the persons employed would be ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... Repeatedly, too, it has withstood and repelled the attacks of an enemy, once when an army of not less than fifteen thousand men sat down before it, and a second time, when pressed by thirteen thousand. But the invention of gunpowder, and still more effectually the changes in men's manners which followed the discovery of printing, slowly robbed it of its importance, till at last it was deserted by its owners, who transferred their residence to the more commodious, but far less picturesque mansion which they still continue ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... experiments with the Leyden jar, made an electrical battery, killed a fowl and roasted it upon a spit turned by electricity, sent a current through water and found it still able to ignite alcohol, ignited gunpowder, and charged glasses of wine so that the drinkers received shocks. More important, perhaps, he began to develop the theory of the identity of lightning and electricity, and the possibility of protecting buildings by iron rods. ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... reply was like a spark to gunpowder. In a moment the cavern presented a scene singularly tragic-comic; the whole party was one busy mass of battle, with the exception of Ted and Batt, and the wife of the latter, who, having first hastily put aside everything that might ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... how so many fiddlers could play at one time, without putting one another out." While the fellow was lighting the upper candles, he cried out to Mrs. Miller, "Look, look, madam, the very picture of the man in the end of the common-prayer book before the gunpowder-treason service." Nor could he help observing, with a sigh, when all the candles were lighted, "That here were candles enough burnt in one night, to keep an honest poor ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... bethought me. We shall be ready for any night-rush. I'll take a leaf out of modern warfare, and show them not only that we are top-dog (a favourite phrase of the mate), but why we are top-dog. It is simple—night illumination. As I write I work opt the idea—gasoline, balls of oakum, caps and gunpowder from a few cartridges, Roman candles, and flares blue, red, and green, shallow metal receptacles to carry the explosive and inflammable stuff; and a trigger-like arrangement by which, pulling on a string, the caps are exploded ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... resisted it would be fined, sold up, knocked on the head by policemen, thrown into prison, and in the last resort "executed" just as they are when they break the present law. But as our proprietary class has no fear of that conversion taking place, whereas it does fear sporadic cut-throats and gunpowder plots, and strives with all its might to hide the fact that there is no moral difference whatever between the methods by which it enforces its proprietary rights and the method by which the dynamitard asserts his conception of natural human rights, the Fabian Society is ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... not far from Concord, there was a sharp fight in which several men were killed. This, in history, is called the Battle of Lexington. It was the beginning of the war called the Revolutionary War. But the king's soldiers did not find the gunpowder. They were glad enough to march back without it. All along the road the farmers were waiting for them. It seemed as if every man in the country was after them. And they did not feel themselves safe until they were once ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... the Bastille. It was a mediaeval dungeon of formidable aspect, armed with many cannon and dominating the outlet from the populous faubourg St. Antoine to the country beyond—one of the mouths of famishing Paris. It contained a great store {67} of gunpowder and a garrison of about 100 Swiss and veterans. The fortress had an evil reputation as a state prison. Although in July, 1789 its cells were nearly all unoccupied, popular legend would have it that numerous victims of ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... had been college-mate in Edinburgh. "He watered all that gunpowder in him years ago, did ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... extreme. He intended to cross the lake in the canoe; land well beyond Mabyn's camp; and fire the grass to the windward of the shack. No rain had fallen in weeks; the grass was as dry as tinder; and the old bleached shack itself almost as inflammable as gunpowder. He had, moreover, a small quantity of oil among the things seized from Mabyn. The night itself seemed to speak for the deed; it was as dark as Erebus; and there was a blustering, raw wind ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... his life are as follows. He was born in the Parish of St. Michael's Cheap, in London, on the 19th of October, 1605 (the year of the Gunpowder Plot). His father, as is apologetically admitted by a granddaughter, Mrs. Littleton, "was a tradesman, a mercer, though a gentleman of a good family in Cheshire" (generosa familia, says Sir Thomas's own epitaph). That he was the parent of his son's temperament, a devout man with a leaning toward ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Gunpowder.—If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Crusader," and Captain Westerway requested that he might be supplied with such provisions as the island afforded, in order to husband those which had been saved from the wreck, as they would be required as stores for the vessel. Among other things, he brought several cases of gunpowder, and the sportsmen were therefore able to range the island with their ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... you were away, Jasper, he went to the laboratory with Constance, and fired off a brass cannon with your new pile until he had used up all the gunpowder and spoiled the panels of the door. That is what he calls picking up something ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... by reason of which he foresees that death will be the consequence of a slight blow, as, for instance, that the other has heart disease, the offence is equally murder. /3/ To explode a barrel of gunpowder in a crowded street, and kill people, is murder, although the actor hopes that no such harm will be done. /4/ But to kill a man by careless riding in the same street would commonly be manslaughter. /5/ Perhaps, however, a case could be put where the ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... fire-works—our squibs, crackers, Roman candles, serpents, Catherine-wheels, and sky-rockets. Would it had produced nothing more harmful than these! But it has also supplied one of the ingredients of that villainous gunpowder, which has been the means of thrusting so many of our fellow-creatures prematurely out of the world. Etna, however, can hardly be held responsible for this sad misuse of the valuable substance which it affords; while even gunpowder itself has, on the whole, ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... little firing. The men in front had no time to reload, those behind could not fire because their friends were before them. It was a fierce hand-to-hand struggle, such as might have taken place on the same ground in the middle ages, before gunpowder was in use. Bayonets and clubbed muskets, these were the weapons on both sides, while dismounted troopers—for horses were worse than useless here, mixed up with the infantry—fought with swords. On the roads, on the sides of the slopes, waist deep in the ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... to ballad or flatter, Or rail, and your betters with froth to bespatter, And your talk's all dismals and gunpowder matter; But we, while old sack does divinely inspire us, Are active to do what our rulers require us, And attempt such exploits as the world ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... At a given signal a firework is launched from the steeple, runs along the wire, and sets light to the stake. As soon as the flames burst forth there is a general discharge of musketry, drums in the fields beat loudly, the smoke of incense, mingling with the smoke of gunpowder, ascends heavenwards, and the priests sing what is called the "Hymn of the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... "These five, none of the others." Then still lower down he pointed out other barrels, eight of them, filled with the best gunpowder, and showed them too where the slow matches ran to the little cabin, the cook's galley, the tiller and the prow, by means of any one of which it could be fired. After this and such inspection of the ropes and sails as the light would allow, they sat in the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... The struggle seemed fierce and long, with no breath wasted in useless outcry. Then there was a bright flash, a muffled report, and the stinging and fire of gunpowder ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... if possible, of this excellent purveyor. Pere Seguin was tall as an obelisk, strong as a Hercules, vif as gunpowder, thin and sinewy as any wolf in his beloved forests. His ear large, flat, and full of hair; his teeth long, white, regular, and sharp as those of his favourite and extraordinary dog; his eyes yellow, calm, and piercing ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... to rank amongst those who had volunteered their services to repel the invasion of a powerful, menacing foreign foe! Such was the man and such was his zeal and enthusiasm—such his devoted patriotism, that, had it been practicable to lay a mine of gunpowder under the Boulogne flotilla, he would, with the same alacrity as he now rescued the stag, have dashed into the sea with a lighted torch in one hand while he swam with the other! Such was the man who would have fearlessly applied the torch to the train, and freely have ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... gentlemen, who had just killed each other in the piece under representation, Nicholas accepted the invitation, and promised to return at the conclusion of the performances; preferring the cool air and twilight out of doors to the mingled perfume of gas, orange-peel, and gunpowder, which pervaded ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... way my Uncle Eddy's terrier used to do back in Kentucky when I visited there one summer," she said, after the plank was adjusted so as to balance them properly. "Only he barked all the time he was riding. But he was fierce because Uncle Eddy fed him gunpowder." ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... in the hands of a wretched girl like this. All the peace and happiness of his life were gone, and he felt like some unhappy prisoner who through the bars of his dungeon sees his jailer's children sporting with lighted matches and a barrel of gunpowder. He was at her mercy, for well he knew that it would resolve into this—that the smallest wish of this girl would become an imperative command that he dared not disobey. However absurd might be her whims and caprices, ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... collector, Sir Kenelm Digby, was born at Gayhurst, near Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, in 1603. He was the son of Sir Everard Digby, who was executed in 1606 for the part he took in the Gunpowder Plot. Sir Kenelm, who was the author of several remarkable works, is described by Lord Clarendon as a man of 'very extraordinary person and presence, with a wonderful graceful behaviour and a flowing courtesy and civility.' He was knighted in 1623. Digby possessed a very fine ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... thus exerted was made to do so by the mysterious and irresistible impulse of a superior being, we should instantly declare that being the agent, and the mind irresistibly influenced only a passive instrument, and no more to blame than the gunpowder. Now, if the sinner is passive he is no more to blame or praise than the passive instruments employed by the murderer. And if he is not passive, but active, then the thing is begun and done by himself as the real agent. ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... a business of profit. Their instrument consists of three or four needles, tied to a truncated and flattened end of a stick, in such an arrangement, that the points may form a straight line; the figure desired is traced upon the skin, and some dissolved gunpowder, or pulverised charcoal, is pricked in with the instrument, agreeably to the figure. It is said not to be painful, but it is sometimes accompanied by inflammation and fever, and has been known ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... received a liberal supply of presents. The next day they had been taken on board the man-of-war lying in the harbour, when they again drank the King's health, and were presented with a pound of gunpowder each. When they at last left for their wilderness homes, they were saluted by the cannon of Fort Howe and His Majesty's ship Albany, and they in return had given three huzzas and an Indian war-whoop. Such attention and good will had made a deep impression upon those ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... continuation of the railroad on the opposite shore; and went on by other cars; in which, in the course of the next hour or so, we crossed by wooden bridges, each a mile in length, two creeks, called respectively Great and Little Gunpowder. The water in both was blackened with flights of canvas-backed ducks, which are most delicious eating, and abound hereabouts at ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... fifteen, he was so well equipped that he was engaged to teach school in Maryland, at Gunpowder Falls, some of his pupils being so much larger and older than he that, at one time, he had to take a brand from the fire, and strike one of them, in order to ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... worked for the emancipation of the negroes who were here; that men worked openly and hard for it until 1832. Then came the Nat Turner Insurrection, when they killed all those women and children, and then rose the hell-fire-for-all, bitter-'n-gall Abolition people stirring gunpowder with a lighted stick, holding on like grim death and in perfect safety fifteen hundred miles from where the explosion was due! And as they denounce without thinking, so a lot of men have risen with us to advocate ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... destruction. The story of the siege need not here be told; nowhere has it been recorded with more picturesque and energetic brevity than in the glowing pages of Gibbon. Operations were carried on with unprecedented vigour and effect, rendered more terrible by the lavish use of gunpowder and artillery, then almost new elements in the art of war. Constantine did all that a Christian prince and a brave general could do. By his example he animated the courage of his soldiers, and revived the hearts of the citizens, sinking in despair. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... words were as a lighted match to gunpowder, and for the instant I firmly believed we would pay for ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... the character of an internal and internecine struggle. Under these circumstances propaganda, in the sense of an insidious exploitation of the sources of dissension and unrest, may as completely change the character of wars of peoples as they were once changed by the invention of gunpowder. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... that end and object, without a moment's delay. Fielding tells us that man is fire, and woman tow, and the Prince of Darkness sets a light to 'em. Mr. Jingle knew that young men, to spinster aunts, are as lighted gas to gunpowder, and he determined to essay the effect of an ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... determined to inflict at their hill fortress. But Skobeleff excelled Lomakin in skill no less than in prowess and magnetic influence. He proceeded to push his trenches towards the stronghold, so that on January 23, 1881, his men succeeded in placing 2600 pounds of gunpowder under the south-eastern corner of the rampart. Early on the following day the Russians began the assault; and while cannon and rockets wrought death and dismay among the ill-armed defenders, the mighty shock of the explosion tore away fifty ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... was not a pleasant one. Many of the arms had been lost, and the gunpowder was of course destroyed. The men were exhausted and worn out with their long struggle with the tempest. They were without food, and might at any moment be attacked ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... forces, or even by the invention of new arts and new processes. But since we have seen aerostation, the motive power of elastic vapors, the wonders of modern telegraphy, the destructive explosiveness of gunpowder, of nitro-glycerine, and even of a substance so harmless, unresisting, and inert as cotton, there is little in the way of mechanical achievement which seems hopelessly impossible, and it is hard to restrain the imagination from wandering forward a couple of generations to ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... in some dark, cold corner—or sitting forlornly partnerless against the bleak wall of the ballroom—or hiding shyly up in the dressing-room—waiting to be discovered! Little Miss Still-Waters, deeper than ten thousand seas! Little Miss Gunpowder, milder than the dusk before the moon ignites it! Little Miss Sleeping-Beauty, waiting for ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... his way; and to the Continent they went. The old squire never set his foot on even the coast of Calais: when he has seen it from Dover, he has only wished that he could have a few hundred tons of gunpowder, and blow it into the air; but Tom and Lady Barbara have lived ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... destruction when once his blood's up. And he minds what Master Scott says more than anyone. So I promised, Miss Dinah dear, the same as you have. And so he doesn't know to this day. Sir Eustace, ye see, has been in a touchy mood all along, ever since ye left. Like gunpowder he's been, and Master Scott has had a difficult enough time with him; and Miss Isabel has kept it from him so that he thinks it was just your going again that made her fret so. There, now ye know all, Miss Dinah dear, and don't ye for the love of heaven tell a soul what I've told ye! ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... their way into their bosoms." Their bosom is a rock of granite, on which falsehood has long since built her stronghold. Poor truth has had a hard work of it with her little pickaxe. Nothing but gunpowder will do. As a proof, however, of the progress of this sap of Truth, he gives us a confession they had made not long before he wrote. "Their fraternity" (as was lately stated by themselves in a solemn report) "has been the brotherhood of Cain and Abel, and they have organized nothing but Bankruptcy ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... witnessing again scenes like those which followed the destruction of the Roman Empire. Now look to the warriors of modern times; you see the spear, the javelin, the shield, and the cuirass are changed for the musket and the light artillery. The German monk who discovered gunpowder did not meanly affect the destinies of mankind; wars are become less bloody by becoming less personal; mere brutal strength is rendered of comparatively little avail; all the resources of civilisation are required to maintain and move a large army; wealth, ingenuity, ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... 1593, and in opposition to Bacon became Attorney-General in 1593. In 1598, on the death of his first wife, he married Elizabeth Hatton, Burghley's granddaughter, again depriving Bacon of a prize. He was retained to prosecute Essex, Southampton, and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, against all of whom he showed the same animus that he did against Raleigh. In 1606 he became Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas, in which capacity he maintained the independence of the Law Courts against ecclesiastical interference. ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... Benningsen fear that his line of communication would be cut, and so he ordered a retreat in the direction of Konigsberg, leaving the French masters of the horrible battlefield covered with dead and dying. Since the invention of gunpowder one has not seen such a terrible effect, for in relation to the numbers engaged at Eylau, in comparison to all the battles, ancient or modern, the proportion of losses was highest. The Russians had twenty-five thousand casualties, and although the figure ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... twelve hundred names that had been drawn read over and commented on all day by men who enlivened their discussion with copious draughts of bad whiskey, especially when most of those drawn were laboring-men or poor mechanics, who were unable to hire a substitute, was like applying fire to gunpowder. If a well-known name, that of a man of wealth, was among the number, it only increased the exasperation, for the law exempted every one drawn who would pay three hundred dollars towards a substitute. This was taking practically the whole number of soldiers called for out of the ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... Discountenancing Watchmen;" another, "The Board of Works," whose object was principally devoted to the embellishment of the university, in which, to do them justice, their labors were unceasing, and what with the assistance of some black paint, a ladder, and a few pounds of gunpowder, they certainly contrived to effect many important changes. Upon an examination morning, some hundred luckless "jibs" might be seen perambulating the courts, in the vain effort to discover their tutors' chambers, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... aside, and giving him a small present of gunpowder, asked his advice in such critical a situation. He was decidedly of opinion that I ought not to go to the king: he was fully convinced, he said, that if the king should discover anything valuable ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park |
