"Headless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Against this a headless, vague aspiration, however universal, is likely to prove quite ineffective. Of course, it is possible to suggest that the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, but in reality the Hague Tribunal ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... of the pirates fled. Throwing down their weapons, they surrendered. No man knew exactly what he was doing; they sank like a headless body. ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... within the walls are the church, the white tower, the ordnance office, the jewel office, the horse armory. The church is called "St. Peter in Vincules," and is remarkable as the depository of the headless bodies of numerous illustrious personages who suffered either in the Tower or on the hill. Among these were Anna Boleyn, Thomas Cromwell, Catharine Howard, the Duke of Somerset ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... maple is a bone of contention among tree-men, at times. Some will tell you it is "coarse"; and so it is when planted in an improper place upon a narrow street, allowed to flourish unrestrained for years, and then ruthlessly cropped off to a headless trunk! But set it on a broad lawn, or upon a roadside with generous room, and its noble stature and grace need yield nothing to the most artistic elm of New England. And in the deep woods it sometimes reaches a majesty and a dignity that compel admiration. The great ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... this the earls rode back to Kenilworth. Guy of Warwick remained all the time in his castle. He had already taken his share in the cruel act of treachery. It was, however, important that Lancaster should take the responsibility for the deed. Four cobblers of Warwick piously bore the headless corpse within their town. But the grim earl sent it back, because it was not found on his fee. At last some Oxford Dominicans took charge of the body and deposited it temporarily in their convent, not daring to inter it in ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... remember in Germany how disappointed we were at not finding a ghost in that old castle, which was said to be haunted by a headless apparition? Well, I have heard of a house in London which, I have reason to hope, is decidedly haunted. I mean to sleep there to-night. From what I hear, there is no doubt that something will allow itself to be seen or to be heard—something, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... repeating all that rubbish, Tom?" Bessie would say, in her sturdy fashion. "Do you think any one would hear us if we sung one of our glees? That will be better than talking about headless bogies to scare Hatty. I like ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the gift of the ancient Gripir, and the forging of the Sword; And there were the coils of Fafnir, and the hooded threat of death, And the King by the cooking-fire, and the fowl of the Glittering Heath; And there was the headless King-smith and the golden halls of the Worm, And the laden Greyfell faring through the land of perished storm; And there was the head of Hindfell, and the flames to the sky-floor driven; And there was the ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... wild attacks Of mace, and club, and battle-axe. But the great chief, unconquered yet, Their weapons with his arrows met, Which severed many a giant's head, And all the plain with corpses spread. With sundered bow and shattered shield Headless they sank upon the field, As the tall trees, that felt the blast Of Garud's wing, to earth were cast. The giants left unslaughtered there Where filled with terror and despair, And to their leader Khara fled Faint, wounded, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... we walked down the footpath to the drift on the other side of the Ghoda, which you meant to have passed to-night. We crossed the stream, and she led me to the edge of the bush and pointed to something lying just inside the outer fringe of brushwood. I looked, and saw the headless body of Xolilizwe. ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... Grace walked slowly about the house, gathering up blocks, and headless dolls, and tailless dogs, and laying them carefully away in a drawer until little Julia should return to visit the ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... meetings at his house; that there is no objection to his seeing all sorts of people indifferently like everybody else, but why should certain persons always be found in his rooms and such an intimate association among these gentlemen?... The King does not want any rallying point; a headless assemblage in a State is always dangerous."—Ibid., p.33: "The reputation of this establishment was too great. People were anxious to put their children in it. Persons of rank sent theirs there. Everybody expressed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... seven feet above ground. Nail inside it stout cleats, to hold the cross bars for the meat. Hang the meat upon them—but not until the hogshead is in place. Cut a hole in the bottom as big as the top of a large barrel. Working through this hole, arrange the meat, then put below a headless barrel, the top resting against the hogshead-heading, the bottom upon supports of gas pipe, iron, or even piled bricks. Between the supports set an iron vessel—build your hickory smoke-fires in it, smothering them carefully, and letting the smoke, with a sufficiency of air, well up, through ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... march at an even pace, each touching the stern of the one in front of him. The unbroken chain eliminates the leader with his changes of direction; and all follow mechanically, as faithful to their circle as are the hands of a watch. The headless file has no liberty left, no will; it has become mere clockwork. And this continues for hours and hours. My success goes far beyond my wildest suspicions. I stand amazed at it, or rather ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... which shows how much Jesus loved John. It was after the foul murder of the Baptist. The record is very brief. The friends of the dead prophet gathered in the prison, and, taking up the headless body of their master, they carried it away to a reverent, tearful burial. Then they went and told Jesus. The narrative says, "When Jesus heard of it, he departed thence by ship into a desert place apart." His sorrow at the tragic death of his faithful friend made him wish to be alone. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... point is simply a headless neck attached to a tow body, supported by natural legs fixed to a perch. I assume that your fragments are sufficiently relaxed, and the feathers cleaned and nearly dried. All the fat must, of course, have been scraped off the inside of each piece of skin. Arrange ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... lightning-braided pinions, 765 Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses: His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed 'twas fading, And hollow Ruin yawned behind: great sages bound in madness, And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding, Gleamed in the night. I wandered o'er, till thou, O King of sadness, 770 Turned by thy smile the worst I saw ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... notwithstanding the guards, penetrated into the hall, where he lay crouched between the legs of his master. Again, at the hour of execution, the faithful dog is there; the knife of the guillotine falls—he will not leave the lifeless and headless body. The first night, the next day, and the second night, his absence alarmed his new patron, who, guessing whither he had retired, sought him, and found him stretched upon his master's grave. From this time, for three months, every morning the mourner ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... Three Magpies, and went in search of it on foot. After many inquiries and defeats, there was pointed out to them in a lane, a very small cottage residence, with a board across the open doorway, hooked on to which board by the armpits was a young gentleman of tender years, angling for mud with a headless wooden horse and line. In this young sportsman, distinguished by a crisply curling auburn head and a bluff countenance, the Secretary descried ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... down again with white face and staring eyes, and pointed at the edge of the cliff. And as he pointed, the neck of a man rose in the shadow above the brink, and the hands of a man grasped the rock. But there was no head on the neck. The shape of the headless man drew itself slowly over the brink, it walked slowly into the light towards the fire, then sat itself down in the glare of the flames, which shrank away from it as from a draught of wind. Pale with ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... could not breathe, her heart ceased beating, and every vestige of life seemed to pass beyond recall. She was looking upon the skeleton of a human being, crouched, hunched against the wall of the narrow passage, a headless skeleton, for the skull rolled out against her feet as the sliding door sank below the level. Slowly she backed away from the door, not knowing what she did, conscious only that her eyes could not be drawn from ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... wonder, Sees the bodies of two women Lying crosswise, and their heads too; Oh, what horror! which to choose! Then his mother's head he seizes,— Does not kiss it, deadly pale 'tis,— On the nearest headless body Puts it quickly, and then blesses With the sword the pious work. Then the giant form uprises,— From the dear lips of his mother, Lips all god-like—changeless—blissful, Sound these words ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... wounded the sentry, but was overpowered and sent to Salim Garh in the Emperor's litter. The latter meanwhile was seized by a savage Uzbek, named Balabash, who had been stationed within, and who sawed off the defenceless monarch's head with a knife. Then stripping off the rich robe he cast the headless trunk out of the window, where it lay for some hours upon the sands until the Kashmirian ordered its removal. The date of this tragic event is between the 10th and 30th of November, 1759 (the latter being the day given by Dowson, vol. viii. p. 243). The late Minister, Intizam-ud-Daula, ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... asserts that, after an absence on a long journey, on De Rance's return, he called at the Hotel Montbazon, and then learned, for the first time, the death of the Duchess; that he was shown into her room, where, to his horror, the headless body lay in its coffin. The head had been cut off, either because the lead coffin was not made long enough or for the purpose of an anatomical study. Some assert that De Rance took the head, and that the skull of the woman he loved so well was found in ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... foliated Decorated arch in the wall in the fifth bay is the carved figure of an unknown ecclesiastic. The effigy is headless and otherwise much mutilated. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... the bows and arrows, bead-work, trappings, &c., belonging to the deceased; quantities of food, consisting of dried fish, roots, herbs, &c., were placed with the body also. The grave was then filled up, covering the headless body; then a bundle of fagots was brought and placed on the grave by the different members of the tribe, and on these fagots the head was placed, the pile fired, and the head consumed to ashes; after this was done the female relatives of the deceased, ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... saw within six inches of my son's face a large old diamond back rattler. It was close and short work to dispatch him but I succeeded, the report of my gun brought all hands to their feet they examined the headless reptile, and were soon again lost in slumber. after while we arrived safely at Fort Collins bought a supply of food and other necessaries and took the trail for the head waters of La-Cash-a-po-da. We reached Pan-handle creek about twenty-five ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... sometimes strange and startling. Susan almost forgot her home-sickness for a while, and found a companion of her own age far more interesting than imaginary conversations with dolls. After they were both tired of jumping, in which exercise Sophia Jane's spare form was by far the most successful, the headless body of the murdered doll was dragged out from behind a box ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... overbalanced at the other end by a great mass of hair. It stood stone still, and for the moment Tim could not decide which end of it was head and which was tail, or even whether it were not double-tailed and headless. Then, slowly, the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... slaughter. "There fell of the nobles of the Norsemen here," say the old Annalists, "as many as fell of the nobles and plebeians of the Irish, at Ath-Cliath" (Dublin). The Northern Hydra, however, was not left headless. Godfrey, grandson of Ivar, and Tomar, son of Algi, took command at Dublin, and Limerick, infusing new life into the remnant of their race. The youthful son of the late king, soon after at the head of a strong force ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... of it when it came.... Nor did he know it when the walls of Cyclopean masonry bulged and opened about him like the petals of a flowering lily. He was beyond all that. His gross body, headless, rent and torn as though the devils it had housed had wreaked their fury on their dwelling, lay sandwiched between the wreckage of the great chimney and the millstone that had paved its hearth, now a yawning cavity, some six feet deep. Leaning on its side in a trench its own weight had dug in the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... from themselves, to think they be Headless, or other bodies' shades, Hath long and bootless dwelt with me; For could I think she some idea were, I still might love, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... outer circle and went past towering ruined temples called dagobas, remains of palaces once spacious and imposing, long rows of stately columns covering a wide space, ruined towers, statues, some headless and some showing traces of their former skill, immense tanks, and remains of buildings of many descriptions which are awaiting the patient investigation of the archaeologist. Much in this line has already been done, and active work is ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... merely reported the crime. The headless one with the fearful hands had stalked over the city in the middle of night in the shape of incarnate murder, and the citizens of Rome would awake to hear the news with consternation, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... however, was interrupted by a singular calamity that befel the Derry garrison. By the death of their commander left 'a headless people,' they suffered from want of food and clothing. They also became the prey of a mysterious disease, against which no precautions could guard, which no medicine could cure, and by which strong men were suddenly struck dead. By the middle of November 'the flux was reigning among them wonderfully;' ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... of broken gods, headless divinities. I tried to believe in Greek mythology; to fancy that the world had gone backwards, and that there were spirits of the earth and air, that took part in the life of man. But these were poetic visions that shifted and waved with every fleeting ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... It was a headless body upon which he gazed, ragged fragments of skin and a few splinters of bone alone remaining to tell that a solid skull had ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... tag-rag-and-bobtail metal warriors was dignified by the name of some famous regiment. Here was the "Black Watch," and there the "Coldstream Guards;" while this assembly of six French Zouaves, a couple of red-coats, a bugler, and a headless mounted officer on a three-legged horse, was the old 57th Foot—the "Die-Hards"—ready to exhibit once more the same stubborn courage and unflinching fortitude as they had displayed at Albuera. Valentine ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... Following the falcon, they soon reached the spot where Triphyna lay dead. After they had all knelt in prayer, St. Gildas said to the corpse, "Arise, take thy head and thy child, and follow us." The dead body obeyed, the bewildered troop followed; but, gallop as fast as they could, the headless body was always in front, carrying the babe in her left hand, and her pale head in the right. In this manner, they reached the castle of Comorre. "Count," says St. Gildas, "I bring back your wife such as your wickedness has made her, and thy child such as Heaven has given it thee. Wilt thou ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... bewildered,—imagining a crime. But in another moment he perceived that there was no blood, and that the headless necks did not look as if they had been cut. Then he thought to himself:—"Either this is an illusion made by goblins, or I have been lured into the dwelling of a Rokuro-Kubi... (4) In the book Soshinki (5) it is written that if one find the body of ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... however, another object for which Smith said the Lord had sent him to Susquehanna; and that was—a wife. Until he obtained one there was no use in trying to get certain buried treasures at Palymra. A headless Spaniard guarded it with great vigilance, but would, it appeared, be driven away if Smith should shake millinery and dry-goods bills at him. Joseph stopped at the house of Isaac Hale, already noticed as having furnished board to the diggers. Mr. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... forest, Rama along with Sumatra's son beheld many herds of deer running in all directions. And they heard a loud uproar of various creatures like what is heard during a fast spreading forest conflagration. And soon they beheld a headless Rakshasa of terrible mien. And that Rakshasa was dark as the clouds and huge as a mountain, with shoulders broad as those of a Sola tree, and with arms that were gigantic. And he had a pair of large eyes on his breast, and the opening of his mouth was placed on ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... speaks as well in the intricate, yet harmonious lines of the body, and the ever-varying play of the limbs. Look at the torso of Ilioneus, the son of Niobe, and see what an agony of terror and supplication cries out from that headless and limbless trunk! Decapitate Laocooen, and his knotted muscles will still express the same dreadful suffering and resistance. None knew this better than the ancient sculptors; and hence it was that we find many of their statues of distinguished men wholly or partly undraped. Such a view ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... precarious jumble to their minds. They had learned to accept such puzzling situations as a consequence of their position in the ranks, and were now usually in possession of a simple but perfectly immovable faith that somebody understood the jumble. Even if they had been convinced that the army was a headless monster, they would merely have nodded with the veteran's singular cynicism. It was none of their business as soldiers. Their duty was to grab sleep and food when occasion permitted, and cheerfully fight wherever ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... breathing her last. Blake's story is faintly reminiscent of the popular legend of Anne Boleyn, who, with her bleeding head in her lap, is said to ride down the avenue of Blickling Park once a year in a hearse drawn by horsemen and accompanied by attendants, all headless out of ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... to his companion, who seemed to be reading his thoughts, for he nodded, and together they touched the flanks of their horses and cantered and then galloped off the field of blood, eager to leave the quivering bodies and headless ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... beheaded within the verge of the Tower. She saw her husband led to execution; and having given him from the window some token of her remembrance, she waited with tranquillity till her own appointed hour should bring her to a like fate. She even saw his headless body carried back in a cart; and found herself more confirmed by the reports which she heard of the constancy of his end, than shaken by so tender and melancholy a spectacle. Sir John Gage, constable of the Tower, when he led her to execution, desired her to bestow on ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... reduced them to the verge of ruin. But, without thinking of themselves, or how they should be supported in the broken and disastrous condition of their cures, their first effort or chief anxiety was to provide for the now entirely headless Church; and so in Mid- Lent, on the Festival of the Annunciation, March 25th, one hundred years ago, ten of the fourteen clergy remaining in Connecticut quietly assembled in this place, and, after careful, and, we must believe, the most prayerful deliberation, they selected ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... the well-adorned head of the Danava who was drinking the Amrita without permission. And the huge head of the Danava, cut off by the discus and resembling a mountain peak, then rose up to the sky and began to utter dreadful cries. And the Danava's headless trunk, falling upon the ground and rolling thereon, made the Earth tremble with her mountains, forests and islands. And from that time there is a long-standing quarrel between Rahu's head and Surya ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... hand, clinging to the headless body of King Manuel, believing it to be Osmyn's. Zelma gave the concluding lines of her part brokenly, in a tone of almost childlike lamenting, with piteous murmurs and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... late November, and the sombre colours of the fields and of the leafless trees showed through a fine autumnal mist, which lent an atmosphere of melancholy to the stretches of fallow land, to the harvested corn-fields, in which the stubble stood in rows, like a headless army, and to the long red-clay road winding, deep in ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... I spent an hour very pleasantly in the National Academy, in the same building as the National Gallery. Many of the paintings here are of a fine order. Oliver Cromwell looking upon the headless corpse of King Charles I., appeared to draw the greatest number of spectators. A scene from "As You Like it," was one of the best executed pieces we saw. This was "Rosalind, Celia, and Orlando." The artist did himself ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... has infinite fun and humour in him. He went lately on a party of pleasure to see places with Lord Abergavenny and a pretty Mrs. Frere, who love one another a little. At Cornbury there are portraits of all the royalists and regicides, and illustrious headless.(178) Mrs. Frere ran about, looked at nothing, let him look at nothing, screamed about Indian paper, and hurried over all the rest. George grew peevish, called her back, told her it was monstrous. when he had come so far with her, to let him see nothing; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the composition of a modern hero, which Addison has displayed with so much propriety. He makes Marlborough behold at a distance the slaughter made by Tallard, then haste to encounter and restrain him, and mow his way through ranks made headless by his sword. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... proceeded slowly, for the heavy broken timbers pressed mercilessly on the object beneath, and when at last it lay revealed in the dim lantern light its ghastly appearance caused all to step back in horror. It was a headless corpse! ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... instance, he saw, one night, a boy's face, as plainly as ever he saw anything in his life, gazing at him. Another time—or, as I think, two or three other times—he saw the figure of a man standing motionless for half an hour in Norman Street, where the headless ghost is ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... next to Gunnar of Lithend in all things; and now, ye sons of Sigfus, and ye other Burners, know this, that such a great blood feud, and hue and cry will be made about this burning, that it will make many a man headless, but some will lose all their goods. Now I doubt much whether any man of you, ye sons of Sigfus, will dare to stay in his house; and that is not to be wondered at; and so I will bid you all to come and stay with me in the east, and let ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... the culprit; a true patriot is ordered to take possession of his house until the national pleasure is known; and thus every thing goes on well. Of course, you have heard of the clearance of the prisons. A magnificent work. Five thousand aristocrats, rich, noble, and enemies to their country, sent headless to the shades of tyrants. Vive la Republique! But a grand idea strikes me. You shall see Danton himself, the genius of liberty, the hero of human nature, the terror of kings." The thought was new, and a new thought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... appearance of the Head-hunter. The streets were deserted throughout the day, and with but few exceptions the only pedestrians were police officers, who now traveled in pairs or squads. The evening papers were brutally frank in predicting that before dawn a sixth headless corpse would be discovered, and this ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... crowded about her, Mrs. Fabian placed the picture, face downwards, on the table near by and tried to draw out the old headless tacks driven in to hold the backboard snugly in ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... saw Things, such as I may fear without more proof To tell of, but that conscience makes me firm, The boon companion, who her strong breast-plate Buckles on him, that feels no guilt within And bids him on and fear not. Without doubt I saw, and yet it seems to pass before me, A headless trunk, that even as the rest Of the sad flock pac'd onward. By the hair It bore the sever'd member, lantern-wise Pendent in hand, which look'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... in eager expectation. A few blows sufficed to remove the head of the cask. Horror! a sickening stench arose, and there became visible the headless trunk of a human being. That portion of the body which was not immersed in the wine, was putrid. 'Look here!' cried I, in mad triumph, plunging my arm into the cask, and drawing forth the ghastly head of Lagrange. I held aloft the horrid trophy of my vengeance; ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... action. But for a reflex action the brain is not essential. As is well known, a snake's hinder part will move in response to a touch when completely severed from the head end; and movements of considerable complexity can be evoked in a headless frog. ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... finding it out on account of the darkness of the night, and the clamour of cannon and musketry mingled with the cries of the wounded. Much it was to Filer's astonishment, then, when the surgeon asked him what he had brought in a headless trunk for; he declared that the lieutenant had a head on when he took him up, for he had himself asked him to take him from the breach, and that he did not know when the head was severed, which must have been done by one of the bullets of which there were so many whizzing ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... effect. There are innumerable niches, too, up the whole height of the towers, above and around the entrance, and all over the walls: most of them empty, but a few containing the lamentable remnants of headless saints and angels. It is singular what a native animosity lives in the human heart against carved images, insomuch that, whether they represent Christian saint or Pagan deity, all unsophisticated men seize the first safe opportunity to knock off their heads! In spite of all dilapidations, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... of State for Religion very kindly facilitated my journey to the shrine of St. Lazar, where I saw Serbia's mediaeval prince lying headless before the altar. Strange to say, it seemed as if the body had a head. The shroud was raised to disclose his brown and wizened fingers and shrunken middle, and where the head should be were the contours of a head under a veil. At my desire the cloth was lifted, and I saw instead of a head ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... the last defile they saw Ten pendent heads, from which the gore still run, All gashed, and grim, and blackening in the sun. These were the gallant troop that passed before, The Indians' vast encampment to explore, Led by Del Oro, now with many a wound Pierced, and a headless trunk upon the ground. The horses startled, as they tramped in blood; 160 The troops a moment half-recoiling stood. But boots not now to pause, or to retire; Valdivia's eye flashed with indignant fire: Follow! he cried, brave comrades, to the hill! And instant shouts the pealing valley fill. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... plunging into the lake, swam safely over to the main shore. He had scarcely reached it, when, looking back, he saw amid the darkness the torches of persons come out in search of the new-married couple. He listened till they had found the headless body, and he heard their piercing shrieks of sorrow, as he took his way to the lodge of ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... remarkable feature of this sham cemetery. In a line with the tomb, on the edge of the cultivation, is the funerary temple belonging to it, which was found by Mr. Randall-Maclver in 1900. Nothing remains but the bases of the fluted limestone columns and some brick walls. A headless ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... Mr. Hanlon's body continued to kneel headless beside the log. Then the head on the ground popped like a flash to the neck it belonged to, and fastened itself accurately there in place. Ketch turned ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... meant what St. Jerome calls and explains thereby the verse (Ezek. xxi. 22), "The King held in his hand the lot of Jerusalem" i.e. the arrow whereon the city-name was written. The Arabs use it for casting lots with ten azlam or headless arrows (for dice) three being blanks and the rest notched from one to seven. They were thrown by a "Zrib" or punter and the stake was generally a camel. Amongst so excitable a people as the Arabs, this ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... space before the same pool. We went to Preston, and took refuge from a thunder-plump in the old tower. I remembered the little garden where I was crammed with gooseberries, and the fear I had of Blind Harry's spectre of Fawdon showing his headless trunk at one of the windows. I remembered also a very good-natured pretty girl (my Mary Duff), whom I laughed and romped with and loved as children love. She was a Miss Dalrymple, daughter of Lord Westhall,[384] a Lord of Session; was afterwards married to ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... fairies and hobgoblins; but for good honest spooks there is no place like home. And what differentiates our spook—Spiritus Americanus—from the ordinary ghost of literature is that it responds to the American sense of humour. Take Irving's stories for example. The Headless Horseman, that's a comic ghost story. And Rip Van Winkle—consider what humour, and what good-humour, there is in the telling of his meeting with the goblin crew of Kendrick Hudson's men! A still better example of this American way ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... Vaillant! His headless body was then being taken to Clamart, and the crowds for whom he had wept, worked, and died were now going quietly away, indifferent and bored. Poor Vaillant! His ideas were exaggerated ones, but they ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... the ground and put them back in their accustomed place upon the altar. Then, stooping, she forced herself to wrap up closely in the altar-cloth that which must be her burden till she found James Mottram's headless body where Charles had left it, and placing that same precious burden within the ample folds of her cloak, she held it with her left hand and arm ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his gore. Jatayu is, however, killed in the conflict. Rama raves with indignation. The brothers set off in pursuit of the ravisher, when Sramana, a female devotee sent by Vibhishana to Rama, calls for succour being seized by Kabandha, a headless fiend. Rama sends Lakshmana to her rescue; he goes off to kill the demon and returns with the dame. She gives Rama a note from Vibhishana praying for his refuge. Rama asks Lakshmana what reply to be sent to (his) "dear friend—lord of Lanka" ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... out of the earth, wherein it had been deposited, the skull of his father, and took it along with him in his flight, in order that it might not be dishonoured in his absence, for he loved his father with extraordinary tenderness, and cherished his memory as dearly as his own life. The headless body of the venerable chief, like those of his ancestors, had been sent to Benin, in order that its bones might adorn the sacred temple at that place, agreeably to an ancient and respected custom, which has ever been religiously conformed to, and tenaciously held by the Lagos people. But Adooley ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... procuring her abduction by a crew of pirates while on an excursion to the Pharos. The vessel of the captors is, however, chased by a guard-boat, and on the point of being taken, when Leucippe is brought on deck and decapitated by the pirates, who throw the headless body into the sea, and make their escape; while Clitophon stays the pursuit, to recover the remains of his mistress for sepulture. Clitophon now returns to Alexandria to mourn for his lost love, and is still inconsolable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... moment a headless doll struck against the side of my neck. It had been thrown by one child at another; missing her aim, she gave me the benefit of her evil intention. At this, cook lost all patience, and seizing the offending little one, boxed her soundly, before I could ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... firs were like waving funeral plumes and mantled, headless goddesses; then the giant beeches would lash themselves to frenzy, and, stooping, would scourge the ice on Undern Pool and the cracked walls of the house, like beings drunken with the passion of cruelty. This was ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... race were exterminated by the papal jealousy. Truly we may say with Michelet that the sibyl of the Renaissance kept offering her books in vain to feudal Europe. In vain, because the time was not yet. The ideas projected thus early on the modern world were immature and abortive, like those headless trunks and zoophytic members of half-moulded humanity which, in the vision of Empedocles, preceded the birth of full-formed man. The nations were not ready. Franciscans imprisoning Roger Bacon for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... River the foreshore gradually bends for a few miles from a west-east to a north-south rhumb, and forms a bay within a bay. The larger is bounded north by Akromasi Point, the southern wall of the great stream; the bold foreland outlain with reefs and a rock like a headless sphinx, is known from afar, east and west, by its 'one tree,' a palm apparently double, the leader of a straggling row. On the south of the greater bay is Point Pepre, by the natives called Inkubun, or Cocoanut-Tree, from a neighbouring village; like the Akromasi ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... for such they might now be styled, walked towards the castle, arm in arm; and stood on the terrace, adorned with headless statues, and backed by a part of the mouldering ruin, half hid ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... destroying the Dragon, and found their monarch running around in a circle, bumping into trees and rocks, but not getting a step nearer home. SO they took his hand and led him back to the palace, where every one was filled with sorrow at the sad sight of the headless King. Indeed, his devoted subjects, for the first time in their lives, came as near to weeping as an inhabitant of the Valley of ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... prolongs the reign of inordinate, unprincipled clans. At this period, 1888, those quill-drivers whose consciences are in their pockets hold high carnival. When news- dealers shout for class legislation, and decapitated reputa- tions, headless trunks, and quivering hearts are held up [25] before the rabble in exchange for money, place, and power, the vox populi is suffocated, individual rights are trodden under foot, and the car of the modern In- quisition rolls along the streets ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... which we created—the ghost of the murdered child that crept up behind you and laid cold fingers on yours. I confess that, to this day, I cannot help fancying its little, furtive footsteps behind me when I come here after nightfall. I'm not afraid of the White Lady or the headless man or the skeletons, but I wish I had never imagined that baby's ghost into existence. How angry Marilla and Mrs. Barry were over that affair," concluded Anne, ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... quickness of lightning. There followed a sharp, cracking noise, like the explosion of a percussion-cap, and the head of the rattlesnake spun twenty feet or more out over the swamp. It struck the branch of a tree, and, dropping to the water, sunk out of sight. The headless body of the reptile now writhed and doubled over itself, and smote the tree in the most horrible agony. Oonomoo walked quietly forward, and with his feet shoved it from the log. Still twisting and interlocking, it sunk down, down, ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... the perennial inspection and purchase of raw edibles, when I wished to live in an ideal world and paint a great picture. Mrs. Hobbs would come to my bedside in the morning and ask me if I would like to buy a fowl. When I looked upon the fowl, limp in death, with its headless neck hanging dejectedly over the edge of the plate, its giblets and kidneys lying in immodest confusion on the outside of itself, and its liver 'tucked under its wing, poor thing,' I never wanted to buy it. But one morning, in taking my walk, I chanced upon ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... voice I heard, marmoreal, strange, remote, As though from yonder throne Clotho had spoken, and the headless throat ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... into a semicircle, with the Queen in the centre. Then the crowd at the brook were seen approaching, and on the shoulders of the multitude was borne a head. They hurried as fast as their heavy load would permit, until they came to the tree under which sat the headless Nerralina, who, bed and all, had fallen here, when the Giant tore down the tower. Then quickly attaching a long rope (that they had put over a branch directly above the lady) to the hair of the head, they all took hold of the other end, and, pulling with a will, soon hoisted the ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... Both above and below the niches much delicate carving may be noticed. Surmounting all are the broken effigies of Lord John and his wife, who was the daughter of Lord Henry Percy, the well-known Hotspur. All the figures on this tomb, including the recumbent figures, are headless, but sufficient remains to show that they were of great excellence. Remains of colouring and gilding can also be distinguished in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... by Pilgrims. The reason why the scallop-shell is used by pilgrims is not generally known. The legend is this: When the marble ship which bore the headless body of St. James approached Bouzas, in Portugal, it happened to be the wedding day of the chief magnate of the village; and while the bridal party was at sport, the horse of the bridegroom became unmanageable, and plunged into the sea. The ship passed over the horse and its rider, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of a similar deed, struck horror to the hearts of the people, and they were worked up to a pitch that had never been witnessed in this country before. Telephones and telegraph were called into service, and the finding of the headless body of a young and doubtless beautiful woman in a sequestered spot near Fort Thomas, was flashed around the world. So shocked was the country over this ghastly find that the metropolitan papers from one end of this country to the other informed their representatives in the Queen City ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... litter was near, thrust her head out, and with her hand holding one of the shafts, exclaimed, "Royal Richard, beware what you do! see, these arrows are headless!" ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... border is aflame. But it is all too late already, I have had news of the end. Before ever a man could reach within miles, the fatal axe had fallen, and my lords, for whom each one of us would gladly have died with smiles upon our faces, lay headless in ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... sleepily rubbing their eyes with their brazen fingers, while all the snakes on their heads reared themselves on end with surprise, and with venomous malice against they knew not what. But when the Gorgons saw the scaly carcass of Medusa, headless, and her golden wings all ruffled, and half spread out on the sand, it was really awful to hear what yells and screeches they set up. And then the snakes! They sent forth a hundred-fold hiss, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... own head off before jumping into the river, it was suicide," he said carefully, "for the body is headless. As for myself, I have never witnessed such a phenomenon, and I ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... which twenty-four hours' hewing could not open; a voice that you know crying after you from God knows where; a mass of long, fair hair visible here, a foot there, three fingers of a hand over there; the snow bright-red under foot; charred limbs and headless trunks tossed about; strong men carrying covered things by you, at sight of which other strong men have fainted; the little yellow jet that flared up, and died in smoke, and flared again, leaped out, licked ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... naumachia, from its having rising rows of seats around the central space, with a channel leading into this from the river. As the shadows of evening lengthened, the heat of the day was moderated, and I sauntered along the bank of the stream till I came to a large headless statue of a female figure lying in the water. Some men lifted it upon the green bank for me; but it was far too heavy to be transported to Jerusalem for the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... confusion of styles—a conflict of grace and beauty with rude and grotesque work. The delicately-traced patterns carved on the walls, the medallions and pendant ornaments, in stone, of the thirteenth century, are scarcely surpassed at Chartres; side by side with these, there are headless and armless statues of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which have been painted, and tablets (such as we have sketched) to commemorate the ancient founders of the church; and underneath the choir, the crypt of Bishop ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... credible that the movements of a headless frog, when it wipes off a drop of acid or other object from its thigh, and which movements are so well coordinated for a special purpose, were not at first performed voluntarily, being afterwards rendered easy through long-continued habit so as at last to be performed ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... Great Serpent, the Kenabeek, With his bloody crest erected, Creeping, looking into heaven; In the sky the sun, that listens, And the moon eclipsed and dying; Owl and eagle, crane and hen-hawk, And the cormorant, bird of magic; Headless men, that walk the heavens, Bodies lying pierced with arrows, Bloody hands of death uplifted, Flags on graves, and great war-captains Grasping ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... sharp pair of scissors quite close beneath the gland, the tentacle generally becomes inflected. I tried this experiment repeatedly, as I was much surprised at the fact, for all other parts of the pedicels are insensible to any stimulus. These headless tentacles after a time re-expand; but I shall return to this subject. On the other hand, I occasionally succeeded in crushing a gland between a pair of pincers, but this caused no inflection. In this ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... at the Nine-Stone Rig, Beside the headless cross, And they left him lying in his blood, Upon ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... of them fixed it, like that of the vilest traitor, on an immense pole, and bore it in triumph all over Paris; while another division of the outrageous cannibals were occupied in tearing her clothes piecemeal from her mangled corpse. The beauty of that form, though headless, mutilated and reeking with the hot blood of their foul crime—how shall I describe it?—excited that atrocious excess of lust, which impelled these hordes of assassins to satiate their demoniac passions upon the remains ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... still remain standing, visible on the dark background of the thick wood. Looking down upon this mass of ruins from a broken pedestal, half-covered with ivy, a mutilated, but colossal statue of stone still keeps its place. This statue is strange and awful. It represents a headless human figure. Clad in the antique toga, it holds in its hand a dish and on that dish is a head. This head is its own. It is the statue of St. John the Baptist and Martyr, put to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... "Oh, 'Headless Horsemen' and 'Midnight Mysteries,' fascinating maidens carried off by desperate ruffians. I am thankful to say that I have no personal acquaintance with that sort of thing; but, girls, let me ask you a few questions. ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... momentarily mystified me. It was blood, but whose? There was no report or explosion. A dead shell! A terrible fear took possession of me, and I shot up the steps into the trench. The Thing that met my eyes stilled my heart with a chill. The headless body of Billy lay at my feet. It was his life's blood that covered my face and clothes. A mist shrouded my brain for a moment, as I leaned against the side of the trench, utterly unable to speak or think. Then as the truth ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... the scene of "the battle," as it was called in the dispatches; a field in the first flush of the war, where the headless lances of Belgian and German cavalrymen were still scattered about. The peasants had broken off the lance-heads for the steel, which was something to pay for the grain smouldering in the barn which had been shelled ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... and shrieked; and, at times, it seemed as if the chain must be broken. But alarming as were these harrowing types of Vice-Elementals—i.e., nude things with heads of beasts and bodies of men and women; grotesque heads; malevolent eyes; mal-shaped hands; headless beasts, etc.; none had so dangerous an effect on the unity of the trio as the alluring types of Vice-Elementals, i.e., shapes of beautiful women that smiled seductively at Kelson, and resorted to every device to entice him away with them. It was ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... seated, fully draped, and holding baskets of fruits on their knees. They are generally found in sets of three; but unfortunately they have been much mutilated, and all the examples remaining are headless. The Deae Matres would seem to correspond in some degree to the Roman Ceres and the Greek Demeter, the bountiful givers of the fruits of the earth. The majority of the altars found are, as was to be expected, dedicated to the deities ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... the only habitations on the Lido; and I suspect that a genteel villa must formerly have stood near the farm-gate, which we found surmounted by broken statues of Venus and Diana. The poor goddesses were both headless, and some cruel fortune had struck off their hands, and they looked strangely forlorn in the swaggering attitudes of the absurd period of art to which they belonged: they extended their mutilated arms toward the sea for pity, but it regarded them not; ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... of the dead are buried, but his skull is hung up in the taboo house in order, we are told, that his ghost may remain in the neighbourhood of the village and see how his memory is honoured. After the burial of the headless skeleton feasting and dancing go on, often for more than a month, and the expenses are defrayed out of the riches left by the deceased.[636] Even in the case of eminent persons who have been buried whole and entire in the usual ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... that shook the house. Shrieks of laughter from wicked Molly and her coadjutor, Grif, greeted this explosion of wrath, which did no good, however, for half an hour later the same cars, all in a heap, were on the steps again, with two headless dolls tumbling out of the cab, and the dilapidated engine labelled, "No. 11 after ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... to persuade Lady Jane to accept the unreformed religion; but she steadily refused. On the morning when she was to die, she saw from her window the bleeding and headless body of her husband brought back in a cart from the scaffold on Tower Hill where he had laid down his life. But, as she had declined to see him before his execution, lest she should be overpowered and not make a good end, so, she even now showed a constancy and calmness ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... more. "Ain't worth a thought." But everything in the room reminded her of the man. He had furnished it from his junk-pile. The drawer was missing from the centre table, the door of the kitchen stove was wired at the hinges; even the black marble clock, with its headless gilt figure, and the brown tin boxes marked "Coffee," "Bread," and "Sugar"—all were junk. And these were the things that Grit, not without a show of pride, had ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... feelings,—who is kneeling on the field of battle and delivering a despatch to Marlborough on horseback. The graceful ease with which the duke receives the message though the messenger's head be gone, and the soldier-like precision with which the headless hero finishes his last effort of military obedience, may not have been portrayed with well-drawn figures, but no finished illustration ever told its story better. Dickens has informed us that he first met Thackeray in 1835, on which occasion the young artist aspirant, looking no doubt after ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... various colonies permitted. The tragedy of Valley Forge, when the little army nearly starved to death, and literally the soldiers could be tracked over the snows by their bleeding, unshod feet, was not due to lack of clothing and provisions, but to the gross incapacity of a headless government that if it had had the wisdom to act lacked the authority. The situation was one of chaos. The colonies recruited their own contingents, paid such taxes as they pleased, which grew increasingly less, and the Congress had no coercive power to enforce its policies, either with reference ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck |
