"Ransacking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for some seconds in great surprise. When I had arrived in the afternoon the house had been plainly deserted; now it was as plainly occupied. It was my first idea that a gang of thieves might have broken in and be now ransacking Northmour's cupboards, which were many and not ill supplied. But what should bring thieves to Graden Easter? And, again, all the shutters had been thrown open, and it would have been more in the ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and Radisson was in possession. At midnight the watch-dogs raised an alarm, and the French sallied out to find that a New Englander had run to the Hudson's Bay Company for aid, and Governor Bridgar's men were attacking the ships. All of the assailants fled but four, whom Radisson caught ransacking the ship's cabin. Radisson now had more captives than he could guard, so he loaded the Hudson's Bay Company men with provisions and sent them back ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... proceedings of ayuntamientos and early departmental juntas, with other records of a primitive and superstitious people, have been my inadequate authorities. It is but just to state, however, that though this particular story lacks corroboration, in ransacking the Spanish archives of Upper California I have met with many more surprising and incredible stories, attested and supported to a degree that would have placed this legend beyond a cavil or doubt. I have, also, never lost faith in the legend myself, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... searched the rooms, ransacking drawers and chests. They took everything of value they could find, including the shotgun and ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... alchemy, their medical tendencies led them simultaneously to cultivate another ancient delusion, the discovery of a universal panacea or elixir which could cure all diseases and prolong life for ever. Mystical experimenters for centuries had been ransacking all nature, from the yellow flowers which are sacred to the sun, and gold his emblem and representative on earth, down to the vilest excrements of the human body. As to gold, there had been gathered round that metal many fictitious excellences in addition to its real ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... eternity before the men had finished ransacking the rooms, swearing terribly at finding so little there; and then they came out and made for the door at the end, which had an outside staircase leading on to the mountain. At last a noise of voices like distant thunder was heard getting nearer and nearer, ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... that they once inhabited, sufficiently attest their unceasing and untiring activity through almost the whole period of their existence as a nation. Always labouring in their workshops at home in mechanical and aesthetic arts, they were at the same time constantly seeking employment abroad, ransacking the earth for useful or beautiful commodities, building cities, constructing harbours, founding colonies, introducing the arts of life among wild nations, mining and establishing fisheries, organising lines of land traffic, perpetually moving from ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... to attend to the securing of the prisoners, I hastened aft to see how Tompion and his little party were faring in the cabins. I found them in the saloon under the poop, with four prisoners who had been discovered ransacking the cabins, and in one of these prisoners, a fine handsome middle-aged man of swarthy complexion, with dark hair clustering in close ringlets all over his shapely head, dark piercing eyes, small ears, from the lobes of which depended a pair of plain gold ear-rings, and a somewhat slim ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... where did you find this? My dear old desk, which has been lost ever so long! I do believe you have been ransacking its contents! Why did you not tell me that you had found it? What are you doing ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... the dinner Daniel admitted Lucien into the secret of his hopes and studies. Daniel d'Arthez would not allow that any writer could attain to a pre-eminent rank without a profound knowledge of metaphysics. He was engaged in ransacking the spoils of ancient and modern philosophy, and in the assimilation of it all; he would be like Moliere, a profound philosopher first, and a writer of comedies afterwards. He was studying the world of books ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... called for her, and in she came half dressed, and when she saw and heard the Breton bawling for his money, Colindres crying in her shift, the alguazil storming, the attorney in a passion, and the bailiffs ransacking the room, she was in no very good humour. The alguazil ordered her to put on her clothes and be off with him to prison, for allowing men and women to meet for bad purposes in her house. Then indeed the row grew more furious than ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... took them from this room last night. At the very time you pretend you were after the robber at Mrs. Canby's house you were here ransacking my desk." ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... with some embarrassment, and the first class moved in a body to the upper end of the room, where they remained till every desk had been subjected to a fruitless ransacking. ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... was, he had been of late ransacking his grandfather's library and had found besides sea-stories and stories of wrecks, and foreign lands and pirates and deep sea treasure—what interested him more than all, a volume of biographies ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... did not immediately reply. He was evidently trying to gain time, ransacking in his mind for a plausible explanation. "After all," he ultimately said, "the thing's quite possible. When I was with M. Simpson, we had with us an old soldier who had belonged to Napoleon's body-guard and had fought at Waterloo. I recollect he was always repeating that ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... searched for her everywhere. Ushers had flown from loggia to loggia, ransacking the Theatre. Next to the Imperial Box, or was it the second? To the right?—no, the left! Below, or perhaps on the Bel-Etage?—All in vain. Was it only a dream? He stared down at the ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... employed in the development and illustration of the principles by which we are governed in applying those words to their legitimate purpose, namely, that of forming a correct and convenient medium by means of which we can communicate our thoughts? Does philosophy consist in ransacking the mouldy records of antiquity, in order to guess at the ancient construction and signification of single words? or have such investigations, in reality, any thing to ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... help keep us going at home—slowly I could feel this place yielding up its inner self, its punch and bigness, endless rush, its feeling of a nation young and piling up prodigious wealth. From the customhouse came fabulous tales of millionaires ransacking the world. Rare old furniture, rugs and tapestries, paintings, jewels, gorgeous gowns poured in a dazzling torrent all that summer through the docks. One day on a Mediterranean ship, in their immaculate "stalls de luxe," came two black Arab ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... have not since met with in any scholar of my times, and which, in my case, was owing to the practice of daily reading off the newspapers into the best Greek I could furnish extempore; for the necessity of ransacking my memory and invention for all sorts and combinations of periphrastic expressions, as equivalents for modern ideas, images, relations of things, etc., gave me a compass of diction which would never have been called out ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... last breath. They were behind him as, with the death-rattle in his throat, he pulled himself into his chamber and fell in a heap. Katharina the Bohemian was there. She bent her quick-witted, puzzled head over his death agony. The police swarmed everywhere, ransacking, forcing locks, pulling drawers from the bureau and tables, emptying the cupboards. Their search took in everything, even to ripping the mattresses, and not respecting the rooms of Boris Mourazoff, who was away this night. They searched ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... conspirators; a topic more fit to condemn one party than to justify the other. The only witness who deposed against Sidney was Lord Howard; but as the law required two witnesses, a strange expedient was fallen on to supply this deficiency. In ransacking the prisoner's closet, some discourses on government were found; in which he had maintained principles, favorable indeed to liberty, but such as the best and most dutiful subjects in all ages have been known to embrace; the original contract, the source of power ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... the most secret transactions of his life, but this had been carefully concealed from me. I was not only unapprized of any other employment of his time, but had not the slightest suspicion of his possessing any property besides his clothes and books. Ransacking his papers, with a different view, I lighted on his bank-book, in which was a regular receipt for seven thousand five hundred dollars. By what means he acquired this money, and even the acquisition ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... art-amateur like me, knowing that he was to inherit one of the finest and most carefully chosen collections of gems and art objects in all the world, would be the last man on earth to allow it to be disturbed, let alone to plot its ransacking, the pillage of its cases and the dispersal of their precious contents. No man could better have exposed the absurdity of the whole flimsy and preposterous fabrication that I had had two confederates, who had, in my interest and at my suggestion, robbed first the triclinium and ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... me in this house; for, as I was ransacking the Sysselmann's book-case, I found Rotteck's Universal History, a German Lexicon, and several poems and ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... the town we passed through on that day had been pillaged to the fullest extent. Not content with ransacking the interior of each house, the soldiers had broken up every article of furniture, and with wanton destruction had thrown everything portable out of the windows. Each street was filled with a mass of debris consisting of household effects of every kind, ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... he mean?' marvelled the poor woman as the janitor disappeared. 'Is he spending all this time ransacking the rooms? I wish I dared disobey him. I wish ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... ancient Bristol churches; of course, wholly above suspicion, for they were in the true old English style. These communications were regarded as of inestimable value, and the lucky finder promised to increase his vigilance, in ransacking the whole mass of antique documents for fresh disclosures. It was not long before other important scraps were discovered, conveying just the kind of information which Mr. Barrett wanted, till, ultimately, Chatterton ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... I shall try to get the whole of the Leicester administration, terminating with the grand drama of the Invincible Armada, into one volume; but I doubt, my materials are so enormous. I have been personally very hard at work, nearly two years, ransacking the British State Paper Office, the British Museum, and the Holland archives, and I have had two copyists constantly engaged in London, and two others at the Hague. Besides this, I passed the whole of last winter at Brussels, where, by special favor of the Belgian Government, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... displayed by many writers, in ransacking the pages of history, in order to fasten on certain prelates of the Church charges of despotism and oppression. But, apart from the fact that the narratives so carefully compiled have, in many cases, turned out to be perversions of the truth, and granting ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... which took wonderfully with the people, for the curiosity and interest attaching to the characters was just suited to the restless, eager temperament of the Camdenites, and they entered into it with heart and soul, ransacking boxes and barrels and worm-eaten chests, scouring the country far and near and even sending as far as Davenport and Rock Island for the necessary costumes. Andy himself had been asked by Harry Clifford to lend his Sunday suit, that young scamp ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... a piece of cotton waste in the flap pocket of the door nearest Roy, but Gilbert Tyson's ransacking of the other one revealed some miscellaneous paraphernalia; there was a pair of motorist's gloves, a road map, a newspaper, and ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... redouble for some time past. He had petitioned the bishop for an edict which expressly forbade the Bohemian women to come and dance and beat their tambourines on the place of the Parvis; and for about the same length of time, he had been ransacking the mouldy placards of the officialty, in order to collect the cases of sorcerers and witches condemned to fire or the rope, for complicity in crimes with rams, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... it very short," said Halleck; and they climbed the narrow little street where Marcia had at last found a house, after searching the South End quite to the Highlands, and ransacking Charlestown and Carnbridgeport. These points all seemed to her terribly remote from where Bartley must be at work during the day, and she must be alone without the sight of him from morning till night. The accessibility ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... in six months; and fancying it must be about lunch-time with them, I went down-town, as soon as they were comfortably settled in the new quarters, to get them food. A rattler, you know, will touch no dead meat, so I had to seek some living bait. After ransacking the markets I found at last one young cuye—the funny little South American, generally miscalled among us the "guinea-pig." It was about half grown—a very proper-sized ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... a moment looking on the ground, as if he were ransacking his ingenuity to see what else he could do to save his father's reputation. Then, with a little cold sigh, he seemed to signify that he regretfully surrendered the late marquis to the penalty of his turpitude. He gave a hardly perceptible shrug, took his neat umbrella ...
— The American • Henry James
... purchase two flounces of the handsomest lace, and had made two unsuccessful expeditions to the Ghetto in search of it, ransacking all the shops and listening to an immeasurable amount of falsehood; but as I was soon to leave Rome, I did not wish to do so with my commission unfulfilled, and resolved to make another search: besides, that beautiful pale statuette deeply interested me, without ever having addressed ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... for souvenirs, and on the second day hardly a man had a button left on his coat. Orders were issued that the buttons be replaced before the next parade, and it was amusing to hear the boys trying to explain to the village shop-mistress what they wanted. It ended in their ransacking the stock themselves, but I do not think any one found many buttons of the same kind, and our uniforms did not look as smart as usual, as somehow blouse-buttons do not seem to go well ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... keep her out of France. This stupefied her for a time. One day it came over her that she was herself suspect. This seemed ridiculous beyond words in view of her abhorrence of the German cause in large and in detail. Ransacking her soul for an explanation, she ran upon the idea that it was because of ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... ruefully, "I never broke out like this before. And the worst of it is that I know with the least encouragement from you I'll start again. I never wanted to talk so much in my life. I'm ransacking my brain this very minute to see if there's anything else I know that I haven't told you. Oh, yes, there is," he exclaimed putting his hand inside his coat, "there's some more money coming to you from Slim—I forgot to tell you. It isn't a great deal but—" he laid in her hand the bank-notes ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... he communicated secretly with Antigonus, and that he had beforehand prevailed with the Megalopolitans to press the Achaeans to crave aid from Antigonus. For they were the most harassed by the war, Cleomenes continually plundering and ransacking their country. And so writes also Phylarchus, who, unless seconded by the testimony of Polybius, would not be altogether credited; for he is seized with enthusiasm when he so much as speaks a word of Cleomenes, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... however, was not derelict in the performance of his duty for, snatching a cane from the innkeeper, he poked underneath the bed, ransacking every corner, even to the cracks in the wall. Twisting his body out of reach, and cautiously drawing a full breath, Giton pressed his mouth against the very bugs themselves. (The pair had scarcely left the room) when Eumolpus burst in in great excitement, for the doors had been broken ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Neapolitans, are readily made drunk. I have keys, as you know, with which I can open any chamber or cabinet in Paris. For three months a night has not passed, during the greater part of which I have not been engaged, personally, in ransacking the D—— Hotel. My honor is interested, and, to mention a great secret, the reward is enormous. So I did not abandon the search until I had become fully satisfied that the thief is a more astute man than myself. I fancy that I have investigated every nook ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... left them. It used to be affirmed, that the dead shopkeeper, in a white wig, a faded velvet coat, an apron at his waist, and his ruffles carefully turned back from his wrists, might be seen through the chinks of the shutters, any night of the year, ransacking his till, or poring over the dingy pages of his day-book. From the look of unutterable woe upon his face, it appeared to be his doom to spend eternity in a vain effort ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... troops were ransacking the houses a little farther down the road. In Mr. Munroe's tavern they were compelling old John Raymond to bring them food, and because he could not give them what they wanted, sent a bullet ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Bishop of London. He, hearing what was going on, repaired to the spot, and with great difficulty succeeded in restraining the mob and saving the palace. They, however, proceeded forthwith to the house of Lord Percy, where they burst through the doors, and, ransacking all the rooms, tore and broke every thing to pieces, and threw the fragments out at the windows. They found a man dressed as a priest, whom they took to be Lord Percy in disguise, and they killed him ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... furtively under their bushy coverts, and his chief characteristic was a crabbed reticence which not even the exigencies of handling a crew of steel-layers seemed able to break. His face was one not to be easily forgotten; from the first sight I had of it, it was vaguely familiar, and a thoughtful ransacking of the cubby-holes of memory very shortly recalled it for me. Dorgan was an ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... spoil, and many a foreign guest From every corner driving an enjoyer, Supplying it with power of a destroyer. So far'd fair Hero in th' expugned fort Of her chaste bosom; and of every sort Strange thoughts possess'd her, ransacking her breast For that that was not there, her wonted rest. She was a mother straight, and bore with pain Thoughts that spake straight, and wish'd their mother slain; She hates their lives, and they their own and hers: Such strife still grows where sin the race prefers: Love is a golden bubble, full ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... interest in Greek and Roman culture, which, as we have seen, dominated European thought from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, was felt not only in literature and in the outward life of its devotees—in ransacking monasteries for lost manuscripts scripts, in critically studying ancient learning, and in consciously imitating antique behavior—but likewise in a marvelous ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the depths of a lounging-chair and lighted a cigarette. "So you're after Thomas Matthew, too, are you? Kittredge has been ransacking the town for him all day, and up to a couple of hours ago he hadn't found him. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... folded up the translation, and put it into his pocket; and, promising to send her some more letters in a few days, he took his leave. The banker went back to his private office. After ransacking his papers for a long time, he found an old letter directed to him, in the care of the firm, postmarked at Paris, with a French postage stamp upon it. Into the envelope of this letter he thrust the ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... not caring about this room, busied themselves in ransacking the rooms below, in one of which I was said to be. In fact, they found the other hiding-place which I thought of going into, as I mentioned before. It was not far off, so I could hear their shouts of joy when they first found it. But after joy comes grief; and so it was with them. The ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... came to Boston, as a matter of course, I spent much of my time in surveying "the lions," dipping into this, and peeping into that; promenading the Common and climbing the stupendous stairway of Bunker Hill; ransacking the forts, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... a year the little army of De Soto wandered about in Florida, ransacking the burying grounds of the Indians in search of treasures, and committing such other depredations as were common to the civilization of that age. When inquiries were made for gold, the Indians always pointed toward the north; and, following these hints, the expedition ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... indefatigable perseverance to traversing, sometimes singly, but more frequently in bands of two, three, or more, Italy, Greece, Spain, and the more civilized countries of Europe for the purpose of ransacking,—or pretending to ransack,—the shelves of convent libraries of their treasures. As scarcely anything was more profitable than searching for MSS.,— particularly when it was certain that, after the looking for, they would ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... at first, like the others, without any division and without the intervention of Cide Hamete Benengeli; and it seems not unlikely that Cervantes had some intention of bringing Dulcinea, or Aldonza Lorenzo, on the scene in person. It was probably the ransacking of the Don's library and the discussion on the books of chivalry that first suggested it to him that his idea was capable of development. What, if instead of a mere string of farcical misadventures, he were to make his tale a burlesque ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a favourite shirt for many moons, Soft, silken, soothing and of tenderest tone, Gossamer-light withal. The Subs., my peers, Envied the garment, ransacking the land To find a shirt its equal—all in vain. For, when we tired of shooting at the Hun And other Batteries clamoured for their share And we resigned positions at the front To dally for a space behind the line, To shed my war-worn vesture ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... same manuscript, that in the autumn of the year 1776, he was one of the number who composed the College of Queen's Museum, and lived with his brother, Dr. Ephraim Brevard, and that in ransacking a number of his brother's papers thrown aside as useless, he came across the fragments of a Declaration of Independence by the people of Mecklenburg. Upon inquiry, his brother informed him they were the rudiments out of which a short ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... in a stately old palace not far from the Fountain of Trevi, and made himself a home to which books and pictures and prints and odds and ends of curious furniture gave an air of leisurely permanence. He had the tastes of a collector; he spent half his afternoons ransacking the dusty magazines of the curiosity-mongers, and often made his way, in quest of a prize, into the heart of impecunious Roman households, which had been prevailed upon to listen—with closed doors and an impenetrably wary ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... that there was no ransacking of the house, as one might have expected. Had the foe fired it he would not have been surprised at all, but all was quiet in the hall, and the voices of the men came mostly from the storehouses, whence he could hear them rolling the casks into the courtyard; so he told me to bide quietly ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... safe on her way to the trireme, which was a little off shore, Agias ran back to the villa; the pirates were ransacking it thoroughly. Everything that could be of the slightest value was ruthlessly seized upon, everything else recklessly destroyed. The pirates had not confined their attack to the Lentulan residence ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... lay slack on the neck of the drowsy beast; his hands were piled on the pommel of the saddle as over his familiar pulpit; his dreamy moss-agate eyes were on the tree-tops far ahead. In truth he was preparing a sermon on the affection of one man for another and ransacking Scripture for illustrations; and he meant to preach this the following Sunday when there would be some one sadly missed among his hearers. Nevertheless he enjoyed great peace of spirit this day: it was ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... leaders who were planning a British Convention. Of these the most formidable was the Secretary of the London Corresponding Society. Accordingly, early on 12th May, some Bow Street officers made their way into Hardy's shop, No. 9, Piccadilly, arrested him, seized his papers, ransacking the room where Mrs. Hardy was in bed. The shock to her nerves was such as to bring on premature child-birth with fatal results. On the same day a royal message came to Parliament announcing that the efforts of certain Societies to summon a Convention in defiance of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... to Sam, "that's the man for me. He's sure to tell us a good deal that we don't know, and although I have been ransacking Bombay ever since I arrived, for information, I don't yet ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... by fleeing, opposed the will of Caesar; hence he would implore him to give an order to search for her throughout the city and the empire, even if it came to using for that purpose all the legions, and to ransacking in turn every house within Roman dominion. Petronius would support his prayer, and the search would begin from ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... letters that afternoon. Indeed, the episode set him to ransacking the desk in which Patricia had found them—a desk which, as you have heard, was heaped with the miscellaneous correspondence of the colonel's father dating back a half-century and more. Much curious ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... gentlewoman, named Fabry, with her aged mother and other females of the family, had taken refuge in the cellar of her mansion. As the day was drawing to a close, a band of plunderers entered, who, after ransacking the house, descended to the cellarage. Finding the door barred, they forced it open with gunpowder. The mother, who was nearest the entrance, fell dead on the threshold. Stepping across her mangled body, the brigands sprang upon her daughter, loudly demanding ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... some lodgers had found in the cellars several jars filled with a dark-coloured ponderous matter. Upon the strength of the rumour, a believer in all the wondrous tales told of Nicholas Flamel bought the house, and nearly pulled it to pieces in ransacking the walls and wainscotting for hidden gold. He got nothing for his pains, however, and had a heavy bill to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... much peril, but both Ethan and Fanny seemed to be chained to the spot where they stood, fascinated, as it were, by the anguished cries of agony and death that were borne to their revolting senses by the airs of that summer morning. The savages were at that moment busy in ransacking and plundering the house, but Fanny realized that she might be the next victim; that the tomahawk of the terrible Lean Bear might be glaring above her head in a few moments more. She trembled like an aspen leaf in the extremity of her terror, as she heard the ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... let me tell you, Mr. Neville, that I have a great mind to report you for trespassing in my quarters. You may think you have the right to demand your own if you choose to break a compact made for your own good, but you have no right to be guilty of the liberty and meanness of ransacking another man's ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... drawers. His sleight of hand however had not altogether escaped the observation of his companions. They discovered that he had made free with the communion plate of the Popish families, whose private hoards he had assisted in ransacking. When therefore he applied for reward, he was dismissed, not merely with a refusal, but with a stern reprimand. He went away mad with greediness and spite. There was yet one way in which he might obtain ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... cantankerous self-righteousness, whom nobody could please or satisfy, but indeed when he was most pitiless about the faults of his race or nation he was really reproaching himself, and when he seemed more egotistical and introspective and self-centred he was really ransacking himself for a clue to that same confusion of purposes that waste the hope and strength of humanity. And now through the busy distresses of the night it would have perplexed a watching angel to have drawn the ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... they strolled among the pines, worked in the little garden behind the house, fished, played upon the beach, or explored the neighborhood. When it rained, which was seldom, they cleaned up the house, read books and old letters, ransacking trunks and drawers trying to discover the secret of the departed owner. But in vain. The departed owner had been careful to leave no clew to his identity or of his reason for abiding there. They did find, ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... are said to be quarrelling as to whether the occupied Serbian territory should eventually belong to the Monarchy or the Kingdom, and the jurists on either side are ransacking the history of the past for arguments to support their respective cases. Here we have another instance of the fondness of learned men for disputing about purely academic questions. Serbia will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... of the band which had attacked the mill, joined with a few plough-lads from the country around. But they were desperate; they had come up the Coltham road so quietly, that, except this faint murmur, neither I nor any one in the town could have told they were near. Wherever they had been ransacking, as yet they had not attacked my father's house; it stood up on the other side the road—barred, ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... delight of your soul, that loves to gaze on the growing glory; but delight is lost in wonder, and you know that they, too, are warlocks. Some heap image upon image, piles of imagery on piles of imagery, as if they were ransacking and robbing, and red-reavering earth, sea, and sky; yet all things there are consentaneous with one grand design, which, when consummated, is a Whole that seems to typify the universe. Others give you but fragments—but such as awaken imaginations of beauty and of power transcendent, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... him, And kiss the lips of unacquainted change; And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath Out of the bloody fingers' ends of john. Methinks I see this hurly all on foot: And, O, what better matter breeds for you Than I have nam'd!—The bastard Falconbridge Is now in England, ransacking the church, Offending charity: if but a dozen French Were there in arms, they would be as a call To train ten thousand English to their side: Or as a little snow, tumbled about Anon becomes a mountain. O noble Dauphin, Go with me to the king:—'tis wonderful What may ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... arrived at, the door opened suddenly. The old lady, being apprehensive, from the long stay of the two visitors, that they were ransacking the rooms and hiding portable articles about their persons, had overcome her superstitious antipathy, and opened the door quickly, so that she might catch them in the act. But they were only standing in the middle of the room, earnestly talking ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... the undertaker could get into the house. When it was learned that Kottinger was dead, a number of his relatives hastened to his hut. There has been a shameful neglect of the dead shown, and indecent haste in ransacking the place in search of the gold and other treasures known ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... been that, of course, he would be retaken immediately. But the hours slipped away, and the days, and still there was no trace of him. The whole city was searched, and I discovered then that the Spanish Woman was far from escaping public suspicion. Detectives went in and out of her house, ransacking its remotest, most cunningly concealed places. She herself was closely questioned, but nothing ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... galloping hither and thither, ransacking houses in search of food or anything else worth carrying off. It might be that presently some of them would even be found putting the torch to any building that failed to meet with their approval, after a ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow |
