"Coffin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and talked to the house-keeper about the dinners. But Lucy had sat at her father's elbow, had read to him of evenings when he went to sleep, had brought him his slippers and looked after the comforts of his easy chair. All this she had done as a child; but when she stood at the coffin head, and knelt at the coffin side, then she ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... pickaxe struck against a stone. He dug round it with the spade, and came to a layer of black burnt ashes of bones. Beneath these, which he scraped away, was the large flat stone on which his pick had struck. It was a wide slab of red sandstone, and Randal soon saw that it was the lid of a great stone coffin, such as the ploughshare sometimes strikes against when men are ploughing the fields in the ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang
... are pouring out these streams of liquid death over the land, and burning up your own neighbors, to enable them to pay their taxes and support religion! Why don't you set up a coffin factory, to create a brisker demand for lumber, and so help the farmers to pay their taxes; and then spread the smallpox among the people, that they may die the faster, and thus increase your business, and give ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... hour of death." Round that grave, whose occupant had rejected religion and its ministrations in life and in death, stood three hundred girls, pupils of those "professional schools," holding bouquets in their hands, and throwing flowers on the coffin of their mistress. The schools are of a piece with the teachers. Ten hours are spent in them, but all religious instruction is strictly forbidden, under the pretext that they are free schools, "open to children of all persuasions, without religious distinction." The founders of ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... yes! Oh, yes! David, he wore them very same clo'es, an' he took me to that very same show that very same night!" There was in her face a look almost of awe, as if a sight of her long-buried past youth had been shown to her from a coffin. ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... material, warming themselves by fires of birchwood charcoal, reading books bound in birch, and eating herrings from a birchen platter, pickled in a birchen cask. Their baskets, boats, harness, and utensils are all of Birch; in short, from cradle to coffin, the Birch forms the peculiar environment of the Laplander."[36:1] In England we still admire its graceful beauty, whether it grows in our woods or our gardens, and we welcome its pleasant odour on our Russia leather bound books; but we ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... see how far removed from the Christian doctrine of souls is the primeval theory of the soul or other self that figures in dreamland. So grossly materialistic is the primitive conception that the savage who cherishes it will bore holes in the coffin of his dead friend, so that the soul may again have a chance, if it likes, to revisit the body. To this day, among the peasants in some parts of Northern Europe, when Odin, the spectral hunter, rides by attended by his furious host, the windows in every sick-room are ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... and cheered by a chaplain, who had a fine taste in the decorative arts, came resolutely to Montfort Court; and there, surrounded with architects and gilders and upholsterers, redeemed his errors; and, soothed by the reflection of the palace provided for his successor, added to his vaults—a coffin. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... groomed young official from the hotel took me out to see the famous old Palace bar and the beautiful Maxfield Parrish painting above it. They have taken the rail away, and around the edge of the bar they have built a nicely finished woodwork wall which looks exactly like a great coffin, the coffin of John Barleycorn. After the manner of my species I wanted to see over the edge and the young man, thinking that I might be suspecting a blind pig, boosted me up to peck over. I asked him why they didn't remove the bar entirely and he said with ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... Feretri) spent much of his time. John de Wheathampsted also built the tomb of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (d. 1447), on the side of the chapel opposite the Watching Loft (a few steps lead down to the coffin); prepared his own tomb W. from that of the duke; built the great Perp. window over the W. porches, now replaced by one Dec. in design, and the nine N. windows of Nave and Ante-Choir; and was probably responsible for the paintings discovered on ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... prisoner, and knowing death to be inevitable, received a proposition to represent the duke with as much joy as if life had been offered him; and hearing this, that a great lady, having bribed those who could open his coffin, and having looked at the form, cried, 'Ah, that is not the Duke of Monmouth.'" Furthermore, Sainte-Foix, who sought to prove that the Iron Mask was no other than the Duke of Monmouth, cited a passage of another ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... in the morning, when they came with their proffers of sympathy and help. The friendly half-breeds came in, cared for the poor children and prepared the dead mother for burial. A half-breed dug the grave and nailed a rude box together for a coffin. Then with a bleeding heart, the sore bereaved man consigned to the bosom of the friendly earth the ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... held the remains of the saint was solemnly opened in the presence of several dignitaries of the Church, among whom was Cardinal Baronius, who left an account of the appearance of the body. "She was lying," says Baronius, "within a coffin of cypress-wood, enclosed in a marble sarcophagus; not in the manner of one dead and buried, that is, on her back, but on her right side, as one asleep, and in a very modest attitude; covered with a simple stuff of taffety, having her ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... well where he was going to. He was going to St. Mary's Rock, and of all the places on land or sea, it was the place I was most afraid of, being so big and frowning, an ugly black mass, standing twenty to thirty feet out of the water, draped like a coffin in a pall, with long fronds of sea-weed, and covered, save at high water, by a ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... this convention, never supposing that I should take part in the proceedings. Indeed, I was not aware that any one connected with the convention even so much as knew my name. I was, however, quite mistaken. Mr. William C. Coffin, a prominent abolitionst(sic) in those days of trial, had heard me speaking to my colored friends, in the little school house on Second street, New Bedford, where we worshiped. He sought me out in the crowd, and invited me to say a few ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... when he arrived rather early, he learned from Mary Hope that her father had died just before daylight, and that Hugh had not come back, and the doctor wanted to be taken to Jumpoff, and she could not leave her mother there alone, and a coffin must be ordered, and she did not know what to do. She was past tears, it seemed to Lance. She was white and worn and worried, and there was something in her eyes that made them too tragic to look at. He stood just outside the kitchen door and talked with her ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... to her child, as Keery's peaceful, shrouded face was hidden under the coffin-lid and carried away to Greenfield Hill. Pitiful whisper! happily all-unmeaning to the child, but full of desolation to the mother, floating with but one tiny plank amid the wild wrecks of a midnight ocean, and clinging as only the desperate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... that a ghost was seen at Patricroft! A barge was silently gliding along the canal near midnight, when the boatman suddenly saw a figure in white. "It moved among the trees with a coffin in its arms!" The apparition was so sudden and strange that he immediately concluded that it was a ghost. The weird sight was reported at the stations along the canal, and also at Wolverhampton, which was the boatman's headquarters. He told the people at Patricroft on his return ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... profound. Thought dead; the fun'ral obsequies achieved, He was surprised, and doubtless sorely grieved, When he awoke and saw where he was placed, With folks around, not much to suit his taste; For in the coffin he at large was left, And of the pow'r to move was not bereft, But might arise and walk about the tomb, Which opened to another vaulted room, The gloomy, hollow mansion of the dead: Fear quickly o'er his drooping spirits spread. What's here? ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... relic-hunting friars from Avila. In a ruthless haste, these pious thieves had lifted the poor embalmed corpse from its resting-place at Alba; they had cut the old woman's arm from the shoulder; they had left it behind in the rifled coffin, and then hastily huddling up the body, they had fled southwards with their booty, while the poor nuns, who had loved and buried their dead "mother," who had been shut by a trick into their own choir while the awful ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... do know. You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then to mourn for him? O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, 110 And men have lost their reason!—Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... at each end," objected Tom, looking at Old Dibs like he was measuring him for a coffin, "and you know yourself six foot six is the most we ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... first thing that will be done for him after he gets what he's entitled to," Jim replied, "will be the sending of his measure to a coffin maker." ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... century, was now unveiled. A good breakfast, like that of yesterday, stood on the table. With a moistened eye, and turning to the portrait, he said: 'Therese, to thy memory!' and emptied his glass at a draught. Surprised and moved, I quitted the strange man. On the stairs of the hotel I met the coffin, which was just being carried up for L——; and I thought to myself: 'Poor Clotilde! you will not be able ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... "you look as if you were walking behind my coffin. It is not my first affair, and I dare bet that it will not be my last. When I fight near town I usually fire a hundred or so in Manton's back shop, but I dare say I can find my way to his waistcoat. But I confess that I am somewhat accable, by all that has befallen us. To think of my dear ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... then never, never go Over the lofty mountains? Shall to my thoughts this wall say,—No! Stand with terror of ice and snow, Barring the way unwended, Coffin me when life ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... marry Charlotte, we shall live here together all our lives, and die here," thought Barnabas, as he went up the hill. "I shall lie in my coffin in the north room, and it will all be over," but his heart leaped with joy. He stepped out proudly like a soldier in a battalion, he threw back his shoulders in ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... decreed that no poet may introduce the Phoenix. Scylla and Charybdis are both successfully avoided even by provincial rhetoric. The performance of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted, and Mahomet's unhappy coffin, these are illustrations that have long been the prerogative of dolts and dullards. It is not for a moment to be tolerated that an oasis should be met with ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... wounded. Behind the barricade was almost as great confusion among the English, for Quebec's defenders were made up of boys of fifteen and old men of seventy, and the first crash of battle had been followed by a panic, when half the guards would have thrown down their arms if one John Coffin, an expelled royalist from Boston, had not shouted out that he would throw the first man who attempted to desert into ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the undertaker did accordingly, with a visage of professional length and most grievous solemnity, distribute among the pall-bearers little cards, assigning their respective situations in attendance upon the coffin. As this precedence is supposed to be regulated by propinquity to the defunct, the undertaker, however skilful a master of these lugubrious ceremonies, did not escape giving some offence. To be related ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of this ominous letter was gruesomely decorated with a skull and cross-bones, a rough drawing of a dagger thrust through a bleeding heart, a coffin, and, under all, a huge black hand. There was no doubt about the type of letter that it was. It was such as have of late years become increasingly common in all our large cities, baffling the ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... the threshold of a roundhead fanatic! In the way of hospitality! Not if the choice lay betwixt that and my coffin!' cried ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... fifty years softened hard hearts, bred generosity in cold ones, kindled emotion in dead ones, uplifted base ones, broadened bigoted ones, and made many and many a stricken one glad and filled it brimful of gratitude, figuratively spit upon in his unoffending coffin by this crawling, slimy, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and love, and defend me;—if such be the duties and the tests of a husband,—oh! then indeed I have never had one! Widowed did you say? That means something holy,—sanctified by the shadow of death, and the yearning sympathy and pity of the world; a widow has the right to hug a coffin and a grave all the weary days of her lonely life, and people look tenderly on her sacred weeds. To me, widowhood would be indeed a blessing, Sir, I thought I had learned composure, self-control, but the sight of this room,—of your countenance,—even ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... but the door was locked. Retracing his steps past a vacant lot, the young man entered a shop where a colored man was employed in varnishing a coffin, which stood on two trestles in the middle of the floor. Not at all impressed by the melancholy suggestiveness of his task, he was whistling a lively air with great gusto. Upon Warwick's entrance this effusion came to ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... have I lingered there with empty pockets. One figure, we shall say, was visible in the first plate of characters, bearded, pistol in hand, or drawing to his ear the clothyard arrow; I would spell the name: was it Macaire, or Long Tom Coffin, or Grindoff, 2d dress? O, how I would long to see the rest! how - if the name by chance were hidden - I would wonder in what play he figured, and what immortal legend justified his attitude and strange apparel! And then to go within, to announce yourself as an ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of single Sermons, it will soon be worn out and forgot. But in the mean time, I would humbly hope, that some tender Parent, whom Providence has joined with me in sad Similitude of Grief, may find some Consolation from it, while sitting by the Coffin of a beloved Child, or mourning over its Grave. And I particularly hope it, with Regard to those dear and valuable Friends, whose Sorrows, on the like Occasion, have lately been added to my own. I desire that, tho' they be not expressly ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... and again replanted yet forever uprooted. Our new scientific nomenclature has plenty of words to explain these things; gastritis, pericarditis, all the thousand maladies of women the names of which are whispered in the ear, all serve as passports to the coffin followed by hypocritical tears that are soon wiped by the hand of a notary. Can there be at the bottom of this great evil some law which we do not know? Must the centenary pitilessly strew the earth ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... yo'.' (Jes' dem th'ee wuds!) De wuds fall right slow—like dirt falls out a spade on a coffin when yo's buryin' anybody an' seys, 'Uth to uth.' Marse Chan he jes' let her hand drap, an' he stiddy hisse'f 'g'inst de gate-pos', an' he didn' speak toreckly. When he did ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... Mrs. Salmon. "You see, the undertaker fetched him away when him and his men brought the coffin—the next day. He took charge of the coffin for the second night, and the funeral took place from there. But I'll tell you what—the undertaker'll know the name, and of course the doctor does. They're ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... coffin and a plain funeral after a useful, unselfish life, than a grand mausoleum after a ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... fondly over something that seemed like the coffin of a little child. Then he rushed directly at the window open-mouthed. Sister Ursula went upwards and onwards, none the less swiftly because she heard a muffled oath, the crash of broken glass, and the tinkling of the broken splinters on the pavestones below. For the second time ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... doubt, an answer can be found, and it is partly given, and very awkwardly, by the incessant introduction of narrative. The confused and melodramatic scene in the banquet-hall between Nils Lykke and Skaktavl is of central importance, but what is it about? The business with Lucia's coffin is a kind of nightmare, in the taste of Webster or of Cyril Tourneur. All these shortcomings are slurred over by the enthusiastic critics of Scandinavia, yet they call for indulgence. The fact is that Lady Inger is a brilliant piece of romantic extravagance, which is ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... rather take you to her in your coffin. She's never known you, never seen what most of us have seen, that all you have—or nearly all—is your lovely looks, and what they call a kind heart. There's only you two in your family, and she's got to live with you—awhile, anyhow. She couldn't stand this business. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... an instrument—sometime. I hate to think about it, though I long for it more than I can tell. It makes me feel as if I was such a wicked creature; for just think of wishing for a thing that can only be had over the grandmother's coffin! Oh, dear! I wish I had never heard the sound of music!" and to the surprise and dismay of the little group she burst ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... her way along, until she came to the steps leading to the side gallery, which she ascended, and happily obtained a place where she had a full view of all that was passing below. On a plain catafalque, covered with black velvet, in front of the sanctuary and altar, rested a coffin. It was made of pine, and painted white. A few white lilies and evergreens were scattered among the lights which burned around it; and May knew that some young virgin had gone to her espousals in the kingdom of the ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... over the noiseless plains like the cry of a shot-stricken animal. She saw it all; the breathing of the rosy, golden day; the stillness of the hushed camp; the tread of the few picked men; the open coffin by the open grave; the levelled carbines gleaming in the first rays of the sun.... She had seen it so many times—seen it to the awful end, when the living man fell down in the morning light a ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... and saddened—the friend now of Hope Wayne, and of Amy, her Uncle Lawrence's wife. Alfred was there, solemnized and frightened. The office of Lawrence Newt & Co. was closed, and the partners and the clerks all stood together around the coffin. Abel's mother, shrouded in black, sat in a dim corner of the room, nervously sobbing. Abel's father, sitting in his chair, his white hair hanging upon his shoulders, looked curiously at all the people, while his bony fingers played upon his ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... for nothing had happened since his second failure to make him any surer this time of success. He had settled up his business affairs, arranging for a goodly sum to go to his beloved daughter; he had bought the coffin in which his own body would be laid away and had stored it in one of the principal rooms of his dwelling; he had even engaged the priests and musicians who should chant his funeral dirge, and, last but not least, he had arranged ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... sister died. Just 'fore her died her said her was goin' to see God. Her told de debbil to git away f'um dar, 'cause her warn't gwine wid him. Dey put a little white dress on her and laid her out on de bed, 'til dey could make up a coffin out of plain pine wood for her. Dey just had a prayer and sung 'Hark F'um De Tomb,' and den dey buried her away in ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... furnicher to be shifted an' (what's harder) stowed in a pokey little cottage that wasn' none too big for Aun' Bunney when she lived. An' sixteen steps up to the door, with a turn in 'em! Do 'ee mind what a Dover-to-pay there was gettin' out the poor soul's coffin? An' then look at the size of my dresser. . ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... The gaoler's wife sent him tea, and the turnkey's daughter begged him to write his name in her album, where a many gentlemen had written it on like occasions! 'Bother your album!' says Bulbo. The Undertaker came and measured him for the handsomest coffin which money could buy—even this didn't console Bulbo. The Cook brought him dishes which he once used to like; but he wouldn't touch them: he sat down and began writing an adieu to Angelica, as the clock kept always ticking, and the hands ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Cuirassiers, in white, with drawn swords; and these massive figures stood there by the bedside, and by and by kept solemn guard beside the coffin; also, near by were two Foresters, ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... ADA QUEETIE, O my heart is consumed In the coffin under ground, O how I feel for her, She and I could never part, She was my own heart within me, She had more than common love, ...
— A Complete Edition of the Works of Nancy Luce • Nancy Luce
... is placed in an open coffin, and the head and feet are left bare. A vessel filled with holy water is placed at the foot of the bier, which the priests and relatives of the deceased sprinkle on the body. The service being concluded, the corpse is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... and returned in a few minutes. The chest was carried in, and placed before the cupboard at the foot of the bed. Alas! the poor lady little thought it was her own coffin ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... their friends bring to their relatives such offerings as they please. In the funeral procession cypress coffins are borne in cars, one for each tribe; the bones of the deceased being placed in the coffin of their tribe. Among these is carried one empty bier decked for the missing, that is, for those whose bodies could not be recovered. Any citizen or stranger who pleases, joins in the procession: ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... has been hereditary in my race. I have myself, on a perfectly amateur and unauthorised inspection of Turnberry Point, bent my brows upon the keeper on the question of storm-panes; and felt a keen pang of self-reproach, when we went downstairs again and I found he was making a coffin for his infant child; and then regained my equanimity with the thought that I had done the man a service, and when the proper inspector came, he would be readier with his panes. The human race is perhaps credited with more duplicity than it deserves. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over, indeed, and the funeral day was past; yet one duty remained to the heart-wrung mourners, not less poignant than the sight of the dead changed face, not less crushing than the thud of stones and clods on the coffin of one beloved. They took the great brown desk in which she used to keep her papers, and sorted and put in order all that they found in it. How appealing the sight of that hurried, casual writing of a hand now stark in death! How ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... out of the coffin flew; Earl Harold's mouth it kist; He fell on his face, wherever he stood; And the white dove carried his soul to God ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... yonder—look, Biber, the Duke of Pomerania's quarters in the Green Shield are still lighted. I'll wager that they are yet at the gaming table. A plague upon it! I would be there, too, if my purse allowed. I feel as if yonder dead man and his coffin were burdening my soul. If it was really good fortune in love that snatched the zecchins from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thereunto. They have much pains to part them asunder, and then the melly beginneth again on all sides, and the evening cometh on that parteth them at last. And on this wise the assembly lasted for two days. The damsel that brought the knight on a bier in a coffin, dead, prayed the assembly of all the knights to declare which one of all the knights had done the best, for the knight that she made be carried might not be buried until such time as he were avenged. And they say that the knight of the white shield and the other with the shield sinople and ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... anybody to go round an' look at; there won't be any coffin—Ann, you ain't goin' to have any coffin when he ain't ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... seven watched and bewailed her three whole days; and then they proposed to bury her; but her cheeks were still rosy, and her face looked just as it did while she was alive; so they said, "We will never bury her in the cold ground." And they made a coffin of glass so that they might still look at her, and wrote her name upon it in golden letters, and that she was a king's daughter. And the coffin was placed upon the hill, and one of the dwarfs always sat by it and watched. And the birds of the air came too, and bemoaned Snow-White. First ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... first bay eastward from the Lavandou, I had seen a funeral in which all the crucifixes were borne before the corpse by women, and the coffin carried by women. Ollivier's father was still living—Demosthene, born under the First Republic, and a deputy under the Second: an old Jacobin of an almost extinct type. Ollivier's house is as pretty as the whole coast. It stands on a peninsula with perfect sands, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... got killed was named Alex Golightly. He taught the boys my age how to swim, fish and hunt. His death was the worst thing that had happened in the community. The man who worked at the foundry, made Alex a coffin. It had to be made long and thin because he was mashed up so bad. In those days coffins were nothing but boxes anyway, but Alex's coffin was the most terrible thing that I have ever seen. I reckon if they had had pretty coffins then like they do now, folks would ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... loved her with all the intimate intensity of a glowing friendship, kissed her cold lips again and again, and turned away from her, forever. Mr. Dalton wiped the moisture from his eyes, as he stooped over the coffin lid, and touched her brow, fondly but reverently, with his trembling lips, Mdme. de Beaumont fell upon the prostrate figure of her darling, and in their last mortal embrace, swooned away! Bayard leaning slowly over her, with a face almost ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... speechless. Prayer was beyond her power. She was dumb. God had done it and she deserved it. She heard nothing John said to her. All that long, long day she sat by her dead child, until in the darkening twilight some men came into the room on tiptoe. They had a small white coffin in their care, and placed it on a table near the bed. Then Jane stood up and if an unhappy soul had risen from the grave, it could not have shocked them more. She stood erect and looked at them. Her ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... said, as he clasped my hand tightly in his, as the barge which bore the coffin away vanished in the mist hanging over the river, "mother, why doth God take hence a brave and noble knight, and leave so many who are evil and do evil ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... perceived that a large, strangely-shaped cart stopped up the further end of the passage, and heard a window open, and a voice call out that all was ready. The next moment a light was seen at the door, and a coffin was brought out and placed in the cart. This done, the driver, who was smoking a pipe, cracked his whip, and put the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the following day. After pressing a last kiss on her mother's icy forehead and seeing the coffin nailed down, Jeanne left the room. The invited guests ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Youth, and Manhood come in vain, And Genius given, and Knowledge won in vain; 70 And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild, And all which patient toil had reared, and all, Commune with thee had opened out—but flowers Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier, In the same coffin, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... his Government was electorally ignored on the St. Lawrence. How much more in a time of unpopular war? Was it not clear that every hurrah for the Empire in Ontario, every fresh battalion mustered and drilled in Toronto, every troopship down the St. Lawrence, was a nail in the coffin of Quebec's potentiality ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... crowd of prisoners and gaolers, would have reached the spot where stood Sir Richard Devine, but that the corpse of the murdered Lord Bellasis arose and thrust him back. How the hammers clattered in the shipbuilder's yard! Was it a coffin they were making? Not for Sylvia—surely not for her! The air grows heavy, lurid with flame, and black with smoke. The Hydaspes is on fire! Sylvia clings to her husband. Base wretch, would you shake her off! Look up; the midnight heaven is glittering with ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... which, under happier circumstances, it would have been marked. Nevertheless, there were many mourners, and amongst them a number of French officers of high rank, whilst a guard of honour was formed around the coffin by the French soldiers. A performance of Mozart's 'Requiem' was given in his honour at the Schotten-Kirche, and as the news of his death spread abroad funeral services were held in all the principal cities of Europe. ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... officials to the island of Jamaica, and had the contents of the coffin marked "George H. Towle" photographed. I could not photograph the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... unblemished record. I will not fatigue your attention by enumerating my works and my merits, I will only say that I have done far more than some celebrities. And yet here I am in my old age, I am getting ready for my coffin, so to say, and I am as celebrated as that black dog yonder running on ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... where I was, and see "the dreary death train" move slowly to the dreary inclosure on a hill-top, where the grass grows rank and very green round a number of white wooden crosses, which mark the graves of the officers and soldiers who fell in 1876. The Union Jack was thrown over the coffin, which was carried by six Sikhs, and Mr. Low, Major Swinburne, Rajah Dris and some followers, and Sultan Abdullah's two boys, who had nothing better to do, followed it. By the time the grave was reached torches were required, and the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... of the Delawares were at some distance from the dwellings. The graves were generally dug by the old women, as the young people abhorred this kind of work. If they had a coffin, it was placed in the grave empty. Then the corpse was carried out, lying upon a linen cloth, full in view, that the finery and ornaments, with all the effects left by the deceased, might appear to ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... under which funerals should be conducted, without hurting some one's feelings. The Duke of Sutherland's attempt in England to do away with the dreadful shape which causes a shudder to all who have lost a friend—that of the coffin—was called irreverent, because he suggested that the dead should be buried in wicker-work baskets, with fern-leaves for shrouds, so that the poor clay might the more easily return to mother earth. Those who favor cremation suffer again a still more frantic disesteem; and yet every one deplores ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... for my body to lie in this floating coffin, which was scrupulously clean, white with the whiteness of new deal boards. I was well sheltered from the rain, that fell pattering on my lid, and thus I started for the town, lying in this box, flat on my stomach, rocked by one wave, roughly shaken by another, at moments almost overturned; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Benedictionem Benediction Benison. Cadentia (Low Lat. noun) Cadence Chance. Captivum Captive Caitiff. Conceptionem Conception Conceit. Consuetudinem Consuetude {Custom. {Costume. Cophinum Coffin Coffer. Corpus (a body) Corpse Corps. Debitum (something owed) Debit Debt. Defectum (something wanting) Defect Defeat. Dilat[-a]re Dilate Delay. Exemplum Example Sample. Fabr[)i]ca (a workshop) Fabric Forge. Factionem Faction Fashion. Factum Fact Feat. Fidelitatem Fidelity Fealty. Fragilem ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... decomposition, or by an accumulation of their blocks, the Indians deposit their dead in the earth. The hammock (chinchorro), a kind of net in which the deceased had reposed during his life, serves for a coffin. This net is fastened tight round the body, a hole is dug in the hut, and there the body is laid. This is the most usual method, according to the account of the missionary Gili, and it accords with what I myself ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... at that time in great confusion with coffins, remains of bodies, some of which were dried like mummies, &c., I could find no better seat than one of the coffins. The sexton's boy, who held my light, informed me this was the coffin of Scratching Fanny, which recalled the Cock Lane story to my mind. I got off the lid of the coffin, and saw the face of a handsome woman, with an aquiline nose; this feature remaining perfect, an uncommon case, for the cartilage mostly gives way. The remains ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... this event, Queen Eleanor died (S216). The King showed the devoted love he bore her in the beautiful crosses of carved stone that he raised to her memory, three of which still stand.[1] These were erected at the places where her coffin was set down, in its transit from Grantham, in Lincolnshire, where she died, to the little village of Charing (now Charing Cross, the geographical center of London). This was the last station before her body reached its final resting ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... fall of darkness they swung the dogs into a cluster of spruce trees on the edge of the waterway and made a camp. The coffin, at the side of the fire, served for seat and table. The wolf-dogs, clustered on the far side of the fire, snarled and bickered among themselves, but evinced no inclination to stray ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... deep valleys, like the vague heraldic animal, black and bristly, which peers from the high tower of the municipal palace. One wonders how this could ever have been a city of the fat, voluptuous Etruscans, whose images lie propped up and wide-eyed on their stone coffin-lids. The long wars of old Italic times, in which Etruria fell before Rome, must have burned and destroyed, as one would think, the land as well as the inhabitants, leaving but grey cinders and blackened stone behind. Siena and Florence ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... instinct of the people led them to press around the house of his tribune, as if to demand inspiration even from his coffin; but had Mirabeau been still living, he could no longer have given it; his star had paled its fires before that of the Revolution; hurried to the verge of an unavoidable precipice by the very chariot he himself had set in motion, it was in ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... had leaped down into the floating coffin as it towed alongside; and, lifting the body of the solitary survivor from amidst the corpses of his dead comrades, handed the light load—for the poor, starved creature did not weigh more than a child of ten, although a man of over six feet in height—up ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... the inscription round the old monument, but with leave from the clergyman and the assistance of the sexton they had disinterred the coffin and found it to ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... put up with a deal, I have—more than ever I told a soul since I come here, which I promised Mrs. de Noel when she asked me to oblige her; which the blue lights I have seen a many times, and tapping of coffin-nails on the wall, and never close my eyes for nights sometimes, but am entirely wore away, and my nerve that weak; and then to be so hurt in my feelings, and spoke to as I am not accustomed, but always treated everywhere ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... put in a coffin, and buried; but Sejugah informed me that the different tribes vary in this particular; and it would appear they differ from their near neighbors the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... "Coffin—no!" was the girl's reply. "The shell ain't here yet. Mr. Jones didn't promise that till nine o'clock, and it haven't ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... that other Father?' 'Yes, dear father,' she answered; 'just as God wills.' And when she was dying, he fell on his knees beside her bed, wept bitterly, and prayed for her redemption, and she fell asleep in his arms. As she lay in her coffin, he looked at her and exclaimed, 'Ah! my darling Lena, thou wilt rise again and shine like a star—yea, as the sun;' and added, 'I am happy in the spirit, but in the flesh I am very sorrowful. The flesh will ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... shipped on board a vessel, to be conveyed to England for burial, in accordance with her expressed wish. When the poor creature came to that part of her piteous tale, when, as she called her, her "beautiful angel of a mistress" was put in the coffin, and the estate hands were called in to take a last view of her (a custom in vogue there sometimes), she was overpowered with grief, and her utterance was so choked, that she ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... they were deeply felt when I took my Bible, the first I ever owned or had bought with my own money, and requested that it might be placed as the basis of the little pillow that supported the head of the lifeless child in his coffin. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... "The coffin will be plain, of course... and everything will be plain, so it won't cost much. Katerina Ivanovna and I have reckoned it all out, so that there will be enough left... and Katerina Ivanovna was very anxious it should be so. You ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... choir of the cathedral was completed, ready for the solemn entry in 1227. His fame continued to grow so much, that in 1266 Bishop Lawrence de St. Martin went to Rome and procured his canonization, and he did not pass out of repute until Protestant times. The high coffin tomb, of dark marble, has on its lid a foliated cross in relief, and on its front four circular medallions with crosses of four sculptured leaves. The arch of the recess, springing from corbels of elaborately ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... to kiss the chaste lips that so tenderly sought his own. And suddenly he heard a knocking sound, as of a hammer,—regular, but soft, low, subdued. Did you ever, O reader, hear the sound of the hammer on the lid of a coffin in a house of woe,—when the undertaker's decorous hireling fears that the living may hear how he parts them from the dead? Such seemed the sound to ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... covered with velvet, in which are said to be the bodies of two Ambassadors, detained here for debt; but what were their names, or what Princes they served, I could not learn. Our guide next showed us the body of King Henry the Fifth's Queen, Catherine, in an open coffin, who is said to have been a very beautiful Princess; but whose shrivelled skin, much resembling discoloured parchment, may now serve as a powerful antidote to that vanity with which frail beauty is apt to inspire ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... the foot of the uncovered sarcophagus, casting a dim glow oyer the centre of the apartment, and deepening the shadows which seemed to huddle together in the corners. By this flickering light the coffin was placed in its granite shell, the heavy slab laid over it reverently, and the oaken door swung on its rusty hinges, shutting out the uncertain ray of sunshine that had ventured to peep ...
— A Struggle For Life • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... into their boats, nor were they longer satisfied to hang back one or more hundred yards as formerly—that elixir had quite captured their hearts, and they scrambled to keep in close proximity to the magical "floating coffin," as they denominated the cedar canoe, as if they could scent future feasts along the line of that ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... on the fourth day after her death. In the morning of that day, from strong affection—having known her from an infant—I begged permission to see the corpse. She was in her coffin; snowdrops and crocuses were laid upon her innocent bosom, and roses, of that sort which the season allowed, over her person. These and other lovely symbols of youth, of springtime, and of resurrection, caught my eye for the first moment; but in the next it fell ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... an object to weep over. His enemies, if a creature so wretched could have had enemies, would have forgiven him, on seeing him in his new dress. His friends—had any of his friends been left—would have been less distressed if they had looked at him in his coffin than if they had looked at him as he was now. Incessantly restless, he paced the room from end to end. Now he looked at his watch; now he looked out of the window; now he looked at the well-furnished breakfast-table—always with the same wistful, uneasy inquiry ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... now are past, This very day I broke the last— And now its perfumed breath is hid, With her, beneath a coffin-lid; There will its petals fall apart, And wither on her icy heart:- At three red Roses' cost My ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... vulgar interest was momentarily kindled by the collection and the simultaneous movement of reluctant hands towards their owners' pockets; but the coins fell on the baize-covered plates with a dull thud, like clods on a coffin, and the dreariness returned. Then there was another hymn and a prolonged moan from the harmonium, to which mysterious suggestion the congregation rose and began slowly to file into the aisle. For a moment they mingled; there was ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... the wild, free life of the north? So I was not surprised when Paul Larocque's spade struck sharply on a box. Indians sleep their last sleep in the skins of the chase. Nor was I in the least amazed when that same spade pried up the lid of cached provisions instead of a coffin. Then I had ocular proof of what I knew before, that Louis in word and conduct—but chiefly in conduct, which is the way of the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... she said decisively, as he crossed the threshold. "There's not enough silver in Sark to make a plate for your coffin." ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... admired the grey interior, the bare walls growing into the roof in unbroken curves, the massive stone rood-screen, the sorrowful faces in the holy pictures, when a little procession filed into the church; four girls carrying a flower-bedecked coffin, half a dozen elders, and a pack of children carrying candles—a sight at once terrible and diurnal, a ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... want anything soon, but a coffin and a grave," said his mother. Matilda wondered how she could speak so; she did not know yet how long misery makes people seem hard. "How he'll get them, I don't know," Mrs. Binn went on; ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... gallows, but he was mercifully shot, at Pest on the 6th October 1849. It is said that the infamous Haynau was nearly mad with rage that his noble victim escaped the last indignity of hanging. His remains were ordered to be buried in a nameless coffin in the burial-ground of the common criminals,.and for many years it was supposed that he had received no other sepulchre. This was not so, however, for two priests who were greatly attached to the magnate's family ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... greatest benefactor you ever had. You thought the thing out carefully. You devised a cunning scheme whereby you might become rich and powerful at the expense of George Le Fenu, and scarcely was the earth dry upon his coffin before your warnings came. You knew the legend of the Four Finger Mine, and you elected to defy it. A week went by, a week during which you took the gold from the mine, and all seemed well with you. Then you ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... bad, but there are worse things than that. I wonder what she meant by that wild cry of 'Tear it open! See if her heart is there?' Tear what open? the coffin?" ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... country! To astonish Europe with an act of folly, such as Europe for two centuries has never beheld in any government! No, sir; such talk is enough to make the bones of Andrew Jackson turn round in his coffin." ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... the prevailing custom, and to show that he had not been murdered, the corpse was placed in the doorway. A small coffin of cedar-wood, painted red and black, stood on a bier, and showed the dead child dressed in a white shroud. He had a garland on his head, woven of the plant of death, the strong-scented Apium or celery. In his mouth he had an obol as ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... pleasures, trophies and teeming life, sent up a confused and low murmur in the distance; only the wind was audible among the tombs. Never had the beautiful Church of England services appeared to me so grand and pathetic as when here read over the coffin of one who had died in exile, and with only a few of his countrymen, most of them unacquainted even with his ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and young, were struggling at once with the pestilence. Friends and relatives, when they met one another in the streets, would hurry onward without a grasp of the hand or scarcely a word of greeting, lest they should catch or communicate the contagion; and often a coffin ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... left alone Febrer went down to the beach. Uncle Ventolera was caulking the seams of his beached boat with tow and pitch. Lying in it as if it were an enormous coffin, with his weak eyes he sought out the leaks, and on finding one he would begin singing his Latin ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Russian Ambassador. The Chamber filled in complete silence. The whole House, from royalists to socialists, listened, standing, to a glowing tribute by M. Paul Deschanel, president of the Chamber, to M. Jaurs, over whose coffin, he said, the whole of France was united. "There are no more adversaries," exclaimed M. Deschanel, with a voice trembling with emotion, "there are only Frenchmen." The whole house as one man raised a resounding shout ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... walk brought us in front of the "Giant's Coffin," an enormous rock forty feet in length, which has fallen from the ceiling. The resemblance to a coffin is so strangely exact, that, having heard mention of it before coming in, I recognized it at the first glance. The upper ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... their creaking locks, were pointed menacingly at us; the steel points of the bayonets were pointed at our hearts. The song resounded louder and louder, with increasing joy. Held in the friendly hands of the 'strugglers,' the black coffin slowly sank ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... king to me, after the ladies in waiting had withdrawn, "how do you account for this cross being here in my hand, considering it was put into the coffin? You think the vault may have been pillaged? That, I believe, is out of the question. The object of a carnival freak, which could have been perpetrated just as easily in any other dress, is far too slight ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... ten people in the church or in the churchyard during the whole time of the funeral. To think that a man with half a million of money could die and be got rid of with so little parade! What money could do—in a moderate way—was done. The coffin was as heavy as lead could make it. The cloth of the best. The plate upon it was of silver, or looked like it. There was no room for an equipage of hearses and black coaches, the house was so unfortunately ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... all at outs with you over your rockin' I never lay it up against you—we 've been friends too many years. If you can be happy rockin' through life till some fine day you rock over backward into your coffin, all I can say is that it won't be my funeral, 'n' bein' as it will be yours, I shall be too busy that day to fuss over ifs 'n' ands. I 'm keepin' the board 'n' saw-horses as father had for you, 'n' the black bow from his door-bell, too, 'n' after you 're done with them I 'm intendin' ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... vault of the noble Count van Valkenburg, whom your reverence buried three days ago. Fortunately the masons have not yet come to cement down the stone. If your Excellencies find it close, you can get air by standing upon the coffin of the ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... fell upon my neck, weeping, and as mute as a fish. As soon as he came to his speech again he told me of the great miraculum (dmonis I mean) which had befallen at the burial of old Lizzie. For that, just as the bearers were about to lower the coffin into the grave, a noise was heard therein as though of a carpenter boring through a deal board; wherefore they thought the old hag must be come to life again, and opened the coffin. But there she lay as before, all black and blue in the face and as cold as ice; but her ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold |
