"Gunpowder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... work to unpack the dray: and after taking out sufficient flour, sugar, tea, &c., for use, the remainder of the goods were taken to the nearest store, where they were sold at an average of five times their original costs: the most profitable portion of the cargo consisted of some gunpowder and percusion-caps. The day after, by good fortune, we disposed of the dray and horses for 250 pounds, being only 40 pounds less than we paid for them. As the cost of keeping horses at the diggings is very great (sometimes two or three pounds a day per head), besides ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... a lofty and abstruse nature, developing itself in wonderful inventions—gunpowder, for instance, is ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... but at a proper distance; women picking linen for lint and chatting genially the while at shop doors and porter's lodge-gates; and a piquet of soldiers at the corner of every street, who felt us all over for hidden cartridges before they let us through; it was all entrancing! The subtle scent of gunpowder was in the air—the most suggestive smell there can be. Even now, here in England, the night of the fifth of November never comes round but I am pleasantly reminded of the days when I was "en pleine revolution" in the streets of Paris with my father and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... equal to the occasion," Sir Penthony remarks, admiringly. "As a penny showman he would have been invaluable and died worth any money. Such energy, such unflagging zeal is rare. That pretty gunpowder plot he showed his friends the other night would ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... the valor of twenty-fold heroes, but had to retreat; babbling about shells and mortars, battalions, manoeuvres, angles, fascines, and other items of military art; for war had filled the whole brain of the people, and enveloped the whole thought of man in a mist of gunpowder. ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... before him, you may set it down that he was likely to blow up with vexation; but, for all that, the first thing he blew up was the rocks—and that he might lose little or no time in doing it, he collected all the gunpowder and crowbars, spades and pickaxes, that could be found for miles about him, and set to it, working as if it was with inch of candle. For half a day there was nothing but boring and splitting, and driving of iron wedges, and blowing up pieces of rocks ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... we were all ready. The harpoon-guns were cleaned, oiled, and fastened, with their swivels, on the "billet-heads," in the bows of the boats. Each harpooner got a supply of gunpowder and percussion-caps; and all other requisites were put ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... it is not a fall this time, but something worse, for I haven't a penny in the world, nor likely to have, and to-morrow is the Fourth of July, when all the boys and girls will have pistols, gunpowder, and fire-works, while I shall not even be able to ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Graystock said something to the touchy rustic that he did not relish, and he writes his distaste in flames. What a power to intoxicate his crude brains, just muddlingly awake, to perceive that something is wrong in the social system; what a hellish faculty above gunpowder! ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... paper immediately ignites and the cotton explodes. Strange, is it not, that the beam should possess such heating power after having passed through so cold a substance? In his arctic expeditions Dr. Scoresby succeeded in exploding gunpowder by the sun's rays, converged by large lenses of ice; here we have succeeded in producing the effect with a small lens, and with a terrestrial ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... the excitement accompanying it, to carry out their scheme, and the Manchus appear to have been in total ignorance until the eleventh hour of the plot for their destruction. The discovery of the conspiracy bears a close resemblance to that of the Gunpowder Plot. A Chinese slave, wishing to save his master, gave him notice of the danger, and this Manchu officer at once informed Kanghi of the conspiracy. The son of Wou Sankwei and the other conspirators were immediately arrested and ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... name of God, why don't Col. Bigelow order us to retreat?" This man in after life received a pension from government, and died respected a few years since in this city. His children are now living here, and therefore we shall not call his name. He was always afraid of gunpowder. The English were also frightened and fled, leaving the hay on the hands of Col. Bigelow, who, having no use for it, returned it to its tory owner, on the express condition that he should not sell it to ...
— Reminiscences of the Military Life and Sufferings of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Commander of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Massachusetts Line in the Continental Army, during the War of the Revolution • Charles Hersey
... more handsomely or be more gallantly executed. There was a talk at one time that our author was about to take Guy Faux for the subject of one of his novels, in order to put a more liberal and humane construction on the Gunpowder Plot than our "No Popery" prejudices have hitherto permitted. Sir Walter is a professed clarifier of the age from the vulgar and still lurking old-English antipathy to Popery and Slavery. Through some odd process of servile logic, it ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... host, "we mix with our gunpowder and shot a certain composition which cooks as well ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... diversified by various attempts at arson—the latest, with aid of gunpowder, being successful. On the first of last February, the British minister's residence at Yedo was burned to the ground by armed incendiaries, who made their work more sure by laying trains of gunpowder, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... excuse myself from, is walking. I should certainly never have the gout, if I had lost the use of my feet. Cherubims that have no legs, and do nothing but stick their chins in a cloud and sing, are never out of order. Exercise is the worst thing in the world, and as bad an invention as gunpowder. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... 45 are poor and small, except a few kept for the king's own use. He has no well-bred mares. Their arms are the same as at Timbuctoo; the muskets, which are matchlocks, are made in the country. They are very dexterous in throwing the lance. Gunpowder is also manufactured there; the brimstone is brought from Fas; the charcoal they make; and he believes they prepare the nitre.[83] Their arrows are feathered and barbed; the bows are all cross-bows, with triggers; the arrows, 20 to 40 in a quiver, are made of hides, and hang on the left side. ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... from Keenan in reply was like a spark to gunpowder. In a moment the cavern presented a scene singularly tragic-comic; the whole party was one busy mass of battle, with the exception of Ted and Batt, and the wife of the latter, who, having first hastily put aside everything that might be injured, stood enjoying the ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the shipment of gunpowder, were thought of no more in the good town of Manhattan. This great emporium—we beg pardon, this great commercial emporium—has a trick of forgetting; condensing all interests into those of the present moment. It is much addicted to believing that which never had an existence, and of overlooking ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... own part, I could not look but with wonder and respect on the Chinese. Their forefathers watched the stars before mine had begun to keep pigs. Gunpowder and printing, which the other day we imitated, and a school of manners which we never had the delicacy so much as to desire to imitate, were theirs in a long-past antiquity. They walked the earth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The other parts of the summit of this hill are occupied by immense fragments of brickwork of no determinate figure, tumbled together and converted into solid vitrified masses, as if they had undergone the action of the fiercest fire, or had been blown up by gunpowder, the layers of brick being perfectly discernible. These ruins surely proclaim the divinity of the Scriptures. Layard says the discoveries amongst the ruins of ancient Babylon were far less numerous and important than could have been anticipated. No sculptures or inscribed slabs, the paneling ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... and indeed one or two declared that they had traced the dim outline of his figure. But no sound was heard to come from the cavern, except the sharp crack of the bullets against the rock, and the echo of the gunpowder. There had been no groan as of a man wounded, no sound of a body falling, no voice wailing in despair. For a few seconds all was dark with the smoke of the gunpowder, and then the empty mouth of the cave was again yawning before their eyes. Morton was now near it, still cautiously creeping. ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... themselves at the mere will of the owner of the island, who wanted to scare away the inhabitants who resided on the coast. He succeeded, this Count d'Artigas, and remains the sole and undisputed monarch of the mountain. By exploding gunpowder, and burning seaweed swept up in inexhaustible quantities by the ocean, he has been able to simulate a volcano upon the point of eruption and effectually scare ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... on the same ground and duly had their day. Indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about Gunpowder Plot. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... The fifth of November, Gunpowder treason and plot, I hope that night will never be forgot. The king and his train Had like to be slain; Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder Set below London to ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... one time of great strength, was now in a somewhat dilapidated condition. It contained eighty-five guns, mortars and howitzers, some of them of English manufacture, upwards of 250 tons of gunpowder, stowed away in earthen vessels, many millions of Enfield and Snider cartridges, and a large number of arms, besides quantities of saddlery, clothing for troops, musical instruments, shot, shell, caps, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... actually to persuade the Pope to punish an Italian writer, named Reboul, for publishing an apology for the English Roman Catholics who refused to take the oath of allegiance required by the English monarch in 1606, after the discovery of the gunpowder plot. This certainly was a singular and remarkable performance, and must have required much tact and diplomacy. It is conjectured that the artful King so flattered the Pope as to induce him to protect the English sovereign from ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... of Mr. Cushing's proposal, and yet something ought to be done. We must put up with what we have already, I suppose, and let Mr. Webster stand threatening to blow us all up with his pistol pointed at the elongated keg of gunpowder on which his left hand rests,—no bad type of the great man's state of mind after the nomination of General Taylor, or of what a country member would call a penal statue. But do we reflect that Vermont is half marble, and that Lake Superior can send us bronze enough for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... usual 6:30 Repast of Chipped Beef in Cream, Sody Biscuits and a Stoup of Gunpowder Tea, they ordered up Cape Cods, Pommes Let-it-go-at-that, Sweetbreads So-and-so, on and on past the partially heated Duck and Salad with Fringe along the Edges and Cheese that had waited too long and a Check for $17.40 and the Waiter peeved at ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... thousand cities, towns, villages, and hamlets, spread over the surface of America—in each the Declaration of Independence has been read; in all one, and in some two or three, orations have been delivered, with as much gunpowder in them as in the squibs and crackers. But let me ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... her steadily. Then he went up to Rachel, and taking her hand, raised it to his lips. There was in his manner a boundless reverent adoration that was to Lady Newhaven's jealousy as a match to gunpowder. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... life more joyous as war threatened to make it short. They displayed the same ardor, the same enthusiasm, in the ball-room as on the battle-field. They loved the smell of flowers as much as the smell of gunpowder. Every form of conquest tempted them, and they revived the customs of chivalry. In the language of the time, there flourished the twofold reign of Mars and Venus. In those heroic days courage was set higher than wealth. The women, with few exceptions, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Railroad was then in course of construction, or was being made to traverse the upper reaches of the city, through that part of which raged, to my young sense, a riot of explosion and a great shouting and waving of red flags when the gunpowder introduced into the rocky soil was about to take effect. It was our theory that our passage there, in the early afternoon, was beset with danger, and our impression that we saw fragments of rock hurtle through the air and smite to the earth another and yet another of the persons ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... stirred with a mixture of gypsum and Prussian blue during the firing, but is prepared in a more laborious manner, the leaves being selected and divided to form the different kinds known as Imperial, Gunpowder, Young Hyson, Hyson, Hyson Skin and Twankay. An aggregation of these kinds, proportioned according to their value, forms what is known as a "chop," whereas a chop of black tea comprises all of one grade or quality. Chinamen ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... from Mongolia; gunpowder, the printing press and many other great discoveries have been traced back to Celestial origin. Let us, then, adopt her method of dealing with troublesome subjects. A 'harikari' sentence saves the nation much trouble and expense. A coroner's verdict of 'suicide by request,' is much more simple, ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... the list, as follows; the words coming out by jerks, as the trotting of my horse permitted. "Fifty blankets, each with yellow strings and yellow trimmings; ten iron pots, four gallons each; forty pounds of gunpowder; seven muskets; twelve pounds of small beads; ten strings of wampum; fifty gallons of rum, pure Jamaica, and of high proof; a score of jews-harps, and three dozen ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... me aye made what they call an anniversary of our wedding-day, which happened to be the fifth of November, the very same as that on which the Gunpowder Plot chances to be occasionally held—Sundays excepted. According to custom, this being the fourth year, we collected a good few friends to a tea-drinking; and had our cracks and a glass or two of toddy. Thomas Burlings, if I mind, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... fifteenth-century Porta di Raspo, obtaining fine views down the alleys and through garden doors as we ascended the hill. High above our heads the battlements towered, and as we approached the walls we realised what a business it must have been to attack a town so protected before the invention of gunpowder. Soon the road bent away to the right, which was not the direction in which we wished to go, but a path led to some brick-works, and there we found an idle workman, who advised us to go along the shore as being much shorter. So we plunged and slid ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... deposited there is enormous,—practically inexhaustible. This profitable sulphur mine is owned, or was, a few months since, by General Ochoa, a resident of the capital. It is said that when Cortez had expended his supply of gunpowder, he resorted to the crater of Popocatepetl for sulphur to make a fresh supply, and that the natives had never ascended the mountain until the Spaniards showed them the way. Earthquakes are not uncommon, even to-day, near the base of this monarch mountain; ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... an old fort—for this region, being on the route to the upper lakes, was a constant battleground. Radisson's party gathered to attack it, {203} the Iroquois meanwhile firing constantly, but doing little harm. Darkness came on, and the assailants filled a barrel with gunpowder and, "having stoped the whole" (stopped the hole) and tied it to the end of a long pole, tried to push it over the stockade. It fell back, however, and exploded with so much force that three of ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... the 8th of September, 1173, when the royalist forces encircled the fortress. Gunpowder was then unknown, and contending armies could only meet hand to hand. For two months the siege was continued, with bloody conflicts every day. Wintry winds swept the plains, and storms of snow whitened the fields, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... cat's whiskers bristled. He turned to the mill with a fierce frown, his long tail going to and fro like that of a tiger in its lair; for Sooty Will had a temper like hot gunpowder, that was apt to go off sizz, whizz, bang! and no one to save the pieces. Yet, at least while the cook was by, he turned the mill furiously, as if with ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... annual tribute due by Sweden, and that country is also bound by treaty to furnish the Dey with a person capable of directing his gunpowder factory! Denmark not only pays tribute, but is bound to pay it in naval stores, and her consul here is at present in disgrace because his country has failed to pay its tribute at the specified ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sources of the wealth of this enormous country. The soil, for miles and miles a dead flat, is now barren as a desert, and we meet hardly a sign of active traffic. During the night we certainly did encounter a long train of heavily-laden bullock-waggons; but the merchandize was gunpowder, and its destination was up, instead of down ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... a trick that I should care to have played upon me,' said Lord Grey, amid a general murmur of applause and surprise. 'Od's bud, man, you have lived two centuries too late. What would not your thews have been worth before gunpowder put all men ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sulphur and noise, there are always fireworks. It is difficult to imagine festivity without them, and yet there must have been a time when rockets did not rise or Catherine wheels go round. You cannot have fireworks without gunpowder, and every school-boy knows that gunpowder was only invented in—I haven't got a dictionary of dates handy. Surely we ought to let off fireworks on Roger Bacon's birthday. "They let off fireworks when he was born," say the French in a slyly witty proverb, which is a circumlocutory way of ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... and lose their nitrogen, either as a lower oxide or as nitrogen. The nitrates of the metals, on heating, leave the oxide of the metal. It is as yielders of oxygen that nitrates are so largely used in the manufacture of explosives. Gunpowder contains from 65 to 75 per ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... the joke of the fellow who put gunpowder in a poor Irishman's pipe," broke in Shadow. "It put the Irishman's eyes out. I don't see ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... upon their policy, about whether they should leave the unmasked Gogol without and begin diplomatically, or whether they should bring him in and blow up the gunpowder at once. The influence of Syme and Bull prevailed for the latter course, though the Secretary to the last asked them why they attacked ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... the loss of both legs very common. The two buildings which accommodate them were formerly the Convent des Celestins, and that of the Dames de St. Louis. Two other handsome convents have been converted to uses less beneficent, one being now a gunpowder manufactory, and the other ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... spot in which to find a pirate's nest—just a group of some five- and-twenty rocks, they are not much larger, and one island about ten miles long and six wide, with reefs and shoals all round. Did you ever smell gunpowder, Six-foot?" ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... "Bless my gunpowder! But when I saw those savage creatures rushing at you, I thought it was all up with us. Are you hurt, Parker, my dear fellow? I ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... Channel, which formed the natural defence of the realm. The opening of the Atlantic had revolutionised war and seamanship. Long voyages required larger vessels. Henry was the first prince to see the place which gunpowder was going to hold in wars. In his first years he repaired his dockyards, built new ships on improved models, and imported Italians to cast him new types of cannon. 'King Harry loved a man,' it was said, and knew a ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... that anyone would think it so, Jean; but it seems to me that it is just because everyone seems so confident that the prison is safe from attack, that we shall have a chance. The thing that is troubling me most is where we can get a barrel of gunpowder. We must have powder to blow open the gate. I expect that any of the doors we may find locked, inside, will give way if a pistol is fired through the keyhole; but to blow in the main gate of the prison we must get powder, and a good deal of it. That, however, is a matter in which ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... the writing of it, it is the seeing of it—the planning and designing. Sometimes I brood over it for hours—I can not find what I want; and then suddenly a phrase flashes over me and like a train of gunpowder my thought goes running on—leaping, flying; and then the whole thing is plain as day. And I hold it all living in ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... purpose. In a world reeling and smoking with the insane fury of war, one nation should stand unshaken for the message of the spirit, for the glory of humanity; for the settlement of disputes by other means than gunpowder and women's tears. That was his dream. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... said only a little more the next time, and the next; and Daniel Burton pocketed his pencil in despair. Then came a day when a chance word about a new air raid reported in the morning paper acted like a match to gunpowder, and sent John McGuire off into a rapid-fire story that whipped Daniel Burton's pencil from his pocket and set it to racing again at breakneck speed to keep up ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... answer. On his reading this and speaking of what he had learned from it, the Indians looked on it as the work of enchantment. They could not comprehend how "paper could talk." Another thing was the following: They showed him a bag of gunpowder which they had somehow obtained, saying that they were going to sow it in the ground the next spring and gather a crop of this useful substance. After spending some days in this and other villages, the captive was taken into the woods, his captors making him understand that they were ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... collected in it and every functionary belonging to it also, high and low, upward and downward, from its son the Accountant-General to its father the Devil, and the whole blown to atoms with ten thousand hundredweight of gunpowder, would reform it in ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... corollary of the doctrine of just price. This is apparently the suggestion of Dr. Cleary in his excellent book on usury: 'It seems to me that the so-called loan of money is really a sale, and that a loan of meal, wine, oil, gunpowder, and similar commodities—that is to say, commodities which are consumed in use—is also a sale. If this is so, as I believe it is, then loans of all these consumptible goods should be regulated by ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... fired gunpowder by an electric spark, and, later on, a party from the Royal Society, in conjunction with Watson, conducted a series of experiments to determine the velocity of the electric fluid, ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... Congress over slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, Mr. Rives, of Virginia, was so unkind as to say, that the gentleman from Massachusetts, "if it so pleased his fancy, might disport himself in tossing squibs and firebrands about this hall; but those who are sitting upon a barrel of gunpowder, liable to be blown up by his dangerous missiles, could hardly be expected to be quite as calm and philosophic." Because he presented antislavery petitions, and insisted on the duty of Congress to consider them, Mr. King, of Alabama, affirmed that the course ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... angry," answered the anxious lady—"far from it. On the contrary, I really believe that our darlings have greatly improved his language and manners by their example; but Robin's exuberant spirits are far too much for them. It is like putting fire to gunpowder, and they are so fond of him. That's the difficulty. The boy does not presume, I must say that for him, and he is very respectful to nurse; but the children are constantly asking him to come and play with them, which he ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... sat in silence. Even the Marchesino's vivacity was suddenly abated, either by the increasing violence of the storm or by the change in Vere. It would have been difficult to say by which. The lightning flashed. The thunder at moments seemed to split the sky asunder as a charge of gunpowder splits asunder a rock. The head wind rushed by, yet had never passed them, but was forever coming furiously to meet them. On the roof of the little cabin the rain made a noise that was no longer like the rustle of silk, but was ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... only expressed the feeling of the other nobles. Yet he executed his murderous plot without their joining in it and by means of his own servants.[225] In the house before mentioned he caused a quantity of gunpowder to be laid under the chamber in which Darnley slept, in order to blow him into the air: alarmed at the noise made by opening the door, the young sovereign sprang from his bed; while trying to save himself, he was strangled together ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... of touching for the king's evil (IV, iii, 140-159),—a custom which James revived. The reference to an equivocator in the porter's soliloquy (II, iii) may allude to Henry Garnet, who was tried in 1606 for complicity in the {190} famous Gunpowder Plot, and who is said to have upheld the doctrine of equivocation. The date of composition ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... will fire his clearing, thus getting rid of a large share of the logger's waste with practically no labor. To the task of disposing of the remaining logs and stumps he will bring modern tools and methods into action. The axe and shovel and hand lever have given place to gunpowder, the donkey engine, derrick and winch. Stump powder puts all the big stumps into pieces easily. The modern stump-puller lifts out the smaller stumps with ease. The donkey engine and derrick pull together and pile ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... recorder grunted. "Another attempt! And gunpowder put in the street to blow the emperor up only last week. Good luck attends him:—only a few windows broken and some common people killed. Taken in the act, was ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of gunpowder!" I exclaimed in astonishment. "Do you mean that we've got to take such a quantity ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... had landed his troops in the Gallipoli Peninsula. On more than one occasion he honoured me with a surprise visit in my office. These interviews in my sanctum were of quite a dramatic, Harrison-Ainsworth, Gunpowder-Treason, Man-in-the-Iron-Mask character. He gave me no warning, scorning the normal procedure of induction by a messenger. He would appear of a sudden peeping in at the door to see if I was at home, would ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... the Bosphorus, which commanded the source whence the city drew her supplies. In the following year a quarrel between some Greeks and Turks gave him the excuse of declaring war. His cannon—for the use of gunpowder, for some time the monopoly of the Christian world, had been betrayed to Amurath by the Genoese—commanded the port, and a tribute was exacted from all ships that entered the harbour. But the actual siege was delayed until ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... loom, and have been promptly vulcanized. Is not Vulcan, with his hideousness and his strength, the emblem of this strong and hideous nation—sublime in its mechanical intelligence, patient in its season, and once in a century terrible, inflammable as gunpowder, and ripe with brandy for the madness of revolution, with wits enough, in fine, to take fire at a captious word, which signifies to it always: Gold and Pleasure! If we comprise in it all those who hold out ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... examinations in China; it was proposed to establish written examinations in the United States; therefore the proposed system was Chinese. The argument might have been applied still further. For instance, the Chinese had used gunpowder for centuries; gunpowder is used in Springfield rifles; therefore Springfield rifles were Chinese. One argument is quite as logical as the other. It was impossible to answer every falsehood about the system. But it was possible to answer certain falsehoods, especially when uttered ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... expeditiously home. The compass proper the Chinese cannot claim; it was probably introduced into China by the Arabs at a comparatively late date, and has been confused with the south-pointing chariot of earlier ages. As to gunpowder, something of that nature appears to have been used for fireworks in the seventh century; and something of the nature of a gun is first heard of during the Mongol campaigns of the thirteenth century; but firearms were not systematically employed until the fifteenth century. Add to ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... On the 12th of January, 1807, a ship laden with four hundred quintals of gunpowder blew up in the middle of the city of Leyden, part of which was thereby reduced to ruins, and one hundred and fifty persons, among others the celebrated professors Luzac and Kleit, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... motion a train of events whose result was beyond their ken. Mr. Palfrey, of Massachusetts, a few days later said with as much sagacity as wit that "Mr. Calhoun thought that he could set fire to a barrel of gunpowder and extinguish it when half consumed." In his anxiety that the war should be brought to an end, Calhoun proposed that the United States army should evacuate the Mexican capital, establish a defensive line, and hold it as the only indemnity ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the progress of the fire that, by the time the escapes reached the house, tongues of flame were shooting out from the windows, and it was impossible to place the ladders in position. The gunpowder had exploded with great violence, and casks of oil were burning ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... the four kings might be unable to see their way clearly without the help of gunpowder to any decision upon Joanna's intention, she—poor thing!—never could mistake her intentions for a moment. All her love was for France; and, therefore, any glove she might drop into the quadrivium must be wickedly missent by the post-office, if it found its way to any ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... remember The Fifth of November, The gunpowder treason and plot. I see no reason Why gunpowder ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... to the principle of breech-loading fire-arms, examples of which may here be seen three hundred years old. One very singular cannon was observed, actually made from closely woven rope, so strong and compact as to be capable of bearing a discharge with gunpowder, and which had once seen service in battle. The rusty old lances, broken spears, and dimmed sword-blades, hanging on the walls, shadowed by the tattered remnants of battle-flags bearing the bloody marks of contests in which they had taken part, were silent but suggestive tokens ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... favour steadily; and many of the nobles always envied and hated him, because they were as proud and not as high as he. He was at this time building a great Palace in the Strand: to get the stone for which he blew up church steeples with gunpowder, and pulled down bishops' houses: thus making himself still more disliked. At length, his principal enemy, the Earl of Warwick—Dudley by name, and the son of that Dudley who had made himself so odious with Empson, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... much a part of our times as it was in the times of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. Hence it finds frequent reflection in all branches of fiction, including science fiction. Yet, as in life, something new has been added, the most gigantic conspiracy of all, the human conspiracy against conspirators. Which makes for a fine stirring story in this short ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... pause in the curiously picturesque place, which looked no more than a village, with its gray-brown houses and gray brown shadows huddled confusedly together. Probably it looked much the same when the Camisards used to hide themselves and their gunpowder in caves near by; and certainly scarce a stone or brick had been added or removed since Stevenson's eyes saw the town, and his pen wrote of it, as he turned away there from the Tarn region, instead of being the first Englishman to explore it. And what a wild region it looked as we and the Aigle ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... fact that Meyerbeer's operas contain such strange scenes as phantom nuns dancing, girls bathing, sunrise, skating, gunpowder explosions, a king playing the flute, and the prima donna leading a goat, dramatic music owes to him new accents of genuine pathos and an addition to its resources of rendering passionate emotions. Through much that is merely showy and ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... apparent even to Harry and all the other young lieutenants that the battle was lost. He must have shed tears then, because afterward he found furrows in the mud and burned gunpowder on his face. The combat now was not for victory, but for existence. The Southerners fought to preserve the semblance of an army, and it was well for them that they were valiant Virginians led by a great ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... at my call. I had lost my power of abstraction—the realities around me were too engrossing. Ere the dying shriek of a majestic rooster had ceased to sound in my ear, his remains were served upon my table, together with a cup or two of very villanous gunpowder tea, and a pitcher of cider, with coarse bread and butter ad libitum. Supper was soon despatched, and in answer to a bell, lightly touched, a vinegar-visaged waiting-maid, of the interesting age of forty-five, entered ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... breakfast was ready. In the dining-room they met three other officers of lower rank—a lieutenant, Otto von Grossling, and two sub-lieutenants, Fritz Scheuneberg and Baron von Eyrick, a very short, fair-haired man, who was proud and brutal toward men, harsh toward prisoners and as explosive as gunpowder. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... piece of marble? Why, 'Poor child—poor child—poor child!'" added Rose-Pompon, with indignation; "neither more nor less than if I had come to complain to him of the toothache. But the worst of it is that I am sure, if he were not in love elsewhere, he would be all fire and gunpowder. Only now he is so ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... harbour presented a similar appearance. At every loop-hole a large lamp occupied the place of the muzzle of the cannon. At nine o'clock in the evening, salvoes were fired from the ships; and at the moment that the cannons were fired, the lamps vanished, flashes of light and gunpowder-smoke filled the air; a few seconds afterwards, as if by magic, the lamps had reappeared. This salute ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... warships to New York and notified all Europe to stand back and look pleasant, and by the great horn spoons, I am going to stand by Russia or bust. I would like to be over there at Port Arthur and witness an explosion of a torpedo under something. Egad, but I glory in the smell of gunpowder. Now, say, here is Port Arthur, by this barrel of dried apples, and there is Mushapata, by the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... of gunpowder. It is the unity of two or more substances, that causes the expansion called power. The heat of the fuel converting water into steam, is another illustration of the unity of two or more elements, which are necessary to ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... carefully up, and entrusted it to the care of the chaplain of the Dutch embassy, who happened to be a native of Vaud. In passing the barrier, the packet fell into the hands of the officials. They tore it open and examined it, happily unconscious that they were handling the most explosive kind of gunpowder that they had ever meddled with. It was not until the chaplain claimed it in the name of ambassadorial privilege, that the manuscript was allowed to go on its way to the press.[79] Rousseau repeats a hundred ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... wheat or other grain. Some of the council, desirous of giving the House still further embarrassment, advis'd the governor not to accept provision, as not being the thing he had demanded; but he repli'd, "I shall take the money, for I understand very well their meaning; other grain is gunpowder," which he accordingly bought, and they ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... him, and the coolness also; for the sun beat on the flat rock above till it scorched the feet, and dazzled the eye, and crisped up the blackening sea-weeds; while every sea-snail crept to hide itself under the bladder-tangle, and nothing dared to peep or stir save certain grains of gunpowder, which seemed to have gone mad, so merrily did they hop about upon the surface of the fast evaporating salt-pools. That wonder, indeed, Elsley stooped to examine, and drew back his hands with an "ugh!" and a gesture of disgust, when he found that they were ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... husband was a distinguished officer in the artillery and a man of learning, but absolutely lacking in ambition, preferring to direct the instruction of Saint-Cyr rather than to risk the chances of advancement presented in active service. He became inspector of the gunpowder manufactory at Angouleme, and later retired to his home at Frapesle, near Issoudun. Though an excellent husband, his inactivity was a great annoyance to his wife. According to several Balzacian writers, Madame Carraud became ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... and called after their mother, for the not excessive sum of L28, exclusive of rigging and fittings. She carried a master, boatswain, cook, and sixteen jolly sailor-men, and she kept a good look out for pirates and was armed with cannon and bows, bills, five dozen darts, and twelve pounds of gunpowder! She was victualled with salt fish, bread, wheat and beer, and she plied with the Celys' trade to Zealand, Flanders, and Bordeaux.[47] She must have been about two hundred tons, but some of the other little ships were much smaller, for, as the learned ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... to town," bawled he. "We are going to read the proclamation and collar the soldiers and the bigwigs, and bring back with us guns and gunpowder, and lots of money. This ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... it have been for those people had they never been visited by Europeans; for, to our shame be it spoken, disease and gunpowder is all the benefit they have ever received from us, in return for their hospitality and kindness. The ravages of the venereal disease is evident, from the mutilated objects so frequent amongst them, where death has not thrown a charitable veil over their misery, by ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... able in a few minutes between his gasps to tell his story. Concealed by a lumber pile behind Rosenblatt's shack, with his ear close to a crack between the logs, he had heard the details of the plot. In the cross tunnel at the back of the cave bags of gunpowder and dynamite were to be hidden. To this mass a train was to be laid through the cross tunnel to a convenient distance. At a certain point during the conference Rosenblatt would leave the cave on the pretext ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... five, none of the others." Then still lower down he pointed out other barrels, eight of them, filled with the best gunpowder, and showed them too where the slow matches ran to the little cabin, the cook's galley, the tiller and the prow, by means of any one of which it could be fired. After this and such inspection of the ropes and sails as the light would allow, they sat in the cabin ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... suppliant; and to the others, they were attractively uncommon; the charm for them being in her fine outlines, her stature, carriage of her person, and unalterable composure; particularly her latent daring. She had the effect on the general mind of a lofty crag-castle with a history. There was a whiff of gunpowder exciting the atmosphere in the anecdotal part ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... or being conquered can it endure. When it is subjugated and disciplined it consists of workers to belabor the ground for others, or tax payers to fill a treasury from which others may spend, or food for gunpowder, or voting material for demagogues. It is an object of exploitation. At one moment, in spite of its aggregate muscle, it is helpless and imbecile; the next moment it is swept away into folly and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the Flowery Land. These same Chinese anticipated us in several most important discoveries, by as many centuries as we may have preceded others. In the knowledge of the properties of the magnet, the composition of gunpowder, the invention of printing, the manufacture of porcelain, of silk, and in the progress of literature, they were before us. But then the power of making further discoveries was arrested, and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... surface of the earth—ay, and deep under the bottom of the sea! His daily sun was a tallow candle, which rose regularly at seven in the morning and set at three in the afternoon. His atmosphere was sadly deficient in life-giving oxygen, and much vitiated by gunpowder smoke. His working costume consisted only of a pair of linen trousers; his colour from top to toe was red as brick-dust, owing to the iron ore around him; his food was a slice of bread, with, perchance, when he was unusually luxurious, the addition of a Cornish pasty; and his drink was ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... in fer the war; He don't vally principle more 'n an old cud; Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood? So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... fight against the Mahommedans. Cyprus belonged to the Venetians, and in 1571 a Jew, who had renounced his faith, persuaded Sultan Selim to have it attacked, that he might gain his favourite Cyprus wine for the pressing, instead of buying it. The Venetian stores of gunpowder had been blown up by an accident, and they could not send help in time to the unfortunate governor, who was made prisoner, and treated with most savage cruelty. However, fifty years later, in 1571, the powers of Europe joined together under ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... faces of consternation, asking one another what had happened. The ground was covered with scattered fragments of wooden pillars, mats, and bamboo cane-work; I looked and saw that one end of the gallery in which I had been walking, and the alcove, were in ruins. There was a strong smell of gunpowder. I now recollected that I had borrowed a powder-horn from one of the soldiers in the morning; and that I had intended to load my pistols, but I delayed doing so. The horn, full of gunpowder, lay upon the table in the alcove all day, and the pistols, out of which I had shaken the old ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... boughs of sharp-thorned mimosa trees, which we tied to the trek tows and brake chains so that they could not be torn away. Also in the middle of the laager we made an inner defence of seven waggons, in which were placed the women and children, with the spare food and gunpowder, but the cattle we were obliged to leave outside. Early on the morning when we had finished the laager we heard that the impi of Moselikatse was close to us, and the men to the number of over ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... to its offensive weapon as a "torpedo," a term not altogether inappropriate while it was actuated by compressed air. But Capt. Ericsson having in the meantime wholly abolished compressed air in his new system of naval attack, substituting guns and gunpowder as the means of producing motive energy, it will be proper to adopt the constructor's term, projectile. It will not surprise those who are acquainted with the laws of hydrostatics and the enormous resistance offered to bodies moving swiftly ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... is of a material known only to themselves—a sort of nightmare illusion of velvet, covered with a slight tracery of refined mortar, curiously picked out and guarded with a nondescript collection of the very greenest green pellets of hyson-bloom gunpowder tea. The buttons (things of use in this garment) describe the figure and proportions of a large turbot. They consist of two rows (leaving imagination to fill up a lapse of the absent), commencing, to all appearance, at the small of the back, and reaching down ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... do more strange works than Geber, Lullius, Bacon, or any of those ancients. Crollius hath made after his master Paracelsus, aurum fulminans, or aurum volatile, which shall imitate thunder and lightning, and crack louder than any gunpowder; Cornelius Drible a perpetual motion, inextinguishable lights, linum non ardens, with many such feats; see his book de natura elementorum, besides hail, wind, snow, thunder, lightning, &c., ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... into,' said the doctor, 'and a couple of men catch one moment's glimpse of a boy, in the midst of gunpowder smoke, and in all the distraction of alarm and darkness. Here's a boy comes to that very same house, next morning, and because he happens to have his arm tied up, these men lay violent hands upon him—by doing which, they place his life in great danger—and swear he is the thief. Now, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... to mix them together as carefully as you could, using exactly the same proportion of each as is found in water, you would make something very dangerous, which might blow up with a terrible noise like gunpowder. It is only when they are "combined," which means very closely joined together, ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... thin figure of an Italian, who stood pale and trembling, and looking up to heaven as he crossed himself repeatedly. "There," said Arthur, "is a man who has left a parcel of his cursed rockets and fireworks, with I don't know how much gunpowder, in the count's house, from which we have just fled. The wind blows that way. One spark of fire, and the whole is ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... has eaten the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the buffalo with sharp horns; man has killed the lion with an arrow, with a sword, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of man what we have made of the horse and of the ox: his chattel, his slave and his food, by the mere power of his will. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... in the old provinces. In course the question is what this War Eagle intends to do. His section of the tribe is pretty considerable strong, and although at present I aint heard that any others have joined, these Injuns are like barrels of gunpowder: when the spark is once struck there's no saying how far the explosion may spread. When one band of 'em sees as how another is taking scalps and getting plunder and honor, they all want to be at the ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... and set up their hunger wails beyond the reach of our bullets; and the heat of the day with its peril of arrow and rifle-ball filled the long hours. Hunger was a terror now. Our meat was gone save a few decayed portions which we could barely swallow after we had sprinkled them over with gunpowder. For the stomach refused them even in starvation. Dreams of banquets tortured our short, troubled sleep, and the waking was a horror. A luckless little coyote wandered one day too near our fold. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... compelled to leave that neighborhood, he wandered about Germany, and went as far as Switzerland, carrying with him, and communicating to all who would listen to him, the plan of a general revolution. Everywhere he found men's minds prepared; he threw gunpowder on the burning coals, and the explosion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the cries of the wounded and dying. The varying chances of the combat, the uncertainties of fear and hope produce in them emotions that they prefer to all others, however poetic and charming. It is with a sort of intoxication that they inhale the smell of gunpowder, perhaps even that of blood. A hotly contested victory is more agreeable to them than one too easily gained. Fortune is, in their eyes, a difficult mistress, whose favors seem the dearer, the harder they are of attainment. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... probably a peculiarity of the saw-mills on this coast, that they must provide a powerful rip-saw to rip in two the larger logs before they are small enough for a circular saw to manage. Indeed, occasionally the huge logs are split with wedges, or blown apart with gunpowder, in the logging camps, because they are too vast to be floated down to the mill in one piece. The expedients for loading vessels are often novel and ingenious. For instance, at Mendocino the lumber is loaded on cars at the mill, and drawn by steam up a sharp incline, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... who seems to have known him well, assures us that the devil was the inventor of gunpowder. But, for my own part, were I in the humor to ascribe any particular invention to the author of all evil, it should be that of distilling apple-brandy. We have scripture for it, that he began his capers with the apple; ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... Dale's immediate happiness at any price, and that the future might bring bitter repentance. But I offered no advice. I have finished playing at Deputy Providence. A madman letting off fireworks in a gunpowder factory plays ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... at him the flaxen-haired gentleman entered the room. The newcomer was a man of lofty stature, with a small red moustache and a lean, hard-bitten face whose redness made it evident that its acquaintance, if not with the smoke of gunpowder, at all events with that of tobacco, was intimate and extensive. Nevertheless he greeted Chichikov civilly, and the latter returned his bow. Indeed, the pair would have entered into conversation, and have made one another's acquaintance (since a beginning was made with their ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... for both sea and land, are fire-bombs. They have quantities of gunpowder, in the shape of loaves. Their artillery, although not large, is poor. They have also, and quite commonly poor, culverins and arquebuses, so that they depend mainly on their lances. I am informed that they do not fear the arquebuses very much, because ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... hands were not a little grimed with the gunpowder, washed himself, combed out his curly black hair, and found all the party in the fore-cabin. Gascoigne, who had not been asked in the forenoon, was, by the consideration of Captain Sawbridge, added to ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... spark thrown upon gunpowder. The gunsmith struck the counter with his open hand till the weapons ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... everybody, and quickly to be specified, are the wonderful events which turned the vision into reality. One of these events was the invention of gunpowder; another was the mariner's compass; a third was the invention of paper; a fourth, the printing-press; a fifth was the discovery that the earth goes round the sun once a year, and whirls on its own axis once a day; a sixth ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... novelties are the spark that ignites the mass of gunpowder. Everywhere, the uprising of the people takes place on the very day on which the electoral assembly meets. From forty to fifty riots occur in the provinces in less than a fortnight. Popular imagination, like that of a child, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... "Other gunpowder arms were there procured, and we barricaded Cowgill House so as to make it at once a decoy and a hornet's nest. I despise war and men of war so much that I have somewhat studied their campaigns, and I suggested, friend Clayton, that the stairway was a good tactical defensive position—is that ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... inspired him. Trunnion that instant desired his counsellor to prepare his cartridge-box, and order the quietest horse in the stable to be kept ready saddled for the occasion; his eye seemed to lighten with alacrity and pleasure at the prospect of smelling gunpowder once more before his death; and when Jack advised him to make his will, in case of accident, he rejected his counsel with disdain, saying, "What! dost thou think that Hawser Trunnion, who has stood the fire of so many ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... it is clear and supplied by a small creek and several springs, and the number of goslins which we saw on it, induced us to call it the Gosling lake. It is about three quarters of a mile wide, and seven or eight miles long. One of our men was bitten by a snake, but a poultice of bark and gunpowder was sufficient to cure the wound. At ten and a quarter miles we reached a creek on the south about twelve yards wide and coming from an extensive prairie, which approached the borders of the river. To this creek which had no name, we gave that of ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... tortoise-shell, birds of paradise, and Trepang; but the trade of Dobbo is not dependent on the productions of the Arrou Islands alone. The Bughis proas import large quantities of British calico, iron, hardware, muskets, gunpowder, etc. from Singapore, to obtain which Dobbo is visited by the natives of Ceram, Buru, New Guinea, and of all the adjacent islands, it being the only spot in this part of the world where British manufactures can at present be procured. The articles brought ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... be,' said Colonel Halkett. 'That's a young man who's an Englishman without French gunpowder notions in his head. He works for us down at the mine in Wales a good part of the year, and has tided us over a threatening strike there: gratuitously: I can't get him to accept anything. I can't think why ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... are crowded, have produced only flashy fragments. Efforts, but not works—they seem to be effects without causes; and as a great author, who is not one of them, once observed to me, "They waste a barrel of gunpowder in squibs." ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... he said this, he gave me fifty LOUIS, with that gracious air that he could so well assume upon certain occasions, and which no person in the kingdom had but himself. I kissed his hand and wept. "You will take care of the accouchee, will you not? She is a good creature, who has not invented gunpowder, and I confide her entirely to your direction; my chancellor will tell you the rest," he said, turning to Madame, and then quitted the room. "Well, what think you of the part I am playing?" asked Madame. "It is that of a superior woman, and an excellent friend," I replied. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... passed since the words were spoken, have not yet brought up the Christian conscience to the full perception of their meaning and obligation. Too many of us still believe that 'great doors and effectual' can be blown open with gunpowder, and regard this Beatitude as a counsel of perfection, rather than as one of the fundamental laws ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... feverishly, "I have made an infernal machine with clockwork, and hid it in the hold near the gunpowder when we were at Fairhaven. I think it will go off between ten and eleven to-night, but I am not quite sure about the time. Don't tell those other beasts, but jump overboard and swim ashore. I have taken the boat I would have taken you too, but you told me you swam seven ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... educated at Benares, and that science is there more thoroughly understood and taught than the people of the west are aware of. We have, for many thousands of years, been good astronomers, chymists, mathematicians, and philosophers. We had discovered the secret of gunpowder, the magnetic attraction, the properties of electricity, long before they were heard of in Europe. We know more than we have revealed; and much of our knowledge is deposited in the archives of the caste to which I belong; but, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... sailors catched the sound of a blowing-horn. The only fire-arms on board were a pair of swivels of one-inch calibre; but it is quite surprising how much the sound is lost in foggy weather, as the report was heard but at a very short distance. The sound from the explosion of gunpowder is so instantaneous that the effect of the small guns was not so good as either the blowing of a horn or the tolling of a bell, which afforded a more constant and steady direction for ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson |
