"Shambles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and I came through yesterday and this morning was most sickening and depressing to both of us. The Australian Aid Post was a perfect shambles, about an acre of stretcher cases, horrible wounds, and all the surroundings soaked with blood. ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... may do better," answered the Fleming. "But would your reverence have me dally until the question amongst the garrison be, whether a plump priest or a fat Fleming will be the better flesh to furnish their shambles?" ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... mystery; but the sum would get itself done with the figures now on the slate. On little Aggie's slate the figures were yet to be written; which sufficiently accounted for the difference of the two surfaces. Both the girls struck him as lambs with the great shambles of life in their future; but while one, with its neck in a pink ribbon, had no consciousness but that of being fed from the hand with the small sweet biscuit of unobjectionable knowledge, the other struggled with instincts ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... In him ingratitude you find, A vice peculiar to the kind. The sheep whose annual fleece is dyed, To guard his health, and serve his pride, 30 Forced from his fold and native plain, Is in the cruel shambles slain. The swarms, who, with industrious skill, His hives with wax and honey fill, In vain whole summer days employed, Their stores are sold, their race destroyed. What tribute from the goose is paid! Does not her wing all science aid! ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... led like a sheep to the shambles," he declared, "and you go like a sheep. You should have landed in France, where you have friends. Even now it is not too late. A ship could ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... out to the last. The Aeolus, discharging another broadside, ran her aboard, when grappling-irons were secured and the boarders called away, led by Norman Foley and Gerald Tracy. Her deck already presented the appearance of a perfect shambles, so many of her crew lay dead and dying in all directions. A determined band still held out, headed by an officer who, by his shouts and gestures, encouraged his men to fight till the last. Gerald at first supposed that he must be Thurot, ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... a goat. It is certainly a pleasant thought that one who rounds out his figure with the luscious fatness of nuts may felicitate himself upon the fact that his tissues are participating in the sweetness of the nut rather than the relic of the sty and the shambles. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... neglected a great duty of his place. It must have been remarked with astonishment, as a matter almost inexplicable, how it has arisen that so many gallant men, at the head of every regiment, should have suffered themselves to be slaughtered like sheep in a butcher's shambles. Surely five-and-twenty or thirty men, in youthful vigour, many of them capital shots, could easily have shot down 150 of the cowardly sepoys. So much work they could have finished with their revolvers. More than one amongst the ladies, in this hideous struggle, have ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the nobility the people in Rome. Secondly, when a prince holds about half the dominion, and the people the other half (which was the case of the Roman emperors, planted partly upon their military colonies and partly upon the Senate and the people), the government becomes a very shambles, both of the princes and the people. Somewhat of this nature are certain governments at this day, which are said to subsist by confusion. In this case, to fix the balance is to entail misery; but in the ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... of it the horse swerved before a brandished rammer, and striking the cheeks of the gun-carriage pitched his inanimate rider across the gun. The hot blood of the dead man smoked on the hotter brass with the reek of the shambles, and be-spattered the hand of the gunner who still mechanically served the vent. As they lifted the dead body down the order came to "cease firing." For the yells from below had ceased too; the rattling and grinding were receding with the smoke farther ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... passion. "If Norfolk thinks to act the King, and turn the city into a shambles,"—with a mighty oath—"he shall abye it. Here, Lord Cardinal—more, let the free pardon be drawn up for the two lads. And we will ourselves write to the Lord Mayor and to Norfolk that though they may work their will on the movers of the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the fact that her Fifth Act had been a veritable shambles—broke up in laughter. She couldn't ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had not courage to attend it, or inclination to witness any man's sorrows but his own. He met the wedding party by accident, and was heard to exclaim with a sigh, as they flaunted past him in gay exuberance of spirits—"Ah, poor Neal! he is going like one of her father's cattle to the shambles! Woe is me for having suggested matrimony to the tailor! He will not long-be under the necessity of saying that he 'is blue-moulded for want of a beating.' The butcheress will fell him like a Kerry ox, and I may have his blood to ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Here she sat, nothing to eat at home, her love-husband changed to a brute beast and lying in jail, her arms and heart empty of the babe that would have been there if only the stupid ones had not made a shambles of her front yard in ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... the London Abyss is a vast shambles. Year by year, and decade after decade, rural England pours in a flood of vigorous strong life, that not only does not renew itself, but perishes by the third generation. Competent authorities aver that the ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... morning, in my usual rambles, Passing along Whitechapel's ancient shambles, Where meat was hung in many a joint and quarter, I had to halt awhile, like other folks, To let a killing butcher coax A score of lambs and fatted sheep to slaughter. A sturdy man he looke'd to fell an ox, Bull-fronted, ruddy, with a formal streak Of ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... if men were not waking to slay each other and pass unconfessed to their account. There came on me a great sickness of war. Yesterday the boulevard of Les Augustins, when the fight was over, had been a shambles; white bodies that had been stripped of their armour lay here and there like sheep on a hillside, and were now smirched with dust, a thing unseemly. I put it to myself that I was engaged, if ever man ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... 727; Aceldama[obs3]. [Destruction of animals] slaughtering; phthisozoics[obs3]; sport, sporting; the chase, venery; hunting, coursing, shooting, fishing; pig- sticking; sportsman, huntsman, fisherman; hunter, Nimrod; slaughterhouse, meat packing plant, shambles, abattoir. fatal accident, violent death, casualty. V. kill, put to death, slay, shed blood; murder, assassinate, butcher, slaughter, victimize, immolate; massacre; take away life, deprive of life; make away with, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... feet to the surface of the mole itself. Many were killed and more wounded as they crowded up the gangways, but nothing hindered the orderly and speedy landing by every gangway. The lower deck was a shambles, as the commander made the round of the ship, yet the wounded and dying raised themselves to cheer as ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... suspect; Dreyfus was a Jew, the Jews were suspect. People began talking about militarism, about the Jews. Such utterly disreputable people as Drumont held up their heads; little by little they stirred up a regular pother on a substratum of anti-semitism, on a substratum that smelt of the shambles. When something is wrong with us we look for the causes outside ourselves, and readily find them. "It's the Frenchman's nastiness, it's the Jews', it's Wilhelm's." Capital, brimstone, the freemasons, the ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... shambles; three were dead inside, another lay in his death agony across the threshold; and there were Alan and I victorious ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... river, mirroring azure skies and radiant in the colorful glow of early autumn. How hard to realize that death lurked in the quietude of its borders; that Man had chosen this bosom of shade, tuneful with the voice of sweetly calling birds, as a fitting shambles to slay his ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... sight, and the room looked like a shambles. Halloway had plainly been caught unawares while leaning over his gate. The back of his head had been crushed in with the eye of an axe, and he had died instantly. The pleasant thought which was in his mind at ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... morning—an hour at which few people had seen me for years—I was on my road to Smithfield. Smithfield? Yes; even so. All known and respectable publishers having declined any connexion with the work, the writers had facetiously resorted to this aceldama, or slaughtering quarter of London—to these vast shambles, as typical, I suppose, of their own slaughtering spirit. On my road to Smithfield, I could not but pause for one moment to reflect on the pure defecated malice which must have prompted an attack upon myself. Retaliation or retort it could not pretend ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... and may very probably originate some serious inflammatory disorder. Any animal which has suffered a very bad case of impaction of the paunch, ought, immediately after complete restoration to health, to be sent to the shambles; for, independently of the lurking danger consequent on the artificial extraction of the food, or even upon the relaxation which follows the administration of a stimulant, the paunch is so much overstretched and injured by the mechanical effects of the distension as to be temporarily incapacitated ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... overcharged with the anti-Catholic passion of the time, has a typical quality which gives it some empirical significance and interest. That anti-papal ardor is indeed the only note of unity in a rough and ragged chronicle which shambles and stumbles onward from the death of Queen Jeanne of Navarre to the murder of the last Valois. It is possible to conjecture what it would be fruitless to affirm, that it gave a hint in the next century to ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... storeroom there were countless exists—down the gutter into the courtyard (a short cut to the shambles), beneath the flooring to the scullery, and thence along the drain-pipe to the great sewer, through the ventilator ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... all over again, and they dashed, often colliding, generally hindering each other, hither and thither, up and down the paths of the "yard" with the hopeless, helpless, senseless, blind abandon of sheep. The result was a shambles. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... how few they were who made the last attempt to stay the dreadful Monday-morning spectacles of men and women strung up in a row for crimes as different in their degree as our whole social scheme is different in its component parts, which, within some fifteen years or so, made human shambles ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... family are all prisoners in the Temple Tower. I do not dare to read the particulars; but not a single protest against their barbarity is made. Frenchmen who silently saw the Abbaye, the Force, and the Carmes turned into human shambles three months ago, now hold their peace while murders no less horrible are being slowly done in ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... believes to have been also liars and murderers, the offal of gaols and brothels, the leavings of the hangman's whip and shears, Catholics guilty of nothing but their religion were led like sheep to the Protestant shambles, where were the loyal Tory gentry and the passively obedient clergy? And where, when the time of retribution came, when laws were strained and juries packed to destroy the leaders of the Whigs, when charters were invaded, when Jeffreys ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... steamer was of course the first to reach the Bill, the Flying Cloud being partially becalmed under the high land of Portland; and when the pleasure party again passed her, it was at a distance of about a mile, the ship steering a course which would take her well clear of the Shambles shoal. ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... almost Christian prayers? That a handful of Spaniards, themselves mistaken for children of a white god, should have crossed the sea, should have found a lovely lady, as in a fairy tale, ready to lead them to victory, should have planted the cross on the shambles of Huitzilopochtli, after that wild battle on the temple crest, should have been driven in rout from, and then recaptured, the Venice of the West, the lake city of Mexico—all this is as strange, as unlooked for, as any story of adventures in a new planet could be. No invention ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... and maunder against the glorious time, When France arose in all her might, when loyalty was crime; When prison shambles stream'd with blood, and red the gutters ran, In the cause of just fraternity, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... you are a foul-lipped blackguard!" I said; and, lest that should not be enough, I smote him in the face so that he fell like an ox in the shambles. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... shambles—the King himself, wrought up to frenzy, firing on the fugitives. And the next day, while his brain still seemed frozen with horror, he was called on to join in the procession of thanksgiving for the King's ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have Allies who share The toll you levy for the shambles, Yet, judging by the frills you wear In this your most forlorn of gambles, One might suppose you stood alone In solitary splendour ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... turned the crank of the Nordenfeldt. The effect was horrible. A dozen fell at the first discharge. The rest halted, and after one dazed instant's wavering, threw down their arms, broke and fled for the cover of the forecastle. The air was filled with the sound of groans. The deck was like a shambles. Maclean watched three or four poor wounded creatures crawl off on their hands and knees for shelter and he ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... and I shall talk to him in his turn. But you desecrated it worse. He turned it into a blacksmith shop; you turned it into a shambles. I shall commit you. You will be taken to Hillsborough to-morrow; to-night you will remain in my strong-room. Fling him down a mattress and some blankets, and give him plenty to eat and drink; I wouldn't starve the devil on old Christmas Eve. There, take him away. Stop; search his ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... my Shakespeare, and even sacrifice my old quarto Hogarth, before I will part with you. Yes, I will go to the hammer myself, ere I send you to be knocked down in the auctioneer's shambles. I will, my beloved,—old family relic that you are;—till you drop leaf from leaf, and letter from letter, you shall have a snug shelf somewhere, though I have no bench ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... before Martinmas, at dusk. In the centre of the town, on the waste ground to the north of the "Shambles" (as the stone-built meat market was called), and in the space between the Shambles and the as yet unfinished new Town Hall, the showmen and the showgirls and the showboys were titivating their booths, and cooking their ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... cleanseth from all sin they fling up their hands in protest, tell us we are to be numbered among the figures of the past and that the theology we seek to maintain is the theology of the butcher shop, the barbarous doctrine of the shambles and the shadow of old -time tribal gods whose vengefulness and wrath could be appeased only by the murder of ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... the gospel is not that a way has been given us by which to avoid conflict, but that the power of love has been given us for the conflict. With it we can enter into the shambles of life with assurance, courage, and a belief that, even though we cannot always understand what is going on, the purpose of love is to reunite man and man, and that in Christ God's love won the initial victory in this ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... many roads, by me possessed, He shambles forth in cosmic guise; He is the Jester and the Jest, And ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... iniquity and egoism, cruelty and corruption; and our planet (a very heaven for warmth and brilliancy and beauty, in spite of earthquakes and cyclones and tornadoes) is a very hell through the creatures that people it—a shambles, a place of torture, a ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... them the Polish corps of Prince Joseph Poniatowski), jammed hopelessly in the streets, were being simply exterminated by the troops of the Allied Powers. When asked what it was like in there, Mr. Nicholas B. muttered only the word "Shambles." Having delivered his message to the Prince he hastened away at once to render an account of his mission to the superior who had sent him. By that time the advance of the enemy had enveloped the town, and he ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... you both," said the charitable mediator, "and especially on you, Master Lambourne! What the fiend lie you here for, fighting on the floor like two butchers' curs in the kennel of the shambles?" ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... row of tenements in the Strand, between Wych Street and Temple Bar, and 'so called from the butchers' shambles on the south side.' (Strype, B. iv. p. 118.) Butcher Row was pulled down in 1813, and the present Pickett Street erected in its stead. P. CUNNINGHAM. In Humphry Clinker, in the letter of June 10, one of the poor authors is described as having been 'reduced ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... stronger daemon, feared the grapple, And looking round him, found this nook of fate, To skulk behind my sword?—Shall I discover him?— Still he would not die mine; no thanks to my Revenge; reserved but to more royal shambles. 'Twere base, too, and below those vulgar souls, That shared his danger, yet not one disclosed him, But, struck with reverence, kept an awful silence. I'll see no more of this;—dog ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... meant gold to our thinking, and all that could walk must pack; The sheep for the shambles stumbled, each with a load on its back; And even the swine were burdened, and grunted and squealed and rolled, And men went mad in the moment, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... Tebrick (and this was all part of his plan) then took a vase and went to find some water for them, but left the flowers beside her. He stopped away five minutes, timing it by his watch and listening very intently, but never heard the rabbit squeak. Yet when he went in what a horrid shambles was spread before his eyes. Blood on the carpet, blood on the armchairs and antimacassars, even a little blood spurtled on to the wall, and what was worse, Mrs. Tebrick tearing and growling over a piece of the skin and the legs, for she had eaten up all the rest of it. The poor gentleman ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... passing, showed a sight I will not seek to describe; nor did I look twice, but fell to work with sponge and rammer, loading this death-dealing piece as quickly as I might, while louder than the awful wailing that came from that gory shambles rose a wild hubbub from their comrades,—shouts and cries telling their sudden panic and consternation. But as they stood thus in huddled amaze, Sir Richard opened on them with his muskets, firing in rapid succession and with aim so deadly that they forthwith turned and ran for it, nor did ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... darkness began to fall the whole Confederate line crossed Cedar Run and swept up the slopes beyond. Every yard of ground bore witness to the severity of the fighting. The slaughter had been very heavy. Within ninety minutes 3000 men had fallen. The woods were a shambles, and among the corn the dead lay thick. Scores of prisoners surrendered themselves, and hundreds of discarded muskets bore witness to the demoralisation of the Northerners. Nevertheless, the pursuit was slow. The impetuosity of the Confederates, eager to ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... wilt do mine errand, and if thou return hither when it is done, thou shalt see Saxon flesh cheap as ever was hog's in the shambles of Sheffield. And, hark thee, thou seemest to be a jolly confessor—come hither after the onslaught, and thou shalt have as much Malvoisie as would drench thy ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... a dog—a huge sandy mastiff, with hanging jaws, wet with foam, a great square head, and broad noiseless feet. It shambles nearer, appearing so suddenly out of the gloom that it seems to materialise before her vision. It watches her as if about to spring; she cannot remember it is not ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... prepared a banquet. Then he sent his chariots and horsemen to Agamemnon, and invited him to the feast, but he meant foul play. He got him there, all unsuspicious of the doom that was awaiting him, and killed him when the banquet was over as though he were butchering an ox in the shambles; not one of Agamemnon's followers was left alive, nor yet one of Aegisthus', but they were all killed ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... in a flash, and sped up the decks—with not one second to spare. The upper deck was a shambles. I scrambled up the bulwark straight in front and sprang out as far as I could. Before I struck the water I heard the roar of a mighty explosion behind, and dived to avoid the after effects. When I came ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... swell every expense, and strain every effort, still more extravagantly; accumulate every assistance you can beg and borrow; traffic and barter with every little, pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country: your efforts are forever vain ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... of 10,000 maravedies, promised in reward to him who should first discover land, was afterwards decreed by their majesties to belong to the admiral, and was always paid him from the rents of the shambles of Seville; because he saw the light in the midst of darkness; typical of the spiritual light they were bringing among those barbarous people: For God so ordered it, that, as soon as the wars with the Moors of Granada were ended, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... Right or wrong, it was done. The shrieks and curses had died away, and the Fort del Oro was a red shambles, which the soldiers were trying to cover from the sight of heaven and earth, by dragging the bodies into the ditch, and covering them with the ruins of the rampart; while the Irish, who had beheld from the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... times as many of the foe. And then the Com-Pub fleet came on. Most of the original force remained; surely enough to devastate an undefended nation, to shatter its cities and butcher its people; to slaughter its men and enslave its women and leave a shambles and smoking ash-heaps where the very backbone of resistance to the red ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... remorselessly suppressed by all the police and military forces at the command of the government. In many instances, the employers have purposely provoked striking workers to violence, and then called upon the government to crush the revolt thus made. Workers have been shot down at the shambles in almost every state, no matter which political party has been in power. Nor have these forces of our class government been used merely to punish lawless union men and women on strike, to uphold the "sacred majesty of the law," as the hypocritical phrase goes. They have been also used to deny ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... career. The dispute grew hot; my escort was foolish enough to clap his hand on the hilt of his sabre—an affront intolerable to a citizen, at the head of fifty or sixty braves from the counter or the shambles; the result was, a succession of blows from the whole troop, which closed in my seeing him stripped of every thing, and flung into the cachot of the corps de garde, from which his only view of his beloved Paris must have been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Kate's fixed opinion, that, if for a moment she entered any bedroom having obviously no outlet, her fate would be that of an ox once driven within the shambles. Outside, the bullock might make some defence with his horns; but once in, with no space for turning, he is muffled and gagged. She carried her eye, therefore, like a hawk's, steady, though restless, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... darkness over them, No cloud of fire to guide and cover them, Beasts for the shambles, tremulous with dread, They crouch on alien ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... length, the people also went mad with their thirst and the fury of their fear. They fell upon each other, killing each other; every man who had a foe sought him out and killed him. None were spared, the place was but a shambles; there on that day died full seven thousand men, and still Chaka walked weeping among them, saying, "Take them away, the heartless brutes, take them away!" Yet, my father, there was cunning in his cruelty, for though he destroyed many for sport alone, also he slew on this ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... authorities took very little notice of the occurrence. But Mr. Mackenzie appealed to a jury, who, "to the no small discomfiture of the tories, from Sir Peregrine Maitland, down to the lowest menial employed in the political shambles," gave exemplary damages. This had some effect, but not the weight which punishment for the crime would have produced. The risk of having to pay for damages would certainly not have prevented similar violence. The employees or relatives of the Executive ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... those who mourned the loss of these brave men had a consolation of which nothing could rob them; the consolation which is graven in stone upon the Epping monument; a consolation preserved as well in German as in English history. Germany may truthfully say of the Epping shambles that no quarter was given that day. England may say, with what pride she may, that none was asked. The last British soldier slaughtered in the Epping trenches had no white flag in his hand, but a broken bayonet, and, under his knee, the Colours of ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... allowing the little gray broncho to pick her own dainty way out of the shambles about her feet. Then, once free from the litter of men and horses, he turned her head to the spot where, he had been told, his squadron were gathering together their diminished forces. As he rode slowly onward, he was surprised to see how low the sun had dropped. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... hypodermics ease the stricken one into the darkness, and ceremony and function and flowers and undertaking institutions conspire to give a happy leave-taking and send-off to the departing shade, but sudden death, primitive death, ugly and ungarnished, like the death of a steer in the shambles or a fat swine stuck ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... accompanied with appropriate sounds. The cattle, particularly, had become sensible of their impending fate, and with awkward resistance and piteous cries, testified that reluctance with which these poor creatures look instinctively on the shambles. The groans and screams of men, undergoing, or about to undergo, the stroke of death, and the screeches of the poor horses which were in mortal agony, formed a fearful chorus. Hugonet was desirous to remove himself ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... early friends of the Saxon Army Corps. Since in the battle of the previous day some 32,000 men had fallen killed or wounded within a comparatively small area, it may be imagined—or rather, without having seen the horror of carnage it cannot be imagined—how shambles-like was the aspect of this Aceldama. Scrambling up through the Bois la Dame with intent to obtain a wider view from the plateau above it, I found in a farmyard in the hamlet of Mariaville a number of wounded men under the care of a single and rather helpless surgeon. The water ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... assassin's sword fell from his hand, and the assassin, with a cry of rage, retreated into the darkness. Lagardere had only time to brand the traitor; he had not the time to kill him. Looking swiftly about him, he saw that his vengeance must be patient if he were to save his skin from that shambles. The sword of the satellite defended the master; other swords began to gleam anew. From all the quarters of that field of fight the bravos were gathering again, all there were left of them, and Lagardere was now alone. With the activity ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... from peaceful flowery pastures, from the sweet sanctity of the cloistral fold, out through thorny devious paths where Temptations prowl wolf-fanged, or into fierce conflicts that end in the social shambles, those bloodless abattoirs where malice mangles humanity. How many verdure-veiled, rose-garlanded pitfalls yawned in that treacherous future now stretching before her like summer air, here all gold and blue, yonder with purple glory crowning the dim far away? Intuitively she ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... every-man-to-his post incline-7-degrees splendour jet pierce immensity azure deflowering onslaught alleys cries labyrinth mattress sobs ploughing desert bed precision telemetre monoplane cackling theatre applause monoplane equals balcony rose wheel drum trepan gad-fly rout arabs oxen blood-colour shambles ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Lieutenant McCready spoke. The quiet was shattered by the roar of two Luger pistols. Again and again the guns barked. A volley of fire came from the tunnel, but Carnes and the lieutenant were standing well away from the opening and they escaped unharmed. Their deadly fire poured into the shambles until they were rewarded by the sound ...
— The Solar Magnet • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... in weight and number of pieces, could do little, in spite of the greatest gallantry, to protect the infantry; and that the army was able to withdraw at all was a striking proof of its stern discipline. Audencourt was a shambles. Colonel McMicking, wounded near this village and left behind, as all the wounded who were unable to walk had to be, was hit again while being carried out of the blazing church. The command devolved on Major, now Brigadier-General, Duncan. From this time onwards the German guns had the range of the ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... table at Kartabo, and looked down river to the pink roof of Kalacoon, and my mind went back to the shambles of Pit Number Five.[1] I was wondering whether I should ever see the army ants in any guise other than that of scouting, battling searchers for living prey, when a voice of the jungle seemed to hear my unexpressed wish. The sharp, high notes of white-fronted antbirds—those ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... ghastly source, and seeing Hope and his daughter lying comparatively weak and exhausted, he came and sat down at a little distance in front of them: that was partly done to divert Hope from examining his shambles and ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... clean. In these there are several covered halls or galleries, having shops on both sides; and a handsome hall of entrance, adorned with pictures. There are hogs kept in every house, and the butchers hang their pork in the shambles along with the mutton[23]. The city wall is flanked with towers at every twenty paces distance; and there is a gate in the middle of each side, from each of which one may see the opposite gate, as the streets pass straight through the middle of the city, dividing it into four ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... marshy, there's no doubt. But, my dear sir, look at Bourron! Bourron stands high. Bourron is close to the forest; plenty of ozone there, you would say. Well, compared with Gretz, Bourron is a perfect shambles." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his eyes wander over the wreckage as his right index finger spun the dial. Actually, the room wasn't as much of a shambles as it had looked on first sight. The—burglar?—hadn't tried to get at anything but the Converter. He hadn't known exactly where it was, but he'd been able to follow the leads to its hiding place. That meant that he knew his beans about ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... cut the faces of maid-servants, and slit the noses of watchmen. The criminal classes became so daring and numerous that the streets were insecure even in the day-time, "It is shocking to think what a shambles this country is grown!" wrote Walpole. "Seventeen were executed this morning, after having murdered the turnkey on Friday night, and almost forced open Newgate. One is forced to travel even at noon, as if one were going to battle."[141] ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... asked. And himself answered his own question: "She is in Paris, and she must be brought out of it at once, before the place becomes a shambles, as well it may once the passions that have been brewing all these months are let loose. Young Rougane's plan is good. At least, I cannot think ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... fish, but of toughened skin, as in crocodiles and alligators, arranged in two overlapping rows of imbricated shields, exactly like the round tiles so common on the roofs of Italian cottages. The fish walks, or rather shambles along ungracefully, by the shuffling movement of a pair of stiff spines placed close behind his head, aided by the steering action of his tail, and a constant snake-like wriggling motion of his entire body. Leg spines ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... appease by having the body interred in a Christian burial-ground. But the spirit of his executed friend worried him all his remaining days, and the act of burial did not save Naples from becoming a shambles of conflict, robbery, and revolution. Neither did Emma Hamilton escape her just deserts for the vile part she played in one of the most abominable crimes ever committed. Her latter hours were made terrible by the thought of the mockery ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... to draw 'twixt God His Law And Man's infirmity; A shadow kind to dumb and blind The shambles where we die; A sum to trick th' arithmetic Too base of leaguing odds; The spur of trust, the curb of lust— Thou ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... commenced—the most intense bombardment we had yet experienced. Most of the fire came from the batteries in concealed positions on our right, whence, as on the fourth, they poured in a very destructive enfilade fire which swept up and down the length of the trench like the stream of a hose, making it a shambles. Each burst of high-explosive shells, each terrible pulsation of the atmosphere, if it missed the body, seemed to rend the very ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... that some of us had taken, not a man of ours was missing, whilst of the Duke's followers not a single one remained alive in that ante-chamber. The place was a shambles. Hangings that had been clutched had been torn from the walls; a great mirror was cracked from top to bottom; tables were overset and wrecked; chairs were splintered; and hardly a pane of glass remained in any of ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... archaeology, and was enthusiastic in finding relics of the olden time. He took me into a great many private houses. I visited every church, and indeed saw far more than do the great majority of even the most inquiring visitors. The Shambles was then and is still perhaps one of the most curious specimens of a small mediaeval street in the world. I felt as if I could pass a life in the museum and churches, and I did, in fact, years after, remain there, very busy, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... my mind was removed, and I felt happy and thankful. I was not sold from the shambles. I prayed, I sung, and I shouted by turns. We arrived at home, and I waited patiently for my ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... seem that he was expected to fling his life away like a dumb brute entering the reeking shambles. His youth and abilities had been given him for some other purpose. Again palsying fear and ignoble selfishness tugged at his heart-strings, and he felt all his carefully ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... And trampled Europe knows the winter near. Orchards go down. Home and cathedral fall In ruin, and the blackened provinces Reach on to drear horizons. Soon the snow Shall cover all, and soon be stained with red, A quagmire and a shambles, and ere long Shall cold and hunger dice for helpless lives. So man gone mad, despoils the gentle earth And wages war on ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... this white man, as sick as the black men who lay helpless about him, and whom he attended. He never knew, each time he entered the festering shambles, whether or not he would be able to complete the round. But he did know in large degree of certainty that, if he ever fainted there in the midst of the blacks, those who were able would be at his throat like ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... she said, "belongs to the shambles of your cut-throat finance. I have no wish to listen to it." Gradually the scornful light in Mary's pupils hardened and brightened into the fighting fire that might come into those of a tigress whose den has been threatened. Her delicate nostrils ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Private M'Queen shambles out of the room for the last time in his life. Captain Blaikie, a little exhausted by his own unusual loquacity, turns to Bobby Little ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... World, and then of the Saracens, and since, of the Turks, were such woes as men had never seen before. The Infandous Blindness and Vileness which then came upon mankind, and the Monstrous Croisadoes which thereupon carried the Roman World by Millions together unto the Shambles; were also such woes as had never yet had a Parallel. And yet these were some of the things here intended, when it was said, Wo! For the Devil is come down in great Wrath, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... people lying about the decks either asleep or dead. We ran almost alongside, when I was ordered to board her with one of the gigs. Never shall I forget the scene which met my sight as I stepped on her decks; they were a complete shambles: a dozen or more men lay about in the after part of the ship, the blood yet oozing from deep gashes on their heads and shoulders, not one of them alive; while on the steps of the companion-ladder were two women, young and ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... hit with his slungshot, in season or out of it. The results of His Majesty's visit were appalling, for he had not been with us more than six weeks before his enthusiasm getting the better of his sportsmanship he turned the jungle into a zoological shambles, from which it is never likely to recover. On his first day's outing, to our dismay he brought down thirty-seven ring-tailed ornithorhyncusses, eighteen pterodactyls, three brace of dodo, and a domesticated ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... broad trottoirs of hard red brick. The police regulations are excellent, and cleanliness is much attended to, the kennels being washed daily during the summer months, with water from the reservoirs. The markets, or shambles, extend half-a-mile in length, from the wharf up Market-street, in six divisions. In addition to the shambles, farmers' waggons, loaded with every kind of country produce for sale, line ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... dash and courage. For four hours the battle raged with fury. The shattered regiments that had been surprised and crushed the day before, yielded at one time before the onslaughts of the Confederates. By noon Beauregard had sent into the shambles his last brigade and reserves and shortly afterwards gave his first order ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... horrified manner, let him run on. The hospital porter and another man turned down the corners of the cloth, and stepped aside. The Chief Inspector's eyes searched the gruesome detail of that heap of mixed things, which seemed to have been collected in shambles and rag shops. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... white-haired man. In front of him rumbled a cart; in the cart, the axeman, laving wet hands; at the axeman's feet, the head of a regicide—all to intimidate that old, white-haired man, fearlessly erect, singing a psalm. When they reached the shambles, know you what they did? Go read the old court records and learn what that sentence meant when a man's body was cast into fire before his living eyes! All the while, watching from a window were the princes and their ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... the pilgrims who are able to afford it, kill some three, some four, or more sheep, even to ten, so that in one sacrifice there are sometimes slain above 3000 sheep; and as they are all slaughtered at sun-rise, the shambles then flow with blood. Shortly afterwards all the carcasses are distributed for God's sake among the poor, of whom I saw there at least to the number of 20,000. These poor people dig many long ditches in the fields round Mecca, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... beyond measure at that rush, knowing his sabres to be slightly outnumbered by mine. In another moment all the level space round the farmhouse was a whirling storm of slashing cavalry, and then we found ourselves still holding on, with half a dozen prisoners, and the farmyard a perfect shambles of horses and men. The melee was over. His charge had failed, and, after a brief breathing—space for my shot—torn infantry to come up, I led on the counter attack. It was brilliantly successful; a hard five minutes with bayonet and sabre, and his right ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... trial having passed, men stirred their slow imaginations with pictures of the crucifixion and the passion. Martyrdoms began to be represented; and the series—not even yet, alas! come to an end—of the coarse and bloody atrocities of painting, pictures worthy only of the shambles, beginning here, marked the decline of piety and the absence of feeling. Love and veneration for the older and simpler works disappeared, and through many of the ancient pictures fresh graves were dug, that faithless Christians ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the shambles that we had left about the Castle gates, it occurred to me that within the courtyard a crowd would be waiting to receive and welcome me, and it became necessary to devise some means of avoiding this reception. I beckoned Giacomo to ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... spoken by all this! Prometheus (who represents the human race) effected some great change in the condition of his nature, and applied fire to culinary purposes; thus inventing an expedient for screening from his disgust the horrors of the shambles. From this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease. It consumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and infinite variety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature and violent death. All vice rose from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... legs are being broken with an iron bar, which has so tortured the unhappy man that in his agony he has torn his left foot from the nail." It is questionable whether any splendour of success can ever justify a man in thus condescending to draw inspiration from the torture-room or shambles. ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... bids Christianity stand aside for a time. It legalises wholesale murder and robbery. It affords a safe opportunity to villainy to work its diabolic will, so that some of the fairest scenes of earth are converted into human shambles. It destroys the labour of busy generations, past and present, and saddles heavy national debt on those that are yet unborn. It has been estimated that the national debts of Europe now amount to nearly 3000 millions ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... closer examination. Were not these amusements of the Netherlanders as elevated and humanizing as the contemporary bull-fights and autos-da-fe of Spain? What place in history does the gloomy bigot merit who, for the love of Christ, converted all these gay cities into shambles, and changed the glittering processions of their Land jewels into ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with enemies through conferences, armistices, treaties of peace, &c., having tamed the savagery of war into connection with modes of intellectual grandeur, and with the endless restraints of superstition or scrupulous religion,—a permanent light of civilization began to steal over the bloody shambles of buccaneering warfare. Other modes of harmonizing influences arose more directly from the bosom of war itself. Gradually the mere practice of war, and the culture of war though merely viewed as a rude trade of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... dead within them," said the Countess. "They are like sheep penned up in the shambles, that the butcher may take his choice among them. In the obscure and brief communications which I have had by a secure hand, they do but anticipate their own utter ruin, and ours—so general is the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the roundabouts. Jerry Garnet, the Man, might become a depressed, hopeless wreck, with the iron planted immovably in his soul; but Jeremy Garnet, the Author, should turn out such a novel of gloom, that strong critics would weep, and the public jostle for copies till Mudie's doorway became a shambles. ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... future is to be the man who can so arrange his work that he is led into the deepest research on some one branch of farming. He must be a specialist. He must thoroughly master the raising of fine stock for breeding purposes, for practical profit and the shambles. Attend stock associations, and hear witnesses testify on every hand to the difficulties connected with properly rearing ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... fellow. They struck him with their fists, kicked him with their heavy shoes, knocked him down, and dragged him to his feet to knock him down again. His eyes were blinded so that he could not set, and the blood running from ears and nose and mouth turned the cabin into a shambles. And when he could no longer rise they still continued to beat and kick him ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... quenched the voice of my singer?—hark, in your dying ears, The song of the conflagration! Ye left me a widow alone? —Behold, the whole of your race consumes, sinew and bone And torturing flesh together: man, mother, and maid Heaped in a common shambles; and already, borne by the trade, The smoke of your dissolution ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... burst in a coal box, the shell fire seemed different; it had a quality of action and adventure in comparison with the monotonous exhibition which we had watched in stalemate warfare. Death now had some element of glory and sport. It was less like set fate in a stationary shambles. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... General. It was as though the grimness of reality had interrupted a piece of play-acting. There was less heat in Braithwaite's voice now and more reproach. "You said nothing about caste in those days, when you hurried us to the shambles. You promised us—— What was ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson |
