"Two-handed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hot, boys!" "That's your sort!" "Bravo, old Waterproof!" this last cheer being for Macintosh, who shot a chief who was leading on his tribesmen, brandishing a huge two-handed sword. ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... that he was the best little two-handed general operator of an all-around character that any gentleman could secure when that gentleman wanted a job done and did not care to give explicit instructions as ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... his head, having a short spike projecting from the front. On one side of the saddle hung a short battle-axe, richly inlaid with Damascene carving; on the other the rider's plumed head-piece and hood of mail, with a long two-handed sword, used by the chivalry of the period. A second squire held aloft his master's lance, from the extremity of which fluttered a small banderole, or streamer, bearing a cross of the same form with that embroidered upon his cloak. He also carried his small triangular ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... answered promptly, "that's all I ask of you. If you think I'm wrong you're welcome to vote against me; but believe me, this is no Sunday-school job. There's a big fight coming on, I can feel it in my bones, and the best two-handed scrapper wins. Old W. H. Stoddard, when he had me in jail and was hoping I was going to be sent up, he tried to buy me out of this mine. He started at nothing and went up to twenty million, so you can guess how much ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... greater grandson, creator, guide, and guardian of modern civilization, paced with restless, ever-present steps, around the borders of that small world of light which he had built up, half blindly, in the overwhelming dark, and with two-handed blows beat back, with the iron mace of Germany, the savage assaults of Saracen and Sclave, of black Dane and brutal Wendt, and smote on till he died smiting, for order, and law, and faith, and so saved Europe, and, let ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... than the idea which fascinates. Professor Walker, speaking of the most exquisitely harmonious lyric ever written in English, or perhaps in any other language,[31] says with great truth: "The reader of Lycidas rises from it ready to grasp the 'two-handed engine' and smite; though he may be doubtful what the engine is, and ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... the room are two full suits of armor, one Italian, and one English of the time of Henry V., the latter holding in its hands a stupendous two-handed sword, I suppose six feet long, and said to have been found on Bosworth field. Opposite to the door is the fireplace of freestone, imitated from an arch in the cloister at Melrose, with a peculiarly graceful ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... the number stamped on the short one's scratched chestplate. Alec Diger had been his only close friend during those thirteen boring years at Orange Sea Camp. A good chess player and a whiz at Two-handed Handball, they had spent all their off time together. They shook hands, with the extra squeeze that ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... those grooves contrived for the blood to run along, those teeth set backward so as to tear out the entrails in withdrawing the weapon. It is a fine character of ferocious arm, and will look well in your collection. This two-handed sword is very beautiful. It is the work of Josepe de la Hera; and this colichemarde with its fenestrated guard—what ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... Frederick behind them wounded; of how he had kneeled before the Baron Conrad, asking for mercy, and of how Baron Conrad had answered, "Aye, thou shalt have such mercy as thou deservest," and had therewith raised his great two-handed sword and laid his kneeling enemy dead at ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... fall from his grasp his huge oak-tree; on which Saint Anthony, redoubling his efforts, smote him so fiercely, that he sunk down on his knees, unable to fly further. Still undaunted, the Giant drew a dagger twice the size of any ordinary two-handed sword. With this he struck right and left so rapidly that the Knight had hard work indeed to escape its blows, and still greater to discover a spot in his huge body in which he might plant a deadly ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... found no suit large enough to fit them in the great collection of Sir Samuel Meyrick. The Oriental sabre will not admit the English hand, nor the bracelet of the Kaffir warrior the English arm. The swords found in Roman tumuli have handles inconveniently small; and the great mediaeval two-handed sword is now supposed to have been used only for one or two blows at the first onset, and then exchanged for a smaller one. The statements given by Homer, Aristotle, and Vitruvius represent six feet as a high standard for full-grown men; and the irrefutable evidence of the ancient doorways, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... ducked, and kept away, occasionally delivering a jolt as opportunity offered, awaiting the time when Orde's weariness would leave him at the other's mercy. That moment did not come. The young man hammered away tirelessly, insistently, delivering a hurricane of his two-handed blows, pressing relentlessly in as Murphy shifted and gave ground, his head up, his eyes steady, oblivious to the return hammering the now desperate handler opposed to him. Two minutes passed without perceptible slackening in this terrific pace. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... labor have a considerable resemblance to those in present use among ourselves. The saws were two-handed; but as the handle was in the same line with the blade, instead of being set at right angles to it, they must have been somewhat awkward to use. The shovels were heart-shaped, like those which Sir C. Fellows noticed in Asia Minor. The pickaxes ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... a mood, how consolatory must be the vision of that muffled figure, with the two-handed engine, always following close! And to Heine himself the consolation came with especial grace. He had been virulently assailed by the leaders of the party to which he regarded himself as naturally belonging—the party for whose ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... and capitas distribute the rations among the soldiers and paddlers, and at an order of the Chief, the whole crowd disappears into the huts. Then we eat our dinner, consisting of the usual chicken and eggs, have a game of two-handed bridge and ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... other, an adventurer at the head of a bunch of dogs as desperate as himself fought his way across the reeking decks of a Chinese junk, to close in single combat with a gigantic one-eyed pirate who stood by the helm with a ring of dead men about him and a great two-handed sword upheaved.... This adventurer ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... three had been contemporary with Donald MacRae. They esteemed old Donald. Jack heard many things about his father's early days on the Gulf that were new to him, that made his blood tingle and made him wish he had lived then too. Thirty years back the Gulf of Georgia was no place for any but two-handed men. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... coeval with its distinguished neighbour, the house of the Verneys, at Middle Claydon, and it had never served any other purpose than to shelter Englishmen of good repute in the land. Souvenirs of Bosworth field—a pair of huge jack-boots, a two-handed sword, and a battered helmet—hung over the chimney-piece in the low-ceiled hall; but the end of the civil war was but a memory when the Manor House was built. After Bosworth a slumberous peace had fallen on the land, and in the stillness of this secluded valley, sheltered from every ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... two-handed rod, and fancied that a single Test-fly on very fine tackle would be the best lure. It certainly rose the trout, if one threw into the circle they made; but they never were hooked. One fish of about a pound and a half threw himself out of the water at it, hit ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... from dating his notarial act as in such a year 'of the pontificate of our most holy Father and Lord in Christ, the Lord Paul, Pope by the Providence of God.' Only three years later, in 1546, he was carrying a two-handed sword before Wishart, then in danger of arrest and condemnation to the stake at the hands of the same Archbishop Beaton under whom Knox held his orders. And in the following year, 1547, Knox is standing in the ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... from the Saracen admiral Anthenor by Mangis d'Aygremont, the hero of the romance of that name. Ancient swords were frequently "flamboyant," or with waved edges; more especially those used for purposes of state. The Dukes of Burgundy bore a two-handed sword of this form. Indeed, "flaming swords," as they were called, were worn down to the time of our Charles II., and perhaps later. It is rather singular that the ordinary synonyma for a sword should be "brand." The name of the weapon taken ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... where thou art, nor what things dwell with thee. Whence art thou born? Thou know'st not; and unknown, On quick and dead, on all that were thine own, Thou hast wrought hate. For that across thy path Rising, a mother's and a father's wrath, Two-handed, shod with fire, from the haunts of men Shall scourge thee, in thine eyes now light, but then Darkness. Aye, shriek! What harbour of the sea, What wild Kithairon shall not cry to thee In answer, when thou hear'st what bridal song, ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... skeleton with the dart, or the phantom with the shrouded face, but a tall, beautiful young man,—as beautiful as they could get into the cast, at any rate,—clothed in simple black, and standing with his back against the mantlepiece, with his hands resting on the hilt of a long, two-handed sword. He is so quiet that you do not see him until some time after the child has seen him. When she begins to question him whether she may not somehow get to heaven without dying, he answers with a sort of sorrowful tenderness, a very sweet and noble compassion, but unsparingly as to his ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... when he comes up to say, that the gentleman with the loaded detonator opposite won't fire, that he feels he's in the wrong. Any or all of these together, very effective and powerful though they be, are light in the balance when compared with the two-handed compression you receive from the gentleman that expects you to marry ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... not fed," while "the grim wolf" of Rome "with privy paw daily devours apace, and nothing said!" The stern resolve of the people to demand justice on their tyrants spoke in his threat of the axe. Strafford and Laud, and Charles himself, had yet to reckon with "that two-handed engine at the door" which stood "ready to smite once, and smite no more." But stern as was the general resolve, there was no need for immediate action, for the difficulties which were gathering in the north were certain ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... Long time in even scale The battle hung; till Satan, who that day Prodigious power had shown, and met in arms No equal, ranging through the dire attack Of fighting Seraphim confused, at length Saw where the sword of Michael smote, and felled Squadrons at once; with huge two-handed sway Brandished aloft, the horrid edge came down Wide-wasting; such destruction to withstand He hasted, and opposed the rocky orb Of tenfold adamant, his ample shield, A vast circumference. At his approach The great Arch-Angel from his warlike toil Surceased, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... hands 28 Use of both bridles at once 30 Shortening the reins when held one in each hand, system of taught, and of untaught horsemen 30 Use of the whip 34 Horses swerve and turn only to the left 34 Fault in "the great untaught," two-handed, ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... romanticism killed him. Walter Scott, from his Castle of Abbotsford, sent out a troop of gallant young Scotch adventurers, merry outlaws, valiant knights, and savage Highlanders, who, with trunk hosen and buff jerkins, fierce two-handed swords, and harness on their back, did challenge, combat, and overcome the heroes and demigods of Greece and Rome. Notre Dame a la rescousse! Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert has borne Hector of Troy clear out of his saddle. Andromache ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ornaments which they wore, one may imagine, however, that they were well cared for by their lords in return for their affectionate labors; and the general bearing of the tall Banjara who bore a long two-handed sword gave evidence of a certain inward sense of protection over his belongings which probably found vent in many an affectionate gift of rings and bracelets to his graceful partner. It must be confessed that the gypsying of these Eastern Bohemians is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... by your leave," said Balafre; "I will not have any nephew baulked." So saying, he instantly assaulted De la Marck with his two-handed sword. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... peace! thou art yet ordained for greater things. There is another, too, a kept mistress, a brave strapping jade, a two-handed whore! ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... double layer of boards, standing at a very acute angle, would keep off the former, while the mingled refuse hay and muck beneath would nurse a smoke that would prove a thorough protection against the latter. And then, when Jim, the two-handed, mounting the trunk of a prostrate maple near by, had severed it thrice with easy and familiar stroke, and, rolling the logs in front of the shanty, had kindled a fire, which, getting the better of the dampness, ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... other. The principal anatomical distinction has been considered to be in the foot, which from the opposable character of the great toe was classed by Cuvier with the hand, the apes being named Quadrumana, or four-handed, and man Bimana, or two-handed. Fuller research has shown that this distinction does not exist, the foot of the ape being found to agree far more closely with the foot than with the hand of man. Estimated according to use, the hand is, in the ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... huge den of vice, where he could not legally be without a warrant, where Palura could kill him and escape once more on the specious plea of self-defence. Terabon saw the grin of perfect hate on Palura's face as both his hands came up with automatics in them—a two-handed gunman with his prey. ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... found himself nodding greeting to many an old acquaintance as they shouldered through it, Wulf and he, straight for the heart of the throng; Ulf still carrying in one hand his unbent sea-bow, and Wulf, the long, straight, two-handed sword of his father, as well as his own keen ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But, swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread; Beside what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said. But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.' Return, Alpheues, the dread voice is past, That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells, and flowerets of a thousand hues. Ye valleys low, where the mild ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... now have fallen to the side of the travellers (for the bravest troops must yield to numbers) had not Susan the chambermaid come luckily to support her mistress. This Susan was as two-handed a wench (according to the phrase) as any in the country, and would, I believe, have beat the famed Thalestris herself, or any of her subject Amazons; for her form was robust and man-like, and every way made for such encounters. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... facts in asserting it. His own good sense, it seems, coincided instinctively with the Bible doctrine, that man in a state of nature is a fallen being, doomed to death—a view which may be a sad one, but still one more honorable to poor humanity than the theory, that we all began as some sort of two-handed apes. It is surely more hopeful to believe that those poor Otomacs or Guahibas were not what they ought to be, than to believe that they were. It is certainly more complimentary to them to think that they had been ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... with the tuning fork fiddled again with some adjustment on the thick portion of its stem, and presently whirling it around his head as the old-time warriors used two-handed swords, he brought it down on one of a circle of small anvils that were arranged around him like the figures ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... out of circulation, an' go get us a couple more drinks, an' heel ourselves with a deck of cards an' a couple bottles of cactus juice, an' hunt us up a place where we'll be ondisturbed by the riotorious carryin's-on of the frivolous-minded, an' we'll have us a two-handed poker game which no matter who wins we can't lose, like I was tellin' you, 'cause they can't no outside parties horn in on the profits. But first-off we'll hunt up a feed barn so Ace of Spades can load up on oats an' hay ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... TWO-HANDED SAW. A very useful instrument in ship-carpentry; it is much longer than the hand-saw, and requires two ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... drive, sometimes just tearing through the air, en route to some mine or other which she wanted to see, they might be found in the "Falcon" lounge, playing bridge with another couple or just sitting alone, talking of London lamp-posts. Sometimes they played two-handed poker, for Marice not only sympathized but shared with Druro his passion for cards. Perhaps this drew their hearts as well as their heads together. At any rate, to lookers-on they seemed absorbed ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... so atrocious that the owners do well in employing asses to draw them: no man of feeling or spirit could endure the horse-laughs they must extort from any animal of tolerable sagacity. To see a stout, two-handed man coming home with his donkey-load of fuel from a distant shrubbery, half a day of the two having been spent in getting as much as would make one good kitchen-fire, is enough to ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... attention to the sighs which exhaled from my bosom while scouring the rust from my long, two-handed sword, my uncle, magnifying glass in hand, was engaged in the examination of a lot of medals which he had purchased that morning. Suddenly he raised his ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... bonds, or hands, possessed by each atom. The atom of hydrogen has only one hand, and the same is true of potassium. Each atom of oxygen has two hands; so that one oxygen atom can hold two hydrogen atoms in the chemical compound called water (H-O-H or H20). Other elements having two-handed atoms are magnesium and calcium. Strange to say, the sulfur atom has six hands but sometimes uses only two, the others seemingly being clasped together in pairs. I will write ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... way to pass the long hours of convalescence, is by playing games with your patient. I am sure no training school for nurses has added the study of cribbage, pinochle, bezique, chess, checkers, backgammon, or dominos to its curriculum. All these are two-handed games, the playing of which will help the convalescent to forget himself and his past illness and present weakness. The nurse, if she knows only one game that is unfamiliar to the patient, gives him new thoughts while she teaches ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... vast two-handed sword into the f[oe]tid air while the tide of corruption paused in its swirling, and swept down on Rupert with ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... not if thou dost, Rose," said Eveline; "yet credit me, girl, we will be at the Red Pool, and thus far on our way home again, ere thy father has donned his best doublet, girded on his two-handed sword, and accoutred his strong Flanderkin elephant of a horse, which he judiciously names Sloth—nay, frown not, and lose not, in justifying thy father, the time that may be better spent ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... showed her too, how the warriors, whose figures rested on the tombs, had worn those rotting scraps of armour up above—how this had been a helmet, and that a shield, and that a gauntlet—and how they had wielded the great two-handed swords, and beaten men down, with yonder iron mace. All that he told the child she treasured in her mind; and sometimes, when she awoke at night from dreams of those old times, and rising from her bed looked out at the dark church, she ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... some old mediaeval knight Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield— The sword two-handed and the shining shield Suspended in the hall and full in sight, While secret longings for the lost delight Of tourney or adventure in the field Came over him, and tears but half concealed Trembled and fell upon his beard of white; So I behold these books upon their shelf ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... combat which we have described, the Laird's Jock was unrivalled; and no champion of Cumberland, Westmoreland, or Northumberland, could endure the sway of the huge two-handed sword which he wielded, and which few others could even lift. This "awful sword," as the common people term it, was as dear to him as Durindana or Fushberta to their respective masters, and was nearly as formidable to his enemies as those renowned falchions ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... to hope for many years to come that human beings generally will be as well cared for as horses. Mr. Carlyle long ago remarked that the four-footed worker has already got all that this two-handed one is clamouring for: "There are not many horses in England, able and willing to work, which have not due food and lodging and go about sleek coated, satisfied in heart." You say it is impossible; but, said Carlyle, "The human brain, looking at these sleek English horses, refuses to believe ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... strange fire! It moves ... It comes at me. O Wolf Apollo, mercy! O agony! ... Why lies she with a wolf, this lioness lone, Two-handed, when the royal lion is gone? God, she will kill me! Like to them that brew Poison, I see her mingle for me too A separate vial in her wrath, and swear, Whetting her blade for him, that I must share His death ... because, because he hath dragged me here! Oh, why these mockers at my ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... A two-handed sword used in the 14th and 15th centuries is shown in Fig. 4. This sword is about 68 in. long, has a cross guard and blade of steel with a round wood handle painted black. The ball or pommel on top of the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... afternoon Thomas Burlings, the ruling elder in the kirk, popped into the shop, and, in our two-handed crack, after asking me in a dry, curious way if I had come by no skaith in the business of the play, he said the thing had now spread far and wide, and was making a great noise in the world. I thought the body ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... weapons close by, and brought four or five of them into the camp. They were ornamented after the usual Australian aboriginal fashion, some with slanting cuts or grooves along the blade, others with square, elliptical, or rounded figures; several of these two-handed swords were seven feet long, and four or five inches wide; wielded with good force, they were formidable enough to cut a man in half ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... grew older, I did as I pleased; I beat the women and the slaves; I think I killed some of the latter—I know I did one, to try whether I could strike well with my two-handed sword made of hard and heavy wood,—but that is nothing in our country. I longed to be a great captain, and I thought of nothing else but war and fighting, and how many skulls I should have in my possession when I had a house and wives of my own, and I was no longer a boy. I went out in the ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... intention to make the infliction of death discretionary with each magistrate. It provided that any foreign Quaker, or any native upon a second conviction, might be ordered to receive an unlimited number of stripes. It is important also to observe that the whip was a two-handed implement, armed with lashes made of twisted and knotted cord or catgut. [Footnote: New England Judged, ed. 1703, p. 357, note.] There can be no doubt, moreover, that sundry of the judgments afterward pronounced would have resulted fatally had the ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... and I were upon him, but though we lifted him clear off the ground we could not loosen that two-handed strangling grip. At we were struggling there a light hand touched my shoulder. It was ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... drew his two-handed sword and laid about him in such wise that twelve of the Sheriff's men lay dead before him. Then Robin found himself face to face with the Sheriff, and gave him a fierce blow; but his sword broke on the Sheriff's head, and he had shot away all his arrows. So the men closed ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... snap-work, and snuff-mill, A bag which they with onions fill; And, as their strict observers say, A tup-born filled with usquebay; A slasht out coat beneath her plaides, A targe of timber, nails, and hides; With a long two-handed sword, As good's the country can afford. Had they not need of bulk-and bones. Who fought with ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... flatly palmated or leaflike structure, separating into sharp prongs along the edges, and spreading more than four feet from tip to tip. To compare them with the short, polished crescent of the horns of Last Bull was like comparing a two-handed broadsword to a bowie-knife. And his head, instead of being short, broad, ponderous, and shaggy, like Last Bull's, was long, close-haired, and massively horse-faced, with a projecting upper ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... with this girl of mine, Mr. Dundee. She's too clever for me! She's beaten me every game so far, and when I plead for two-handed bridge as a chance to get even, she ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... "my side had been pierced with a lance, a Welsh two-handed sword had broken through my helmet, and well-nigh cleft my skull; and the men-at-arms, riding over me I suppose, must have broken my leg, for I could not move: and oh! I felt it hard that I had yet to die. Then, Lady, came lights and ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... through the land to all and sundry his lords and barons who were able for justing and tourney to come to Edinburgh to him, and there to exercise themselves for his pleasure, some to run with the spear, some to fight with the battle-axe, some with the two-handed sword, and some with the bow, and other exercises. By this means the King brought the realm to great manhood and honour: that the fame of his justing and tourney spread through all Europe, which caused many errant knights to come out of other parts to Scotland to seek justing, because they heard ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... turned it was met by a blaze of broken rainbows. They were there by hundreds, and every gem was a fortune—whole cases of swords with hilts and scabbards of solid gold studded with gems, the great two-handed coronation sword of the German emperors, daggers covered with brilliants and rubies, diamond buttons, chains, and orders, necklaces and bracelets of pearl and emerald, and the order of the Golden Fleece made in gems ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... Kipling's renowned "Tommy Atkins," who is looked upon by the classes above him in the social scale as a short, undersized sort of person—can neither fit his chest and shoulders into their armor, get his hands comfortably on the hilts of their famous two-handed swords, nor even lie down ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... Vale to Loch Lomond, Ben Lomond and the Highlands, and on the other hand, the Clyde and the Isle of Bute. In the soft and still balminess of the morning, it was a lovely picture. In the armory, I lifted the sword of Wallace, a two-handed weapon, five feet in length. We were also shown a Lochaber battle-axe, from ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... in all the panoply of the fourteenth century, on the backs of which sat knights in shining armor, with long lances, and great two-handed swords for their weapons, and waving plumes dangling from their helmets. Men with bare legs and all manner of weird apparel were attacking the castle, using clubs, rocks, and queer arrangements for casting missiles; some of them were climbing short scaling ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... air of distinction to the room. There hung trophies of arms of all sorts—a bewildering array of spiky stars like the monstrous decorations on the breast of a Brobdingnagian diplomatist, of guns and pistols of all ages and nationalities, of halberds, pikes, and partisans, of curved scimitars, great two-handed swords, and long, glittering rapiers, with precious hilts. There, too, were coats of chain mail and great iron gauntlets, and rows of dinted helmets formed a cornice round ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... noise by striking; to babble; to prattle. Claught, clutched, seized. Claughtin, clutching, grasping. Claut, a clutch, a handful. Claut, to scrape. Claver, clover. Clavers, gossip, nonsense. Claw, a scratch, a blow. Claw, to scratch, to strike. Clay-cauld, clay-cold. Claymore, a two-handed Highland sword. Cleckin, a brood. Cleed, to clothe. Cleek, to snatch. Cleekit, linked arms. Cleg, gadfly. Clink, a sharp stroke; jingle. Clink, money, coin. Clink, to chink. Clink, to rhyme. Clinkin, with a smart motion. Clinkum, clinkumbell, the beadle, the bellman. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... travesties on the male sex by caring about anything they say," she tells him. "You have so many things they never will have! Why, you're a big, clean, two-handed man and—" She breaks off and gives a giggle that I would have took Verdun for. "But there!" she goes on. "I—I—guess I'm ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... proper note with the right. But, after practice, he couples the two hands, strikes the bass note of a chord with the left hand while his right strikes the other notes of the same chord, and much prefers two-handed to one-handed playing. In short, to overcome a distraction, you either sidetrack it or else couple it ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... old mediaeval knight Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield, The sword two-handed and the shining shield Suspended in the hall, and full in sight, While secret longings for the lost delight Of tourney or adventure in the field Came over him, and tears but half concealed Trembled and fell upon his beard of white, So I behold ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... at "yarning." At first the conversation ran in ordinary channels, such as short reminiscences of old world rascality, perils in the Bush. Till at length a topic arose which seemed to have a paramount interest for all. This was the prowess of a certain Two-handed Dick the Stockman. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... indifference, by suddenly becoming quite tragical, and actually despatching two or three heroes with very little ceremony. The first of these unfortunate gentlemen perished, if I remember correctly, by "a tremendous backstroke of a two-handed, double-edged sword, that severed his head from his body." At this sentence, which seemed pretty decisive, Johnny was somewhat staggered, but, immediately recovering himself, he bade Max "go on," expecting, I verily believe, that it would turn out that ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... really haven't," said the doctor, arching his painful brows. "It's not easy to hack a neck through even clumsily, and this was a very clean cut. It could be done with a battle-axe or an old headsman's axe, or an old two-handed sword." ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... must recognise, in Scott, the absence of lightness of touch, of delicacy in the small sword-play of conversation. In fencing, all should be done, the masters tell us, with the fingers. Scott works not even with the wrist, but with the whole arm. The two-handed sword, the old claymore, are his weapons, not the rapier. This was plain enough in the word-combats of Queen Mary and her lady gaoler in Loch Leven. Much more conspicuous is the "swashing blow" in the repartee of "St. Ronan's." The insults lavished on Lady Binks are violent and ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... pike, played with the two-handed sword, with the back sword, with the Spanish tuck, the dagger, poniard, armed, unarmed, with a buckler, with a cloak, with a target. Then would he hunt the hart, the roebuck, the bear, the fallow deer, the wild boar, the hare, the pheasant, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... depth, extending from the bend of the eye- brow across the zygomata to the ear, and No. 3 wears cuts across the forehead. I was shown a sword belonging to the Mijolo: all declared that it is of native make; yet it irresistibly suggested the old two-handed weapon of Europe, preserved by the Bedawin and the Eastern Arabs, who now mostly derive it from Sollingen. The long, straight, flexible, and double-edged blade is neatly mounted by the tang in a handle with a pommel, or terminating knob, of ivory; others prefer wood. The ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... of the wild North Sea he has come. Record observes him, one of a small, fierce group, standing on the sands of desolate Northumbria, staring landward, his worldly wealth upon his back. This consists of a two-handed battle-axe, value perhaps some forty stycas in the currency of the time. A careful man, with business capabilities, may, however, manipulate a small capital to great advantage. In what would appear, to those accustomed to our slow modern methods, an incredibly short space of time, Inge's two-handed ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... other two face downwards on the table: the dealer is at liberty to do the same to his partner, and vice versa. The two who have received their partners' cards play the game, previously discarding their worst card for the one received from their partners. The game then proceeds as at two-handed Put. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... was the win of the Gladstonian Party at Newcastle like the triumph of a single-fisted pugilist over his two-handed opponent? Because the victory was achieved with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... our greatest men are that way," asserted the Emperor. "To be left-handed is usually to be two-handed; the right-handed people ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... haughty English crusaders, fluted armour from Milan, hung against the blackened wainscoting in the shadowy hall; Scottish hackbuts, primitive arquebuses that had done service on Bosworth field, Homeric bucklers and brazen greaves, javelins, crossbows, steel-pointed lances, and two-handed swords, were in symmetrical design upon the dark and polished panels; while here and there hung the antlers of a giant red-deer, or the skin of a fox, in testimony to the triumphs of long-departed sportsmen of ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... depart with Lute for bed. A second bridge quartet had been arranged—Ernestine, Bert, Jeremy Braxton, and Graham; while O'Hay and Bishop were already deep in a bout of two-handed pinochle. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the best is the Englishman, who can pierce a suit of armor through and through, and at a hundred steps he will not miss a dove. Czechowie (Bohemians) cut dreadfully with axes. For the big two-handed sword the German is the best. The Swiss is glad to strike the helmets with an iron flail, but the greatest knights are those who come from France. These will fight on horseback and on foot, and in the meanwhile they will speak very brave words, which however you will not ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Spanish warriors, with whom Don Juan had manned his vessel, hesitated. Only one stepped mutely and resolutely to his side, flinging over his shoulder the two-handed sword, whose hilt nearly reached to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... proposed to deviate from this course, and to separate Man from the apes as an order apart, under the name of Bimana, or two-handed. In making this innovation he seems at first to have felt that it could not be justified without calling in psychological considerations to his aid, to strengthen those which were purely anatomical; for, in the earliest edition of his "Manual of Natural ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... Roland clove with huge two-handed sway, And to the enormous labor left his name, Where unremitting ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... few in number, but armor was scarce among them; some had only boards fastened on their arms by way of shields, some had halberts, which had been used by their fathers at the battle of Morgarten, others two-handed swords and battleaxes. They drew themselves up in the form of a ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... women, animals) surround the base of his statue in Berlin, in Leipsic; and in Hamburg, clad in a corrugated golf costume, with a colossal two-handed sword in front of him, he is a melancholy figure, gazing out over a tumble-down beer-garden. At Wannsee, near Berlin, there is, I must admit, a really fine bust of Bismarck. On a solid square pedestal of granite, covered with ivy and surrounded by the whispering, or sighing, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said: —But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smite ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Fortunately, perhaps, for Ferdinand and Spain, the contest did not last long. Twenty horsemen spurred into the melee to the rescue of the plumed diadem: Tendilla arrived the first; with a stroke of his two-handed sword, the white banner was cleft from its staff, and fell to the earth. At that sight the Moors round broke forth in a wild and despairing cry: that cry spread from rank to rank, from horse to foot; the Moorish infantry, sorely pressed on all sides, no sooner learned the disaster than they ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Secure slain; this Secure used to say that the blind and lame in Mansoul were able to keep the gates of the town against Emmanuel's army (2 Sam 5:6). This Captain Secure did Captain Conviction cleave down the head with a two-handed sword, when he received himself three wounds in his mouth. Besides these, there was one Captain Bragman, a very desperate fellow, and he was captain over a band of those that threw fire-brands, arrows, and death; he also received, by the hand of Captain Good-hope ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan |
