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More "Gunpowder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... foot. The saddle-coloured soldiery were firing as the mood took them, and the man in the litter waved a shining sword. The muzzle of the big gun kicked down a fraction as it was laid on the mud wall at the bottom of the house garden. Ten pounds of gunpowder shut up in a hundred pounds of metal was its charge. Three or four yards of the mud wall jumped up a little, as a man jumps when he is caught in the small of the back with a knee-cap, and then fell forward, spreading ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... spectacles, to be followed two centuries later by telescopes and microscopes. Useful chemicals were now first applied to various manufacturing processes, such as the tinning of iron. The compass, with its weird power of pointing north, guided the mariner on uncharted seas. The obscure inventor of gunpowder revolutionized the art of war more than all the famous conquerors had done, and the polity of states more than any of the renowned legislators of antiquity. The equally obscure inventor of mechanical clocks—a great improvement on the {8} older sand-glasses, water-glasses, and candles—made ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... insolence of his manner acted like a lighted torch to gunpowder. Roger swung round upon him furiously, his hands clenched, his forehead ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... people began to tire of these sorts of entertainments, the more so as they were required to pay for them, and they naturally preferred the public rejoicings, which cost them nothing. They were particularly fond of illuminations and fireworks, which are of much later origin than the invention of gunpowder; although the Saracens, at the time of the Crusades, used a Greek fire for illuminations, which considerably alarmed the Crusaders when they first witnessed its effects. Regular fireworks appear to have been invented in Italy, where the pyrotechnic art has ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... organised to include all villages implicated in the raid, took longer than had been anticipated. The demolishing of Afridi watch-towers, manned by the finest natural marksmen in the world, and built on bases proof against everything but gunpowder, is no child's play; and at almost every village on the line of route the troops had found their work cut out for them. That they carried it out gallantly and effectively need hardly be said, since we are dealing with the pick of India's ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... there was a brave captain whose name was Julius Caesar. The soldiers he led to battle were very strong, and conquered the people wherever they went. They had no gun or gunpowder then; but they had swords and spears, and, to prevent themselves from being hurt, they had helmets or brazen caps on their heads, with long tufts of horse-hair upon them, by way of ornament, and breast-plates of ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... over the sum, which amounted to the discharge of his debt, principal and interest, he returned three pieces to buy his kinswoman a gown, as he expressed himself, and a brace more for the twa bairns, as he called them, requesting they might buy anything they liked with them except gunpowder. The Highlander stared at his kinsman's unexpected generosity, but courteously accepted his gift, which he deposited for the time in ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... corollary of the doctrine of just price. This is apparently the suggestion of Dr. Cleary in his excellent book on usury: 'It seems to me that the so-called loan of money is really a sale, and that a loan of meal, wine, oil, gunpowder, and similar commodities—that is to say, commodities which are consumed in use—is also a sale. If this is so, as I believe it is, then loans of all these consumptible goods should be regulated by ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... soldiers can then climb up upon scaling ladders or heaps of small faggots piled up to the height of the opening. Sometimes, too, the besiegers burrow underground till they are just below the wall, then fill the hole with gunpowder, and blow up all above them; in short, instead of, as in former days, a well- fortified city being almost impossible to take, except by starving out the garrison, a siege is in these times almost equally sure to end in favor ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of existence at Tette is sometimes relieved by an occasional death or wedding. When the deceased is a person of consequence, the quantity of gunpowder his slaves are allowed to expend is enormous. The expense may, in proportion to their means, resemble that incurred by foolishly gaudy funerals in England. When at Tette, we always joined with sympathizing ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... you much for the copies of your 'Anti-Puseyistic Pugilism.' The papers reached my hands quite safely and so missed setting the world on fire; and I shall be as wary of them evermore (be sure) as if they were gunpowder. Pray send them to Mary Hunter. Why not? Why should you think that I was likely to 'object' to your doing so? She will laugh. I laughed, albeit in no smiling mood; for I have been transmigrating from one room to another, and your packet found me half ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... glare of fire, encircled by blinding light, licked by sheaves of flames, the short barrel of the mortar drew back at the moment of firing. Clouds of dust rose; they mixed gray with brown, with the smoke of gunpowder which hid from sight for a few moments the entire gun, and then it rained down from the air, for whole minutes, the tiny pieces into which the cover of the charge had been torn. After every shot of the big mortars, the heavy howitzers ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... arrived at the ruins I soon discerned what had taken place. The lightning had struck it last night, and what felt to me like an earthquake was the explosion of my large cask of gunpowder. The boathouse was a complete ruin, and the ruin involved the loss of many things of great value to me, among them being my canoe, most of my lamp oil, paints, and above ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... for gunpowder; it is a largish, straggling, but poor place, though thickly tenanted. Its latitude is 29 degrees 1' 20", and is placed thirty miles too far south in Tassin's last map. Sugar-candy from Bussorah and cloth, are the ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... account of the Gunpowder Conspiracy, our acknowledgments are due to the proprietors of an elegant and interesting Annual, entitled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... peculiar and dangerous effect of these acts for the individuals, the community, and the State depends upon the nature of the soil on which they are committed, just as a spark, if thrown upon a heap of gunpowder, has a much more dangerous result than if thrown on the mere ground, where it vanishes and leaves no trace. But, on the whole, a good many such acts, though punishable by law, may come under a certain kind of nemesis which internal impotence is forced to bring about. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... enough curry on your rice, it gives things an appearance of reality. Which, says he, they discovered the uselessness of things in Asia so long ago they've forgot when, and then they discovered the uselessness of the discovery. They discovered gunpowder, he says, long before we did, but they use it for fireworks in the interests of irony. They've forgotten more'n we ever knew, says he, the stuck-up little cast-eyed pig. Go on! I'm disgusted. Haven't I put on curry till it give me ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... vivacity was suddenly abated, either by the increasing violence of the storm or by the change in Vere. It would have been difficult to say by which. The lightning flashed. The thunder at moments seemed to split the sky asunder as a charge of gunpowder splits asunder a rock. The head wind rushed by, yet had never passed them, but was forever coming furiously to meet them. On the roof of the little cabin the rain made a noise that was no longer like the rustle of silk, but was like ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... inflammable, such as scorched linen), with a damper for extinguishing the smouldering fire after a light had been obtained, or in later days by the sulphur-tipped match applied to it. Among the varieties are what are termed pistol tinder boxes, instruments which contained a small charge of gunpowder, which, when fired, lighted the tinder. Tinder pouches or purses containing flint and tinder having a piece of steel riveted on to the edge of the purse or pouch were a common form. Those brought over from Central Asia were frequently decorated with dragons ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... complicity in the Overton project. Sexby had left Sindercombe L1600; and with this money Sindercombe had been again tampering with Cromwell's guard, taking a house at Hammersmith convenient for shots at Cromwell's coach when he drove to Hampton Court, and buying gunpowder and combustibles for a nearer attempt in Whitehall. He had been, seen in the Chapel at Whitehall on the evening of January 8, and that night the sentinel on duty smelt fire just in time to extinguish a slow-match that was to explode ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... who make it a business of profit. Their instrument consists of three or four needles, tied to a truncated and flattened end of a stick, in such an arrangement, that the points may form a straight line; the figure desired is traced upon the skin, and some dissolved gunpowder, or pulverised charcoal, is pricked in with the instrument, agreeably to the figure. It is said not to be painful, but it is sometimes accompanied by inflammation and fever, and has been ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... to keep silent respecting their purpose, and the boldness and the skill requisite to carry it out to its most minute details: for the neglect of one of those details might be fatal to the whole project. Society does not exist in such peril as that. Does any one suppose, that, if the Gunpowder Plot had been a success,—that, if King, Lords, and Commons had all been hoisted by Mr. Fawkes, the English nation would have gone to wreck, that it could not have survived the loss of most of the royal family, the greater part of the peerage, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... them for the moment; and they not only recognized King James as their sovereign, but consented at last to call his representative Father Corlaer instead of Brother. Their father, however, dared not promise them soldiers; though, in spite of the recent treaty, he caused gunpowder and lead to be given them, and urged them to recall the powerful war-parties which they had lately sent against the Illinois. [Footnote: Colden, 97 (1727), Denonville au ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... drawn with pen and ink on a sulphur background—a scene of surpassing splendour and terror. Fareham had seen Flemish villages blazing, Flemish citadels exploding, their fragments hurled skyward in a blue flame of gunpowder; but never this vast arch of crimson, glowing and growing before his astonished gaze, as he paddled the boat inshore, and stood up to ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... brilliancy may perhaps decay with time, being thus fixed in the flesh, are of course indelible, just as much as the marks of a similar nature which our own sailors frequently make on their arms and breasts, by introducing gunpowder under the skin. One effect, we are told, which they produce on the countenances of the New Zealanders, is to conceal the ravages of old age. Being thus permanent when once imprinted, each becomes also the peculiar distinction ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... by some quaint architect having less peaceful times in view, who contrived numerous secret chambers, of which the conspirators Garnet and Oldcorn are known to have availed themselves. Here also lived the sister of Lord Monteagle, whose letter to her brother is said to have led to the discovery of Gunpowder Plot. Near the hall is the old ivy-towered church of the hamlet, with its rustic graveyard. At a distance of six miles from Worcester is ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... was regularly visited by East India ships on the return voyage, which touched there to take in water, and to leave gunpowder for the use of the garrison. On such occasions there were always persons anxious to pay a visit to the renowned captive. The regulation of those visits was calculated to protect Napoleon from being annoyed by the idle curiosity of strangers, to which he professed a great ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... is not a fall this time, but something worse, for I haven't a penny in the world, nor likely to have, and to-morrow is the Fourth of July, when all the boys and girls will have pistols, gunpowder, and fire-works, while I shall not even be able to get ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... been thrice true, indeed, because of the ridicule showered on her as a woman trying to do a man's work. No man ever had the courage of his convictions as much as she. It takes a bold spirit to stand up against the dangers of gunpowder in the old-time, legitimate way; but it is a braver one that withstands ridicule and that mean cunning which makes wit of every act looking toward the advancement of women. The Free Press has perhaps ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... its offensive weapon as a "torpedo," a term not altogether inappropriate while it was actuated by compressed air. But Capt. Ericsson having in the meantime wholly abolished compressed air in his new system of naval attack, substituting guns and gunpowder as the means of producing motive energy, it will be proper to adopt the constructor's term, projectile. It will not surprise those who are acquainted with the laws of hydrostatics and the enormous resistance offered to bodies moving swiftly through water, that the determination of the ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... the people made no sign at either our fiddlers or our knocking. And then the infernal machine was set to work. Its parts seemed to be no more than an empty keg and a plank. Some citizen informed me that I should soon have a new idea of noise; and I nerved myself for something severe in the way of gunpowder. But the Virginian and the proprietor now sat on the ground holding the keg braced, and two others got down apparently to play see-saw over the top of it with the plank. But the keg and plank had been rubbed with rosin, and they drew the plank back and forth over the ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... parasol, holding Archer's hand, and telling the story of the gunpowder explosion in which poor Mr. Curnow had lost his eye, Mrs. Flanders hurried up the steep lane, aware all the time in the depths of her mind of ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... hardly tell whether the fight had lasted ten minutes or an hour, when, as the enemy's fire had evidently ceased or slackened, I gave the order to cease firing. But it was very difficult at first to make them desist: the taste of gunpowder was too intoxicating. One of them was heard to mutter, indignantly, "Why de Cunnel order Cease firing, when de Secesh blazin' away at de rate ob ten dollar a day?" Every incidental occurrence seemed somehow to engrave itself upon my perceptions, without ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... at a later period. It is evident, from the history and memoirs of the times, that the people were more given to games of skill and exercise than games of chance. Before the introduction of the arquebus and gunpowder, they applied themselves to the practice of archery, and in all times they played at quoits, ninepins, bowls, and other similar ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... globe. Some day the epic of medicine will be written, and will show what a large and unexpected part it has played in the progress of civilization. Valuable and essential to that progress as were the classic great discoveries of fire, ships, wheeled carriages, steam, gunpowder, and electricity, they are almost paralleled by the victories of sanitary science and medicine in the cure and prevention of that greatest disrupter of the social organism—disease. No sooner does the primitive human hive ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... flask of gunpowder and a pistol. Some way further along the beach they picked up three muskets, which had been jammed into the rack in which they had been fixed, and the whole together had ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... sovereign justice, who should be commissioned by the crown; and nominate military officials by sea and land over ships, troops, and fortresses, the king agreeing to appoint their nominees. They were empowered to build forts, forge cannon, make gunpowder, and do all things necessary for the security of the colony and ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... and to describe them as they appear; but no concealment of stoves, or other dangerous accessories or inflammable goods, should be practised. This certainly binds the office so long as no change takes place; but the addition of any stove, opening, or door through a party wall, the introduction of gunpowder, saltpetre, or other inflammable articles into the premises without notice, very properly "voids the policy." The usual course is to give notice of all alterations, and have them indorse on the policy, as ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... some of these persons,—the most noted fanatics certainly of their party,—and amongst whom we read the names of Talbot, Catesby, and Tresham, afterwards principal conspirators in the detestable gunpowder plot[98]. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... But gunpowder has taken the place of "cold steel," and arms of precision at a thousand yards have ousted the "white arm" of the chivalrous ages, so that it is really only of single-stick as a sport that men think, if they think of it at ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... topic: What would the Virginian do to Trampas? Would it be another intellectual crushing of him, like the frog story, or would there be something this time more material—say muscle, or possibly gunpowder—in it? And was Scipio, after all, infallible? I didn't pretend to understand the Virginian; after several years' knowledge of him he remained utterly beyond me. Scipio's experience was not yet three weeks long. So I let him alone as to all this, discussing with him most other things good and evil ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... was thought to be unsafe; the immense mass of rock above it seemed likely to crush downwards upon the passage, and the engineers thought that their best course would be to remove the hill from above it. Three and a half tons of gunpowder were placed at intervals in the tunnel, and connected by wires with a galvanic battery placed a long distance off. The operation of firing the mine was made a public occasion, and Lady Belmore agreed to ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... themselves, their present powers and their future prospects, it is this new-found mastery over nature's latent resources which is the spring and fountain of their confidence. Cardan, in the sixteenth century, marveling at the then modern inventions of the compass, the printing press, and gunpowder, cried, "All antiquity has nothing comparable to these three things." [7] Every year from that day to this has deepened the impression made upon the minds of men by the marvelous prospect of harnessing the resources of the universe. The last one hundred and twenty-five ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... addition to the president's message being full of gunpowder, the report made to congress by its committee on the state of the foreign affairs of the United States, conveys sentiments of such decided hostility towards England, that I feel justified in recommending such precaution as ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... boy. You don't know what gunpowder smells like yet. If you'd been with the fust Pennsylvany, where I was, you'd a-known sunthin about war. Now, shet up, Ben; and don't ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... found expression for their invention in the other arts, and the best of those who devoted themselves to architecture were in great part occupied in adapting the construction of buildings to new necessities, such as those developed by the invention of gunpowder (introducing a totally new and most interesting science of fortification, which directed the ingenuity of Sanmicheli and many others from its proper channel), and found interest of a meaner kind in the difficulties of reconciling the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... covered the whole ground upon which the Spaniards and the Hollanders had been battling for six years, and were destined to battle for three-quarters of a century longer. Yet, although other affairs might be discussed, those two points were to be reserved for the more conclusive arbitration of gunpowder. The result of negotiations upon such a basis was easily to be foreseen. Breath, time, and paper were profusely wasted and nothing gained. The Prince assured his friend, as he had done secret agents previously sent to him, that he was himself ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... as a chemist being well established, he was called to Paris in 1793, by the committee of public safety, to be consulted relative to the making of gunpowder and the production of saltpetre. It must be in the memory of all those who recollect the history of the first years of the French Revolution, that the want of saltpetre, the principal ingredient in gunpowder, had nearly put an end to the war; and as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... had befallen him now so often, without producing any tangible effect, that a great many people, and especially the shooters (convinced of the accuracy of their aim), went far to believe that he possessed some charm against wholesome bullet and gunpowder. And lately even a crooked sixpence dipped in holy water (which was still to be had in Yorkshire) confirmed and doubled the faith of all good people, by being declared upon oath to have passed clean through him, as was proved by its being picked ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... unknown to any aboard, their rudder gone and their mast "broken in three places," we know from Bradford's graphic description. On Saturday they rested on their island and dried their clothes and their gunpowder. On Sunday they prayed and otherwise kept the Sabbath as was their want. On Monday they went ashore on the mainland, found the situation desirable, and struck boldly across the bay to the Mayflower inside the hook of the Cape, to ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... trouble of telling Major Mabry about my return to Abilene the fall before and my subsequent escapade in Texas, embellishing the details and even intimating that I had squandered funds not my own. I was thirty years old and as touchy as gunpowder, and felt the injustice of the charge like a knife-blade in my heart. There was nothing to do but ask for my release, place the facts in the hands of my employer, and court a thorough investigation. I had always entertained the highest regard for Major Mabry, and before ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... blowing up positions that cannot be taken otherwise is by no means a new one. Probably it dates back almost as far as the invention of gunpowder itself. Doubtless, if we only knew of them, there have been attempts to mine the Great Wall of China. It was, therefore, only natural that, when the Austrians had us held up before a position it was vitally necessary we should have, we should ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... blessed the hand of S. Francis. In the monastery garden on the hill-top the Battalion rested for three days, that is, rested from fighting and marching, but the time was not wasted. The Division set to work on the Roman Road with pick and shovel and gunpowder and in the three days made it passable for 60-pounder ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... The Gunpowder Conspirators, from a print published immediately after the discovery. Shows the Beards in Fashion in ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... no less particular in the choice of his studies; they were generally bent towards exploded chimeras*—the perpetuum mobile, the circular shot, philosopher's stone, silent gunpowder, making chains for fleas, nets for flies, and instruments to ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... find his motor cycle broken and puffing out its last breath, and himself among the dead and wounded in the wake of the army which was advancing rapidly. The turmoil was so vast, and so much dust and burned gunpowder was floating about that he was not able to tell where the valiant Vaugirard with the remainder of his staff marched. In front of him a regiment, cut up terribly, was advancing at a swift pace, and acting under the impulse ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I could not look but with wonder and respect on the Chinese. Their forefathers watched the stars before mine had begun to keep pigs. Gunpowder and printing, which the other day we imitated, and a school of manners which we never had the delicacy so much as to desire to imitate, were theirs in a long-past antiquity. They walked the earth with us, but it seems they must be of different clay. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gunpowder as she uttered this, sotto voce it is true, but still loud enough to be ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... discovered another plot. The prospective assassins having piled a little wood where they intended to kindle a fire, went off to search for more. While they were gone Burton made a hole under the wood and buried a canister of gunpowder in it. On their return the assassins lighted the fire, seated themselves comfortably round, and presently there weren't any assassins. We tell these tales just as Burton told them to his intimate friends. The first may have been true, the second, we believe, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Attorney-General in 1593. In 1598, on the death of his first wife, he married Elizabeth Hatton, Burghley's granddaughter, again depriving Bacon of a prize. He was retained to prosecute Essex, Southampton, and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, against all of whom he showed the same animus that he did against Raleigh. In 1606 he became Chief-Justice of the Common Pleas, in which capacity he maintained the independence of the Law Courts against ecclesiastical interference. He likewise offered a resolute opposition to the ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... that he was not. It would have been about as rational to suggest that the lighted match should not be taken out of the hand of Guy Fawkes till a committee had formally reported on the probable effects of gunpowder if ignited in large quantities beneath the chamber in which the Parliament was sitting. Strafford would not have respected forms in the midst of what he must have well known was a revolution. He would probably have struck at the Commons if they had not struck at him; certainly ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... of smoke began to rise. These clouds gradually grew bigger, then united into one heavy opaque mass that hung over the combatants. Strips of vapor were detached from it and floated off into the forest. A sharp, pungent odor, the smell of burnt gunpowder, filled the nostrils of the men and added to the fire ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... still touched by the smell of gunpowder, greeted him as he strode majestically down the halls. Somehow each person who bowed to him seemed to do it with the melancholy precision of one who has been up for six nights in succession and doesn't ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... were almost the only products that would pay their cost of transportation to Philadelphia, and the proceeds derived from the sale of these were sufficient to purchase only a few things of prime necessity such as salt, gunpowder, and some indispensable articles of iron. Even this small trade of the West was crippled when the new government placed an excise tax on whiskey, and the resentment felt against the federal authorities for their apparent disregard of the economic interests of the western people blazed ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre
... he thereby only expressed the feeling of the other nobles. Yet he executed his murderous plot without their joining in it and by means of his own servants.[225] In the house before mentioned he caused a quantity of gunpowder to be laid under the chamber in which Darnley slept, in order to blow him into the air: alarmed at the noise made by opening the door, the young sovereign sprang from his bed; while trying to save himself, he was strangled together with the page who was with ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... kills animals that breathe it, on which account it had obtained the name of the choke damp. The other is lighter than common air, taking its place near the roofs of subterraneous places, and because it is liable to take fire, and explode, like gunpowder, it had been called the fire damp. The word damp signifies vapour or exhalation in ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... to gunpowder, and several in the crowd cried: "No! No!" "Hang him!" "Don't let him escape!" A few others said they agreed ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... were all ready. The harpoon-guns were cleaned, oiled, and fastened, with their swivels, on the "billet-heads," in the bows of the boats. Each harpooner got a supply of gunpowder and percussion-caps; and all other requisites were put ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... North-China B.R.A.S., 1869-1870, Colonel Gerini, who, of course, did not know of Dr. Schlegel's paper, adds: "It was not until the reign of the Emperor Yung Le, and on occasion of the invasion of Tonkin in A.D. 1407, that the Chinese acquired the knowledge of the propulsive effect of gunpowder, from their vanquished enemies." ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... loudest noise I had ever heard. The honourable Antonio pitches forward—they always do, towards the shot; you must have noticed that yourself—yes, he pitches forward on to the embers, and all that lot of hair on his face and head flashes up like a pinch of gunpowder. Greasy, I expect; always scraping the fat off them ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... peculiar color by being stirred with a mixture of gypsum and Prussian blue during the firing, but is prepared in a more laborious manner, the leaves being selected and divided to form the different kinds known as Imperial, Gunpowder, Young Hyson, Hyson, Hyson Skin and Twankay. An aggregation of these kinds, proportioned according to their value, forms what is known as a "chop," whereas a chop of black tea comprises all of one grade or quality. Chinamen wonder at the taste of "outside barbarians" in ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... them, and then pouring on vinegar, which opened seams and fissures in them, by means of which the rocks could be split and pried to pieces with wedges and crowbars. On reading this account, the mind naturally pauses to consider the probability of its being true. As they had no gunpowder in those days, they were compelled to resort to some such method as the one above described for removing rocks. There are some species of rock which are easily cracked and broken by the action of fire. Others resist it. There seems, however, to be no reason obvious why vinegar ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... name of the particular victory—"Badajoz for ever!" or "Salamanca for ever!" The half-slumbering consciousness that all night long, and all the next day—perhaps for even a longer period—many of these mails, like fire racing along a train of gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory itself, by multiplying to the imagination into infinity the stages of its progressive diffusion. A fiery arrow seems to be let loose, which from that moment is destined to travel, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... travelling on the prairies of North America among the Red Indians,—for this singular being seemed to have visited most parts of the habitable globe during his not yet very long life. There were five small casks of fresh water, two or three canisters of gunpowder, a small box of tea and another of sugar, besides several bags of biscuits. There were also other bags and boxes which did not by their appearance reveal their contents, and all the articles were of a shape and size which seemed most suitable ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... opportunity presented by the one or the other of these two days of airing their respective opinions on subjects which could not yet be discussed without excitement. Protestant ardour, scarcely satisfied with commemorating Gunpowder Treason in Church services which matched in language the bonfires of the evening, found scope also for Antipapal demonstrations in other and more distant reminiscences. November 27, the anniversary of Elizabeth's accession, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... (S238) small cannon appear to have been used for the first time in field warfare, though gunpowder was probably known to the English friar, Roger Bacon (S208), a hundred years before. The object of the cannon was to frighten and annoy the horses of the French cavalry. They were laughed at as ingenious toys; but in the course of the next two centuries those toys revolutionized ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... made prisoners by the Imperial guards. On the side of the harbor the naval attack was more successfully conducted by the Venetians; and that industrious people employed every resource that was known and practiced before the invention of gunpowder. A double line, three bow-shots in front, was formed by the galleys and ships; and the swift motion of the former was supported by the weight and loftiness of the latter, whose decks, and poops, and turret, were the platforms of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... been promptly vulcanized. Is not Vulcan, with his hideousness and his strength, the emblem of this strong and hideous nation—sublime in its mechanical intelligence, patient in its season, and once in a century terrible, inflammable as gunpowder, and ripe with brandy for the madness of revolution, with wits enough, in fine, to take fire at a captious word, which signifies to it always: Gold and Pleasure! If we comprise in it all those who hold out their hands for an alms, for lawful wages, or the five francs that are granted ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... bristled. He turned to the mill with a fierce frown, his long tail going to and fro like that of a tiger in its lair; for Sooty Will had a temper like hot gunpowder, that was apt to go off sizz, whizz, bang! and no one to save the pieces. Yet, at least while the cook was by, he turned the mill furiously, as if with ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... my sister had sent to Subiaco was the Moorish alchemist who had taught Fenice to make the fire balloons, and I was at first encouraged by his assurance that the fortress was well munitioned, and that he had manufactured great quantities of gunpowder which was stored in its donjon. But I reflected that this circumstance was but an added danger as the assailants were ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... happened," said she, twitching at her own hair to arouse herself. "Just as Abraham always said; the rats have been nibbling matches in the store; they've burned a hole through the floor, and set fire to that keg of gunpowder. Yes, that's it!" ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... decision rests. In the mean time we prepare. If may be we shall have such a start that we shall prevent him growing. You know, because he was better skilled in chemistry, knew how to manufacture gunpowder, that the Spaniard destroyed the Aztec. May not we, who are possessing ourselves of the world and its resources, and gathering to ourselves all its knowledge, may not we nip the Slav ere he grows ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... say. In many ways money is as dangerous to handle as gunpowder. You can't be too careful either as to who you are working with. Anyhow there was a mighty flashy burst up, a sensation, and—his familiar haunts knew him no more. But before he vanished he went to see Miss Moorsom. That very fact argues for his innocence—don't ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... recurring inundations. Moreover, the expansion of the city of old and the need of access to the suburbs involved frequent displacement and opening of new gates. In 1482 the whole system of the defensive works was modified to meet the new situation caused by the introduction of gunpowder. The gates most exposed to attack were further defended by outworks, that of St. Lazare having been fortified during the rule of Giuliano della Rovere by the addition of a powerful bastide, with three round towers, a drawbridge, a new fosse which communicated ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... discussed it thoroughly," Pachmann repeated, and the Prince, who detected the contempt in the words, flushed hotly, but did not speak; "and there are certain objections to your plan which we wish to submit to you. The first of these is that war does not depend upon explosives. Before gunpowder, men fought with swords and lances and arrows; before the discovery of iron and steel, with clubs and stones. Man has always been fighting, even when he had no weapons but ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... of idle waiting Schiller was able to report that Dalberg had returned and was showing himself very friendly. The man was 'all fire,'—only it was gunpowder flame that would not last long. The genial intendant insisted that Schiller should by all means remain in Mannheim. 'Fiesco,' now in print as a tragedy, should be put upon the stage at once; 'Louise Miller' should be taken ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... countries and to enable that branch of the service to control the prices of those articles and graduate the supplies to the wants of the Government, as well as to regulate their quality and insure their uniformity. The same reasons induce me to recommend the erection of a manufactory of gunpowder, to be under the direction of the Ordnance Office. The establishment of a manufactory of small arms west of the Alleghany Mountains, upon the plan proposed by the Secretary of War, will contribute ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... Popery" mob, had very generally fallen into disuse. On the 5th of the eleventh month of this present year all England was traversed by processions and lighted up with bonfires, in commemoration of the detection of the "gunpowder plot" of Guy Fawkes and the Papists in 1605. Popes, bishops, and cardinals, in straw and pasteboard, were paraded through the streets and burned amid the shouts of the populace, a great portion of whom would have doubtless been quite as ready to do the same pleasant little office for the Bishop ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... not turned out of the castle at first. Twice at least in 1605 we find her there, on the second occasion causing all the armour to be scoured. Some persons afterwards considered that this act was connected with Gunpowder Plot, others maintained that it was merely due to the fact that the armour was rusty. The great point is that she was still mistress of Sherborne. Lord Justice Popham, however, as early as 1604, pronounced Raleigh's act of conveyance ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... bleed. The pain of the surumpe is the most intense that can be imagined, and frequently brings on delirium. The sensation resembles that which it may be imagined would be felt if cayenne pepper or gunpowder were rubbed into the eyes. Chronic inflammation, swelling of the eyelids, dimness of sight, and even total blindness are the frequent consequences of the surumpe. In the Cordillera, Indians are often seen sitting by the road-side shrieking in agony, and unable to proceed on their ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... destruction of the Armada 298 A conspiracy by the Papists for the destruction of James I, commonly known by the name of the Gunpowder Plot 310 ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... sirrah you, no; You Don with th'oaker face, I wish to ha thee But on a Breach, stifling with smoke and fire, And for thy 'No' but whiffing Gunpowder Out of an Iron pipe, I woo'd but ask thee If thou wood'st on, and if thou didst cry No Thou shudst read Canon-Law; I'de make thee roare And weare cut-beaten-sattyn: I woo'd pay thee Though thou payst ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... been observed in similar heaps, on the banks of the Darling, during my journey of 1835 (vol. i. p. 238). I now ascertained that the seed of the latter is also collected by the natives and made into a paste. This seed was black and small, resembling fine gunpowder when shaken out. Nevertheless it was sweet and pleasant to the taste, ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they daren't say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign, it won't be your skirmishing at Durrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that will decide the matter, but those who devised it," said Bilibin quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead, and pausing. "The only question is what will come of the meeting between the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If Prussia ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... at Mr. Pomeroy's exaggeration and perversions of fact, and he was so evidently speaking the truth that everybody from Lord Hull to a reporter of The Sun was impressed by his account of the affair, so that in the end the Pomeroy Abduction was decided to be less revolutionary than the Gunpowder Plot. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... raise the report, my lord, that you have undermined the castle, and laid a huge quantity of gunpowder, with the determination of blowing it up the moment they enter? That would make them fall back upon blockade, and leave us a little time. Our provisions are not nearly exhausted, and when fodder fails, we can eat ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... and he put a firm and friendly hand on the boy's shoulder. Dick came back to life, and, looking into his colonel's face, he grinned. Colonel Winchester could have been recognized only at close range. His face was black with burned gunpowder. His colonel's hat was gone and his brown hair flew in every direction. He still clenched in his hand the hilt of his sword, of which a broken blade not more than a foot long was left. His clothing had been torn by at least a dozen bullets, and one had made ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... remember The Fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason, and plot; I know no reason Why gunpowder treason ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... been pointed out by Mr Jackson, on the suggestion of Mr Thorley, the late Warden, that "the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 may have weakened his (Wadham's) attachment, in common with that of many liberal and loyal Catholics, to the cause of the old faith"; further, that "the Venice scheme comes very near, if it does not amount to, an offence which the law had anticipated ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... cousin a touching romance for the poor lady, supposed to have spent the one brilliant and successful summer of her life at Tadoussac, where her admirers had agreed to bemoan her loss in this explosion of gunpowder. They asked him if he did not wish the captain had whistled; and "Oh!" shuddered Kitty, "doesn't it all make you feel just as if you had been doing it yourself?"—a question which he hardly knew how to answer, never having, to his knowledge, done a ridiculous ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... dreamed of, a Mark King of blazing wrath thrusting aside the man whom she knew and who had held himself in check and throttled down his emotion until she spoke that quiet "Yes." The word was like a spark to a train of gunpowder. His determination to beat down his temper, no matter what came, was gone; his memory of her ordeals was wiped out; from his whole tense being there flashed out upon her a hot, heady anger, like stabbing lightning from an ominous ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... skipper gave signs of distress. The ship mustn't miss the next morning's tide. He had to take on board forty tons of dynamite and a hundred and twenty tons of gunpowder at a place down the river before proceeding to sea. It was all arranged for next day. There would be no end of fuss and complications if the ship didn't turn up in time.—I couldn't help hearing all ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... contrasting them with the arts of war. In past ages, so Gorman said, the human intellect had occupied itself mainly in devising means for destroying life and had been indifferent to the task of preserving it. Gunpowder was invented long before the antitoxin for diphtheria was discovered. Steel was used for swords ages before any one thought of making it into motor cars. These were Gorman's illustrations. I should not have thought ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... the west front of the church of Vendome, a lace-work of beautiful sculpture representing trailing roses and vines, birds and reptiles, was ruthlessly hacked. Churches, cathedrals, were blown up with gunpowder—such was the fate of the cathedrals of Montauban, Perigueux, and Orleans. Beza himself rolled the barrels of gunpowder to explode under the great piers that sustained the central tower of Orleans. [Footnote: ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... though not without difficulty, in getting by James Ross Sound, by frequent use of the ice-saws and gunpowder; the crew was very much fatigued. Fortunately the temperature was agreeable, and even thirty degrees above what James Ross found at the same time of year. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... set his trap and baited it, and it had worked perfectly—save that the teeth of the trap had closed over thin air. At the denouement of the sheriff's story there should have been the barking of two guns and a film of gunpowder smoke should have gone tangling to the ceiling. Instead there had been the formal little speech from Terry—and then quiet. Yet he had to mask and control his bitterness; he had to watch his tongue in talking ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... who advised her to hang up the child's blanket, at night to wrap the child in it, and if she found anything therein to throw it in the fire. A very large toad was found, which on being put in the fire "made a great and horrible noise, and after a space there was a flashing in the fire like gunpowder ... and thereupon the toad was no more seen or heard." More wonderful still, "the next day there came a young woman and told this deponnent that her aunt (meaning the said Amy) was in a most lamentable condition, having ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... too, on all impersonal subjects of conversation which arose, it was the nature of Bates to contradict and argue; whereas Trenholme, who had little capacity for reasonable argument, usually dealt with contradiction as a pot of gunpowder deals with an intruding spark. As regarded the personal subject of his own misfortune—a subject on which Trenholme felt he had a certain right to receive confidence—Bates's demeanour was ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... glory and honor which reflected on men from the wars in ancient times. Their shipping of this sort Was for voyages; ours dare not launch, nor lies it safe at home. Your Gothic politicians seem to me rather to have invented some new ammunition or gunpowder, in their King and Parliament, than government. For what is become of the princes (a kind of people) in Germany?—blown up. Where are the estates, or the power of the people in France?—blown up. Where is that of the people in Arragon, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... for an entire day with undaunted bravery. Their leader was mortally wounded, and Taylor took the command. The garrison at last retreated into a cellar into which the only access was a narrow flight of stone steps, and where nine barrels of gunpowder were stored. Taylor declared he would blow up the place if life were not promised to those who surrendered. Carew refused, and retired for the night, after placing a strong guard over the unfortunate men. The following morning he sent cannon-ball in ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Gate is the world-famed Cashmere Gate—world-famed in connection with the brilliant exploit of the little forlorn hope that, on the morning of September 14, 1857, succeeded, in the face of a deadly fusillade from the, walls and the wicket gates, in carrying bags of gunpowder and blowing it up. Through the opening thus effected poured the eager troops that rescued the city from ten times their own number of mutineers and turned the beams of the scale in which the fate of the whole British Indian ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... somewhere around me. If twigs crackled or a sudden awe fell causelessly, I laughed—"That family of Indian ghosts is near. I wish they would show themselves!" For if they ever show themselves, they bring you the gift of prophecy. The Chippewas left tobacco and gunpowder about for them. My offering was to cover with moss the picnic papers, tins, and broken bottles, with which man who is vile defiles every prospect. Discovering such a queer islander as the blue man was almost equal to seeing ...
— The Blue Man - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the hearth, jumped to her rheumatic feet in consternation. "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" she cried, throwing her withered arms above her turbaned head. For the guests held revolvers in their hands, and the "aunty's" heart always sank at the thought of gunpowder. ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... have always relied mainly on pasturage and agriculture, also on the chase, on rapine and the spoils of war, and on the exchange of their natural products and slaves for the salt, gunpowder, and manufactured goods of foreigners. So constant for centuries has been their attachment to the mountains that they have never emigrated to the plains, the life of which they despise. Only the harems of Constantinople ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... and around Calcutta, I would recommend the visiter to make a point of seeing, the Mint, the native Bazaars, the Dum Dum Artillery Station, the Ishapoor Gunpowder Manufactory, and Mr. Wakefield's farm at Acra. I mention these as having been myself gratified with examining them. The Mint is, perhaps, the finest in the world. Captain (now Colonel) Forbes, who kindly shewed me over every part ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... king, was ob graveolentiam oris, rejected by her husband. Many such matches are made for by-respects, or some seemly comeliness, which after honeymoon's past, turn to bitterness: for burning lust is but a flash, a gunpowder passion; and hatred oft follows in the highest ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... flames curling over his head, Well powder'd with white smoking ashes; He drinks gunpowder tea, melted sugar of lead, Cream of tartar, and dines on hot spice gingerbread, Which black from ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... cried the blind man; 'what does my noble captain drink—is it brandy, rum, usquebaugh? Is it soaked gunpowder, or blazing oil? Give it a name, heart of oak, and we'd get it for you, if it was wine from a bishop's cellar, or melted gold from ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... he has as strongly as I—and more strongly. He's a braver man than I, because, though raised to gentle things, when you ordered him into the fight, he was there. He never turned back, or flickered. I was raised on raw meat and gunpowder, but ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... when I secured my bow and arrows, for I knew that with them I could always be certain of killing sea-fowl for food. There was a stock of gunpowder on board and a number of rifles and shot-guns, but as the former was hopelessly spoiled, I did not trouble about either. With my tomahawk I cut away some of the ship's woodwork, which I threw overboard and ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... efforts used to make the circumstance common to the former a sympathetic bond of co-operation. I scarcely express myself too strongly in saying that any allusion in the Convention to the subject you have so much at heart would have been a spark to a mass of gunpowder. It is certain, nevertheless, that time, the great "Innovator," is not idle in its salutary preparations. The Colonization Society are becoming more and more one of its agents. Outlets for the freed blacks are alone wanted for a rapid erasure of the blot from ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... were concerned in the Gunpowder Plot of England and two of the fathers were among ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... deeds were diversified by various attempts at arson—the latest, with aid of gunpowder, being successful. On the first of last February, the British minister's residence at Yedo was burned to the ground by armed incendiaries, who made their work more sure by laying trains of gunpowder, which caused ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is discharged, a great quantity of air is produced, by the firing of the gunpowder, which being violently propelled from the piece, condenses the air that encompasses the space where the expansion happens; for whatever is driven out from the space where the expansion is made will be forcibly driven into the space all around it. This condensation forms the ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... on a barrel of gunpowder, Sir Toady declared that he smelt traitors in the camp, whereupon he held a (paper) knife aloft in the air, and cried, "If any deceive us or betray the gang, we ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... how blissfully ignorant of truth we can be are found in the facts that Capt. John Smith sailed up the James River to reach India and that the Indians planted gunpowder. ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... make him exert himself. Even to the last the mighty power was still there in undiminished strength, but it was not willingly put forth. Sometimes the outside impulse would not come; sometimes the most trivial incident would suffice, and like a spark on the train of gunpowder would bring a sudden burst of eloquence, electrifying all who listened. On one occasion he was arguing a case to the jury. He was talking in his heaviest and most ponderous fashion, and with half-closed eyes. The court and the jurymen were nearly asleep as Mr. ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Gunpowder has spoiled war. War was always detrimental to the solid interests of mankind. But in old times it was good for something: it painted well, sang divinely, furnished Iliads. But invisible butchery, under a pall of smoke a ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... had been made by the savages, and as the party had bought all the buffalo meat they had brought, Mr. Stuart began to make preparations in the morning for his departure. The savages, however, were for further dealings with their newly found pale friends, and above everything else they wanted gunpowder, for which they offered to trade horses. Mr. Stuart declined to accommodate them. At this they became more impudent, and demanded the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... cloud-city, the night within the day, and all its towers and temples are disordered along the firmament, to a sound that might waken the dead. Where are ye, ye echo-hunters, that grudge not to purchase gunpowder explosions on Lowood bowling-green at four shillings the blast? See! there are our artillerymen stalking from battery to battery—all hung up aloft facing the west—or "each standing by his gun" with lighted match, moving or motionless, Shadow-figures, and all clothed in black-blue uniform, with ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... life were in the hands of a wretched girl like this. All the peace and happiness of his life were gone, and he felt like some unhappy prisoner who through the bars of his dungeon sees his jailer's children sporting with lighted matches and a barrel of gunpowder. He was at her mercy, for well he knew that it would resolve into this—that the smallest wish of this girl would become an imperative command that he dared not disobey. However absurd might be her whims and caprices, she had but to express them, and he dared not resist. What means ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... to build and to work the Government factories at Augusta, giving him carte blanche to act as he thought best; and the result has proved the wisdom of the President's choice. Colonel Rains told me that at the beginning of the troubles, scarcely a grain of gunpowder was manufactured in the whole of the Southern States. The Augusta powder-mills and arsenal were then commenced, and no less than 7000 lb. of powder are now made every day in the powder manufactory. The cost to the Government of making the powder is only four cents a pound. The saltpetre (nine-tenths ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... the exploit, being compelled to leave that neighborhood, he wandered about Germany, and went as far as Switzerland, carrying with him, and communicating to all who would listen to him, the plan of a general revolution. Everywhere he found men's minds prepared; he threw gunpowder on the burning coals, and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Explosion, there must be other Ingredients mixed therewith, especially Nitre, of which the Air is always full, besides other Things, of which it is impossible to give any Account. The Tracts of this Sort of Matter fly about in the Air, and are as it were Lines of Gunpowder, and as in the firing of that Powder, the Fire begins at one End, and pursuing its Aliment proceeds to the other Extremity, and so the whole Mass of Powder is fired; we may from thence account for the Phaenomenon of Thunder. For in like Manner those inflamed Tracts which are suspended in the ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... of women were here employed in making gunpowder, grinding the usual materials on a stone, with the addition of water from the Hookah; a custom for which they have an obstinate prejudice. The charcoal here used is made from an Acacia: the Seiks, I believe, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... made in many forms," explained Tom. "A person who has only seen black gunpowder, with its little grains, would not believe that this was one grain of the ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... should be,' said Colonel Halkett. 'That's a young man who's an Englishman without French gunpowder notions in his head. He works for us down at the mine in Wales a good part of the year, and has tided us over a threatening strike there: gratuitously: I can't get him to accept anything. I can't think ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were at play in the sunshine, excepting Columbus Risdale, who sat solitary, like a disconsolate screech-owl, in one corner of the room. Riley and Ben Berry, still smarting from yesterday, entered, and without observing Lummy's presence, proceeded to put some gunpowder in the stove, taking pains to surround it with cool ashes, so that it should not explode until the stirring of the fire, as the chill of the afternoon should come on. When they had finished this dangerous transaction, they discovered the presence ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... the pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the buffalo with sharp horns; man has killed the lion with an arrow, with a sword, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of man what we have made of the horse and of the ox: his chattel, his slave and his food, by the mere power of his will. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... defence of which he was thenceforward very zealous. Nine days before the death of Queen Elizabeth, Catesby, undeterred by his past experiences, and "hunger-starved for innovations," joined Sir Edward Baynham and the Wrights in a second plot, for which he suffered imprisonment. The Gunpowder Plot was his third treasonable venture; and to him principally is due the inception of this fearful project, though John Wright, and afterwards Thomas Winter, joined him at a very early stage. Until Easter, 1605, Catesby himself "bore all the charge" of the mine. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... like to become of them that will be so mad to run into an house, when fire is putting to the gunpowder barrel, in order to its blowing up: Why thus do they, let their pretended cause be what it will, that are returning again to Babel. Are her plagues pleasant or easy to be borne? Or dost thou think that God is at play with thee, and that he threateneth but ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... let your father go alone?"[219] The greater part caught fire at his words, promised to follow him and put on their war-paint. Beaujeu received the communion, then dressed himself like a savage, and joined the clamorous throng. Open barrels of gunpowder and bullets were set before the gate of the fort, and James Smith, painfully climbing the rampart with the help of his stick, looked down on the warrior rabble as, huddling together, wild with excitement, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Mr. Two Trees, a Sioux Indian, with his family, visited Fort Benton, where he hoped to dispose of some robes. While bathing in the Missouri the young hopefuls of the family discover a keg of gunpowder that has been washed out from a wrecked steamboat. They rejoice greatly over their prize; and after taking it ashore, hold a long discussion in their own musical language as to what they ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sixty cannon, though at that time carrying no more than four-and-twenty, with a complement of three hundred men, about thirty of whom were killed in the action. She belonged, with the other three that escaped, to the French East India company, was laden with gunpowder and naval stores, and bound for Pondicherry. Two privateers, called Le Chasseur and Le Conquerant, the one from Dunkirk, and the other from Cherbourg, were taken and carried into Plymouth by captain Hughes, of his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... his life. Would he ever forget the long night spent in that dank, dark shell-hole? Would he ever forget that chance companion in peril, who had nursed him and cheered him all through that endless night? He could smell the damp earth again and the pungent atmosphere of gunpowder which permeated the place and almost suffocated him. Directly over the shell-hole a great British tank had stopped and been deserted, locking them in as in a dungeon. And when he had recovered from the fumes, he had heard a voice speaking to him and asking him if he ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... made his money heaven knows how,' answered Lady Kirkbank, indignantly. 'He has made it in cochineal, in iron, in gunpowder, in coal, in all kinds of commodities. Everybody in the City knows how he has made his money, and that he has a genius for turning everything into gold. If the gold changes back into one of the baser metals, it is only when Mr. Smithson has made all he wanted to make. And now he has ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the front all, And with guns horizontal, Stood our sires; And the balls whistled deadly, And in streams flashing redly, Blazed the fires: As the roar On the shore Swept the strong battle breakers o'er the green-sodded acres Of the plain; And louder, louder, louder, cracked the black gunpowder, Cracking amain! ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... denomination. We have also markets, at which I have been frequently with my mother. These are sometimes visited by stout mahogany-coloured men from the south west of us: we call them Oye-Eboe, which term signifies red men living at a distance. They generally bring us fire-arms, gunpowder, hats, beads, and dried fish. The last we esteemed a great rarity, as our waters were only brooks and springs. These articles they barter with us for odoriferous woods and earth, and our salt of wood ashes. They always carry slaves through our land; ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... not know whether the speech was pretty, but as the woman was, I hope so. Re-embarked on the lake of Thoun; fell asleep part of the way; sent our horses round; found people on the shore, blowing up a rock with gunpowder; they blew it up near our boat, only telling us a minute before;—mere stupidity, but they might have broken our noddles. Got to Thoun in the evening; the weather has been tolerable the whole day. But as the wild part of our tour is finished, it don't matter to us; in all the desirable part, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... here it assumed a new character. The exact contents of the warehouse remain undiscovered to this day. At the time it was freely asserted that Mr. Bertram had, in direct breach of the law, warehoused a large quantity of gunpowder; but scientific witnesses who were subsequently examined showed that it was possible that certain chemicals stored in the warehouse, when suddenly combined, as by the falling of the floors, would be quite ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... the blanket, there fell out of it a great toad, which hopped up and down the hearth, uttering strange cries. A boy caught it, and held it in the fire with the tongs, where it made a horrible noise, and flashed like gunpowder, with a report like that of a pistol. Whereupon the toad was seen no more. The next day a kinswoman of Dunny said she was grievously scorched with the fire, and on going to the house it was found to be even so. After the burning of the ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... more addicted than formerly to the custom of strangling their brothers. Lord Lyttelton charges the poor Florentine with the manifold treasons of the house of Guise, and with the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Several authors have hinted that the Gunpowder Plot is to be primarily attributed to his doctrines, and seem to think that his effigy ought to be substituted for that of Guy Faux, in those processions by which the ingenious youth of England annually commemorate the preservation of the Three Estates. The Church of Rome has pronounced his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... see!" "Let them come," said a saucy pinwheel, "yes, let them come if they like, As a delegate I'll announce to them that the fireworks are going to strike!" "My friends," said a small cap-pistol, "this movement is all wrong,— Gunpowder, noise, and fireworks to Fourth of July belong. My great ancestral musket made Independence Day, I frown on your whole conspiracy, and you are ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... in many forms," explained Tom. "A person who has only seen black gunpowder, with its little grains, would not believe that this was one ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... the war should be fought out in France and not in England.[20] Then, in 1346, he won his famous victory of Crecy against overwhelming numbers of his enemies. It has been said that cannon were effectively used for the first time at Crecy, and it was certainly about this time that gunpowder began to assume a definite though as yet subordinate importance in warfare. But we need not go so far afield to explain the English victory. It lay in the quality of the fighting men. Through a century and a half of freedom, England had been building up a class ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... heaven. Was it not as well to be civil to such messengers from above?—to testify by homage to them due awe of the being who had thrown them at men, and who though he had missed his shot that time might not miss it the next? I think if we, knowing nothing of either gunpowder, astronomy, or Christianity, saw an Armstrong bolt fall within five miles of London, we should be inclined to be very respectful to it indeed. So the aerolites, or glacial boulders, or polished stone weapons of an extinct race, which looked ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... desired him to catch the toad and throw it into the fire, which the youth did accordingly, and held it there with the tongs; and as soon as it was in the fire it made a great and terrible noise; and after a space there was a flashing in the fire like gunpowder, making a noise like the discharge of a pistol, and thereupon the toad was no more seen nor heard. It was asked by the Court if that, after the noise and flashing, there was not the substance of the toad to be seen to consume in the fire; and it was answered by the said Dorothy Durent ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... of compressed air, for example—if such resistance possesses little or no inertia to be brought into play; contrariwise, the smallest inertia opposed to the explosion of a mixture subjected to instantaneous combustion is equivalent to an insurmountable obstacle. Thus a small quantity of gunpowder, or a detonating mixture of air and hydrogen, may without danger be ignited in a large closed vessel full of air, because the pressure against the sides of the vessel exerted by the explosion is not more than the pressure of the air ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... reduced to his unenviable situation; and, that all passers-by might take note that the execution had not been done without authority, there was painted upon the smooth white bark of the tree, in large black letters, traced by a finger well charged with moistened gunpowder, the ominous name—JUDGE LYNCH,—the Rhadamanthus of the forest, whose decisions are yet respected in the land, and whose authority sometimes bids fair to supersede that of ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... out of her by force, with a rhythmical swaying of her body to right and left. She did not smile, and indeed knitted her brows, her delicate, high, rounded eyebrows, between which a dark blue mark, probably burnt in with gunpowder, stood out sharply, looking like some letter of an oriental alphabet. She almost closed her eyes but their pupils glimmered dimly under the drooping lids, fastened as before on Kuzma Vassilyevitch. And he, too, could not look away ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... be smaller, it yields. If a musket be charged with ball and powdered sulphur only, and the fire be applied, the ball is not discharged, in which case the motion of greater congregation overcomes that of matter; but when gunpowder is used, the motion of matter in the sulphur predominates, being assisted by that motion, and the motion of avoidance in the nitre; and so of ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... defection of the servants I have just mentioned. Those who were sufficiently attached to their masters and mistresses to endure the confinement and privations of a Maison d'Arret, tremble at the thoughts of being involved in the common ruin of a gunpowder explosion; and the men seem to have less courage than the women, at least more of the latter have consented to remain here.—It was atrocious to publish such a conception, though nothing perhaps was intended by it, as it may ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... and now the glorious fancy was actually translated into fact. The procession was to be supplemented by artillery, and now here was a time-eaten old gun, mounted on a worm-eaten old carriage, and trailed in harness of rope by two stalwart Flemish horses. Here also was gunpowder enough to wreck the village, and the Janennois, who for a moral people have a most astounding love of noise, were out at earliest dawn of light on Sunday morning to see the gun fired. The first firing was supposed to be an experiment, ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... parched peas; and fire belching out of her portholes forward. Then we took to the boats, and saved a few bales of silk by way of sample of her cargo, and got ashore; and she'd have come ashore too next tide and told tales, but somebody left a keg of gunpowder in the cabin, with a long fuse, and blew a hole in her old ribs, that the water came in, and down she went, hissing like ten thousand sarpints, and nobody ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... out of another religious war that another such heroism can arise. If church and dissent should take up arms, and, instead of controversies carried on in pamphlets, upon tradition and white surplices, should blow out each other's brains with gunpowder, then Mr Carlyle would see his "heroic ones" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... great ones of the earth; and they were a little disposed, perhaps, to wear their suddenly-acquired honors with some air of pretension. Mr. Astor, too, had put them on their mettle with respect to the captain, describing him as a gunpowder fellow who would command his ship in fine style, and, if there was any fighting to do, would "blow ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... the news reached him, had laid siege to Calais. In this siege cannon,[18] which had been used in earlier sieges of the war, were employed, but they were too badly made and loaded with too little gunpowder to do much damage. In 1347 Calais was starved into surrender, and Edward, who regarded the town as a nest of pirates, ordered six of the principal burgesses to come out with ropes round their necks, as a sign that they were to be put ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... lives, and must live, so wholly in convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are more apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer round that little idol of part-truth and part-conveniences which is the contemporary deity, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... circumstances supposed, though the four kings might be unable to see their way clearly without the help of gunpowder to any decision upon Joanna's intention, she—poor thing!—never could mistake her intentions for a moment. All her love was for France; and, therefore, any glove she might drop into the quadrivium must be ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... hedge. Madeleine and Frances were speaking to a poor girl whose clothes were burned, her hands blackened, and her face tied up with bloodstained bandages. I saw that she was one of the girls employed at the gunpowder mills, which are built further up on the common. An explosion had taken place a few days before; the girl's mother and elder sister were killed; she herself escaped by a miracle, and was now left without any means of support. She ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... the Chinese mind is this—that at all points of the circle described by man's intelligence, it seems occasionally to have caught glimpses of a heaven far beyond the range of its ordinary ken and vision. It caught a glimpse of the path which leads to military supremacy when it invented gunpowder, some centuries before the discovery was made by any other nation. It caught a glimpse of the path which leads to maritime supremacy when it made, at a period equally remote, the discovery of the mariner's compass. It caught ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... different conditions is well worth determining. A spoonful of warm spirits of wine burnt 116 pulsations. The same spoonful of spirits of wine with addition of one-sixth saltpetre burnt 94 pulsations. With one-sixth common salt, 83; with one-sixth gunpowder, 110; a piece of wax in the middle of the spirit, 87; a piece of Kieselstein, 94; one-sixth water, 86; and with equal parts water, only 4 pulse-beats. This, says Liebig, is given as an example ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... second charge. Gripping the colours he staggered out to join them, and as he went a bullet sang past him and his left wrist dropped nerveless at his side. He scarcely felt the wound. The brutal jar of the repulse had stunned every sense in him but that of thirst. The reek of gunpowder caked his throat, and his tongue crackled in his ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Bastille. It was a mediaeval dungeon of formidable aspect, armed with many cannon and dominating the outlet from the populous faubourg St. Antoine to the country beyond—one of the mouths of famishing Paris. It contained a great store {67} of gunpowder and a garrison of about 100 Swiss and veterans. The fortress had an evil reputation as a state prison. Although in July, 1789 its cells were nearly all unoccupied, popular legend would have it that numerous victims of royal despotism, arbitrarily ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... said the cardinal, taking off his hat, "the Church militant does not burn gunpowder, it fights hand to hand. Come for me at six," he said to ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... of the Shah's coronation took place at Bala Bala with due solemnity. Among the black tents there was much plucking of plaintive strings, there was more stuffing of mutton and pilau, and after dark many a little rockets, improvized out of gunpowder and baked clay, traced brief arabesques of gold against the black of the underlying gorges. The castle celebrated in the same simple way. The stuffing, to be sure, was more prolonged and recondite, while dancers ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... life are as follows. He was born in the Parish of St. Michael's Cheap, in London, on the 19th of October, 1605 (the year of the Gunpowder Plot). His father, as is apologetically admitted by a granddaughter, Mrs. Littleton, "was a tradesman, a mercer, though a gentleman of a good family in Cheshire" (generosa familia, says Sir Thomas's own epitaph). That he was the parent of his son's temperament, a devout man with a leaning ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... them stronger and more violent than yours are, exceeding your greatest cannons and basilisks. We represent also ordnance and instruments of war and engines of all kinds; and likewise new mixtures and compositions of gunpowder, wild-fires burning in water and unquenchable, also fire-works of all variety, both for pleasure and use. We imitate also flights of birds; we have some degrees of flying in the air. We have ships and boats ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... charged with gunpowder, it appeared, had been laid beneath its vaults by Demdike, with a view to its destruction at some future period, and this circumstance being known to Nance, she had ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and also of a house in which the bowls were kept: from this bowl-house a subterranean passage might easily have been dug to the very centre of the ground underneath the building, and a chamber or mine formed there for holding barrels of gunpowder, sufficient to complete the work of destruction. This scheme must have occurred to the mind of Lord George Murray, who was born at Blair, and well acquainted with its construction. His objections to pursue it appear, as has been stated, to have been perceived and controverted by the Marquis of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... but a small amount of gunpowder. A keg containing the main supply had been left by accident in one of the village houses. This misfortune, as you will soon see, brought about the brave ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, and other equally desirable and unattainable objects, had once more begun to engage the energies of scientific men. The real end which they were approaching was the invention of gunpowder, which can hardly be termed a blessing to the world at large. But Father Nicholas fell into the snare, and was soon absolutely convinced that only one ingredient was wanting to enable him to discover the elixir of life. ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... from denouncing all reasoning from human goodness to Divine as "illicit." To take a parallel case. The manufacture of gunpowder is a dangerous process, and, if carried on without due precautions, is very likely to lead to disastrous consequences. Surely it is one thing to point out what precautions are necessary, and what evils are to be apprehended ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... no cannon crackers or cap-pistols or bombs or any firearms. I'm not going to have a hospitalful of gunpowder victims on my ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... week a great deal of timber was cut and squared. During this time Martin had several meetings with the old hunter, and it was agreed that he should sell his property to Mr Campbell. Money he appeared to care little about—indeed it was useless to him; gunpowder, lead, flints, blankets, and tobacco, were the principal articles requested in the barter; the amount, however, was not precisely settled. An intimacy had been struck up between the old hunter and John; in what manner it was difficult to imagine, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... called New Holland: Columbus and Gama went to their graves in ignorance of the fact. He has heard of the Georgium Sidus: Newton was ignorant of the existence of such a planet. He is acquainted with the use of gunpowder: Hannibal and Caesar won their victories with sword and spear. We submit, however, that this is not the way in which men are to be estimated. We submit that a wooden spoon of our day would not be justified ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Raderic, Furor, it shall be thy task to cudgel with thy thick, thwart terms; marry, at the first, give him some sugarcandy terms,[103] and then, if he will not untie purse-strings of his liberality, sting him with terms laid in aquafortis and gunpowder. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... about eighty lbs., forty-five small iron bullets for the service of the aforesaid; five brasse pieces, six iron bullets for the service of the aforesaid, twenty-six brasse-pieces weighing only three lbs. each, thirty or forty lbs. of gunpowder all belonging to M. de Caen, of Dieppe; about thirty lbs. of mettle belonging to the French King; thirteen whole and one broken musket, a harquebush, two large harquebueses five or six foote longe, a ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... whose face and hands were not a little grimed with the gunpowder, washed himself, combed out his curly black hair, and found all the party in the fore-cabin. Gascoigne, who had not been asked in the forenoon, was, by the consideration of Captain Sawbridge, added to the number. Before dinner was long off the table, the first lieutenant ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... of the others." Then still lower down he pointed out other barrels, eight of them, filled with the best gunpowder, and showed them too where the slow matches ran to the little cabin, the cook's galley, the tiller and the prow, by means of any one of which it could be fired. After this and such inspection of the ropes and sails as the light would allow, they sat in the cabin waiting ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... give up everything to our foes because Mr. Mahoney and a few congenial traitors have, justly or unjustly, been kept on crackers and tough beef. When a city burns and it is necessary to blow up houses with gunpowder, it is no time to be talking of actions ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... by steamer. Gunpowder ruined two hundred of his drawings on this trip. Obtained position of Drawing-master in the college at Washington, Mississippi. At the close of this year took his first lessons ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... of modern warfare, and show them not only that we are top-dog (a favourite phrase of the mate), but why we are top-dog. It is simple—night illumination. As I write I work opt the idea—gasoline, balls of oakum, caps and gunpowder from a few cartridges, Roman candles, and flares blue, red, and green, shallow metal receptacles to carry the explosive and inflammable stuff; and a trigger-like arrangement by which, pulling on a string, the caps are exploded in the gunpowder and fire set to the gasoline-soaked oakum ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... three-fourths of his income. To please the people and enforce the theory, the taxes on articles consumed, on salt, with the excise subsidies and the octroi duties on liquors, meat, tobacco, leather and gunpowder, have been abolished, while the new imposts substituted for the old ones, slowly fixed, badly apportioned and raised with difficulty have brought in no returns. On the 1st of February, 1793,[4208] the Treasury had received on the real and personal taxation of 1791, but one hundred and fifty millions ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... think this is the best that Earth can spare you? [She nods slowly and deliberately, with fixed eyes.] Dear me, how amusin' you women are! And in your dowdy days you had ambitions? [She looks at him suddenly.] They were of a queer, gunpowder-and-faggot ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... on the eve of great changes, as well as Boston. Virginia had her heroes that felt quite as keenly the injustice of the mother country. Patrick Henry had fired many hearts with his patriotic eloquence. When Governor Dunmore had seized a quantity of gunpowder belonging to the colonies and had it shipped on board a man of war, Henry went at the head of a party of armed citizens and demanded restitution, which was made with much show of ill feeling. Not long after the exasperated people had driven ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... and the loss of both legs very common. The two buildings which accommodate them were formerly the Convent des Celestins, and that of the Dames de St. Louis. Two other handsome convents have been converted to uses less beneficent, one being now a gunpowder manufactory, and the ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... districts, receives its peculiar color by being stirred with a mixture of gypsum and Prussian blue during the firing, but is prepared in a more laborious manner, the leaves being selected and divided to form the different kinds known as Imperial, Gunpowder, Young Hyson, Hyson, Hyson Skin and Twankay. An aggregation of these kinds, proportioned according to their value, forms what is known as a "chop," whereas a chop of black tea comprises all of one grade or quality. Chinamen ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... further embarrassment, advis'd the governor not to accept provision, as not being the thing he had demanded; but be reply'd, "I shall take the money, for I understand very well their meaning; other grain is gunpowder," which he accordingly bought, and they never ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... the 8th of September, 1173, when the royalist forces encircled the fortress. Gunpowder was then unknown, and contending armies could only meet hand to hand. For two months the siege was continued, with bloody conflicts every day. Wintry winds swept the plains, and storms of snow whitened the fields, when, from the battlements of ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... an additional fact, by reason of which he foresees that death will be the consequence of a slight blow, as, for instance, that the other has heart disease, the offence is equally murder. /3/ To explode a barrel of gunpowder in a crowded street, and kill people, is murder, although the actor hopes that no such harm will be done. /4/ But to kill a man by careless riding in the same street would commonly be manslaughter. /5/ Perhaps, however, a case could ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... square American shoulders of his. "Strange as it may seem to you, he wanted to. That settled it. I didn't monkey with the gunpowder." ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... gentleman who lacked a "good opinion of the law," but was singularly rich in the faith that by means of gunpowder and flying nails humanity could be brought into a nearer relation with reason, righteousness and the will of God, is said to have been nearly devoid of a nose. Of this affliction M. Vaillant made but slight account, as was natural, seeing that but for a brief season did he need even so ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... men these appeared to be, and the big-limbed, hardy fishermen looked on them with mingled contempt and pity. No one knew what the works were, and no one cared. Some thought that fireworks were manufactured within the high fence; others imagined it to be a gunpowder factory. All were content with the knowledge that the establishment belonged to an English company employing ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... the 'bossing' element will be absent from the school we shall choose. I doubt it would work very well with you, Beverly. Sparks and gunpowder are apt to lead to pretty serious explosions and I dislike pyrotechnics which are likely to spread disaster. Now go change your clothes and make yourself presentable for I hear Uncle Athol calling ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... at Montpellier in France; at least a work purporting to be a translation of such a discourse was published in 1658,(1) and further editions appeared in 1660 and 1664. KENELM was a son of the Sir EVERARD DIGBY (1578-1606) who was executed for his share in the Gunpowder Plot. In spite of this fact, however, JAMES I. appears to have regarded him with favour. He was a man of romantic temperament, possessed of charming manners, considerable learning, and even greater credulity. His contemporaries seem to have differed in their opinions concerning him. EVELYN ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... with these fire-arms, and as they use them a great deal, must have a large and constant supply of gunpowder. ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... or made prisoners by the Imperial guards. On the side of the harbor the naval attack was more successfully conducted by the Venetians; and that industrious people employed every resource that was known and practiced before the invention of gunpowder. A double line, three bow-shots in front, was formed by the galleys and ships; and the swift motion of the former was supported by the weight and loftiness of the latter, whose decks, and poops, and turret, were the platforms of military engines, that ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... control of the postal service and of telegraphs; the coining of money and the maintenance of a monetary system; the issue of bank notes and of other forms of paper money; the fixing of standards of weights and measures; the maintenance of a monopoly of the manufacture and sale of gunpowder; and the enactment of supplementary legislation relating to ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... this surprising when we remember the civilized state of the inhabitants, as shown by the fact of their having practised artificial irrigation and made tunnels through hard rocks without the use of iron or gunpowder, and who, as we shall see in a future chapter, fully recognised, as far as animals were concerned, and therefore probably in the case of plants, the important principle of selection. We owe some plants to Brazil; and the early voyagers, namely Vespucius and Cabral, describe the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... Burton had his pencil poised expectantly from the start. He said only a little more the next time, and the next; and Daniel Burton pocketed his pencil in despair. Then came a day when a chance word about a new air raid reported in the morning paper acted like a match to gunpowder, and sent John McGuire off into a rapid-fire story that whipped Daniel Burton's pencil from his pocket and set it to racing again at breakneck speed to keep up ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... recognised their strength; they were too dangerous, these castles, and must be destroyed. His cannon-balls had rattled against their stone walls without much effect during the war; but their fate was sealed with that of their King, and the gunpowder of Cromwell's soldiers was soon employed in blowing up the walls that resisted him so long, and left them battered ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... happened until about seven o'clock in the evening. I had been invited to dine with the gunroom officers this day, and every thing was going on smooth and comfortable, when Mr. Splinter spoke. "I say, master, don't you smell gunpowder?" ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... Or else, his faith in her argued, something had happened, there had been some unimaginable reason to prevent her answering. That the letter had been lost was so commonplace a solution that it did not occur to him. One does not think of mice setting off gunpowder magazines. At all events he was facing a stone wall; there was no further step to take; she must be in Germany; he did not know her address; if he did, how could he write again? A man may not hound a woman with his love. Yet he was ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... hand of S. Francis. In the monastery garden on the hill-top the Battalion rested for three days, that is, rested from fighting and marching, but the time was not wasted. The Division set to work on the Roman Road with pick and shovel and gunpowder and in the three days made it passable for 60-pounder guns from ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... precisely like another. There is no local individuality. Their veritable records represent this people as far back as the days of Abraham, and, indeed, they antedate that period. In two important discoveries they long preceded Europe; namely, that of the magnetic compass and the use of gunpowder. The knowledge of these was long in travelling westward through the channels of Oriental commerce, by the way of Asia Minor. There are many antagonistic elements to consider in judging of the Chinese. The common ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... which had seized her, a moment ago, deepened as she went. Something in the scene and the hastening figure roused a sense of dread. With her, an impression was like a spark to gunpowder. Her imagination blazed up. Life, in its most tragic aspect, seemed before her in the lonely scene, with the lonely figure, moving, as if in pursuit of a lost hope, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... mixing the ingredients of my grand substitute for gunpowder, when somehow it blew up, and set ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... In 1340, gunpowder and guns were first invented by Swartz, a monk of Cologne. In 1346, Edward III. had four pieces of cannon, which contributed to gain him the battle of Cressy. Bombs and mortars were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... probably remember that the result of several communications which appeared in our columns on the subject of the celebrated Treatise of Equivocation, found in the chambers of Tresham, and produced at the trial of the persons engaged in the Gunpowder Plot, was a letter from a correspondent (J. B., Vol. ii., p. 168.) announcing that the identical MS. copy of the work referred to by Sir Edward Coke on the occasion in question, was safely preserved in the Bodleian Library. It was not to be supposed that a document of such great historical ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... close at hand; and a fearful explosion ensued, in which the poor marine, cleaning his bayonet near, was shockingly burnt and disfigured, the very skin of all the lower part of his face being utterly destroyed by gunpowder. They said it was a mercy that his eyes were spared; but he could hardly feel anything to be a mercy, as he lay tossing in agony, burnt by the explosion, wounded by splinters, and feeling that he was disabled for life, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... posterity. Nicholas Diaz and Vasco de Gama had passed, with one gigantic stride, from one hemisphere to another, and showed that millions of their predecessors were but pigmies. The genius of a third visioned forth a new world, with new oceans—went to it, and brought it to mankind. Gunpowder, the compass, printing, cheap paper, regular armies, the concentration of states and powers, ingenious destruction, and ingenious creation—all were the work of this wondrous age. At this time, also, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... indeed, because of the ridicule showered on her as a woman trying to do a man's work. No man ever had the courage of his convictions as much as she. It takes a bold spirit to stand up against the dangers of gunpowder in the old-time, legitimate way; but it is a braver one that withstands ridicule and that mean cunning which makes wit of every act looking toward the advancement of women. The Free Press has perhaps had as many of the frowns ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... whether she doesn't," broke in Miss Felicia, "hasn't got a single thing to do with it, Peter. You just go back to your work, Mr. Breen, and look after your gunpowder plots, or whatever you call them, and if some one of these gentlemen of elegant leisure—not one of whom so far has offered his services—cannot manage to escort you to your father's house, Ruth, I will take you myself. Now come inside the drawing-room, every one of you, ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... The journey was a triumphal progress. "Whenever was passed a camp or a wigwam, the Indians saluted me by firing their guns, which happened so often that I thought all the trees along the way were charged with gunpowder; and when we reached the fort, Monsieur de Becancour received us with great ceremony and the firing of cannon, by which my ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... thank you much for the copies of your 'Anti-Puseyistic Pugilism.' The papers reached my hands quite safely and so missed setting the world on fire; and I shall be as wary of them evermore (be sure) as if they were gunpowder. Pray send them to Mary Hunter. Why not? Why should you think that I was likely to 'object' to your doing so? She will laugh. I laughed, albeit in no smiling mood; for I have been transmigrating from one room to another, and your packet ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... forests is emphasized when one stops to consider the great number of uses to which wood is put. In addition to being used as a building material, wood is also manufactured into newspaper and writing paper. Furthermore, it is a most important product in the making of linoleum, artificial silk, gunpowder, paints, soaps, inks, celluloid, varnishes, sausage casings, chloroform and iodoform. Wood alcohol, which is made by the destructive distillation of wood, is another important by-product. Acetate of lime, which is used extensively in chemical plants, and charcoal, are other products ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack
... obsequies of a great warrior, it is customary to include in the funeral procession the hero's favorite horse, his battle-horse, compelled to adapt to the snail-like pace of the cortege the prancing gait which survives the smell of gunpowder and the waving of standards. On this occasion Mora's great coupe, the "eight-spring" affair which carried him to social or political gatherings, occupied the place of that companion in victory, its panels ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Then he went up to Rachel, and taking her hand, raised it to his lips. There was in his manner a boundless reverent adoration that was to Lady Newhaven's jealousy as a match to gunpowder. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... nerves and the hearts of those for whom it first broke. Utter silence—that is, the suspension of all faculty of hearing or feeling or thinking—succeeded for the moment. Sight and sound were blown out, as the flame of a candle is blown out by an ordinary gunpowder explosion. Then the sudden and complete silence was succeeded by a crashing of bells in the ears, by a flashing of furnaces in the eyes, by a limpness of every limb, a relaxation of every fibre, by a ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... exploits of Tartarin of Tarascon had to the Franco-German war. It has been devised merely to make flesh creep in certain tabernacles of fanaticism in the less civilised parts of England and Scotland. So far as action goes it will end in smoke, but not in gunpowder-smoke. There will no doubt be riots in Belfast and Portadown, for which the ultimate responsibility will rest on learned counsel of the King. But there have been riots before, and the cause of Home Rule has survived all the blackguardism and bloodshed. It is lamentable ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... jailer, an old man-of-warsman named "Mike." He will be remembered by many naval officers who as midshipmen served on the Santee. McGiffin so won over Mike that when he left the ship he carried with him six charges of gunpowder. These he loaded into the six big guns captured in the Mexican War, which lay on the grass in the centre of the Academy grounds, and at midnight on the eve of July 1st he fired a salute. It aroused the entire garrison, and ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... of fine art, a masterpiece of intellectual subtlety; and like the Renaissance itself, this peculiar form of warfare was essentially transitional. The cannon and the musket were already in use; and it only required one blast of gunpowder to turn the sham-fight of courtly, traitorous, finessing captains of adventure into something terribly more real. To men like the Marquis of Mantua war had been a highly profitable game of skill; to men like the Marechal de Gie it was a murderous ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of fifteen, he was so well equipped that he was engaged to teach school in Maryland, at Gunpowder Falls, some of his pupils being so much larger and older than he that, at one time, he had to take a brand from the fire, and strike one of them, in order ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... extending "even to the ladies' toilette-tables". By way of precaution "they break sticks of pomatum in two, presuming that musket-balls are concealed in them, and they take away hair-powder under the pretext that it is either colored or masked gunpowder." Then, without disbanding, the troop betakes itself to the environs and into the country, where it operates with the same promptness in the chateaux, so that "in one day all honest citizens, those with the most ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... which replaced tinder. It is known that a spongy, velvety flesh is procured from a certain mushroom of the genus polyporous. Properly prepared, it is extremely inflammable, especially when it has been previously saturated with gunpowder, or boiled in a solution of nitrate or chlorate of potash. But, till then, they had not found any of these polypores or even any of the morels which could replace them. On this day, the engineer, seeing a plant belonging to the wormwood ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... requisite to carry it out to its most minute details: for the neglect of one of those details might be fatal to the whole project. Society does not exist in such peril as that. Does any one suppose, that, if the Gunpowder Plot had been a success,—that, if King, Lords, and Commons had all been hoisted by Mr. Fawkes, the English nation would have gone to wreck, that it could not have survived the loss of most of the royal family, the greater part of the peerage, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... this wild spot, with a leg smashed by a shot or perhaps with a bullet in your side. It might happen. A star might fall. I have watched stars falling in scores on clear nights in the Atlantic. And it was nothing. The flash of a pinch of gunpowder in your face may be a bigger matter. Yet somehow it's pleasant as we stumble in the dark to think of our Senora in that long room with a shiny floor and all that lot of glass at the end, sitting on that divan, you call it, covered with carpets as if expecting a king indeed. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... organized anarchy, suited to rude and barbarous times, but so well was it adapted to existing conditions that it became the prevailing form of government, and continued as such until a better order of society could be evolved. With the invention of gunpowder, the rise of cities and industries, the evolution of modern States by the consolidation of numbers of these feudal governments, and the establishment of order and civilization, feudalism passed out with the passing of the conditions ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... old chap, we've gone through too much, what with the seals' cave, and being caught and then put down in that stifling hole over the gunpowder. We're both off our heads—in a ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... the very next town! The safe blown open with gunpowder! Five thousand dollars in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... much upon their policy, about whether they should leave the unmasked Gogol without and begin diplomatically, or whether they should bring him in and blow up the gunpowder at once. The influence of Syme and Bull prevailed for the latter course, though the Secretary to the last asked them why they attacked ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... men could work at even their awning, were two hours early in the morning, and as many after the sun had got very low, or had absolutely set. Eight holes had to be drilled into the lava, to a depth of two feet each. Gunpowder, in very small quantities, was used, or these holes could not have been made in a twelvemonth. But by drilling with a crowbar a foot or two into the rock, and charging the cavity with a very small portion of powder, the lava was cracked, when the stones rather easily were ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... the garrison at the railway bridge, and took fifty-eight prisoners. He then set fire to the bridge, which was a temporary wooden structure, having been built to replace another similar one, which had been blown up with gunpowder. ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... made of huge pines, with timbered walls, plain white- washed ceilings and floors, was bestrewn with pelts of bears, elks, wolves, foxes, and ermines. Gunpowder and grape-shot lay on the tables. In the corners was a medley of lassoes, snares, and wolftraps. Some rifles hung round the walls. There was a strong pungent odour, as though all the perfumes of the woods were collected here. The house contained two ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... respect of the glory and honor which reflected on men from the wars in ancient times. Their shipping of this sort Was for voyages; ours dare not launch, nor lies it safe at home. Your Gothic politicians seem to me rather to have invented some new ammunition or gunpowder, in their King and Parliament, than government. For what is become of the princes (a kind of people) in Germany?—blown up. Where are the estates, or the power of the people in France?—blown up. Where is that of the people in Arragon, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... a hiss. The story goes that the poor author was dreadfully frightened; and that in answer to a hurried question, Colman exclaimed, "Psha! Doctor, don't be afraid of a squib, when we have been sitting these two hours on a barrel of gunpowder." If this was meant as a hoax, it was a cruel one; if meant seriously, it was untrue. For the piece had turned out a great hit. From beginning to end of the performance the audience were in a roar of laughter; ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... morning during this period there occurred a thunderous explosion which shattered my windows and many others in Rome. A gunpowder magazine had blown up, somewhere in the Campagna; the concussion of air was so mighty that it broke glass, they said, even at ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... disclosures of interest that day, but after that Chris spent all the time he could, both day and night, watching the young sailor. He was determined to discover if he could what Zachary intended to do with the gunpowder. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... the method of procuring the stone, are highly deserving the attention of strangers, who have there an opportunity of seeing this useful article forced from its natural situation by means of gunpowder; raised from the bowels of the earth, and conveyed through the country by means of inland navigation, to serve the purpose of the agriculturist, and also the architect. In these rocks there are numerous marine productions, and among others, one which the ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... they are not very fond of the custom-house officers, for everybody, high or low, profits by smuggling; thanks to which many articles, and especially coffee, gunpowder and tobacco are to be had cheap. It may here be stated that on that wooded, broken country, where the meadows are surrounded by brushwood, and the lanes are dark and narrow, smuggling is chiefly carried on by means of sporting dogs, who are broken in to become smuggling dogs. Scarcely an ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of bread which I bought for him, the vapour does not seem to injure the animal functions. Addison seems to have been very particular in his experiments upon the vapour of this cavern. He found that a pistol would not take fire in it; but upon laying a train of gunpowder, and igniting it beyond the sphere of the vapour, he found that it could not intercept the train of fire when it had once begun flashing, nor hinder it from running to the very end. He subjected a dog to a second trial in order to ascertain whether he was longer in expiring the ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... composed of miners from the coal regions of that state. Late in June Colonel Pleasants of this regiment had submitted a plan whereby his men were to dig a tunnel to a point directly under one of the Confederate forts, plant a gunpowder mine there and blow a breach in the defenses through which troops could be poured and the town carried by assault. The scheme was plausible, provided the tunnel could be bored and Grant gave his consent, with the result that within a month an underground passage over ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... of foreign vessels trading with this port are American, principally from New York and Salem. After the American come the German, then come the French and English. They arrive loaded with American sheeting, brandy, gunpowder, muskets, beads, English cottons, brass-wire, china-ware, and other notions, and depart with ivory, gum-copal, cloves, hides, cowries, sesamum, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... famed beyond the limits of Lonesome. It had traditions as well as echoes. He remembered vaguely that beneath this cliff there was said to be a cave which was utilized in the manufacture of saltpetre for gunpowder in the War ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... a sketch, if possible, of this excellent purveyor. Pere Seguin was tall as an obelisk, strong as a Hercules, vif as gunpowder, thin and sinewy as any wolf in his beloved forests. His ear large, flat, and full of hair; his teeth long, white, regular, and sharp as those of his favourite and extraordinary dog; his eyes yellow, calm, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... thought the British had surrendered. General Pike was sitting on the stump of a tree talking with a captive British officer, when a tremor of the earth was felt, 'immediately followed by a tremendous explosion near by. The British, unable to hold the fort had fired a magazine of gunpowder on the edge of the lake. The effect was terrible. Fragments of timber and huge stones, of which the magazine walls were built, were scattered in every direction over a space of several hundred feet. When the smoke floated away, the scene was appalling. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... iron skewers, and a general apparatus of kitchen utensils that would have satisfied the desires of Monsieur Soyer himself. Then we had double and single-barrelled guns, rifles, pistols, six barrels of Pigou and Wilkes' gunpowder; an immense assortment of shot, and two hundred weight of lead ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... war. Edward I discovered in his Welsh wars that the long-bow was more efficient than the weapons of the knight; and his grandson won English victories at Crecy and Poitiers with a weapon which was within the reach of the simple yeoman. The discovery of gunpowder and development of artillery soon proved as fatal to the feudal castle as the long-bow had to the mailed knight; and when the feudal classes had lost their predominance in the art of war, and with it their monopoly of the ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... goes in fer the war; He don't vally princerple more'n an old cud; Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood? So John P. Robinson he Sez he ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... think it so, Jean; but it seems to me that it is just because everyone seems so confident that the prison is safe from attack, that we shall have a chance. The thing that is troubling me most is where we can get a barrel of gunpowder. We must have powder to blow open the gate. I expect that any of the doors we may find locked, inside, will give way if a pistol is fired through the keyhole; but to blow in the main gate of the prison we must get ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... on the brink of marrying her," Lush went on. "But I hope it's off now. She's a niece of the clergyman—Gascoigne—at Pennicote. Her mother is a widow with a brood of daughters. This girl will have nothing, and is as dangerous as gunpowder. It would be a foolish marriage. But she has taken a freak against him, for she ran off here without notice, when he had agreed to call the next day. The fact is, he's here after her; but he was in no great hurry, and between his caprice and hers they ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... from obtaining machinery to enable them to prepare their sugar for market, or for producing cotton and indigo and combining them into cloth—precisely the same course of operation that was pursued in Jamaica with such extraordinary loss of life. Guns and gunpowder aided in providing cheap labour, and how they were supplied, even so recently as in 1807, will be seen on a perusal of the following passage, from an eminent English authority, almost ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... are other ways, William, although, in most of them, tinder is necessary. The savages can produce fire by rubbing a soft piece of wood against a hard one. But we have gunpowder; and we have two ways of igniting gunpowder - one is by a flint and steel, and the other is by collecting the sun's rays into one focus ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... pieces of iron about told tales for themselves without the odour of the explosive, for everything had been covered with a film of a greyish-white, such as gunpowder gives to iron or brickwork ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... civilization, even in the so-called modern inventions, was already old while ours lay still in the cradle, it was to no scientific spirit that its discoveries were due. Notwithstanding the fact that Cathay was the happy possessor of gunpowder, movable type, and the compass before such things were dreamt of in Europe, she owed them to no knowledge of physics, chemistry, or mechanics. It was as arts, not as sciences, they were invented. And it speaks volumes for her civilization ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... region, being on the route to the upper lakes, was a constant battleground. Radisson's party gathered to attack it, {203} the Iroquois meanwhile firing constantly, but doing little harm. Darkness came on, and the assailants filled a barrel with gunpowder and, "having stoped the whole" (stopped the hole) and tied it to the end of a long pole, tried to push it over the stockade. It fell back, however, and exploded with so much force that three of the assailants ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... the dog, from midnight to dawn, successfully fought off twelve men equipped with the thunder of gunpowder and the wide-spreading, deep-penetrating, mushroom bullets of soft lead. And the blind man defended himself only with a bow and a hundred arrows. He discharged many hundreds of arrows which Jerry retrieved for him and which he discharged over and over. ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... style to unbend the bow: once by means of Jesuitism, and the second time by means of democratic enlightenment—which, with the aid of liberty of the press and newspaper-reading, might, in fact, bring it about that the spirit would not so easily find itself in "distress"! (The Germans invented gunpowder—all credit to them! but they again made things square—they invented printing.) But we, who are neither Jesuits, nor democrats, nor even sufficiently Germans, we GOOD EUROPEANS, and free, VERY free spirits—we have it still, all the distress of spirit and all ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... has also succeeded in establishing a traffic in gunpowder, by inventing a carriage of sheet iron, lined with wood, in which four-and-a-half tons of gunpowder can be conveyed without fear of explosion either from ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... established with the natives, but it ended as usual by their commencing to steal, and having to be chastised for it. In revenge they set fire to the grass, and the navigator very nearly lost his whole stock of gunpowder. He was astonished by the extreme inflammability of the grass and the consequent difficulty in putting it out, and vowed if ever he had to camp in such a situation again, he would first clear the grass around. Leaving the Endeavour River, Cook, after passing through ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... to ballad or flatter, Or rail, and your betters with froth to bespatter, And your talk's all dismals and gunpowder matter; But we, while old sack does divinely inspire us, Are active to do what our rulers require us, And attempt such exploits as the world shall ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... muffled sound of quick firing came from metallic cartridges exploding within the cases that held them; each case would burst and set fire to others beside it; like the spark that runs along a fuse, the train of boxes would blow up in quick succession till the large stores of gunpowder were fired and then a mass of dynamite beyond. There were divisions in the vaults, there were doors, there were walls, but Giovanni well knew that no such barriers would avail for more than ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... prisoners by friendly and pacific means. Arrived on the scene, the captain sent his only two interpreters on shore to negotiate. They were Guard himself and a lying billiard-marker from Kororareka. They promised the natives ransom—a keg of gunpowder—if the captives were released; an offer which was at once accepted. They did not tell the captain of their promise, and he, most unwisely, refused to give the natives anything. All the captives were at once given up except the woman and the children, who ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... almost explosive velocity of ascent. The physical peculiarity from which this results is the intensity of its heat—commonly stated at 2,000 degrees, as to our common illuminating gas—acting instantaneously throughout its mass, just as in gunpowder. The gas goes up the flue in its own flash, like the ignited charge in the barrel of a gun: the burning coals can only send, and by a leisurely messenger, namely, the moderately heated gases, and contiguous air, that rise only by ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... is not merely a transformation of so much human energy into the same amount of natural energy; but nature adds to the former a non-human energy of her own; as—to take a good illustration of Dr. Crozier's—obviously happens in the case of a charge of gunpowder, which, "when used for purposes of blasting, has," he observes, "in itself a thousand times the quantity of pure economic power that is bought in the work of the labourers who supply and mix the ingredients." That ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... will venture to say, extremely useful, advice about scientific people in general. Their first business is, of course, to tell you things that are so, and do happen,—as that, if you warm water, it will boil; if you cool it, it will freeze; and if you put a candle to a cask of gunpowder, it will blow you up. Their second, and far more important business, is to tell you what you had best do under the circumstances,—put the kettle on in time for tea; powder your ice and salt, if you have a mind for ices; and obviate the chance of explosion by not making the gunpowder. But if, beyond ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... Shields, and bred to the sea, served my time out of that port, and got a berth on board a small vessel fitted out from Liverpool for the slave trade. We made the coast, unstowed our beads, spirits, and gunpowder, and very soon had a cargo on board; but the day after we sailed for the Havannah, the dysentery broke out among the niggers—no wonder, seeing how they were stowed, poor devils, head and tail, like pilchards ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... possibly have been imposed on the poor scholars," but "the velvet cap was the cap of liberty," and the gentleman commoner consulted only his own pleasure. Johnson was a poor scholar, and on him duties were imposed. He was requested to write an ode on the Gunpowder Plot, and Boswell thinks "his vivacity and imagination must have produced something fine." He neglected, however, with his usual indolence, this opportunity of producing something fine. Another exercise imposed on the poor was the ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... misfortune. He proposed, however, in it a petition for the discontinuance of the use of the State services commemorating the martyrdom of Charles I., the restoration of Charles II., the discovery of the gunpowder plot, and the Revolution of 1688; and Parliament soon after adopted his view. He also sat on the Royal Commission in 1864 for considering the subject of clerical subscription. He took on this occasion a characteristic line, advocating a complete ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... to give the word, and there would be some right eager shooting. And as the Southerners shot, in their present mood, they would remember various matters. They would remember the treasure he had wrung from their distress; the cotton bought for ten cents and sold abroad for a dollar; the nitre, the gunpowder, the clothing and medicines, rated so mercilessly dear; the profits boosted a thousand per cent., though an ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... coast, that they must provide a powerful rip-saw to rip in two the larger logs before they are small enough for a circular saw to manage. Indeed, occasionally the huge logs are split with wedges, or blown apart with gunpowder, in the logging camps, because they are too vast to be floated down to the mill in one piece. The expedients for loading vessels are often novel and ingenious. For instance, at Mendocino the lumber is loaded ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... to be melted down to platoons; the more they were reduced, the prouder they seemed to be: close to them, one still breathed the smell of burnt cartridges and gunpowder, with which the ground and their apparel were impregnated, and their faces yet quite begrimed. The emperor could not pass along their front without having to avoid, to step over, or to tread upon carcases, and bayonets twisted by the violence of the shock. But over all these horrors he threw ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Privy Chamber to James the First, was afterwards created Baron of Escricke, in the county of York. He it was who was intrusted to search the vaults under the Parliament House, and who discovered the thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, and apprehended Guido Fawkes, who declared to him, that if he had happened to be within the house when he took him, as he was immediately before, he would not have failed to blow him up, house and all. (Howell's State Trials, vol. ii., p. 202.) His courage ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... toilette, such as it was in these rough campaigning days. Since then he had been in his saddle for several hours and constantly in the heat and turmoil of the fight. His clothes were torn, mud-encrusted, and bloodstained; his face was black and grimy with gunpowder smoke. ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... we were all ready. The harpoon-guns were cleaned, oiled, and fastened, with their swivels, on the "billet-heads," in the bows of the boats. Each harpooner got a supply of gunpowder and percussion-caps; and all other requisites were ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... coarse and savage,—and consist mainly in making disagreeable noises and disturbing the peace of the community by rude uproar. The only idea an American boy associates with the Fourth of July is that of gunpowder in some form, and a wild liberty to fire off pistols in all miscellaneous directions, and to throw fire-crackers under the heels of horses, and into crowds of women and children, for the fun of seeing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... were not fewer than nine principal gates of entrance: and above the walls were built, at equal distances, fifty-five towers—surmounted, in turn, by nearly thirty towers of observation on the exterior of the walls. But in the beginning of the sixteenth century, from the general adoption of gunpowder in the art of war, a different system of defence was necessarily adopted; and the number of these towers was in consequence diminished. At present there are none. They are supplied by bastions and redoubts, which answer yet better the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... all Egyptians, and it would be hard to find a poorer lot; they never worked, save under compulsion, and they stole whatever they could. I examined their packs during the homeward cruise, and found that many of them had secreted Government gunpowder:— ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... in a little book he was reading, to the excited talk of a group of soldiers. One of them, he said, had been on guard beneath the Queen's windows last night, and between midnight and one o'clock had seen three times a brilliant light explode itself, like soundless gunpowder, immediately over the room where she slept. And this he asserted, over ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... believe [305]Bartholomeus a Casa, their own bishop) 12 millions of men, with stupend and exquisite torments; neither should I lie (said he) if I said 50 millions. I omit those French massacres, Sicilian evensongs, [306]the Duke of Alva's tyrannies, our gunpowder machinations, and that fourth fury, as [307]one calls it, the Spanish inquisition, which quite obscures those ten persecutions, [308]———saevit toto Mars impius orbe. Is not this [309]mundus furiosus, a mad world, as he terms it, insanum ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... and covering a rock which could only be removed by blasting. Mr. Denison has the keen logical faculty which enables him to bore his way through the hardest argument, and blast it remorselessly and effectually as the gunpowder the rock. Mr. Scott, again, prefers to chip the face of the rock, to trim it into shape, to cover it over with soil, and to conceal its hard and rocky appearance under the guise of a flower-garden, through which any one may walk. And with ordinary men this style of thing is very popular. ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... can't der quite say I should know him now; but he is a ditter go-ahead fellow, who loves the smell of gunpowder nearly as well as Seth Warner himself, whose pupil he is in the trade. We shall have the pleasure of seeing him in a few minutes, probably, as Coffin told me he passed along here night before last, on the way to Number Four, to ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
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