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More "Reprieve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by criminating the queen: but besides the extreme improbability that the king would have shown or promised any mercy to such a delinquent, we know in fact that the confession of Smeton did not obtain for him even a reprieve: it is therefore absurd to represent Norris as having died in vindication of the honor of the queen; and the favor afterwards shown to his son by Elizabeth, had probably little connexion with any tenderness for the memory of her mother, a sentiment which she certainly exhibited ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... hailed our three heroes with demonstrations of friendly interest. They had turned out fully half an hour ago to see the main body of the hunt go by, and just as they were returning regretfully to their ordinary occupations, the cry of "Three more of 'em!" came as a welcome reprieve, and brought them back into the highway ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... their now terrestrial prison. Hope, which so far had buoyed them up in the direst calamities, would here have no place. Humanity, in the fulness of its strength, would await a wholesale execution from which there could be no chance at all of a reprieve. Observations of the approaching body would have enabled astronomers to calculate its path with great exactness, and to predict the instant and character of the impact. Eight minutes after the moment ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... infatuation for pretty Hetty Sorrel. Hetty is seduced by the young squire, murders her baby, and is condemned to die for the crime. Dinah visits the doomed girl in prison, wins her to a confession and repentance, and accompanies her in the gallows-cart. They are at the scaffold when a reprieve ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... produced, and the final vote was taken. It was in favor of the prisoner's reprieve. Having thus succeeded in his benevolent purpose, Girty lost no time in attending to the comfort of his friend. He led him into his own wigwam, and, from his own store, gave him a pair of moccasins and leggins, a ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... to my darlings, and don't be uneasy if you don't get letters. My cough has been better now for five days without a bad return of it, so I hope it is really better; it is the first reprieve for so long. The sun is so hot, a regular broil, November 21, and all doors and windows open ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... to have a reprieve of a few hours, though they rode in that dark shadow of death which was closing in ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... the chief nurses on the island for many years. I suppose she has made some application to Mr. G—— for a respite for Edie, on finding how terribly unfit she is for work; or perhaps Mr. ——, to whom I represented her case, may have ordered her reprieve; but she came with much gratitude to me (who have, as far as I know, had nothing to do with it), to tell me that she is not able to be sent into the field for another week. Old Sackey fully confirmed Edie's account ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... land. A sterner and healthier spirit was called for at the present juncture. The time had come to make an example, and a more suitable case than the one now before him could not have been found for such a purpose. He would accordingly hold out no hope of a reprieve, but would counsel prisoner to make the best use of the ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... postponement, respite, reprieve; retardation, retention, obstruction; dawdling, lingering, dalliance. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... that there had been a hastily summoned court-martial, and in the presence of very clear evidence a verdict approved by General Grant. The man would be shot at seven the next morning. "A hopeless case, Mr. Rivers," said the Provost, "any appeal for reprieve will be useless—utterly useless—there will be no time given for appeal to Mr. Lincoln. We have had ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... knew it yesterday, when I saw that you had recognized me. It was very merciful in you to reprieve me, even for a few hours; but you will pardon me if I ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... it was the consequence of the policy adopted by him. But no sooner had the law pronounced her doom than the tide turned with startling rapidity, and a gigantic agitation was at once set on foot for a reprieve. ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... expect to hear such a result when first the old woman began her tale. I now felt like one who had received his reprieve after condemnation. Instead of the mysteries, disguises, scaling of walls and windows, drawn scimitars, and bloody wounds attendant on a Turkish intrigue, I saw nothing before me but riches, ease, and repose from all future care. I blessed my ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... on to petition the council, upon which he was respited to the 30th, and from that to May 9th, when he suffered according to his sentence. And no doubt, Dalziel was as good as his word.—For it is said that he obtained a reprieve for him from the king; but that coming to the hands of bishop Paterson, was kept up by him, till he was executed, which enraged the general not a little. It seems that they had a mind to spare ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... a reprieve to a condemned man on the morning of his execution, and in the revulsion of my ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... sustaining a severe loss in the death of her brother, Mr Joseph Cohen. This occurrence caused the deepest grief to herself and every member of the family. On the same day Sir Moses was obliged to attend at Newgate to speak with Rickie, a reprieve having, after all, been sent to ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... at the meeting, fourteen hours hence. A message which was to make a substantial difference ought to be received before then. But not very much before; nor too late, eleventh-hour-reprieve style, either. ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... attention to the poor during his Protectorship, and his opposition to the system of enclosures, had created him many friends among the lower classes, who hastened to witness his end, and yet flattered themselves with the hope of his reprieve."—LINGARD. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... be done till after the Wil'sbro' business," said Raymond, glad of the reprieve. He could not bear the prospect of banishment for his mother or himself from the home to which both were rooted; and the sentence of detachment from her was especially painful when she seemed his only consolation for his wife's perverseness. Yet he was ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sharp sent for Burnet, and dismissed his advice without apparent resentment. He had already made valuable acquaintances in Edinburgh, and he now visited London, Oxford and Cambridge, and, after a short visit to Edinburgh in 1663, when he sought to secure a reprieve for his uncle Warristoun, he proceeded to travel in France and Holland. At Cambridge he was strongly influenced by the philosophical views of Ralph Cudworth and Henry More, who proposed an unusual degree of toleration within the boundaries of the church and the limitations ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... far away from Him in wrath. Then Death threw herself upon it, scattering terror everywhere. She holds this world in her talons. Misery also precipitates herself upon it, gnashing her teeth in beast-like rage. She clutches man like a beast of prey, she torments him without reprieve...." ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... said. "Sure. Okay. It isn't urgent." He was just as glad of the reprieve; it gave him one more chance to work matters through to a solution, and report success instead of failure. "But what's going on in Miami?" ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... impossible to express, to the life, what the ecstasies and transports of the soul are, when it is so saved, as I may say, out of the very grave: and I do not wonder now at that custom, when a malefactor, who has the halter about his neck, is tied up, and just going to be turned off, and has a reprieve brought to him—I say I do not wonder that they bring a surgeon with it, to let him bleed that very moment they tell him of it, that the surprise may not drive the animal spirits from the ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... affirmed was true or not, hours came when she still belonged wholly to him. Whatever happened on her absences from him, as soon as the four walls of the room shut them in again, she was his; and each time she returned, a burning gratitude for the reprieve filled him anew. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Como was within a few hours of ending. Till the last moment they had hoped for a reprieve; but the accommodating Streffy had been unable to put the villa at their disposal for a longer time, since he had had the luck to let it for a thumping price to some beastly bouncers who insisted on taking possession at ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... was written in the Luxembourg prison, under the shadow of the guillotine. But life is only a sentence of death, with an indefinite reprieve. Prison, to Paine, was not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... prospect, and yet it was a reprieve. One is thankful for small mercies when a hairy savage with a blood-stained knife is standing at one's elbow. He dragged me from the room and I was thrust down the stairs and back into my cell. The door was locked and I ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... perhaps I had better wait.' he was big with news which he had come to tell, but which he knew could not be told without much discussion. He had hurried away to Plumstead as fast as two horses could bring him, and now, finding himself there, he was willing to accept the reprieve which dinner would ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... sketch the plot. Damon and Pythias with their servant Stephano arrive in Syracuse in the reign of the tyrant, Dionysius. There Damon is arrested on the denunciation of the informer Carisophus, and is sentenced to death as a spy. Reprieve for six months is allowed him on the pledge of Pythias's life as bail, and at the last minute he returns, just in time to save the life of his devoted and willing friend. Such signal proofs of the sincerity of their ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... A reprieve for further inquiry was granted by the State. Finally Arnaud was cleared, and allowed ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... intended to make it,—had not, in truth, thought of it. But when her mother talked of Harry's destiny, as though some terrible evil had come upon him,—as though she were speaking of a poor wretch condemned to be hanged, when all chances of a reprieve were over,—then her spirit rose within her. She had not meant to say that she was going. Harry had never asked her to go. "If you talk of his destiny I am quite prepared to share it with him." That was her meaning. But her mother already saw her only child in the hands of those ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... a kind of reprieve when she heard from Mr. Strafford that they might delay their journey safely for a month. The sober middle age which had come upon her before its time, as her life rolled on out of the anguish and ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... body, swam with bursting lungs, until he felt air upon his face and knew that he could breathe. In choking sobs and gasps his breath came and went, while he paddled with hands and feet, glad of his reprieve; and when his lungs worked normally, he struck out for a white, circular life-buoy, not six feet away. "Bless her for this," he prayed, as he slipped it under his arms. His oilskin trousers were cumbersome, and with a little ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... although Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN is still nominally Chancellor of the Exchequer, he is really a prisoner in the Tower, conveyed under guard to and from the House, and that the reprieve of the sentence of capital punishment passed on him by The Daily Mail may expire—and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... moment's reprieve, I willingly agreed to the proposal; and Mrs. Selwyn had but just time to shut me in, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... thought: become ready to face anything. When Keith came in he would without murmur have accepted the advice: "Give yourself up!" He was prepared to pitch away the end of his life as he pitched from him the fag-ends of his cigarettes. And the long sigh he had heaved, hearing of reprieve, had been only half relief. Then, with incredible swiftness there had rushed through him a feeling of unutterable joy and hope. Clean away—into a new country, a new life! The girl and he! Out there he wouldn't care, would ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... can love not; if he grieve, His tears are barren as the unfruitful rain That rears no harvest from the green sea's plain, And as thorns crackling this man's laugh is vain. Nor can belief touch, kindle, smite, reprieve His heart who has not heart ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... first thought suppose, for he believed that to solidify a quicksand was impossible. The effect on him was so great that he was mentally prostrated, and although the company generously and justly relieved him from his engagement, the reprieve came too late, for he died. It then came to be a question whether or not the tunnel should be abandoned. Many advised that it should. At this juncture Mr Robert Stephenson, son of the great George, came forward and undertook the ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... doctrine of a "ruling passion" is a remarkable contribution to Greek political thought, the abstract personifications reading like the work of a poet or philosopher. An exciting race against time is most graphically described. After great exertions the ship bearing the reprieve arrived just in time to save Mytilene. This act of mercy stands in sinister contrast with the treatment the unhappy Plataeans received from the liberators of Greece. The citizens were captured, Athens having strangely abandoned them in spite of her promise to help. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... the infant put out its tongue in passing. Several Jurymen have said, that had this fact been brought before them at the trial, they would have returned a very different verdict. Much sympathy is expressed with LARRIKIN, who is quite a young man. He expresses himself as sanguine of a reprieve. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... short space, to be relieved from his burdens. For them both, so young, so helpless against powers that were ruthless in the accomplishment of wider destinies, they were allowed to find in these silent minutes a brief reprieve. ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... could sleep, and, in fact, sank to rest. She felt refreshed on awakening and said, 'I wish it was over; it is only a reprieve to make me suffer a little longer; I cannot recover, but my nasty heart will not break yet.' She had an impression that she should die on a Wednesday: she had, she said, been born on a Wednesday, married on a Wednesday, crowned on a Wednesday, her first child ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... failed not to do it in the most earnest manner. He answered me at first with procrastinations, declaring, from time to time, he would mention it to my father; and still excusing himself for not doing it. At last he thought on an expedient to obtain a longer reprieve. This was by pretending that he should, in a very few weeks, be preferred to the command of a troop; and then, he said, he could with some ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... as you'll easily believe. "O GILBERT, you must spare him, for I bring him a reprieve, It came from our Home Secretary many weeks ago, And passed through that post-office which I used to ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... shouts of, "Who killed Myles Joyce?" [Footnote: One of several men hanged for the Maamtrasna murders. All the other men sentenced protested that Myles Joyce was innocent, and died protesting it. Strong efforts were made to gain a reprieve for this lad.] while some varied the proceedings by calling "Murderer!" after him. A few days later, when I was driving with Lady Spencer in an open carriage, a well-dressed bicyclist came riding through the cavalry escort, and in a quiet, conversational tone observed to us, "Who killed Myles Joyce?" ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... vaguely when he was a child. Two of the soldiers were sentenced to be hanged for desertion, and the officer in command hurried forward the execution, although an express had been sent to lay the case before the general at another post. The offence was only a desertion in name, and the reprieve was promptly granted, but it came ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... happen only to some?" They answered, "Unless death come before hand to remove him, no dweller on earth, but, as life advanceth, must make trial of this lot." Then the young prince asked in how many years this overtook a man, and whether the doom of death was without reprieve, and whether there was no way to escape it, and avoid coming to such misery. They answered him, "In eighty or an hundred years men arrive at this old age, and then they die, since there is none other way; for death is a ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... Whether or not, the reprieve was granted; and those who had been menacing my life drew back—though still muttering their discontent—and shrunk once more into ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... the head carried on a pole. More than once it happened that condemned men were paraded before the troops for execution with the graves dug and the coffins lying ready. The death sentence would be read, and then, as the firing party took aim, a reprieve would be announced. The reprieve in such circumstances was omitted often enough to make the condemned endure the real ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... regret; it clogs. Regret nothing; what's done is done past recall. Live out your life, no matter what the struggle. Count this life as yours to make the best of. Live, I say; live, work, make good; it is in any man's power who has received a reprieve like yours. I know whereof I am speaking. I'll go further: it would be in your power even if you had been ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... theft. The man was tried by a court-martial, and condemned to death, a circumstance which, as may naturally be supposed, was very distressing to us. Madame de Bourrienne applied to the commanding officer for the man's pardon, but could only obtain his reprieve. The regiment departed some weeks after, and we could never learn what was the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... object in society. Now the way society is enjoyed is to have a pursuit, a metier of some kind, and then to go into the world, either to make the individual object a social pleasure, or to obtain a reprieve from some toilsome avocation. Thus, if you are a politician—politics at once make an object in your closet, and a social tie between others and yourself when you are in the world. The same may be said of literature, though in a less degree; ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in a new place every day, and every time he broke out it cost the house money. Finally, I made up my mind to swallow the loss, and Mister Jim was just about to lose his job sure enough, when the orders for Extract began to look up, and he got a reprieve; then he began to make expenses, and he got a pardon; and finally a rush came that left him high and dry in a permanent place. Jim was all right in his way, but it was a new way, and I hadn't been broad-gauged enough to see that it was a ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... It was the first day. I was as thin as a rail, as white as the pillow from which I had just raised my head. Death's reprieve was written all over me. I dragged along wearily, leaning on a stick. I was thinking of her, thinking, thinking always. As I scanned the faces of the crowds that thronged the streets, I thought only of her face. Then suddenly she was before me. She ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... this interview, and before the day was out it had spread over the town and over the Five Towns, and it was in the Signal. The Signal spoke of Daniel Povey as 'the condemned man.' And the phrase startled the whole district into an indignant agitation for his reprieve. The district woke up to the fact that a Town Councillor, a figure in the world, an honest tradesman of unspotted character, was cooped solitary in a little cell at Stafford, waiting to be hanged by the neck till he was dead. The district determined ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... did that husband then rather chuse death Then me to be his bride? is his life mine? Why, then, because the Law makes me his Judge, Ile be, like you, not cruell, but reprieve him; ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... more a Russian, and he was refused. Trenck gave him a blow, and called aloud to the soldiers to follow him. They however being Russians, remained motionless, and he was put under arrest. The court-martial sentenced him to death, and all hope of reprieve seemed over. The general would have granted his pardon, but as he was himself a foreigner, he was fearful of offending the Russians. The day of execution came, and he was led to the place of death, Munich ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... upon as a reprieve, and when a traveller, expressing sympathy, suggested that "it might sicken her a bit of camp life," Jack clung ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... can your form improve, But all are lost, unless you love; While that sweet passion you disdain, Your veil and beauty are in vain: In pity then prevent my fate, For after dying all reprieve's too late. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... pardoned, but Browne was ordered to be executed. The captain appealed to the Assembly to have the benefit of the Act of Privateers, and the House of Assembly twice sent a committee to the Governor to beg a reprieve. Lord Vaughan refused this and ordered the immediate execution of Browne. Half an hour after the hanging the provost-marshal appeared with an order, signed by the ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... gradually be melted by my mother's entreaties. Turning aside to brush away a furtive and not unmanly tear, he would suddenly tear the death-warrant to shreds, and taking up another huge placard headed REPRIEVE, he would quickly fill it in and sign it. He would then hand it to the Private Secretary, who would instantly start post-haste for Cork. As the condemned man was being actually conducted to the scaffold, the Private Secretary would appear, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... far-reaching. Under the moonlight and the watching balloons there will be swift noiseless rushes of cycles, precipitate dismounts, and the never-to-be-quite-abandoned bayonet will play its part. And now men on the losing side will thank God for the reprieve of a pitiless wind, for lightning, thunder, and rain, for any elemental disorder that will for a moment lift the descending scale! Then, under banks of fog and cloud, the victorious advance will pause and grow peeringly ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... stopped, he wanted to rise once more; he fancied he was a boy at school again," said the nurse, "and that he was going in to Dr. Raine, who was schoolmaster here ever so many years ago." So it was, that when happier days seemed to be dawning for the good man, that reprieve came too late. Grief, and years, and humiliation, and care, and cruelty had been too strong for him, and Thomas Newcome ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I was called by another voice. I was fain enough of the reprieve. Leaving Dame Joan with the Queen, I ran forth into the Queen's ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... and you begin with them calmly to parcel out the names by sixes and eights, and then to arrive at an opinion when your day of execution will be. If your name comes at the head of the list, you wish that you were "YOUNG, Carolus, e Coll. Vigorn." that you might have a reprieve of your sentence. If your name is at the end of the list, you wish that you were "ADAMS, Edvardus Jacobus, e Coll. Univ." that you might go in at once, and be put out of your misery. If your ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... struck, her bullets did not penetrate the brain, but they did give Bill an instant's reprieve. The bear struck at the wounds they made, then halted, bawling, in the snow. His roving eye caught sight of Virginia's form. With a roar he ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... Uncle Tobe hanged all sorts and conditions of men—men who kept on vainly hoping against hope for an eleventh-hour reprieve long after the last chance of reprieve had vanished, and who on the gallows begged piteously for five minutes, for two minutes, for one minute more of precious grace; negroes gone drunk on religious exhortation ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... by Mr. Thorowgood and Mr. Arrowsmith, two members of the assembly of divines, who kindly offered him their utmost interest if he would make some petitionary acknowledgment, and submit to take the covenant, which he refused. But that he might obtain a reprieve, he wrote several letters to the earl of Northumberland, the earl of Stamford, and others of the nobility, from whom he received favours. In the House of Commons he was particularly obliged to Sir John Corbet, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... enough in some respects, was not quite such a fool as that. Sometimes the Jinn could be mollified and induced to grant a reprieve by being told stories, one inside the other, like a nest of Oriental boxes. Unfortunately Fakrash did not seem in the humour for listening to apologues, and, even if he were, Horace could not think of or improvise any just then. "Besides," he thought, "I can't sit up here telling ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... conjured up in my mind of life spreading slowly from this little seed bed of the solar system throughout the inanimate vastness of sidereal space. But that is a remote dream. It may be, on the other hand, that the destruction of the Martians is only a reprieve. To them, and not to us, perhaps, is the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... give me unprevisioned new, Or give to change reprieve! For new in me is olden too, That I for sameness grieve. O flowers! O grasses! be but once The ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... in the courtyard. "No reprieve, no reprieve! Nobody comes near us. There's only the night left now!" moaned Dennis. "Do you think they'll reprieve me in the night, brother? I've known reprieves come in the night afore now. Don't you think there's a good chance yet? Don't you? ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... perish'd, as I fondly thought, Lest her kind Usage my Salvation wrought; Her happy Aid I labour'd to obtain, Hop'd for Success, yet fear'd her sad Disdain, Tortur'd like dying Convicts whilst they live, 'Twixt fear of Death, and hopes of a Reprieve. First for her smallest Favours did I sue, Crept, Fawn'd and Cring'd, as Lovers us'd to do? Sigh'd e'er I spoke, and when I spoke look'd Pale, In words confus'd disclos'd my mournful Tale? Unpractised and Amour's fine Speeches coin'd, But could not utter what I well design'd. Warm'd by her Charms ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... back a pace, gripping his cane. Then he laughed. "Why not?" he said. "Let this be me. And I'll go on, with that clanking hardware store around my neck. It can be done, can't it? Better for you and for Dagmar. I'm not being philanthropic. I'm looking, not for a reprieve, but for release. No one knows this fellow in Salvan—he probably came up from the Rhone and was on his way to Chamonix. What d'you think was the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... but could not; and we now began to repine at our fate, and abandon ourselves to despair; when, in the midst of our murmuring, the captain all at once cried out 'A sail! a sail! a sail!' This gladdening sound was like a reprieve to a convict, and we all instantly turned to look at it; but in a little time some of us began to be afraid it was not a sail. However, at a venture, we embarked and steered after it; and, in half an hour, to our unspeakable joy, ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... even grateful. It was certainly an odd mode of procedure to devote primary attention to the trunks and boxes, leaving the travellers still shut up in the carriage, of which they were by this time pretty well tired. I was not sorry for the reprieve, however: being nervous about first impressions, and willing to defer mine, I sat shyly back, peeping at the candle and moonlight ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... preferred against them, but many months passed before they were brought to trial. When at last the trial came off, Mr. Dean was sentenced to imprisonment for ten years, and five thousand dollars fine. Miss Ford's sentence was five years' imprisonment, but the governor finally granted a reprieve of ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... below. As he passed through the after-hatch, all the officers on the quarter-deck bowed to him, and not a man was there in the ship who did not feel the happier for the reprieve. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ought to feel very glad, Edwards," he said. "This is a reprieve, don't you see, so far as I am concerned. And yet I can't realize it; I don't seem to care about it; all the ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the wooden cannon and the chief's ruling that we were no longer Ward's prisoners appealed to me as a reprieve. At least the girl was snatched from Ward's clutches. But the unanimous vote that one of us must die threw me ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... reason or other, Immelan accepted these measured words of prophecy as a total reprieve. The relief in his face was almost piteous. He seized his visitor's hand and would have fawned upon it. Prince Shan withdrew himself a little farther ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and should like Molly to give up a party at Mrs Goodenough's, to which they were all three invited, but to Which Molly alone was going. Molly's heart leaped up at the thoughts of stopping at home, even though the next moment she had to blame herself for rejoicing at a reprieve that was purchased by another's suffering. However, the remedies prescribed by her husband did Mrs Gibson good; and she was particularly grateful and ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... if it be of a homely, ordinary kind!—I send a message by my Servant, and he delivers it faithfully: but whether it is to be called my message, or is not to be called my message, is to depend entirely on the subject-matter!... Thus, if a King, refusing to appear in person, should issue a reprieve to prisoners under sentence of Death, a proclamation of Peace or of War, an address to the representatives of the constitution, (Clergy, Lords, and Commons,) in parliament assembled,—the message ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... hordes of Goths searched out and ravaged the furthest corners of European Greece. Then the current set westward to sweep away[2] the Roman administration in the Latin provinces, and Hellenism seemed to have been granted a reprieve. The Greek city-state of Byzantium on the Black Sea Straits had been transformed into the Roman administrative centre of Constantinople, and from this capital the Emperor Justinian in the sixth ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... princes were connected with the lucrative, if nefarious, traffic in which he was a captain. But the offense was so flagrant that the New York district attorney went to Washington to block mistaken clemency. He was all but too late, for the President had literally under his hand the Gordon reprieve. The powerful influence reached even into the executive study. Lawyer Delafield Smith stood firmly upon the need of making an example, and Mr. Lincoln gave way, but in despair at having to lay aside the pen and redoom the miserable tool to the gallows, where ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... wicked doers; and thou shalt surely find them of all men the most covetous of life, even more than the idolaters: one of them would desire his life to be prolonged a thousand years, but none shall reprieve himself from punishment, that his life may be prolonged: God seeth that which they do. Say, Whoever is an enemy to Gabriel (for he hath caused the Koran to descend on thy heart, by the permission ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... fabricated a special taboo. Only could he marry, he explained, when the Southern Cross rode highest in the sky. Knowing his astronomy, he thus gained a reprieve of nearly nine months; and he was confident that within that time he would either be dead or escaped to the coast with full knowledge of the Red One and of the source of the Red One's wonderful ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... among other pilfered ingots, and would in due time emerge from his subterranean retreat in such cheerful temper that he had no heart to browbeat the scared-looking Madame. Whereupon Madame would be divided in her honest soul between horror at Pierre's wrong-doing and thankfulness for a temporary reprieve ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... that all efforts were in vain, that she herself would be publicly disgraced, and that Leucha would naturally never speak to her again. These things might come to pass at once. As it was, they did come to pass a little later on, but on this special Saturday there was a slight reprieve both ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... for our escape, but we expected every moment to be drowned by the waves, then it pleased God to show his power and free mercy by his own hand to deliver us, and, after two hours' expectation of death, to reprieve us, to set our ship on float again, and to bring us all in health and safety to your Highness's presence, and to our dear ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... least painful of Yolanda's emotions was the knowledge that she could insure Max's return by telling him that she was the Princess of Burgundy. But she did not want this man whom she loved so dearly, and who, she knew, loved her, if she must win him as princess. She was strangely impelled to reject a reprieve from a life of wretchedness, unless it came through the high ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... on horseback; she managing the bridle, and guiding him by the hand after alighting. Their humble means were exhausted in these offices of reverence and affection. One of the noble girls made her way to Boston, sought out the Governor, and implored a reprieve for her mother; but in vain. The sight of these young women, leading their blind father to comfort and provide for their "honored mother,—as innocent," as they declared her to be, "of the crime charged, as any person in ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... it. They were at once taken down. This was the signal for an outbreak, and shouts of "burn 'em, burn 'em" burst from the multitude. Mr. Moore then asked the sheriff to delay execution till he could see the Governor and get a reprieve. He hurried off, and soon returned with a conditional one. But, as he met the sheriff on the common, the latter told him that it would be impossible to take the criminals through the crowd without a strong guard, and before that could arrive, they would be murdered by the exasperated populace. ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... reach El-Obeid by evening the day after to-morrow. There he will hear that he has let slip through his fingers the man for whom all the country is in search, and horsemen will be despatched instantly in pursuit; probably they will be here the next evening; it is but a reprieve. Journey as fast as we will they ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... of delight, what acclamations followed this discovery. To use Carteret's own comparison, the feelings of surprise and comfort experienced by the crew can only be likened to those of a criminal, who at the last moment on the scaffold receives a reprieve! It was Nitendit ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the tension, grown almost unendurable, came with the arrival at Suda of the Psyche, with Admiral Lord Clarence Paget, direct from Constantinople, to inform us that the Arethusa frigate had been ordered to Crete. If the Psyche had been a reprieve the Arethusa was a pardon. The hilarious blue-jackets flying over the plains of Crete brought all the Mussulman world to its senses, and we took down our barricades; but for the poor Cretans there was no change,—the Turks were so fully persuaded that England was with ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... whispered, and there were some who looked for signs of a swift-coming messenger. But the cart came nearer, slowly and surely; the space round the gallows was kept clear with difficulty, and there was no sign of hurrying reprieve. ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... cockerel! Here was I in the barrel, and able only to squeal in irate terror at whoever looked down upon me. I could have crawled under a log and died. At the door of the Major's tent I paused to learn and joy of one to whom comes reprieve when the rope is on his neck, I overheard Harry Helm, the General's nephew and aide de-camp, who had been with us, telling what a howling good joke Smith had ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... see the condemned man alive. Undaunted by the news, the brave wife sought an interview with the Empress, in whom she found a warm advocate, but who was obliged to own, after several attempts to obtain a reprieve, that she despaired of success. Teresa Confalonieri hurried back to Milan through the bitter winter weather, in doubt whether she should arrive before the execution had taken place. But the unceasing efforts of the Empress won the day. The respite was granted ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... passed, and, being now free for the time, he fled the country. He went to Africa, and there he so disgraced the state that bore him that of late times I hear he has been sent for to come back to Austria. Even yet the Emperor may suspend the reprieve and send him to the block for his ancient crime. If he had a thousand heads, he could not atone for the worse crimes ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... his capacity as watch-dog he might have been considered as ex officio the guardian. This vile malefactor had been ordered for execution, and the noose was already coiled for his caitiff neck, when a neighbor of his master's—a great raiser of sheep—begged for him a reprieve, kindly volunteering the use of a truculent, but valuable ram belonging to him, for the purpose of illustrating the homaeopathic theory above alluded to. At nightfall the ram was brought and turned into a paddock, where he was left fettered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... by seven weeks, and indeed the delay was longer, as Gordon was then at Jaffa, and that delay, I repeat it solemnly, cost Gordon his life. Whoever else was to blame afterwards, the first against whom a verdict of Guilty must be entered, without any hope of reprieve at the bar of history, was Sir Evelyn ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... horrible precision, the monster raised his whip, but it struck a pendant lantern, and with an oath he turned to the gallery, where he should find room and to spare for his brutality. At this delay my lady fell upon her knees, in a wild hope, I think, to turn her respite into a reprieve, but the beast cried out upon her, struck down her outstretched hands, and, twisting his fingers in her soft dark hair, dragged her incontinently out of the closet. The little whimper she gave ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... footsteps—there was a general hush, and then another bang of the mallet on the ball and then a clapping of hands. Sir Patrick was a privileged person. He had been allowed, in all probability, to try again; and he was succeeding at the second effort. This implied a reprieve of some seconds. Blanche ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... can procure His soul a short reprieve, Redeem from death one guilty hour, Or make his ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... previous morning. He got it, and saw that it bore no address, merely stating that she would be in London by midday on the first of May, that was on the morrow. Till then it was clear he must wait, and he was not sorry for the reprieve. His was not a pleasant story for a husband ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... "A reprieve for a week, and I can have a beautiful time with nobody nigh to hinder," she thought. "I had a narrow escape from a real sheriff. Luck is with ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... hang Porteous did not, in fact, develop in a few hours, after his failure to appear on the scaffold. The Queen's pardon (or a reprieve) reached Edinburgh on Thursday, Sept. 2; the Riot occurred on the night of Sept. 7. The council had been informed that lynching was intended, thirty-six hours before the fatal evening, but pronounced the reports to be "caddies' clatters." Their negligence, of course, must ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... wife done it," cried Blacky, his eyes gleaming. "It says so here. They went to the gov'nor this morning and put it up to him in a way that made him grant a reprieve for thirty days, so's Mr. Jenison can get the real facts before him. That means a pardon sure, kids. Say, Jenison's all right! He's the kind of a friend to have, he is. He never quit on Dick. Say, where's Ernie? We'd better put ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... all that he could get, and, leaving his friend sitting in the stocks in his shirt-sleeves, he disappeared as swiftly as one could wish a man to carry a reprieve. ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... heard tell of the story? Well, now, I can hardly believe! Never heard of the honour and glory Of Pardon, the son of Reprieve? But maybe you're only a Johnnie And don't know a horse from a hoe? Well, well, don't get angry, my sonny, But, really, a young ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the rope about his neck, and the white cowl tied over his eyes, to say nothing of his hands yerked together behind his back, and on the nick of being thrown over, could not have been more thankful for a reprieve than I was, at the same blessed moment. It was like Adam seeing the deil's rear marching out of Paradise, if one may be allowed to think such ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... last, and their minds have a temperature a little below normal. In Ypres, whatever may have been their heroic and exalted dreams, they awake, see the world is mad, and surrender to the doom from which they know a world bereft will give them no reprieve. ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... cannot be explained either by the pleasure of satisfying our love of justice, nor the ignoble joy of vengeance. Perhaps the unhappy man may find excuses in the hearts of those present; perhaps the sincerest pity takes an interest in his reprieve: this does not prevent a lively curiosity in the spectators to watch his expressions of pain with eye and ear. If an exception seems to exist here in the case of a well-bred man, endowed with a delicate ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... for leaving his liquor. (Yorkshire Proverb.) It was customary for criminals on their way to execution to stop at a certain tavern in York for a "parting draught." The saddler of Bawtry refused to accept the liquor, and was hanged, whereas if he had stopped a few minutes at the tavern his reprieve, which was on the road, would have arrived in time to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... remained in their houses praying and fasting. They were accused before Decius, and they confessed themselves to be Christians. However, the Emperor gave them a little time to consider what line they would adopt. They took advantage of this reprieve to dispense their goods among the poor, and they retired, all seven, to Mount Celion, where they determined ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... convention. That law had to be approved by a majority of the people. Members of the convention had then to be elected in all parts of the State, and the Constitution which they adopted had to be carried by a majority of the popular vote. He allowed himself no reprieve from labor until all this had been accomplished. And when the rest of us, worn out by incessant toil, gladly sought rest, he went before the court of appeals to maintain everything that had been done against all comers, ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... 'tis my doom, love's undershrieve, Why this reprieve? Why doth my she-advowson fly Incumbency? To sell thyself dost thou intend By candle's end, And hold the contrast thus in doubt, Life's taper out? Think but how soon the market fails, Your sex lives faster than the males; And if, to measure age's span, The sober ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... grim. She made no further effort to withstand him, aware that to do so would entail a battle of wills which could only end in her defeat. Perhaps deep in the heart of her she was even thankful for this brief reprieve. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... murmurings and the booming of the drums died down in disappointment. The worshippers had been cheated of their sadistic pleasure. There was something wrong with the timing of the rite; their mysterious fire-god had granted the captives a reprieve. ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... got ready for the family before the winter, so that the move could not take place till the spring. In the meantime, as Dr. Drake could not marry till Easter, the lower part of the house was to be given up to him, and Carey and Janet felt that they had a reprieve. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fondly thought, Lest her kind Usage my Salvation wrought; Her happy Aid I labour'd to obtain, Hop'd for Success, yet fear'd her sad Disdain, Tortur'd like dying Convicts whilst they live, 'Twixt fear of Death, and hopes of a Reprieve. First for her smallest Favours did I sue, Crept, Fawn'd and Cring'd, as Lovers us'd to do? Sigh'd e'er I spoke, and when I spoke look'd Pale, In words confus'd disclos'd my mournful Tale? Unpractised and Amour's fine Speeches coin'd, But could ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... Suetonius[144] connects these shows with the well-known tale of the unhappy gladiators who fondly hoped that a kind word from the Emperor meant a reprieve of their doom. He had determined to surpass all his predecessors in his exhibition of a sea-fight, and had provided a sheet of water large enough for the manoeuvres of real war-galleys, carrying some five hundred men apiece.[145] The crews, eleven thousand in all, made their ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... romance in Cowfold. There could not be a greater mistake. The history of every boy or girl of ordinary make is one of robbery, murder, imprisonment, death sentence, filing of chains, scaling of prison walls, recapture, scaffold, reprieve, poison, and pistols; the difference between such a history and that in the authorised versions being merely circumstantial. The garden of Eden, the murder of Cain, the deluge, the salvation of Noah, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... House of Lords, an address was voted to the King, petitioning that his Majesty would reprieve such of the rebel lords as deserved his mercy. The royal answer was couched in these terms: that "the King on this, and all occasions, would do what he thought consistent with the dignity of the Crown and the safety of his ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Eben is on the alert, and unless they shoot us without the usual twenty-four hours' reprieve, he will have ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... mats, which served as his bed, for there was some blood on them, and some pieces of linen and lint lying about, and that was all he knew. He had not spoken to, nor seen Signor Paolo that night. Zappa's anger was very great at hearing this, and he was very nearly revoking the reprieve he had granted to the other prisoners. He believed that treachery had been practised, though, except Paolo and Nina, he knew not whom to suspect; and, while she denied all knowledge of the event, her brother was nowhere to be found; so, weary as he was, he ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... present juncture. The time had come to make an example, and a more suitable case than the one now before him could not have been found for such a purpose. He would accordingly hold out no hope of a reprieve, but would counsel prisoner to make the best use of the short time ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... point to miscarry, In life. Thus hold they us under, Thus they bring us in blunder, It were great wonder, And ever should we thrive. For may he get a paint sleeve,[89] or a brooch now on days, Woe is he that shall grieve, or once again says, Dare no man him reprieve, what mast'ry he has, And yet may none believe one word that he says— No letter. He can make purveyance, With boast and bragance,[90] And all through maintenance, Of men that are greater. There shall come a swain, as proud as a po,[91] He must borrow my wain, my plough ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... it is true, come over his character; he became more desperate, but if was only because the deeper had become this affection. The incident of the reprieve of la Tour, which had meanwhile reached him, sank deeper into his heart than the whole round of his pleasures, and made him anxious for the moment when he might ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... Glad of any reprieve from giving the answer she hated to make, the girl left the room in haste, as if intent upon summoning the lad. But she was gone longer than seemed necessary, nor did the waiting grandmother hear the boyish voice she loved, despite its stammering; and she ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... more freely. There are cases in which to obtain time for thought seems the one essential thing—cases in which a reprieve is as ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... "Sure. Okay. It isn't urgent." He was just as glad of the reprieve; it gave him one more chance to work matters through to a solution, and report success instead of failure. "But what's going on in Miami?" ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and presaged her own swift doom. All lesser interests had dwindled and grown poor; her life seemed flickering out like a taper in the breeze. Now grief had something to leaven it. Something had set up a screen between her and the wind of unmerciful events. There was a possibility, not of reprieve, but of a message from the unseen good, and for a moment the candle of her life burned steadily. Since the dead could not return, stricken mortality had one shadowy hope: that it should go, in its course, to them, and find them living. Again ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... she said, to plead the cause of a poor prisoner who was dying under sentence of the law. She paused a moment, having made this statement, and was answered by a nod. Prisoners often died without reprieve, he seemed to be aware. This cold civility warmed the petitioner's speech. Her mother would have been satisfied, Madeline Desperiers would have been overwhelmed with grief and horror, to have heard this young girl's testimony in regard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... my window twilight made Familiar mysteries of shade. Faint voices from the darkening down Were calling vaguely to the town. Intent upon a low, far gleam That burned upon the world's extreme, I sat, with short reprieve from grief, And turned the volume, leaf by leaf, Wherein a hand, long dead, had wrought A million miracles of thought. My fingers carelessly unclung The lettered pages, and among Them wandered witless, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... not very well kept, after all. Lucy whispered the good news to Jeff, and he could not forbear telling it to Evelyn just as the train was drawing out of Baltimore. His own spirits had been drooping as time went on, but the reprieve of a day sent them ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... a sort of holiday feeling and they were in no hurry to go home. For Jerry it was a reprieve from his worry about the charge account, which by now had become a burden. Once having picked it up, he had to go on carrying it. Here in town with Andy, the weight seemed ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... my name, To give you time for preparation, And fit you for your future station, Three several warnings you shall have Before you're summoned to the grave; Willing for once I'll quit my prey, And grant a kind reprieve; In hopes you'll have no more to say, But, when I call again this way, Well pleased the world will leave." To these conditions both consented, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... there sweeps from out the cold north a mighty wind like a final sentence of death, the cruel ending to a reprieve, and soon the poor leaves, brown, red and golden, shaken too unkindly, strow the ground; the snow covers them, and the white expanse has only for adornment the sombre green of trees that alter not their garb-triumphing now, as do those women inspired with bitter wisdom who barter ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... forgiven by God—never has been forgiven on earth, and never will be. Death—death inexorable, is declared by God's judgments on the world and on nations; and he has declared death as its punishment by his law—death to both male and female, without pardon or reprieve, and beyond the power of any ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... them so shortly. But the fact was, terrors of every kind had so encompassed them round since their arrival on the island that the mere additional certainty of a date and mode of execution was rather a relief to their minds than otherwise. It partook of the nature of a reprieve, not of a sentence. Besides, this meeting with another speaker of a European tongue seemed to them so full of promise and hope that they almost forgot the terrors of their threatened end in their discussion of possible schemes for escape to freedom. Even M. Peyron himself, who had ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... into his own person the whole Government. His rulings swayed the Court, in which he acted the part of prosecutor of the Prisoners, and overbore the Jury. He sat in judgment upon the sentences of his own Court; and heard and refused, applications and supplications for pardon or reprieve. The three grand divisions of all constitutional or well-ordered Governments were, for the time, obliterated in Massachusetts. In the absence of Phips, the Executive functions were exercised by Stoughton. While presiding over the Council, he also held a seat as an elected ordinary ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... she could sleep, and, in fact, sank to rest. She felt refreshed on awakening and said, 'I wish it was over; it is only a reprieve to make me suffer a little longer; I cannot recover, but my nasty heart will not break yet.' She had an impression that she should die on a Wednesday: she had, she said, been born on a Wednesday, married on a Wednesday, crowned on a Wednesday, her first child was born on a Wednesday, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... His premature arrival would in effect admit the bull of equity into the china-shop of my intentions. And day-dreams are fragile stuff, Monsieur d'Ormskirk! Indeed, I am giving you this so brief reprieve only because I am, unwilling to have upon my conscience the reproach of hanging without due preparation a man whom of all politicians in the universe I most unfeignedly like and respect. The Protestant minister has been sent for, and will, I sincerely trust, be here at dawn. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... describes no lover's passion, No wretched father, no unthrifty son! No craving, subtle whore or shameless bawd, Nor stubborn clown or daring parasite, No lying servant or bold sycophant. We are not wanton or satirical. These have their time and places fit, but we Sad hours and serious studies to reprieve, Have taught severe Philosophy to smile, The Senses' rash contentions we compose, And give displeas'd ambitious Tongue her due: Here's all; judicious friends, accept what is not ill. Who are not such, let ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... his back, was beheaded in prison like the vilest malefactor. Those who are inclined to palliate the cruelties of Constantius, assert that he soon relented, and endeavored to recall the bloody mandate; but that the second messenger, intrusted with the reprieve, was detained by the eunuchs, who dreaded the unforgiving temper of Gallus, and were desirous of reuniting to their empire the wealthy ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Headworth showed herself much concerned about the state of things, Nuttie coaxed her, and declared that she should fancy herself unwelcome, and have to go and beg a lodging somewhere instead of enjoying her reprieve. And Aunt Ursel was far less impervious to coaxing than she used to be when she was the responsible head of a boarding house. She did most thoroughly enjoy the affection of her great niece, and could not persuade herself to be angry with her, especially when the girl looked ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to-day that I have a short reprieve, 'time to write to you,' the good Colonel says. Forgive him, Father, he only does his duty; he would gladly save me if he could; and do not lay my death against Jemmie. The poor boy is heart-broken, and does nothing but beg and entreat them to let ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... come up for some cigars; but when she got into her father's room, she seated herself blindly and looked aimlessly down at her hands. What a blessed reprieve this was! If she could but stay here! She could if it were not for the peace-pipe. Such a silly performance too! Father kept those superfine cigars over in the cabinet there. Should she bring only two as usual? Then she was going? Why not? It would look very rude not to do so. Besides, ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... the imprisoned woman, her reprieve had come before her sentence had time to be carried out. She was brought directly from the prison, where Nona had once visited her, to the lodgings where the American girls were making ready ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... flapped and cleared themselves of their icy varnishing—then all was over. There was an iceberg of another shape astern of us, the gale recommenced, the waves pressed each other on as before, and we felt the return of the gale, awful as it was, as a reprieve. That was a dreadful voyage, Jacob, and turned one-third of my hair grey; and what made it worse was, that we had only three fish on board on our return. However, we had reason to be thankful, for eighteen of our vessels were lost altogether, and it was the mercy ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... week: every body is going out of town. My Lord goes the first week in May; but I shall reprieve myself till towards August. Dull as London is in summer, there is always more company in it than in any one place in the country. I hate the country: I am past the shepherdly age of groves and streams, and am not arrived at that of hating every thing but what ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Life; and I shall think my self ever obliged to my dear Wife, for this kind Reprieve;—had she been cruel, I had been strangled, or hung in the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... deserving of pity, and too mischievous for contempt, to think of restraining it in any other country whilst it is predominant there. War, instead of being the cause of its force, has suspended its operation. It has given a reprieve, at least, to the Christian world. The true nature of a Jacobin war, in the beginning, was, by most of the Christian powers, felt, acknowledged, and even in the most precise manner declared. In the joint manifesto, published by the emperor and the king ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... man; but that he intended to have killed his captain, with whom he had the night before a violent quarrel. He was brought to the gallows, a prayer made, and the time for his execution almost arrived, when Colonel Arnold thought best to reprieve him and send him to General Washington. I have been informed, that he died in gaol before the day of his ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking
... man buy a reprieve from Death!" he continued. "Never do that—never? Did you ever think of it, Sim, that what happens ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... back to meet his sentence. Drs. Thomas and Scholtz declared this most unadvisable. His heart was in such condition, any shock might prove fatal. Their reports were forwarded to the Transvaal Government, and I begged for a few days' reprieve, cabling my urgent request to Mr. Olney in Washington, Dr. Coster at Pretoria, and our faithful friend, Mr. Robert Chapin, United States Consul at Johannesburg. Mr. Olney at once petitioned the Boer Government in our behalf. ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... railed and scoffed at them from the foot of the gallows the two brave men were hanged. The halter had been placed upon Mrs. Dyer when her son, who had come in all haste from Rhode Island, obtained her reprieve on his promise to take her away. The bodies of the two men were denied Christian burial and thrown uncovered into a pit. All the efforts of husband and son were unable to keep Mrs. Dyer at home. In the following spring she returned to Boston and on the first day of June was again taken ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... know. Next time Harry Armstrong was going to read; but to tell you the truth, Adela, I doubt if he will be ready. I know he is dreadfully busy just now, and I believe he will be thankful to have a reprieve for a day or two, and his story, which I expect will be a good one, will be all the better ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... vote went against Kroger, but he got a last-minute reprieve by suggesting the crystals be pulverized and mixed with sulphuric acid. He says ...
— The Dope on Mars • John Michael Sharkey
... understand, but an unhappier face I have never seen. She looked like a criminal whose reprieve is over, and the ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... reprieve to one about to be executed. I could only weep and thank God, once more believing in my Father in heaven. But it was a humbling thought, that, if he had not thus helped me, I might have ceased to believe in him. I saw plainly, that, let me talk to Percivale as I might, my own faith ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... I took him the time before, I told him what he would come to if he did not mend his Hand. This is Death without Reprieve. I may venture to Book him [writes.] For Tom Gagg, forty Pounds. Let Betty Sly know that I'll save her from Transportation, for I can get more by ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... One was convicted of arson, another of robbing the United States mail, when the mail was intercepted with a view of capturing letters from the Federal officers in the western counties to the authorities at the capital. In both instances President Washington granted first a reprieve, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... he purchased a respite of three months, by adding thirty pounds to his debt, and so was thankful for another deliverance, and was confident of the promised subsidy within a week, or at all events a fortnight, or, at worst, three months was a long reprieve—and the subsidy must arrive before ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... can express the ecstasies and transports that my soul felt at the happy deliverance. It was like a reprieve to a dying malefactor, with a halter about his neck, and ready to be turned off. I was wrapt up in contemplation and often lifted up my hands, with the profoundest humility, to the Divine Powers, for saving, my life, when ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... was glad of the reprieve of one month. She retired from her mother's presence in silent anguish, and hastened to her own apartment, that she might give way to her grief. There she found Mrs. Somers waiting for her, seated in an arm-chair, with an open letter ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... him off so easy," said Jack, but he did as Melville wished. But the colonel had a short reprieve. On his way to jail, a bullet from some unknown assailant pierced his temple, and Jerry Lane, the notorious road agent, died, as he ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the king was in earnest, and that his severity would be carried any further than the mere terror of execution. When the decisive period approached, and he was to receive the extreme unction, he looked wistfully round, and when there still appeared no prospect of a reprieve, he turned to Julian Romero, and asked him once more if there was no hope of pardon for him. Julian Romero shrugged his shoulders, looked on the ground, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... called Sackey, who has been one of the chief nurses on the island for many years. I suppose she has made some application to Mr. G—— for a respite for Edie, on finding how terribly unfit she is for work; or perhaps Mr. ——, to whom I represented her case, may have ordered her reprieve; but she came with much gratitude to me (who have, as far as I know, had nothing to do with it), to tell me that she is not able to be sent into the field for another week. Old Sackey fully confirmed Edie's account of the terrible hardships the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... his pleasant way the Captain used to tell how he acted in the dilemma. He went round to the twelve condemned wretches, and asked each man separately if, being under sentence of death, he desired a reprieve or wished for death. As luck would have it, of the twelve men, six pleaded for life and six as earnestly prayed that they might be sent to the scaffold. So the Captain hanged the six men who wished to live, and spared the six men who prayed ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... man of a brutal disposition, and abandoned morals, being provoked by the insults of the mob, commanded his soldiers to fire upon the crowd, by which precipitate orders several innocent persons were killed; Porteus was tried and condemned to die, but obtained a reprieve from the Queen, who was then Regent. The mob, however, were [sic] determined to execute the sentence; they accordingly rose in a tumultuous manner, forced open the prison doors, dragged forth Porteus, and hanged ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... fire, made two or three strenuous swallows of nothing, and opened his mouth to speak. At that instant old Mr. Valentine came in, newly arrived from the Hill, and "whew"-ing at the cold. Peyton felt like one for whom a brief reprieve had been ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... out it had spread over the town and over the Five Towns, and it was in the Signal. The Signal spoke of Daniel Povey as 'the condemned man.' And the phrase startled the whole district into an indignant agitation for his reprieve. The district woke up to the fact that a Town Councillor, a figure in the world, an honest tradesman of unspotted character, was cooped solitary in a little cell at Stafford, waiting to be hanged by the neck till he was dead. The district determined that this must not and should not be. Why! ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... character; not to say, that, if Mr. Newman's doubts of man's immortality be well founded, that better future will be of no more avail to the myriads of our race who have suffered under the long iron regime of necessity, than a reprieve to the wretch who ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... with his body, swam with bursting lungs, until he felt air upon his face and knew that he could breathe. In choking sobs and gasps his breath came and went, while he paddled with hands and feet, glad of his reprieve; and when his lungs worked normally, he struck out for a white, circular life-buoy, not six feet away. "Bless her for this," he prayed, as he slipped it under his arms. His oilskin trousers were cumbersome, and with a ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... would be but a short reprieve; I could not trust you; the sum would be spent, and I again in the state to which you have compelled me now; but without the means again to relieve myself. No, no! if the blow must fall, be it so one ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was certainly an odd mode of procedure to devote primary attention to the trunks and boxes, leaving the travellers still shut up in the carriage, of which they were by this time pretty well tired. I was not sorry for the reprieve, however: being nervous about first impressions, and willing to defer mine, I sat shyly back, peeping at the candle and moonlight picture before me, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... to stand, also in line, with their backs against a huge rock which was to serve as a background; and Jim found himself, for the second time in his life, facing a firing-party and condemned to death. But this time there seemed to be no hope or possibility of reprieve. He was surrounded by cruel men who had no feelings save those of a brutal nature, and it seemed as though no power on earth could ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... work wonders with her eloquence, her tears, her pleading glances. On hearing her prayer for a reprieve of twenty-four hours, swearing that after that she would never see Jeannin again, the commander and the chevalier were obliged to bite their lips to keep from laughing outright. But the former soon regained his self-possession, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... at the stonework from behind their curtain screen until evening had settled into night. With the easy good nature of a Paris crowd, everybody quietly went home, a few disappointed at the failure of a promised excitement, but by far the greater number rejoicing in their hearts at the reprieve of the bronze pillar which they had been accustomed from childhood to regard with pride. Tuesday's Officiel positively announced the ceremony for that day at 2, and the concourse was greater than ever. The Rue de la Paix and the space behind, up to the steps of ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... experience. Put aside regret; it clogs. Regret nothing; what's done is done past recall. Live out your life, no matter what the struggle. Count this life as yours to make the best of. Live, I say; live, work, make good; it is in any man's power who has received a reprieve like yours. I know whereof I am speaking. I'll go further: it would be in your power even if you had been ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... Gordon's departure by seven weeks, and indeed the delay was longer, as Gordon was then at Jaffa, and that delay, I repeat it solemnly, cost Gordon his life. Whoever else was to blame afterwards, the first against whom a verdict of Guilty must be entered, without any hope of reprieve at the bar of history, was Sir ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... break and end our efforts at any moment, but the quickness with which I had seized upon Preblesham's information confirmed the proverb about the early bird; the threehour reprieve stretched to five and by the time Havas flashed the news I had liquefied almost all of my now worthless assets—and to potential financial rivals. Needless to say I had not trusted solely to the honor of the men with whom I had conversed, but had the sale confirmed in each case by an agent ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... vain presumption would be rightly served, if I should perish with him in the gulf from which I sought to save him! Yet, God preserve me from it, and him too! Yes, poor Arthur, I will still hope and pray for you; and though I write as if you were some abandoned wretch, past hope and past reprieve, it is only my anxious fears, my strong desires that make me do so; one who loved you less would be less ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... circumstances is always painful. I need hardly say that my own feelings were of a very distressing kind. Conscious that if the unfortunate man really was guilty, he was at least not deserving of capital punishment, I exerted myself to procure a reprieve. In the first place I waited privately on the judge; but he would listen to no proposal for a respite. Along with a number of individuals—chiefly of the Society of Friends—I petitioned the crown for a commutation of the sentence. ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... to catch fish, but could not; and we now began to repine at our fate, and abandon ourselves to despair; when, in the midst of our murmuring, the captain all at once cried out 'A sail! a sail! a sail!' This gladdening sound was like a reprieve to a convict, and we all instantly turned to look at it; but in a little time some of us began to be afraid it was not a sail. However, at a venture, we embarked and steered after it; and, in half an hour, to our unspeakable joy, we ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... the night, and tormenting myself with the falsest notions and apprehensions of things, I fell, through mere fatigue into a kind of delirious doze, out of which I waked late in the morning, in a violent fever: a circumstance which was extremely critical to reprieve me, at least for a time, from the attacks of a wretch, infinitely more terrible to me than ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... what you ask would please, you should not know. But since that knowledge, more than death, will grieve, Know, Indamora gained you this reprieve. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... May 1954 meeting at the Homestead [expensive resort hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia, where the BAC often holds its 'work and play' sessions with high government officials and their wives], Stevens flew down from Washington for a weekend reprieve from his televised torture. A special delegation of BAC officials made it a point to journey from the hotel to the mountaintop airport to greet Stevens. He was escorted into the lobby like a conquering hero. Then, publicly, ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... party at Mrs Goodenough's, to which they were all three invited, but to Which Molly alone was going. Molly's heart leaped up at the thoughts of stopping at home, even though the next moment she had to blame herself for rejoicing at a reprieve that was purchased by another's suffering. However, the remedies prescribed by her husband did Mrs Gibson good; and she was particularly grateful and ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... offered no further objections to their plans. Yet they could see that he was consenting to his exile only because he had no argument with which to meet theirs. He refused to resign from the Patent Office until the last moment, as if hoping for some reprieve from the sentence which his family had pronounced. He was moody, irritable, a changed boy from the one who had hippity-hopped with Leila ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... period of Kate's visit arrived, a letter from Professor Fraser, to the purport that if Mrs Forbes did not mind keeping Kate a little longer he would be greatly indebted to her, came to Alec like a reprieve from execution. And the little longer lengthened into the late harvest of ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... send, A gentle ear; I wish that he may find A happy passage, and a prosp'rous wind. The contract I don't plead, which he betray'd, 130 Nor that his promised conquest be delay'd; All that I ask is but a short reprieve, Till I forget to love, and learn to grieve; Some pause and respite only I require, Till with my tears I shall have quench'd my fire. If thy address can but obtain one day Or two, my death that service shall ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... set her teeth and swung forward. In front of Tenney's they stopped. The rooms were lighted. The house was still. Raven drew a deep breath. What he had expected he did not know, whether calls for help or Tenney's voice of the woods shouting, "Hullo!" This, at any rate, was a reprieve. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the time while the carriage was conveying Mr. Eldridge home; and yet when he came in sight of the house, he wished a longer reprieve from the dreadful task of informing Mr. and Mrs. Temple of ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... dreadful. An awkward step, a fright, and we shall have a rupture of the aneurism. I have seen instances of it. O my God! what is to become of us? Is she asleep? Yes. She is asleep. Is she in a swoon? No. Her pulse is pretty strong. She is only asleep. Sleep is a reprieve. It is the happy blindness. What can I do to prevent people walking about here? Gentlemen, if there be anybody on deck, I beg of you to make no noise. Do not come near us, if you do not mind. You know a person in delicate health requires a little attention. She is feverish, you see. She ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... do, my dear. I'll speak to Dr. O'Farrell myself in the morning, and I'll ask him whether something can't be done in the way of a reprieve. I'll tell him we don't mind paying for Josephine to be sent away for a ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... bad nights, nearly all had temperatures, and they looked very poor things when they were dressed; even fat, jolly Adolphe looked pale and subdued. We had not attempted to do anything with the bad bed cases; if they must go they must just go wrapped up in their blankets. But we unexpectedly got a reprieve. A great German chief came round that morning, accompanied by the German doctor and German commandant, and gave the order that the very bad cases were to remain for the present. I cannot say how thankful we were for this respite and so were the men. ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... aimed at by Tressamer or not, it was the consequence of the policy adopted by him. But no sooner had the law pronounced her doom than the tide turned with startling rapidity, and a gigantic agitation was at once set on foot for a reprieve. ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... to be burned, and was actually tied to the stake. But a heavy shower came on, so wetting the wood that it was determined to reprieve him till the morrow. That night he was bound and put in a wigwam under the care of three warriors. They laughed and chatted with the prisoner, mocking him, and describing to him with relish all the torments that he was to ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... tell a dozen actions of mine which are quite as splendid; but I do it in order that certain gentlemen in Paris may understand that I, who am able here to tell about the fate of Monsieur Caratal, can also tell in whose interest and at whose request the deed was done, unless the reprieve which I am awaiting comes to me very quickly. Take warning, messieurs, before it is too late! You know Herbert de Lernac, and you are aware that his deeds are as ready as his words. Hasten then, ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... where the robbery was done; and to St. Mary Axe, where he lived. And there I got for a shilling to stand upon the wheel of a cart, in great pain, above an hour before the execution was done; he delaying the time by long discourses and prayers one after another, in hopes of a reprieve; but none come, and at last was flung off the ladder in his cloak. A comely-looked man he was, and kept his countenance to the end: I was sorry to see him. It was believed there were at least 12 or 14,000 ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... traffic in which he was a captain. But the offense was so flagrant that the New York district attorney went to Washington to block mistaken clemency. He was all but too late, for the President had literally under his hand the Gordon reprieve. The powerful influence reached even into the executive study. Lawyer Delafield Smith stood firmly upon the need of making an example, and Mr. Lincoln gave way, but in despair at having to lay aside the pen and ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... her first suggestions. It is certain, the person and behaviour of Mr. Wilks[199] has no small share in conducing to the popularity of the play; and when a handsome fellow is going to a more coarse exit than beheading, his shape and countenance make every tender one reprieve him with all her heart, without waiting till ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... moment there was no possible chance of escape for the Master. He had virtually condemned Himself by His own words. There was no retreat or reprieve. He was roughly pushed from the hall and like a common criminal was turned over to the taunts and revilings of the mob, which availed itself of its privileges to the full in this case. Insults, curses, ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... rather inartificial. It is brought about too much by a tour de force, too entirely by the de par le roi, to deserve the praise bestowed on the rest of the piece. It resembles, in short, too nearly the receipt for making the "Beggars' Opera" end happily, by sending someone to call out a reprieve. But as it manifested at the same time the power of the prince, and afforded opportunity for panegyric on his acuteness in detecting and punishing fraud, Moliere, it is certain, might have his own good reasons for unwinding and disentangling ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... it yesterday, when I saw that you had recognized me. It was very merciful in you to reprieve me, even for a few hours; but you will pardon me if I say ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... but who had nevertheless not refrained from joining it, and was the most guilty of all the accomplices in consequence of the confidential post he occupied near the king's person. The decree was not executed, however; Saint-Vallier received his reprieve on the scaffold itself. Francis I. was neither rancorous nor cruel; and the entreaties, or, according to some evil-speakers of the day, the kind favors, of the Lady de Brew, Saint-Vallier's daughter and subsequently the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Fenice, who hears his grief, struggles and strives for strength to comfort him by word or glance. Her heart almost bursts because of the sorrow which he shows. "Ah Death!" he says, "how mean thou art, to spare and reprieve all things despicable and vile—to let them live on and endure. Death! art thou beside thyself or drunk, who hast killed my lady without me? This is a marvellous thing I see: my lady is dead, and I still live on! Ah, precious one, why does your ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... angel shall Bless this unworthy husband? he cannot thrive, Unless her prayers, whom heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath Of greatest justice.—Write, write, Rinaldo, To this unworthy husband of his wife: Let every word weigh heavy of her worth, That he does weigh too light: my greatest grief, Though little he do feel it, set down sharply. Dispatch the most convenient messenger:— ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... melted with grief. She played on him with all a woman's artillery; and at last actually wrung from him what she called a reprieve. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... fact of treason, and Prendergast was convicted and sentenced to be hanged in six weeks. Then this valiant woman's energy and perseverance rose to their highest. She set off for an audience with the Governor, Sir Henry Moore, Bart., and returned about the first of September with a reprieve. Just in time she arrived, for a company of fifty mounted men had ridden the whole length of the county to rescue her husband from the jail. She convinced them of the folly of such action as they proposed, and sent ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... new, Or give to change reprieve! For new in me is olden too, That I for sameness grieve. O flowers! O grasses! be but once The grass and flower ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... Maxwell had gone out of the yard with the heavy cut-glass dish pressed firmly against her side under her black silk shawl, Jane Field felt like one who had had a reprieve from instant execution, although she had already suffered the slow torture. She went back to her guests as steady-faced as ever. She was quite sure none of them had noticed Mrs. Maxwell's calling her Esther, but her eyes were like a wary ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and then, as their opposition became violent, he directed the guard to fire among them; whereby six persons were killed, and eleven severely wounded. For this he was prosecuted at the expense of the city, and condemned to die. But, a short reprieve having been obtained, the mob, determined to defeat it, assembled in the night preceding the seventh day of September, whereon he was to have been executed pursuant to the sentence, and, in a very riotous manner, seized and disarmed the city-guard, and possessed themselves of the town-gates, ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... secret thoughts escaped me? No, no, I read them all! You trusted that you should still have time for repentance. I saw your artifice, knew its falsity, and rejoiced in deceiving the deceiver! You are mine beyond reprieve: I burn to possess my right, and alive you ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... graces can your form improve, But all are lost, unless you love; While that sweet passion you disdain, Your veil and beauty are in vain: In pity then prevent my fate, For after dying all reprieve's too late. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... and the cares On which the day is closing, The hour of eve brings sweet reprieve, O come, come away. O come where love will smile on thee, And round its hearth will gladness be, And time fly merrily, O ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... tenejo. Reprehend riprocxi. Reprehensible riprocxinda. Represent reprezenti. Representation reprezentado. Representative reprezentanto. Repress haltigi, subpremi. Repression subpremo—ado. Repressive subprema. Reprieve pardoni. Reprimand riprocxi, mallauxdi. Reprimand riprocxo, mallauxdo. Reprisals revengxo. Reproach riprocxo. Reproachful riprocxa. Reprobate malaprobi, riprocxi. Reproduce reprodukti. Reproduction kopiajxo, reproduktajxo. Reproof riprocxo. Reprove malaprobi, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... of this reprieve, went up stairs; and while Sally was laying out the law, and prating away in her usual dictorial manner, whipt on another gown, and sliding down the stairs, escaped to her relations. And this flight, which was certainly more owing to terror than guilt, was, in the true Old ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... snorted Logan. "That woman is a she-devil that would commit murder to gain her ends. She wouldn't listen to a governor granting her a reprieve. And anyhow, what ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... word, I was called by another voice. I was fain enough of the reprieve. Leaving Dame Joan with the Queen, I ran forth into the Queen's closet, ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... and for thee bound, with thee and for thee given, A mystery seal'd from hell, and wonder'd at in heaven; I send thee rest at heart to love, and still believe; But not for thee—nor Me—is found from death reprieve." ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... Madeleine de Miolans, a daughter of a once illustrious Savoyard family. To her devotion and that of his de Vergy's relatives, who spared nothing but the necessary funds to avert his impending ruin, Michel owed a short reprieve from the execution of his creditors. Four months' delay was granted his wife in which to raise the interest due on the loans; but although journeying to Paris and soliciting every influence to procure the required sum, the ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... been glad of the excuse for his absence, for the few hours of reprieve. But he would have to see her now, would have to ask her to be his wife—while his heart ached with love ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... even a political criminal. You are a common felon. As such I warn you that I shall execute you without notice, and without reprieve." ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... to my last refuge," writes he to a friend, "where I must receive my final sentence, which at present Dr. Forbes will not pronounce. He leaves me, however, I think, like a criminal condemned, though not without hopes of reprieve. But this I am to obtain by meritoriously abstaining from flesh of every sort, all strong liquors, and by riding as much as I can bear. These are the only terms on which I am to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Convention received the news of victory. It was really their reprieve, for news of disaster would have cut short their career. Jubilant over a prompt success, their joy was savage and infernal. With the eagerness of vampires they at once sent two commissioners to wipe the name of Toulon ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... ANNIE, as you'll easily believe. "O GILBERT, you must spare him, for I bring him a reprieve, It came from our Home Secretary many weeks ago, And passed through that post-office which I used ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... intellect; gradually thus the truth dawned upon her, and as he continued she lost the sense of his spoken thoughts in the mad cross- tides of her own unuttered. Now her crying instinct was for rescue at all costs, at any hazard. Prayers, entreaties, cravings for reprieve thronged unvoiced and not to be voiced through every fibre of her body. Could he not spare her? Could he not? If she could turn suddenly upon him, clasp his knees, worm herself between his arms, put her face—wet, shaking, tremulous, but ah, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... doom, love's undershrieve, Why this reprieve? Why doth my she-advowson fly Incumbency? To sell thyself dost thou intend By candle's end, And hold the contrast thus in doubt, Life's taper out? Think but how soon the market fails, Your sex lives faster than the males; And if, to measure age's span, The sober Julian were th' account of ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... monument of melancholy, led through the steady rain to the scaffold. He saw the Sheriff presently called away, but could not see the Scotch lad who called him, who was Gibb riding in with the reprieve. He could see Markham standing before the block, he could see the Sheriff return, speak in a low voice to Markham, and lead him away into Arthur's Hall and lock him up there. He could then see Grey led out, he could see his face light up with ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... gone out of the yard with the heavy cut-glass dish pressed firmly against her side under her black silk shawl, Jane Field felt like one who had had a reprieve from instant execution, although she had already suffered the slow torture. She went back to her guests as steady-faced as ever. She was quite sure none of them had noticed Mrs. Maxwell's calling her Esther, but her eyes were like a wary animal's ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... evening until nearly midnight, little groups of two and three presented themselves at the lodge-gate, and inquired, with anxious faces, whether any reprieve had been received. These being answered in the negative, communicated the welcome intelligence to clusters in the street, who pointed out to one another the door from which he must come out, and showed where the scaffold would be built, and, walking with unwilling steps away, turned ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Street.—I received yesterday a reprieve from Gloucester, and Harris's sanction for my staying here a week longer; so that the meeting, and the report of Mr. Guise and Mr. Burrow's declaring themselves both as candidates upon separate interests, but secretly assisting ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... told her errand. She had come across the ocean, she said, to plead the cause of a poor prisoner who was dying under sentence of the law. She paused a moment, having made this statement, and was answered by a nod. Prisoners often died without reprieve, he seemed to be aware. This cold civility warmed the petitioner's speech. Her mother would have been satisfied, Madeline Desperiers would have been overwhelmed with grief and horror, to have heard this young girl's testimony in regard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... a little speed had saved his life. Here is a kind reprieve come from the king, To bring him ...
— Cromwell • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... shall Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive Unless her prayers, whom Heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... will hear that he has let slip through his fingers the man for whom all the country is in search, and horsemen will be despatched instantly in pursuit; probably they will be here the next evening; it is but a reprieve. Journey as fast as we will they will soon ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... with hesitating steps and guilty looks, to the saloon. Their mother was not there. Here was a reprieve. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... the first day. I was as thin as a rail, as white as the pillow from which I had just raised my head. Death's reprieve was written all over me. I dragged along wearily, leaning on a stick. I was thinking of her, thinking, thinking always. As I scanned the faces of the crowds that thronged the streets, I thought only of her face. Then suddenly she was before me. She looked like a ghost, poor little thing; and ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Staines was nearly dressed; at a quarter past ten she demanded ten minutes; at half-past ten she sought a reprieve; at a quarter to eleven, being assured that the street was full of carriages, which had put down at Mrs. Lucas's, she consented to emerge; and in a minute ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... things in their truth as they have in their own day possessed themselves in reality. It is no subterfuge or superstitious effrontery, called to disguise or throw off the lessons of experience; on the contrary, it is experience itself, reflection itself, and knowledge of mortality. Memory does not reprieve or postpone the changes which it registers, nor does it itself possess a permanent duration; it is, if possible, less stable and more mobile than primary sensation. It is, in point of existence, only an internal and complex kind of sensibility. But in intent and by its ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... her escape, but that Everard stood between her and the only available opening. She knew that he was about to propose, and would gladly have prevented it if possible, but as it was, there was no reprieve—he would ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... could insure Max's return by telling him that she was the Princess of Burgundy. But she did not want this man whom she loved so dearly, and who, she knew, loved her, if she must win him as princess. She was strangely impelled to reject a reprieve from a life of wretchedness, unless it came through the high court ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... after the Wil'sbro' business," said Raymond, glad of the reprieve. He could not bear the prospect of banishment for his mother or himself from the home to which both were rooted; and the sentence of detachment from her was especially painful when she seemed his ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... treason, and Prendergast was convicted and sentenced to be hanged in six weeks. Then this valiant woman's energy and perseverance rose to their highest. She set off for an audience with the Governor, Sir Henry Moore, Bart., and returned about the first of September with a reprieve. Just in time she arrived, for a company of fifty mounted men had ridden the whole length of the county to rescue her husband from the jail. She convinced them of the folly of such action as they proposed, and sent ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... removed, and he looked occasionally at his fellow-sufferer. When the body was lowered down, he considered that his time was come, and attempted to leap overboard. He was restrained and led aft, where his reprieve was read to him and his arms were unbound. But the effect of the shock was too much for his mind; he fell down in a swoon, and when he recovered, his senses had left him, and I heard that he never recovered ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... and downstairs for a nothing. At a word from mademoiselle she would trip down the whole five flights. When she was seated, her feet danced on the floor. She brushed and scrubbed and beat and shook and washed and set to rights, without rest or reprieve, always at work, filling the apartment with her goings and comings, and the incessant bustle that followed her about.—"Mon Dieu!" her mistress would say, stunned by the uproar she made, just like a child,—"you're ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... members of the Council was put to death because he denounced the tyranny of Calvin and of the Consistory; Gentilis was condemned to execution for differing with Calvin's teaching on the Trinity, and was compelled to make a most abject public retraction before he could obtain a reprieve. Several of the citizens were punished with long imprisonment for dancing even on the occasion of a wedding, as happened in the case of Le Fevre, whose son-in-law was obliged to flee to France because he resented ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... Quibia's family who had been taken on board the squadron as prisoners, had made their escape by swimming to the shore, three miles off; and this feat encouraged a bold pilot of Seville, named Ledesma, who was on board the admiral's caravel, to attempt a similar exploit. Never was bearer of reprieve for the condemned more welcome. Ledesma communicated with the Adelantado, and conveyed to the admiral intelligence of the desperate state of affairs. The result was, that when in a few days the wind moderated, all the settlers ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... condition of present impunity for our offence:—"this—one—time— master, if ye plaise, sir;" and the utter hopelessness and despair which were legible in the last groan, as we grasp the "master's" leg in utter recklessness of judgment, were all perfect in their way. Reader, have you ever got a reprieve from the gallows? I beg pardon, my dear sir; I only meant to ask, are you capable of entering into what a personage of that description might be supposed to feel, on being informed, after the knot had been neatly tied under the left ear, and the cap drawn over his eyes, that her majesty ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... behind time, and a terrible railway collision occurs. A leading firm with enormous assets becomes bankrupt, simply because an agent is tardy in transmitting available funds, as ordered. An innocent man is hanged because the messenger bearing a reprieve should have arrived five minutes earlier. A man is stopped five minutes to hear a trivial story and misses a train or steamer ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... in some respects, was not quite such a fool as that. Sometimes the Jinn could be mollified and induced to grant a reprieve by being told stories, one inside the other, like a nest of Oriental boxes. Unfortunately Fakrash did not seem in the humour for listening to apologues, and, even if he were, Horace could not think of or improvise any just then. "Besides," he thought, "I can't ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... wall; and, listening, he heard the river murmuring among the alders. He halted, utterly at a loss. If he were caught again could Rickerl save him? What could a captain of Uhlans do? True, he had interfered with Von Steyr's hangman's work, but that was nothing but a reprieve at best. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... entirely by the de par le roi, to deserve the praise bestowed on the rest of the piece. It resembles, in short, too nearly the receipt for making the "Beggars' Opera" end happily, by sending someone to call out a reprieve. But as it manifested at the same time the power of the prince, and afforded opportunity for panegyric on his acuteness in detecting and punishing fraud, Moliere, it is certain, might have his own good reasons for ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... reached, without difficulty, the presence of the chief administrator of justice, who, having read the memorial and the note I had affixed to it, said, "That is sufficient, sir; have the goodness to assure madame la comtesse du Barry, my cousin, that the reprieve she desires is already granted; and as my fair relation appears to fear trusting implicitly to my personal friendship and humanity, I will set her mind at rest by putting you in possession of the legal forms requisite ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... persisted two years in preaching in the woods and mountains of France. At Dieppe he was seized, and with a friend, Mr. Durant, condemned. Durant was hanged, and while the preparations for beheading De Benneville were in progress, a reprieve from Louis IX arrived, and after a long imprisonment in Paris, he was liberated through ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... proposal. The reader must know very little of love, or indeed of anything else, if he requires any information concerning the reception which this proposal met with. Not guilty never sounded sweeter in the ears of a prisoner at the bar, nor the sound of a reprieve to one at the gallows, than did every word of the old gentleman in the ears of our hero. He gave his father full power to treat in his name, and desired nothing more ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... impossible tangles of sex. They enjoyed it. Ruth enjoyed it. That she could do so is wonderful, perhaps, but then, so many human capabilities are wonderful! Men about to be hanged eat a hearty meal with relish.... How much more might Ruth find pleasure since she had been granted a reprieve! ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... and the arrival of this dire birthday, this day of wrath on which the proudest woman will kneel to implacable destiny and beg a reprieve, had induced the reveries natural to it—the self-searching, the exchange of old fallacies for new, the dismayed glance forward, the lingering look behind. Absorbed though she was in the control of the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... some delightful thrills while watching this situation—whichever it may be—develop, but is spared any acute anxiety, knowing from experience that just at the last moment the rescuing boat, or the heroic firemen, or the troops, or a reprieve from the Governor, will arrive and save the leading man or woman and the play from a premature end and for ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... praying and fasting. They were accused before Decius, and they confessed themselves to be Christians. However, the Emperor gave them a little time to consider what line they would adopt. They took advantage of this reprieve to dispense their goods among the poor, and they retired, all seven, to Mount Celion, where they determined to ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... heart and a red-faced woman on his arm he approached the box-office. "Not a seat left," sounded to his hen-pecked ears like the concluding words of the black-robed judge: "and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul." But a reprieve came, for one of the aforesaid beacon lights of hope rushed forward, saying: "I have two good seats, not far back, and only ten apiece." And the gentleman with fear in his heart and the red-faced woman on his ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... was something apologetic about his smile. "It is a reprieve," he admitted. "I left her a week ago," he went on to explain,—"it must have been the day Doctor Wollaston fell ill—on a promise not to come back until I had got this opera of mine into the shape she wants. I came back to-day to tell her that it can't be done—not by me. I have tried ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... awkward step, a fright, and we shall have a rupture of the aneurism. I have seen instances of it. O my God! what is to become of us? Is she asleep? Yes. She is asleep. Is she in a swoon? No. Her pulse is pretty strong. She is only asleep. Sleep is a reprieve. It is the happy blindness. What can I do to prevent people walking about here? Gentlemen, if there be anybody on deck, I beg of you to make no noise. Do not come near us, if you do not mind. You know a person in delicate health requires a little attention. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... to plead for a reprieve. Not yet—not yet! Whatever she had to face, let her rest for a little first. They had parted with her for the night; they would not go to her room, she knew—outcast as she now was from the sympathy of them all; they would not miss her before the morning. And, oh, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... but, in the last thin treble of second childhood, she trembled forth mild complaints of her neighbours' troubles, but very little of her own. We left her to enjoy her frugal meal and her noontide reprieve in peace, and came back to the middle of the town. On our way I noticed again some features of street life which are more common in manufacturing towns just now than when times are good. Now and then one meets with a man in the dress of a ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... too. Psia krew, how difficult it was to sound the fellow. Although he thought he had introduced the subject so cunningly, he saw he would have to be still more explicit. So he continued, "Only a fortnight longer, a very short reprieve. We shall all miss you, Rosa especially. Well, well!" He paused for a moment, and then cast ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... o'clock, a scaffold which had been erected near the block fell down, and several persons were killed, and many injured; but the proceedings of the day went on. No reprieve, no thoughts of mercy ever came to shake the fortitude of the old man. At eleven, the Sheriffs of London sent to demand the prisoner's body: Lord Lovat retired for a few moments to pray; then, saying, "I am ready," he left his chamber, and descended the stairs, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... also in line, with their backs against a huge rock which was to serve as a background; and Jim found himself, for the second time in his life, facing a firing-party and condemned to death. But this time there seemed to be no hope or possibility of reprieve. He was surrounded by cruel men who had no feelings save those of a brutal nature, and it seemed as though no power on earth could ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... N. {ant. 132} lateness &c. adj.; tardiness &c. (slowness) 275. delay, delation; cunctation, procrastination; deferring, deferral &c. v.; postponement, adjournment, prorogation, retardation, respite, pause, reprieve, stay of execution; protraction, prolongation; Fabian policy, medecine expectante[Fr], chancery suit, federal case; leeway; high time; moratorium, holdover. V. be late &c. adj.; tarry, wait, stay, bide, take time; dawdle ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... object, I could tell a dozen actions of mine which are quite as splendid; but I do it in order that certain gentlemen in Paris may understand that I, who am able here to tell about the fate of Monsieur Caratal, can also tell in whose interest and at whose request the deed was done, unless the reprieve which I am awaiting comes to me very quickly. Take warning, messieurs, before it is too late! You know Herbert de Lernac, and you are aware that his deeds are as ready as his words. Hasten then, or ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Nothing was left to tell. He never spoke of his home-coming, and I did not; I dreaded it too much. Whenever the last steamers of the season were due, I nerved myself to look the passenger lists over; and when his name was missing, it was a reprieve. Neither my father nor my grandfather had believed in divorce; in their eyes it was disgrace. It seemed right, for Silva's sake, out of the rich placers David continued to find, he should contribute to my support. So—I lived my life—the ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... that they struck, her bullets did not penetrate the brain, but they did give Bill an instant's reprieve. The bear struck at the wounds they made, then halted, bawling, in the snow. His roving eye caught sight of Virginia's form. With a ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... uncertain if it has got a total pardon or only a reprieve. I won't think of it, as I can do no good. It seems to be in one of those crises by which Providence reduces nations to their original elements.[477] If I had my health, I should take no worldly fee, not to be in the bustle; but I am as weak as water, and I shall be glad ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... did not think of going to poor Thekla for comfort, he went to his grim dreams. "I git my property all straight for Thekla, and then I quit," said he. Perhaps he gave himself a reprieve unconsciously, thinking that something might happen to save him from himself. Nothing happened. None of the "boys" came to see him, except Carl Olsen, the very stupidest man in the shop, who put Lieders beside himself fifty times a day. The other men were ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... it!" he cried into Zuleika's ear—cried loudly, for it seemed as though all the Wagnerian orchestras of Europe, with the Straussian ones thrown in, were here to clash in unison the full volume of right music for the glory of the reprieve. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... intimidate them; and then, as their opposition became violent, he directed the guard to fire among them; whereby six persons were killed, and eleven severely wounded. For this he was prosecuted at the expense of the city, and condemned to die. But, a short reprieve having been obtained, the mob, determined to defeat it, assembled in the night preceding the seventh day of September, whereon he was to have been executed pursuant to the sentence, and, in a very riotous manner, seized and disarmed the city-guard, and ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... that when happier days seemed to be dawning for the good man, that reprieve came too late. Grief and years, and humiliation and care, had been too strong for him, and Thomas Newcome was stricken down. Our Colonel was no more our friend of old days. After some days the fever which had attacked him left him, but left him so weak and enfeebled ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the theft. The man was tried by a court-martial, and condemned to death, a circumstance which, as may naturally be supposed, was very distressing to us. Madame de Bourrienne applied to the commanding officer for the man's pardon, but could only obtain his reprieve. The regiment departed some weeks after, and we could never learn what was the fate of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... in reality this was not so. At all times, and especially since he knew that he had got consumption, Semenoff had dreaded death. At the outset of his malady, he was in a state of abject terror, much as that of a condemned man for whom hope of a reprieve there was none. It almost seemed to him as if from that moment the world no longer existed; all in it that formerly he found fair, and pleasant, and gay had vanished. All around him was dying, dying, and every moment, every second, might bring about something fearful, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... for the execution passed, and, being now free for the time, he fled the country. He went to Africa, and there he so disgraced the state that bore him that of late times I hear he has been sent for to come back to Austria. Even yet the Emperor may suspend the reprieve and send him to the block for his ancient crime. If he had a thousand heads, he could not atone for the ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... he had a partial reprieve; but then it was so partial that it would have been much better for him to have had no such reprieve at all. Mrs. Woodward was at Sunbury with Linda, and no one was at home but Katie. What was he to do? was he to tell Katie? or was he to pretend that all was right, that no ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... new resolution in force. The immediate apprehensions of the kidnapper were quieted, by an assurance that he might yet live for days, though his punishment was inevitable. A reprieve, to one abject and wretched as Abiram, temporarily produced the same effects as a pardon. He was even foremost in assisting in the appalling arrangements, and of all the actors, in that solemn tragedy, his voice alone ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... feeble frame to save, (Unblest reprieve) and rob the gaping wave, The morn broke forth, these tearful orbs descried The golden banks that bound the western tide. With full success I calm'd the clamorous race, Bade heaven's blue arch a second earth embrace; And gave the astonish'd ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... too abrupt—too thoughtless and inconsiderate? You would forgive me, love, if you knew how I have longed for you; have yearned for this meeting as Dives yearned for water—as the condemned yearn for reprieve. Have you no smile for me, sweetheart?—no word of welcome for the man whose heaven is your love? You knew I would come. You ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... up, indeed, with a great brilliance the dull printer's ink expended on the assemblage of the few letters that form the ship's name to the anxious eyes scanning the page in fear and trembling. It is like the message of reprieve from the sentence of sorrow suspended over many a home, even if some of the men in her have been the most homeless mortals that you may find among ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... duties, the President has the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in the case of impeachment. A pardon fully exempts the individual from the punishment imposed upon him by law; a reprieve, on the other hand, is simply a temporary suspension of the ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... faintly gleaming out in the blue above; a gentle sea breeze stirred the branches and went along with Faith on her errand. Now was this errand grievously unpleasing to Faith, simply because of the implication of that one year of reprieve which she must ask for. How should she manage it? But her way was clear; she must manage ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... can not be forgiven by God—never has been forgiven on earth, and never will be. Death—death inexorable, is declared by God's judgments on the world and on nations; and he has declared death as its punishment by his law—death to both male and female, without pardon or reprieve, and beyond the power of any sacrifice ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... because of that which their hands have sent before them; God knoweth the wicked doers; and thou shalt surely find them of all men the most covetous of life, even more than the idolaters: one of them would desire his life to be prolonged a thousand years, but none shall reprieve himself from punishment, that his life may be prolonged: God seeth that which they do. Say, Whoever is an enemy to Gabriel (for he hath caused the Koran to descend on thy heart, by the permission of God, confirming that which was before revealed, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... Tower-Hill in the reign of his nephew, Edward VI.—"His attention to the poor during his Protectorship, and his opposition to the system of enclosures, had created him many friends among the lower classes, who hastened to witness his end, and yet flattered themselves with the hope of his reprieve."—LINGARD. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... to the hope of a reprieve with all the sanguine tenacity of his ill-starred class, though it did seem with more encouragement on the whole. For the days went on, and each of many mornings brought its own respite till the next. The welcome announcement was invariably made ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... man who was so terrified at the prospect of immediate execution that his separable soul left his body, and he found himself sitting on the eaves of a house, from which point he could see a man bound, and waiting for the executioner's sword. Just then, a reprieve arrived, and in a moment he was back again in his body. Mr. Edmund Gosse, who can hardly have been acquainted with the Chinese view, told a similar story in his Father and Son: "During morning and evening prayers, which were extremely lengthy and fatiguing, I fancied ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... names by sixes and eights, and then to arrive at an opinion when your day of execution will be. If your name comes at the head of the list, you wish that you were "YOUNG, Carolus, e Coll. Vigorn." that you might have a reprieve of your sentence. If your name is at the end of the list, you wish that you were "ADAMS, Edvardus Jacobus, e Coll. Univ." that you might go in at once, and be put out of your misery. If your name is in the middle of the list, you wish that it were elsewhere: and then you wish ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the first time in his life that he had really yielded to any one, but he never thought of that; he only groaned and begged for reprieve. ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... of the dear familiar figure, so little changed, must have afforded a brief reprieve, and lent a sense of almost glad incredulity to the distress which had gone before. But the well-meant whisper of one of the attendants of "Ein sanftes ende" destroyed the passing illusion. "Seeing that my presence did not disturb her," the Queen wrote afterwards, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... to have "disobeyed his instructions and exceeded his powers." On March 3 an edict appeared, sentencing the unhappy envoy to "decapitation after incarceration." This sentence was not carried out, and the reprieve of the unlucky envoy was due to Queen Victoria's expression of a hope that the Chinese government would ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... computation, that there remained but a fortnight to elapse of the engagement he had formed, and to which, though certain it was never to be renewed, no power on earth could make him false. With some difficulty they procured a reprieve for this short space, after which they found him perfectly willing to come under any engagements they chose to dictate. He entered the service of the Estates accordingly, and wrought himself forward to be Major in Gilbert Ker's corps, commonly called the Kirk's Own ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... beheaded one of them and returned to their camp with the head carried on a pole. More than once it happened that condemned men were paraded before the troops for execution with the graves dug and the coffins lying ready. The death sentence would be read, and then, as the firing party took aim, a reprieve would be announced. The reprieve in such circumstances was omitted often enough to make the condemned endure the real agony ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... I did think there were a reprieve to come for you I would be contented to spin out the time thus; but in good earnest I expect none; unless you had an apprehension you were not to die you would not spin out the time thus, not ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... looked upon as a reprieve, and when a traveller, expressing sympathy, suggested that "it might sicken her a bit of camp life," Jack ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... dreadfully saddened of late by whole days- -nay weeks—of helplessness for any employment. They have but just revived. How merciful a reprieve! How merciful IS ALL we know! The ways of Heaven are not dark and intricate, but unknown and unimagined till the great teacher, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... though a man is condemned to die in a week's time and is shut up in a prison from which it is certain that he cannot escape, he will always hope that a reprieve may come before the week is over. Besides, the prison may catch fire, and he may be suffocated not with a rope, but with common ordinary smoke; or he may be struck dead by lightning while exercising in the prison yards. When the morning ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... tried. We have borne with thee full long. At next full moon thou wilt have had a year's reprieve. Thou must prepare to worship the true God and ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... monster raised his whip, but it struck a pendant lantern, and with an oath he turned to the gallery, where he should find room and to spare for his brutality. At this delay my lady fell upon her knees, in a wild hope, I think, to turn her respite into a reprieve, but the beast cried out upon her, struck down her outstretched hands, and, twisting his fingers in her soft dark hair, dragged her incontinently out of the closet. The little ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... such an appeal as men are rarely able to make, because a regenerated life was also vocal in utterance. To him a miracle seemed to have been wrought, and he listened to each word as if to a reprieve from a ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... to save Salvat's life. Even some of the papers asked that he might be reprieved. But nothing succeeded, the execution was regarded as inevitable, it seems, even by those who consider it a blunder. Still, they had such a touching opportunity to reprieve him, when his daughter, little Celine, wrote that fine letter to the President of the Republic, which I was the first to publish in the 'Globe.' Ah! that letter, it cost me a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of command which character alone had earned for them. If the Black Prince had lived, or if Richard II. had inherited the temper of the Plantagenets, the ecclesiastical system would have been spared the misfortune of a longer reprieve. Its worst abuses would have then terminated, and the reformation of doctrine in the sixteenth century would have been left to fight its independent way unsupported by the moral corruption of the church from which it received its most powerful impetus. The nation was ready for sweeping remedies. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... but neither Count Morano, nor Cavigni, was of the party. Somewhat revived by observing this, Emily, when the gondolieri dashed their oars in the water, and put off from the steps of the portico, felt like a criminal, who receives a short reprieve. Her heart beat yet lighter, when they emerged from the canal into the ocean, and lighter still, when they skimmed past the walls of St. Mark, without having stopped to ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... in that telegram. I don't know who "Belle" is. I get my orders from the Courts. No one but the Governor can order a reprieve." ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... every nation under heaven, could the victim whom you were dragging to the cross, be he who he might—and you did not know who he was—when he declared he was a citizen of Rome, could he obtain from you, a Roman magistrate, by the mere mention and claim of citizenship, not only no reprieve, but not even ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... soon recovering his good humour, "since you are certainly better to-day without the draught, discontinue it also to-morrow. I will make an alteration for the day after." So that night Madame Dalibard visited in vain her niece's chamber: Helen had a reprieve. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... let him off so easy," said Jack, but he did as Melville wished. But the colonel had a short reprieve. On his way to jail, a bullet from some unknown assailant pierced his temple, and Jerry Lane, the notorious road agent, died, as ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... any man who had been snatched back to life in such a fashion would start and tremble at the reprieve, or would break down altogether, but this boy turned his head steadily, and followed with his eyes the direction of the officer's sword, then nodded his head gravely, and, with his shoulders squared, took up a new position, straightened his back again, and once more ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... donkey gravely bent down, and thrice smelt or sniffed its prostrate foe; then, having convinced itself that it had nothing farther to apprehend for the present, and very willing to make the best of the reprieve, according to the poetical admonition, "Gather your rosebuds while you may," it cropped a thistle in full bloom, close to the ear of the Squire; so close indeed, that the Parson thought the ear was gone; and ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... great author asks knowledge and industry before it may be attempted, but in the end it is the critic, not the author, who is judged by it, and, where his sympathies have been too narrow, or his sight too dim, condemned without reprieve, and ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... cause of the first tumult was a sudden panic, occasioned by the running of some of the guards who arrived late; the second was due to the appearance of Sir Anthony Browne, whom the people fancied had been sent with a reprieve. ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... hours, aunt sucking young Dale's toothsome prick while I gamahuched and postillioned her to her infinite satisfaction. In this way, and with repeated changes from one receptacle to the other but always both occupied at once, we at last gained a reprieve, and retired to well-deserved repose. The doctor, who had kept out of the way on this our first bout with my glorious aunt, afterwards apparently surprised us together, and, after giving us and receiving a pretty sharp flogging, he joined in all the ecstasies ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... the mallet on the ball and then a clapping of hands. Sir Patrick was a privileged person. He had been allowed, in all probability, to try again; and he was succeeding at the second effort. This implied a reprieve of some seconds. Blanche looked ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... with the march leaders won the administration a reprieve from the threat of a mass civil rights demonstration in the nation's capital, but at the price of promising substantial reform in minority hiring for defense industries and the creation of a federal body, the Fair Employment Practices Committee, to coordinate the reform. While it prompted ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... posture, said, "You are a brave man, and the brave among the whites are always truthful they tell me. I am told that I am to be blown from the cannon's mouth to-morrow. Is this the truth? Is there no hope of pardon or reprieve?" ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... trial in England for witchcraft took place in 1712, when the jury convicted an old woman named Jane Wenham, of Walkerne, a little village in the north of Hertfordshire, and she was sentenced to be hanged. The judge, however, quietly procured a reprieve for her, and a kind-hearted gentleman in the neighbourhood gave her a cottage to live in, where she ended her days in peace. With regard to the mobbing of reputed sorcerers, it is recorded that in the year 1628, Dr. Lamb, a so-called wizard, who had been under the protection ...
— Witchcraft and Devil Lore in the Channel Islands • John Linwood Pitts
... from me, and went on cutting the leaves of the books placed before him. Still utterly incapable of preparing myself in any way for the disclosure expected from me; without thought or hope, or feeling of any kind, except a vague sense of thankfulness for the reprieve granted me before I was called on to speak—I mechanically looked round and round the room, as if I expected to see the sentence to be pronounced against me, already written on the walls, or grimly foreshadowed ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... which was much finer; and if the sultan would give her leave, she would tell it them next morning, for day began to appear. Schahriar, bethinking himself that he had granted the sultaness a month's reprieve, and being curious, moreover, to know if this new story would be as agreeable as she promised, got up with a design to hear ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... and other writers of a similar custom being maintained at York. It gave rise to the saying, that "The saddler of Bawtry was hanged for leaving his liquor": had he stopped, as was usual with other criminals, to drink his bowl of ale, his reprieve, which was actually on its way, would have arrived in ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... granted, and Hannah, after ascertaining that a banker's office was the proper place to exchange her precious gold, sallied forth with it, having finally resolved to sacrifice it for Percy's relief without further delay, as Easter was drawing near and the time of reprieve ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... England it will do a bad book no ultimate service, that it is written by a lord, or a bishop, or a privy counsellor, or a member of Parliament—though, undoubtedly, it will do an instant service—it will sell an edition or so. This being the case, it being certain that no rank will reprieve a bad writer from final condemnation, the sycophantic glorifier of the public fancies his idol justified; but not so. A bad book, it is true, will not be saved by advantages of position in the author; but a book moderately good will be extravagantly aided by such advantages. Lectures on ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... who was chief of a large district, producing a thousand kokus of revenue, and was therefore a man of experience, acted for the others; and we grieve that he alone should suffer for all. Yet in his case we reverently admit that there can be no reprieve. For his wife and children, however, we humbly implore your gracious mercy ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... girl seized upon the only subterfuge which seemed at all likely to succeed. It would, at least, give her a slight reprieve—a little time in which to think, and possibly find an avenue from ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... agitation in favour of his reprieve broke out at once. Apart from the peculiar circumstances under which the crime was committed, it was urged that Mr. Lyndon's services to the country as an inventor should be taken into consideration. Within twenty-four hours over a million ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... communication suggests a Query: Is there any biographical notice of William Blake; and was he the author of the following piece, preserved among the Kings' pamphlets in the British Museum? "The Condemned Man's Reprieve, or God's Love-Tokens, flowing in upon the heart of William Blake, a penitent sinner, giving him assurance of the pardon of his sins, and the enjoyment of eternal happiness through the merits of Christ his Saviour. Recommended by him (being a condemned prisoner ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... disobeyed his father, for Mr. Tulliver was a peremptory man, and, as he said, would never let anybody get hold of his whip hand; but he went out rather sullenly, carrying his piece of plumcake, and not intending to reprieve Maggie's punishment, which was no more than she deserved. Tom was only thirteen, and had no decided views in grammar and arithmetic, regarding them for the most part as open questions, but he was particularly clear and positive on one point,—namely, that he would punish everybody who deserved ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... both are born of an extreme sensitiveness, and the man who smiles at the trivial misfits of life realizes also that all men who tread the earth are living under a sentence of death, and that Fate has merely allowed them an indefinite, but limited, reprieve. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... every body is going out of town. My Lord goes the first week in May; but I shall reprieve myself till towards August. Dull as London is in summer, there is always more company in it than in any one place in the country. I hate the country: I am past the shepherdly age of groves and streams, and am not ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... shall not fire! I forbid you! I swear by my honor and the honor of England that he shall not die like a dog. He is of my country; he is of my Order. I will appeal to your Emperor; he will accord me his life the instant I ask it. Give me only an hour's reprieve—a few moments' space to speak to your chiefs, to seek ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... made by the People, and the People can and will unmake them, should they ever prove an engine of oppression. They exist only during good behavior, and like men, they are living under a sentence of death, with an indefinite reprieve. ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... outbreak which might well appear to resemble riot. The Government in London came to the conclusion that it would not do to hang John Porteous, and a message was sent by the Duke of Newcastle notifying her Majesty's pleasure that Porteous should have a reprieve for a period of six weeks—a preliminary step to the consequent ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... me not my cares to leave, Who cannot from their shadow flee. I do but win a short reprieve, 'Scaping to pleasure ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... mischievous for contempt, to think of restraining it in any other country whilst it is predominant there. War, instead of being the cause of its force, has suspended its operation. It has given a reprieve, at least, to the Christian world. The true nature of a Jacobin war, in the beginning, was, by most of the Christian powers, felt, acknowledged, and even in the most precise manner declared. In the joint manifesto, published ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of so many years there is no need for lack of candor in discussing the events of 1885. To put it plainly Riel's fate turned almost entirely upon political considerations. Which was the less dangerous course,—to reprieve him or let him hang? The issue was canvassed back and forth by the distracted ministry up to the day before that fixed for the execution when a decision was reached to let the law take its course. The feeling ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... What a number of different ideas are by this means wrapped up in one short sound, and how much of our time and breath is thereby saved, any one will see, who will but take the pains to enumerate all the ideas that either REPRIEVE or APPEAL stand for; and instead of either of those names, use a periphrasis, to make any one ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... who doth compassionate My sickness and my long unrest, that unto him I may Make moan of all that I endure for dole and drearihead And of my sleepless eyes, oppressed of wakefulness alway? My night in torments is prolonged; I burn, without reprieve, In flames of heart-consuming care that rage in me for aye. The bug and flea do drink my blood, even as one drinks of wine, Poured by the hand of damask-lipped and slender-waisted may. The body of me, amongst the lice, is as an orphan's good, That in an unjust Cadi's hands doth dwindle and decay. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... Street, near where the robbery was done; and to St. Mary Axe, where he lived. And there I got for a shilling to stand upon the wheel of a cart, in great pain, above an hour before the execution was done; he delaying the time by long discourses and prayers one after another, in hopes of a reprieve; but none come, and at last was flung off the ladder in his cloak. A comely-looked man he was, and kept his countenance to the end: I was sorry to see him. It was believed there were at least 12 or 14,000 people in ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... wove, By hard necessity, not light caprice? But to what purport could premonished Love A system twined with mutual suffering weave, When but a word all suffering would remove? And wherefore yet delayeth the reprieve Of Love, that doth not willingly afflict Its children, neither wantonly aggrieve? Can aught the gracious purpose interdict Of Him, whose piercing eye, whose boundless sway, No cloud can dim, no barrier restrict? Say'st thou, "By path inscrutable, and way Past finding out, perchance, may mercy bend ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... her," said my kind-hearted tutor, looking sadly on the gold-brown toasted little bird on his fork. "The pleasantest meat tastes bitter when seasoned with tears and moans. Could you have the heart to let a woman cry? Reprieve this one, I beg of you! Is she then so blamable for having thrown a kiss to my young pupil, who was her neighbour and companion in the days of their common mediocrity, at a time when this pretty girl's charms were only famous under the ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... which he was unwilling to give them, cannot now be determined. But to the want of genuine and reciprocal confidence between him and those ministers is to be attributed, in a great measure, the escape which the nation at that time experienced—an escape, however, which proved to be only a reprieve from that servitude to which they were afterwards reduced in the latter years ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... repetition of his guilt, would undoubtedly some time fall into the hands of the law, though not extended on purpose to seize him; and, therefore, they constituted their proceedings in such a manner, that innocence might at least not be entrapped, though guilt should sometimes gain a reprieve. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... excitement when anybody on the block takes a bath—not so much excitement as for a fire, perhaps, but more than for a funeral. On the eve of the fatal day the news spreads through the district that to-morrow poor Jacques is going to take a bath! A further reprieve has been denied him. He cannot put it off for another month, or even for another two weeks. His doom is nigh at hand; there is ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... as guilty as you suppose, sir," he exclaimed, with a look of agony; "he would never have sought to injure the King's forces unfairly; let him live till I have seen Sir William Howe; he may order a reprieve till he has inquired more into the particulars ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... that any man, snatched back to life in such a fashion would start and tremble at the reprieve, or would break down altogether, but this boy turned his head steadily, and followed with his eyes the direction of the officer's sword, then nodded gravely, and, with his shoulders squared, took up the new position, ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... will be! How awful to have the days and weeks and months slip by, and know that at the best there is only a reprieve of a few years. I think from this night I shall have my shadow of death. I shall always be doing things for the last time; a sad life that! And perhaps we change; as you say, we may become dead in life, prepared for a different ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... the yellow face had never looked so grim. She made no further effort to withstand him, aware that to do so would entail a battle of wills which could only end in her defeat. Perhaps deep in the heart of her she was even thankful for this brief reprieve. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... head carried on a pole. More than once it happened that condemned men were paraded before the troops for execution with the graves dug and the coffins lying ready. The death sentence would be read, and then, as the firing party took aim, a reprieve would be announced. The reprieve in such circumstances was omitted often enough to make the condemned endure the real ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... the UFO investigation said. "There's no such thing as a flying saucer." He went on to say that all people who saw flying saucers were jokers, crackpots, or publicity hounds. Then he gave the airline pilots who'd been reporting UFO's a reprieve. "They were just fatigued," he said. "What they thought were ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... hoarse with his prayer to fall like a soldier, but when the bullets begin to wail around him, it is a thousand to one that he will duck his head. A man may be reasonably convinced that, since he must die some day, and his reprieve cannot be extended long, it is best to die in battle and shoot full-blooded into the spiritual land; nevertheless, if the shadow of a rock gives some shelter from the guns, he will crawl behind it. A few years ago there was a great Oxford ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... rests my sin against you. This paper, dated only a few months before my father's death, was in this pocket-book, the other paper in the deed box, of which his executors took possession. No one knew of this paper but me. I kept it back, granting the reprieve for your sweet sake. If I had obtained possession of you I might have told you of it—I do not know. I cannot answer for myself—my old self,' he repeated. 'God forgive me, I am punished. ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... this reprieve, went up stairs; and while Sally was laying out the law, and prating away in her usual dictorial manner, whipt on another gown, and sliding down the stairs, escaped to her relations. And this flight, which was certainly more owing to terror than guilt, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Dog! When I took him the time before, I told him what he would come to if he did not mend his Hand. This is Death without Reprieve. I may venture to Book him [writes.] For Tom Gagg, forty Pounds. Let Betty Sly know that I'll save her from Transportation, for I can get more by ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... speak; and then could only utter the words—number 7? "Still in the wheel," was the answer. "Our messenger is not yet returned from Guildhall, with news of what has been drawn this last hour. If you will call again at three, we can answer you." The man seemed to feel this as a reprieve; but as he was retiring, there came one with a slip of paper in his hand. This was the messenger from Guildhall, who handed the paper to the clerk. He read aloud, "Number 7. Were you ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... mispronunciations; and Ned Ferry—that cockerel! Here was I in the barrel, and able only to squeal in irate terror at whoever looked down upon me. I could have crawled under a log and died. At the door of the Major's tent I paused to learn and joy of one to whom comes reprieve when the rope is on his neck, I overheard Harry Helm, the General's nephew and aide de-camp, who had been with us, telling what a howling good joke Smith had just got off ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... was with his friend to the last moment. Poor Forster was being gradually overpowered by the rising bronchial humours with which, as he grew weaker, he could not struggle with or baffle. It was then that Quain, bending over, procured him a short reprieve and relief in his agony, putting his fingers down his throat and ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... disposition, and abandoned morals, being provoked by the insults of the mob, commanded his soldiers to fire upon the crowd, by which precipitate orders several innocent persons were killed; Porteus was tried and condemned to die, but obtained a reprieve from the Queen, who was then Regent. The mob, however, were [sic] determined to execute the sentence; they accordingly rose in a tumultuous manner, forced open the prison doors, dragged forth Porteus, and hanged him on a dyer's pole; after which they quietly dispersed. On the 24th ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... was another series of deflecting flashes from the defense batteries. Two more domes vanished... Then—somehow—nothing more. Evidently some of the attackers had been only half hearted, this time. Reprieve... ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... REPRIEVES AND PARDONS if he sees good reason for doing so. A reprieve is a delay of punishment. When a person is convicted of murder, the judge sentences him to be put to death on a certain day. But there may be reason for further inquiry into the case, and to give time for such inquiry the governor may ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox
... no respite, nor reprieve, nor subterfuge was possible, he bravely decided upon his course of action; he wound his right foot round his left leg, raised himself on his left foot, and stretched out his arm: but at the moment when his hand touched the manikin, his body, which was ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... motive for constantly poking his coercive bill in our faces at these critical moments. The Lords will take courage at anything that seems to weaken the government morally. They are like a fellow going to be hanged who looks out for a reprieve, and is always hoping for a lucky escape until the ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... you seem to be? Can you think to blow out the intended fire your city is ready to flame in, with such weak breath as this? No, you are deceived; therefore back to Rome, and prepare for your execution: you are condemned; our general has sworn you out of reprieve ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... followed at Chenonceaux, was once imprisoned here. Even the powerful influence of Diane scarcely gained her father's pardon from Francis I. His sentence had been pronounced and he was mounting the steps of the scaffold when the reprieve came. ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... sight of her, accidentally incurred, one tremendously hot summer night, as she slowly moved from her lodgings or wherever, in the high Bowdoin Street region, down to the not distant theatre from which even the temperature had given her no reprieve; and well remember how, the queer light of my young impression playing up again in her path, she struck me as the very image of mere sore histrionic habit and use, a worn and weary, a battered even though almost sordidly smoothed, thing of the theatre, very much as an old infinitely-handled ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... O.K. It isn't urgent." He was just as glad of the reprieve; it gave him one more chance to work matters through to a solution, and hand it to Burris on a silver platter. "But ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... VI.—"His attention to the poor during his Protectorship, and his opposition to the system of enclosures, had created him many friends among the lower classes, who hastened to witness his end, and yet flattered themselves with the hope of his reprieve."—LINGARD. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... The audience enjoys some delightful thrills while watching this situation—whichever it may be—develop, but is spared any acute anxiety, knowing from experience that just at the last moment the rescuing boat, or the heroic firemen, or the troops, or a reprieve from the Governor, will arrive and save the leading man or woman and the play from a premature end and for ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... condemned, without reprieve, to go O'er life's long deserts with its charge of woe, With sad congratulation joins the train Where beasts and men together o'er the plain Move on—a mighty caravan of pain: 170 Hope, strength, and courage, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... administrative duties, the President has the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in the case of impeachment. A pardon fully exempts the individual from the punishment imposed upon him by law; a reprieve, on the other hand, is simply a temporary suspension of ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... word was said. The mules were turned about; and leaving that great eye to guard the lonely canon, we retraced our steps in silence. Day had not yet broken ere we were once more at home, condemned beyond reprieve. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... detailed long consultations held with Satan for the purpose of overthrowing the kingdom of heaven. In some cases these confessions were the result of distempered understandings; but, generally, they may be attributed to the hope of respite and ultimate reprieve, as none but the supposed impenitent sorcerers were executed. Thus only the truthful and conscientious suffered from the effects of this odious insanity. Some among the wretched people who had confessed witchcraft ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... at Salem, ... on the third day of January, the lieutenant-governor being chief judge.... All ... were cleared, saving three.... The deputy-governor signed a warrant for their speedy execution, and also of five others who were condemned at the former court.... But ... I sent a reprieve; ... the lieutenant-governor upon this occasion was enraged and filled with passionate anger, and refused to sit upon the bench at a superior court, at that time held at Charlestown; and, indeed, hath from the beginning hurried on these matters ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... the last few hours had made a great impression on me, and, although I felt awed and somewhat shaken, my heart was light with the gladness of one who rejoices in a reprieve. The express that I had been so anxious to catch had long since gone on its way; still, in my present hopeful frame of mind, that did not trouble me. I felt a conviction that Mary was mending, that I should find her better, and, comforted by this belief, I walked briskly ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and as he continued she lost the sense of his spoken thoughts in the mad cross- tides of her own unuttered. Now her crying instinct was for rescue at all costs, at any hazard. Prayers, entreaties, cravings for reprieve thronged unvoiced and not to be voiced through every fibre of her body. Could he not spare her? Could he not? If she could turn suddenly upon him, clasp his knees, worm herself between his arms, put her face—wet, shaking, tremulous, but ah, Lord! how full ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... is an integral part of the cosmos, from which there is no appeal; no reprieve; no immunity, no "respecter of persons." The law is absolute and it is also just. Pure and perfect love is the price of immortal life. There is no other "coin ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... persevere with them. Punishment by death is becoming more and more unpopular. The dislike of juries to bring in a verdict of "guilty" in a murder case is sufficient testimony to this. In the crowds who sign petitions for the reprieve of the condemned, the hysterical element is too prominent to make any other estimate possible. But the reaction is steady, and it will not be long before capital punishment becomes a thing of the past. To abolish it before a suitable substitute were provided would ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... than grief doth murder men. The thief, even at the gallows, may be killed If, while through every vein with fear he's chilled, Sudden reprieve do set him ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... metaphor, and turned with the others towards the press-room again. "Wait for the end of the spell, mate," said the albino over his shoulder—an afterthought. The swart man waited for the albino to precede him. Denton realised that he had a reprieve. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... by pushmen diminutive nomber unt platty few altogedder. Bot der localisation-topography unt der route you schall py der map mit you gross magnanimity indicate, unt Gott pless! Tousand pig tank you, Mr. Tongcollin! For von trifle-moment, you ver munificent reprieve"—— ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... blithe to see their backs. Indeed, a condemned thief with the rope about his neck, and the white cowl tied over his eyes, to say nothing of his hands yerked together behind his back, and on the nick of being thrown over, could not have been more thankful for a reprieve than I was, at the same blessed moment. It was like Adam seeing the deil's rear marching out of Paradise, if one may be allowed to ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... girl!" Cecil said kindly, and helped herself to bread and butter. Claire had a miserable conviction that her reply had had a deceptive effect, and that the shock when it came, would be all the more severe. Nevertheless, she was thankful for the reprieve; thankful to see Cecil eat sandwiches with honest enjoyment, until the last one had disappeared from ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... I handed a plate to a young lady at luncheon, and, looking sweetly upon me, as though I had brought a reprieve from the gallows, she sighed, "Oh thanks! ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Judge may not deal with the fallacies of a defence by placing before the jury the true trend of the evidence, what other business has he on the Bench? And it was for thus clearly defining the issue that some one suggested a petition for a reprieve, on the ground that the evidence was purely circumstantial, and that my "summing up was against the weight of the evidence." Truly a strange thing that circumstances by themselves ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... a dreadful dream about Eagle March. Somehow or other, he had been condemned to death by Major Vandyke (who had unbecomingly turned into a judge) and Eagle was to be executed unless I could arrive in time to save him, armed with a reprieve or pardon—I didn't quite know which—that I had got from Washington. I waked up crying out, because a hand had been stretched forth through darkness to clutch my shoulder, and prevent me from getting to El Paso until too late. Even then, when I was ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the constable from his plot, but who had nevertheless not refrained from joining it, and was the most guilty of all the accomplices in consequence of the confidential post he occupied near the king's person. The decree was not executed, however; Saint-Vallier received his reprieve on the scaffold itself. Francis I. was neither rancorous nor cruel; and the entreaties, or, according to some evil-speakers of the day, the kind favors, of the Lady de Brew, Saint-Vallier's daughter and subsequently the celebrated Diana of Poitiers, obtained from the king ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, and all three were seized, imprisoned, and, after a summary trial, were sent to the gallows. The two men were executed; but at the moment when Mary Dyer was standing, calm and resigned, with the rope around her neck, expecting to be launched into eternity, a reprieve arrived, and the victim was released. But it was only for a little time. She was again banished; and again returned, as if to seek her fate. A second trial took place, and she was again condemned. Her husband, who knew not of her return to Boston until it was too late, appeared before the magistrates, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... himself close to the park wall; and, listening, he heard the river murmuring among the alders. He halted, utterly at a loss. If he were caught again could Rickerl save him? What could a captain of Uhlans do? True, he had interfered with Von Steyr's hangman's work, but that was nothing but a reprieve at best. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... their lucid judgment, clearness of perception, and utter absence of all overplus of chivalrous feeling, in matters of cool dispassionate reasoning—were unanimous in their belief in the prisoner's guilt, and only acquiesced in the month's reprieve, because it was Isabella's wish. Against their verdict what could be brought forward? In reality nothing but the prisoner's own strongly-attested innocence—an attestation most forcible in the minds of the ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... is alive, safe and well, in Gibraltar. You deserve to know this, but it is all I can say to you. My mother has suffered so much that she hardly feels her joy; it has broken her down, and I, who have borne up well till now, feel prostrated by this reprieve. God be thanked for all his mercies! ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the letter he had received from her on the previous morning. He got it, and saw that it bore no address, merely stating that she would be in London by midday on the first of May, that was on the morrow. Till then it was clear he must wait, and he was not sorry for the reprieve. His was not a pleasant story for a husband to ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... be forgiven by God—never has been forgiven on earth, and never will be. Death—death inexorable, is declared by God's judgments on the world and on nations; and he has declared death as its punishment by his law—death to both male and female, without pardon or reprieve, and beyond the power ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... difficulty, the presence of the chief administrator of justice, who, having read the memorial and the note I had affixed to it, said, "That is sufficient, sir; have the goodness to assure madame la comtesse du Barry, my cousin, that the reprieve she desires is already granted; and as my fair relation appears to fear trusting implicitly to my personal friendship and humanity, I will set her mind at rest by putting you in possession of the legal forms requisite for the ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... me!" she cried, delighted, both at the prospect of the music, which she loved with a real passion, and at the prospect of the brief reprieve the diversion would afford her from the revelation which ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... go back, however, and would have done so when vacation came; but a classmate invited him to his home, and there he went, glad of the reprieve from an embarrassing, and, as it seemed to him now, an undignified conflict with a civilian. But the surrender brought its sting, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... scarcely made up his mind what to propose. A moment's reflection convinced him that only one thing could purchase Toby's reprieve; and perhaps even that would fail. Regardless of consequences to himself, he ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... you please, if it is any satisfaction to you to do so; but rely upon my obtaining the reprieve I seek." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... prevailed. The doctrine of a "ruling passion" is a remarkable contribution to Greek political thought, the abstract personifications reading like the work of a poet or philosopher. An exciting race against time is most graphically described. After great exertions the ship bearing the reprieve arrived just in time to save Mytilene. This act of mercy stands in sinister contrast with the treatment the unhappy Plataeans received from the liberators of Greece. The citizens were captured, Athens having strangely abandoned them in spite ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... limbs and a sensation as of cold water down his spine drove Lenox to open his second and last bottle of brandy. Stimulated by the kindly spirit, he wrestled with a fowl tougher than india-rubber, and slept as a doomed man might sleep on the night of his reprieve. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... and Clover entered the hotel, very glad of the reprieve, and of one more quiet evening alone with papa. They needed to get their ideas straightened out and put to rights, after the confusions of the day and Lilly's extraordinary talk. It was very evident that the Nunnery was to be quite different from their expectations; but another thing was ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... the first of their early potatoes from the garden for supper and a bit of ham to eat with them, by way of celebrating their reprieve, and after supper the Shepherd got out his bagpipes and played "The Blue Bells of Scotland" until the rafters rang again. Jean stepped busily about the kitchen in tune to the music, humming ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... different ideas are by this means wrapped up in one short sound, and how much of our time and breath is thereby saved, any one will see, who will but take the pains to enumerate all the ideas that either REPRIEVE or APPEAL stand for; and instead of either of those names, use a periphrasis, to make any ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... faith no longer I implore, Nor yet his Latian kingdom to forego: Some fruitless space, some breathing time for woe, 'Till fate have thought the wretch subdu'd to grieve, Is all I beg—Obtain this last reprieve— 540 For pity gain it,—and the short delay With all her parting soul, will Dido pay". So pray'd the Queen, and o'er and o'er again, Pray'rs, sighs, and tears her sister urg'd in vain; Unmov'd he stands by tears, by pray'rs by sighs, 545 The fates oppose, the God ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... intervals of reprieve from these morbid dreams, and he again began to compose with renewed—almost ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... God! a little speed had saved his life. Here is a kind reprieve come from the king, To bring him ...
— Cromwell • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... of music were brought low with her, but, in the last thin treble of second childhood, she trembled forth mild complaints of her neighbours' troubles, but very little of her own. We left her to enjoy her frugal meal and her noontide reprieve in peace, and came back to the middle of the town. On our way I noticed again some features of street life which are more common in manufacturing towns just now than when times are good. Now and then one meets with a man in the dress of a factory worker selling newspapers, or religious tracts, ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... the counsel for the defence in the trial of Jacques Aubrieux, has been received at the lyse. We are informed that the President of the Republic has refused to reprieve the condemned man and that the execution will take place ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... his desk. The next three hours passed without any consciousness of existence save the slow ticking of the astronomical clock which governed the mechanism of the telescope. The rest was merely figures and formulae, which might amount to the death-sentence of the human race or to an indefinite reprieve. ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... expiations they had witnessed. Analytic people were comparing the various modes of shooting, garroting, and guillotining. Cigars were sending up spirals of soothing smoke. There was a good deal of covert fear that a reprieve might be granted. Inquires were many and ingenuous for whisky, and one or two were so deeply expectant that ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... as their Saviour, now receive the adoption of sons. They become the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. This is their pedigree and they rejoice to declare it. A human governor or ruler may pardon a guilty criminal, and grant him a reprieve, but he never takes him into his own family. He may forgive the guilty one, but he cannot bestow upon him a new nature, nor can he consent to recognize him as a brother or a son. But God not only remits the sins of those whom He saves, He ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... was empty, and the front door stood open to the cool of the summer night. From the ballroom came the swaying lilt of the music and the beat of the dancers' feet. Ethne drew a breath of relief at her reprieve from her duties, and then dropping her partner's arm, crossed to a ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... the end of the week, or of many succeeding weeks: warmth and food, and Mrs. Evans' nursing powers combined, caused one of those curious rallies not uncommon in cases of consumption, though no one who saw the boy's thin, flushed cheeks, and brilliant eyes, could think the reprieve would be a long one. Still for the present there was improvement, and Lawrence could not help feeling glad that he might keep for a little while longer the child whose love had ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM
... the silence by clearing his throat with evident embarrassment. A peal of thunder offered him reprieve, and after its reverberations had died away, he still hesitated. "This," he said presently, "is a—the orphan—an orphan—one who has come to me from— She says her name ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... and that Leucha would naturally never speak to her again. These things might come to pass at once. As it was, they did come to pass a little later on, but on this special Saturday there was a slight reprieve both for Leucha and ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... coal his two small steamers, and had come close to the island expecting to find smoother water in which to do so. He told us afterwards he only took us because he knew how difficult it must be to get off the island. It was a reprieve to know we had not to leave that night; it gave us time to go round and say good-bye to all the old people. Some of them, especially Eliza Hagan, Betty Cotton and Martha Green, felt it very much. Mr. Keytel ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... them why; because Fitzgerald and I had saved the life of the daughter of one of the chief planters, who, in gratitude, had promised that he would assist us if we were ever in difficulty. I told them that they must adhere to what they said, as they would be condemned with the others, but that a reprieve would be given when they ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... the mission with which the poor young gentleman had charged him, with a sad blank face and a shake of the head, which told that there was no hope for the prisoner; and scarce a wretched culprit in that prison of Newgate ordered for execution, and trembling for a reprieve, felt more cast down than ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Axe, where he lived. And there I got for a shilling to stand upon the wheel of a cart, in great pain, above an houre before the execution was done; he delaying the time by long discourses and prayers one after another, in hopes of a reprieve; but none came, and at last was flung off the ladder in his cloake. A comely-looked man he was, and kept his countenance to the end: I was sorry to see him. It was believed there were at least 12 or 14,000 people in the street. So I home all in a sweat, and dined ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the Kislar Aga again appeared. "Her head," said he, hesitatingly. The Kislar Aga waited a little, to ascertain if there was no reprieve, for too hasty a compliance with despots is almost as dangerous as delay. He caught my eye—he saw at once, that if not her head, it would be his own, and he quitted the room. In a few minutes he held ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... such spells every little while. I mistrusted and he just as good as owned up to me that it wuz partly owin' to his bein' dressed up all the time; it wuz a dretful cross to him. He wears frocks to hum, round doin' the barn chores, and loose shues, but now of course he had no reprieve from night till mornin' from tight collars and cuffs and his ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... for she hoped that whatever called him to England might still further delay the wedding. She had made a bad bargain, but she intended carrying her part loyally to the bitter end—if she could manage to secure a temporary reprieve, though, she felt that she was warranted in doing so. ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... angle that they struck, her bullets did not penetrate the brain, but they did give Bill an instant's reprieve. The bear struck at the wounds they made, then halted, bawling, in the snow. His roving eye caught sight of Virginia's form. With a roar ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... been taken on board the squadron as prisoners, had made their escape by swimming to the shore, three miles off; and this feat encouraged a bold pilot of Seville, named Ledesma, who was on board the admiral's caravel, to attempt a similar exploit. Never was bearer of reprieve for the condemned more welcome. Ledesma communicated with the Adelantado, and conveyed to the admiral intelligence of the desperate state of affairs. The result was, that when in a few days the wind moderated, all the settlers were taken ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... painful. I need hardly say that my own feelings were of a very distressing kind. Conscious that if the unfortunate man really was guilty, he was at least not deserving of capital punishment, I exerted myself to procure a reprieve. In the first place I waited privately on the judge; but he would listen to no proposal for a respite. Along with a number of individuals—chiefly of the Society of Friends—I petitioned the crown ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... 'What, perchance, have I done? In what way, please, have I sinned? Have I with my feet perhaps smashed your crockery? I beg of you, Mr. Cook, I entreat you, if such be the case, kindly grant the supplicant a reprieve.' ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... condemned to be hanged, and was brought to the gallows along with a fellow prisoner; but on the road, before reaching the place of execution, a reprieve arrived for the Jew. When informed of this, it was expected that he would instantly leave the cart in which he was conveyed, but he remained and saw his fellow prisoner hanged. Being asked why he did not at once go about his business, he said, "He was waiting ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... move among, all happy hearts that, knowing what Makes life worth while, have wasted not the sweet reprieve of being young. ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... by remorse or fright at the last moment, M de Courtornieu and the Duc de Sairmeuse had granted a reprieve to six of the prisoners and at that very hour a courier was hastening toward Paris with six petitions for pardons, ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... observation and by testimony that to send back the convalescents to the bench or the workshop from which they came is practically to repronounce upon them the sentence of death from which the sanitarium has offered them a reprieve. The only practical thing to do with such convalescents, and with such persons who are not capable of their ordinary avocations, is to get them in some way upon the land. There is a large demand for persons ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... tyranny of Calvin and of the Consistory; Gentilis was condemned to execution for differing with Calvin's teaching on the Trinity, and was compelled to make a most abject public retraction before he could obtain a reprieve. Several of the citizens were punished with long imprisonment for dancing even on the occasion of a wedding, as happened in the case of Le Fevre, whose son-in-law was obliged to flee to France because he resented warmly such methods of promoting religion. In Geneva ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... before her, and her fate in view, Unsated vengeance in her bosom grew: Sullen she was and threat'ning; in her eye Glared the stern triumph that she dared to die: But first a being in the world must leave - 'Twas once reproach; 'twas now a short reprieve. She was a pauper bound, who early gave Her mind to vice and doubly was a slave: Upbraided, beaten, held by rough control, Revenge sustain'd, inspired, and fill'd her soul: She fired a full-stored barn, confess'd the fact, And laugh'd at law and justified the act: Our gentle Vicar tried his powers ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... Papa would call him her Perseus. She must have felt that there was no explaining what she suffered. She had only to act, to plunge. First she fixed her mind on Harry Oxford. To be able to speak his name and see him awaiting her, must have been relief, a reprieve. She did not waver, she cut the links, she signed herself over. Oh, brave girl! what do you think of me? But I have no Harry Whitford, I am alone. Let anything be said against women; we must be very bad to have such bad things written of us: only, say this, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... this remark why Lina had asked her to go home with her. It was not because she wished to hear any of Dotty's brilliant stories, for she had not asked a single question about Out West; it was because she hoped for a reprieve ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... kind Usage my Salvation wrought; Her happy Aid I labour'd to obtain, Hop'd for Success, yet fear'd her sad Disdain, Tortur'd like dying Convicts whilst they live, 'Twixt fear of Death, and hopes of a Reprieve. First for her smallest Favours did I sue, Crept, Fawn'd and Cring'd, as Lovers us'd to do? Sigh'd e'er I spoke, and when I spoke look'd Pale, In words confus'd disclos'd my mournful Tale? Unpractised and Amour's fine Speeches coin'd, But could not utter what ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... was made such an appeal as men are rarely able to make, because a regenerated life was also vocal in utterance. To him a miracle seemed to have been wrought, and he listened to each word as if to a reprieve from ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... an apparently sincere and hearty interest towards her. Although her uncle had forborne to trouble her upon that hateful subject, after he had first proposed it, she knew his disposition too well to regard the reprieve as an ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... replied. "When we sailed from Skye he was under sentence, and they weren't over much given to reprieve for sheep-stealing in those days. It was in consequence o' that that ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... in his arms Everett had entirely forgotten to announce to her such a minor fact as the saving of her lands and estate, but to the two little old ladies his sympathy had made him give the words of reprieve with his first free breath. The bundles on the floor and the old trunk had smote his heart with a fierce pain that the impulsive warmth of his greeting and the telling of his ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... numbers, and much troubled at the sight of so many crosses and circles in the superstitious Algebra and that black art of Geometry) will, no doubt, determine once in their lives to become figure-casters, and so vote them all to be throwen into the fire, if some good body doe not reprieve them for pye-bottoms, for which purposes you know analogicall numbers are incomparably apt, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... convicted of arson, another of robbing the United States mail, when the mail was intercepted with a view of capturing letters from the Federal officers in the western counties to the authorities at the capital. In both instances President Washington granted first a reprieve, then a pardon. ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... of the United States paused in the midst of the important business under discussion, and with the gravity due to a solemn occasion, took a card and wrote on it an order of reprieve for the turkey, which Tad seized, and fled with all speed, and Jack's life was saved. He became very tame, and roamed peacefully about the grounds at will, enduring petting and teasing alternately, from his capricious young master. At that time the White House was guarded by ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... praised! The joyful tidings are just announced of Land!! Oh! who can conceive our feelings now? The wretch condemned to the scaffold, who receives, at the moment he expects to die, the joyful reprieve, he can best conceive the state of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... had been originally fixed for the execution, but it was delayed until the 3rd. To the last moment, when he received notice of it, which was on the 29th of April, Garnet fully expected a reprieve. He "could hardly be persuaded to believe" in approaching death. Yet even then, on the very night before his execution—if we may believe the testimony of his keepers—he drank so copiously that the ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... friendship—those drops of honey in the cup of gall—did not their sweetness in this hour of desolation atone for the bitter dregs, and hold him to earth? The mighty struggle was to rend asunder these new-formed and holy ties. For him there existed no hope of a reprieve. Wise and good men had tried and found him guilty of a crime which, in all ages, had been held in execration by mankind. He was not a common criminal; for him there existed no sympathy, no pity. The voice of humanity ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... by Pennant and other writers of a similar custom being maintained at York. It gave rise to the saying, that "The saddler of Bawtry was hanged for leaving his liquor": had he stopped, as was usual with other criminals, to drink his bowl of ale, his reprieve, which was actually on its way, would have arrived in ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... was, that when happier days seemed to be dawning for the good man, that reprieve came too late. Grief and years, and humiliation and care, had been too strong for him, and Thomas Newcome was stricken down. Our Colonel was no more our friend of old days. After some days the fever which had attacked him left him, but left him so ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... back, he offered no further objections to their plans. Yet they could see that he was consenting to his exile only because he had no argument with which to meet theirs. He refused to resign from the Patent Office until the last moment, as if hoping for some reprieve from the sentence which his family had pronounced. He was moody, irritable, a changed boy from the one who had hippity-hopped with Leila on ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... replied her exasperated father, stamping his foot, and pushing her from him; "go to bed, and if ever I hear of you going there again, you shall be well whipped." The tearful face lingered about the door in hope of a reprieve that did not come, and then disappeared for ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... and healthier spirit was called for at the present juncture. The time had come to make an example, and a more suitable case than the one now before him could not have been found for such a purpose. He would accordingly hold out no hope of a reprieve, but would counsel prisoner to make the best use of the short time remaining ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... much too small, and I was relieved, and even grateful. It was certainly an odd mode of procedure to devote primary attention to the trunks and boxes, leaving the travellers still shut up in the carriage, of which they were by this time pretty well tired. I was not sorry for the reprieve, however: being nervous about first impressions, and willing to defer mine, I sat shyly back, peeping at the candle and moonlight picture before ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... his consciousness; the rest hung more in his nerves than in his brain. He thought: 'Well, I will speak it out to her in the morning'; and thought so sincerely, while an ominous sigh of relief at the reprieve ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... march leaders won the administration a reprieve from the threat of a mass civil rights demonstration in the nation's capital, but at the price of promising substantial reform in minority hiring for defense industries and the creation of a federal body, the Fair Employment Practices Committee, to coordinate the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... Write the reprieve, and let me run with it,' cries the Princess—and she got a sheet of paper, and pen and ink, and laid ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be aware that her purpose was wicked. When the knock at the door was at last heard she trembled and feared that she would almost be unable to speak to him. Might it be possible that there should yet be a reprieve for her? No; it was his step on the stairs, and there he was in the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... and city-moulding mind, II 1 And shelter from the clear-eyed power of biting frost, He hath taught him, and to shun the sharp, roof-penetrating rain,— Full of resource, without device he meets no coming time; From Death alone he shall not find reprieve; No league may gain him that relief; but even for fell disease, That long hath baffled wisest leech, ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... faithfully: but whether it is to be called my message, or is not to be called my message, is to depend entirely on the subject-matter!... Thus, if a King, refusing to appear in person, should issue a reprieve to prisoners under sentence of Death, a proclamation of Peace or of War, an address to the representatives of the constitution, (Clergy, Lords, and Commons,) in parliament assembled,—the message would be his. But if, on ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... purchased a respite of three months, by adding thirty pounds to his debt, and so was thankful for another deliverance, and was confident of the promised subsidy within a week, or at all events a fortnight, or, at worst, three months was a long reprieve—and the subsidy ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... {ant. 132} lateness &c. adj.; tardiness &c. (slowness) 275. delay, delation; cunctation, procrastination; deferring, deferral &c. v.; postponement, adjournment, prorogation, retardation, respite, pause, reprieve, stay of execution; protraction, prolongation; Fabian policy, medecine expectante[Fr], chancery suit, federal case; leeway; high time; moratorium, holdover. V. be late &c. adj.; tarry, wait, stay, bide, take ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... A little earlier something of the same sort had happened to John Smith, who had been hanging for five minutes and a quarter, during which time the hangman "pulled him by the legs and used other means to put a speedy period to his life", when a reprieve arrived and he was cut down. He was hurried away to a neighbouring tavern where restoratives were given, blood was let, and after a time he came to himself, "to the great admiration of the spectators". According to his own account ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... anger, He cast it far away from Him in wrath. Then Death threw herself upon it, scattering terror everywhere. She holds this world in her talons. Misery also precipitates herself upon it, gnashing her teeth in beast-like rage. She clutches man like a beast of prey, she torments him without reprieve...." ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
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