"Arson" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and would perhaps have puzzled the proprietors of the store even more than it would a stranger. For a stranger would have said at once this is burglary, or else arson; but those acquainted with the place would have known that neither of those crimes was very practicable. This enterprising sailor could not burn down this particular store without roasting himself the first thing; and indeed he could not burn it ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... apparent toward the close of his work, when he begins to show signs of fatigue and exhaustion. Nay, it is to be feared that we are still suffering from the outrage committed on Victorian literature by Mr. Mill's incendiary housemaid. We may yet note marks of arson in the restored volume. At the same time, there are large parts of his work which are as true historically as they are poetically brilliant. Part I.—"The Bastille"—is almost perfect. The whole description of Versailles, its ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... you all at our marriage, and I say we can't. It will be at Christmas or New Years, when such a trip across the country would be equivalent to murder & arson & everything else.—And it would cost five hundred dollars—an amount of money she don't know the value of now, but will before a year is gone. She grieves over it, poor little rascal, but it can't be helped. She must ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... borders, we have ever the farther to walk among unpleasant sights, before we gain the country air. If the population of Edinburgh were a living, autonomous body, it would arise like one man and make night hideous with arson; the builders and their accomplices would be driven to work, like the Jews of yore, with the trowel in one hand and the defensive cutlass in the other; and as soon as one of these masonic wonders had been consummated, right-minded iconoclasts ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ignorance, naivete, brutal simplicity of an utterly abandoned baby. Nothing mystical or beautiful about the Rat. He did not disguise from me in the least that there was no crime that he had not committed—murder, rape, arson, immorality of the most hideous, sacrilege, the basest betrayal of his best friends—he was not only savage and outlaw, he was deliberate anarchist and murderer. He had no redeeming point that I could anywhere discover. I did not in the least mind his entering my room when he pleased. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... the gallows, and with exile. I do not refer to their inclusion of lawyers among keepers of disorderly houses, and people of ill-fame. I refer to what every people, savage or civilized, has forbidden by law: murder, arson, adultery, infanticide, drunkenness, theft, rape, sodomy, and bestiality. The standard of sexual morality among the unmarried youth was lower in Puritan England than it is ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... copy, and place it on the shelf where this one had stood—this gloriously glowing one. I would do nothing of the sort. What I had done I had done. I would wear forever on my conscience the white rose of theft and the red rose of arson. If hereafter the owner of this cottage happened to miss that volume—let him! If he were fool enough to write to me about it, would I share my grand secret with him? No. Gently, with his poker, I prodded that ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... absolute necessity going about stark naked, and their men and women wearing only rags and streamers, which do not preserve even the show of decency;—and is there not sufficient reason, not indeed to justify murder and arson, but why a whole race of suffering and excitable people should not be stamped as fiends in human shape for the outrages of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... though a discharged soldier, and wounded in our battles. A white man in Kentucky may keep a gun; if a black man buys a gun he forfeits it, and pays a fine of five dollars if presuming to keep in his possession a musket which he has carried through the war. Arson of public buildings, if committed by a white man, is punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term of from seven to twenty-one years; if committed by a black man, the punishment is death. Arson of a warehouse, etc., when committed by a white man, is punished by ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... that "the United States and Her Britannic Majesty shall, upon mutual requisitions ... deliver up to justice all persons ... charged with murder, or assault with intent to commit murder, or piracy or arson or robbery or forgery or the utterance of forged paper...." Power was given to judges and other magistrates to issue warrants of arrest, to hear evidence and if "the evidence be deemed sufficient ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... They wouldn't look at bacon, unless you'd guarantee that the pig had been killed on a moonless Friday with the wind in the North, and as for pulled figs, if you couldn't swear that the box had been crossed by a one-eyed man whose father had committed arson in a pair of brown boots, you could go and bury ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... petty charges mostly: pilfering, fraud, theft, occasionally arson or manslaughter. One man, however, was arraigned for murder with highway robbery, and a woman for the most ignoble traffic, which ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to Mr. Paine's wit. Several striking examples might be cited; but two must suffice. Some years ago, when he was County Attorney, a man who had been indicted in Kennebec County for arson, was tried, and acquitted by the jury on the ground that he was an idiot. After the trial, the Judge before whom the case had been tried, sought to reconcile Mr. Paine to the verdict by some explanatory remarks. "Oh, I'm quite satisfied, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... were properly fed and screened from the sun, is rather a disgrace than a cruel mode of punishment. Death is said to be inflicted for aggravated robbery, robbery with murder, highway robbery, arson, and piracy, even without the form of a trial when the culprits are caught in flagrante delicto; but though it is a frequent punishment, it is by no means absolutely certain for what crimes ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... visitor - Baker of Tonga. Heard you ever of him? He is a great man here: he is accused of theft, rape, judicial murder, private poisoning, abortion, misappropriation of public moneys - oddly enough, not forgery, nor arson: you would be amused if you knew how thick the accusations fly in this South Sea world. I make no doubt my own character is something illustrious; or if not yet, there is a ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mr. MacTaggart, on whatna charge?" asked the writer, taking a confident, even an insolent, tone, now that he was on his own familiar ground. "Rape, arson, forgery, robbery, thigging, sorning, pickery, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... on one's balcony to see the reflection of a fire somewhere in the heavens. Now and then in clear nights I have counted the reflections of as many as five. Contempt of judges and laws—that's what it is! And that has taken such hold of these scoundrels that arson has become a kind of diversion.—But they had better go slow. Just a little patience, ladies and gentlemen! We know the tracks! We are on the right scent! And the people in question will have a terrible awakening when, quite suddenly, discovery and retribution come upon them. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... that he was a villain, double-dyed and beyond hope, yet he was the home of such courage, such virility, that her unconsenting admiration went out in spite of herself. He was, at any rate, a MAN, square-jawed, resolute, implacable. In the sinuous trail of his life might lie arson, robbery, murder, but he still held to that dynamic spark of self-respect that is akin to the divine. Nor was it possible to believe that those unblinking gray eyes, with the capability of a latent sadness of despair in them, expressed a soul entirely without nobility. He had a certain gallant ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... "Bootlegging, chicken-stealing, sneak-thieving, arson, and perjury. And they are ripe for any deviltry, without compulsion. All I need to do is to show them a piece of money ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... too easy to produce an unprovoked murder, an inexplicable arson, neither led up to nor followed by the ordinary human history of such acts, and therefore as arbitrary as the deeds of idiots or the insane. A villainous hate, an alleged love, a violent death, are flashed at us, without being ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... a Winchester shouldered muskets, shotguns, and other firearms. Warrants of arrest against the Tollivers on charges of murder, arson, and various other crimes and misdemeanors were issued and the date set for the arrest of the men was ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... machinery.—Henceforth these constitute the new leaders: for in every mob it is the boldest and least scrupulous who march ahead and set the example in destruction. The example is contagious: the beginning was the craving for bread, the end is murder and arson; the savagery which is unchained adding its unlimited violence to the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... slave trade each nation was to keep a squadron (carrying at least eighty guns) cruising off the coast of Africa. (2) It was agreed that any person who, charged with the crime of murder, piracy, arson, robbery, or forgery, committed in either country, shall escape to the other, shall if possible be seized and given up to the authorities of the country which ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Treason is punishable by death; but as this offense is defined and made punishable by the laws of the United States, not all the states take cognizance of it. If committed in such states, it is tried in the courts of the United States. In New York, murder, treason, and arson in the first degree, are punishable by death. Few states make more than these crimes thus punishable. In two or three states, the penalty of death has been abolished, and imprisonment ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... central page. "Here it is, and with your permission I will read it to you. Listen to this, Mr. Holmes. The headlines are: 'Mysterious Affair at Lower Norwood. Disappearance of a Well Known Builder. Suspicion of Murder and Arson. A Clue to the Criminal.' That is the clue which they are already following, Mr. Holmes, and I know that it leads infallibly to me. I have been followed from London Bridge Station, and I am sure that they ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and it ain't arson, that's flat," observed that functionary; "but we don't draw no such fine distinctions in our profession. If we did, the judges ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... if I were her child, and would go through the fire for me. I had a good deal of trouble the other day to prevent her strangling the false railway porter. I picked her out of three or four thousand convicts. She had been convicted of infanticide and arson. I would bet a hundred to one that, during the three years that she has been in my service, she has not even thought of robbing me of so ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... political refugees. Did they not advertise an amnesty to all those who returned within forty-five days? And in what newspaper, they indignantly asked—in what newspaper had they published the slightest threat of arson?] ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... underlying, fundamental principle. It is at work in countless ways, in everybody's life, nearly all the time. Personal impulses and inclinations may be very short-sighted, very unlovely, very unworthy. Greed, murder, arson, lust, theft, lying, betrayal—are only a few samples of the variety of impulses which may come and do come frequently ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... seems to make answer, "what simplicity in you to think so! If you have not broken one commandment, let us see whether we cannot convict you of the breach of another. If you are not a swindler or forger, you are guilty of arson or burglary. By hook or by crook you shall not escape. Are you to suffer or I? What does it matter to you who are going off the stage, to receive a slight additional daub upon a character so deeply stained already? But think ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... purse either before or since. And to the boot of all that, Gilliewhackit said, that, be the evidence what it liked, if he had the luck to be on Donald's inquest, he would bring him in guilty of nothing whatever, unless it were wilful arson, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Roman criminal procedure was completely void of principle, and was degraded into the sport and instrument of political parties; which can the less be excused, seeing that this procedure, while especially applied to political crimes proper, was applicable also to others, such as murder and arson. The evil was aggravated by the clumsiness of that procedure, which, in concert with the haughty republican contempt for non-burgesses, gave rise to a growing custom of tolerating, side by side with the more formal process, a summary criminal, or rather police, procedure ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... isn't thermite, I'm a Dutchman," he said. "At any rate, we'll be able to convict Mr. Milburgh of arson if we can't get him for murder. We'll send this to the Government analyst right away, Whiteside. If Milburgh did not kill Thornton Lyne, he certainly burnt down the premises of Dashwood and Solomon to destroy the evidence ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... obnoxious to him had been burned down, and there was only the appositeness of the event to show that the administrator had instigated it. Once a Swedish half-caste, ruined by the burning, had gone to him and roundly accused him of arson. Walker laughed in ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... was held by Simon; the central city by John, and the temple by Eleazar.[514] John and Simon were stronger than Eleazar in numbers and equipment, but he had the advantage of a strong position. Their relations mainly consisted of fighting, treachery, and arson: a large quantity of corn was burnt. Eventually, under pretext of offering a sacrifice, John sent a party of men to massacre Eleazar and his troops, and by this means gained possession of the temple.[515] Thus Jerusalem ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... say, but I tell you, old man, that Judas Iscariot can't show hisself in Utiky with impunerty by a darn site!" with which observashun he kaved in Judassis hed. The young man belonged to 1 of the first famerlies in Utiky. I sood him and the Joory brawt in a verdick of Arson in the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... saw those girls blushin' and bowin' behind their father, I didn't care to have my crimes made out any blacker'n necessary and I tried to give Jim the high-sign to let me off easy—just make it forgery or arson—but he was lookin' at the ladies, and evidently believin' in the strength of a good impression, he said: "Well, yes! He's young but they never was a old man with half his crimes. He's wanted for a good many things in different places, but I went ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... considerations affect the Native where his anger and hatred are directed against one or more of his own colour. The records of the South African courts are replete with instances of cattle-maiming, arson, poisoning and other crimes proved to have been motived ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... true," the merchant assented. "Owing to these frequent acquittals, murder and arson have become much more ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... that it was their duty to use "all lawful means" to discover the guilty parties, for there was "much room to suspect" that the fires were not accidental. He told them that there were many persons in jail upon whom suspicion rested; that arson was felony at common law, even though the fire is extinguished, or goes out itself; that arson was a deep crime, and, if the perpetrators were not apprehended and punished, "who can say he is safe, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... and his Russians have voted for August; able, they, to disperse all manner of enthusiastic Polish Chivalry; which indeed, we observe, usually stands but one volley from the Russian musketry; and flies elsewhither, to burn and plunder its own domestic enemies. Far and wide, robbery and arson are prevalent in Poland; Stanislaus lying under covert; in Dantzig,—an imaginary King ever since the equinox, but well trusting that the French will give him a plumper vote. French War-fleet is surely under ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... all things scandalous and shameful meet and become fashionable. Therefore, at the beginning, some were seized who made confessions; then, on their information, a vast multitude was convicted, not so much of arson as of hatred of the human race. And they were not only put to death, but subjected to insults, in that they were either dressed up in the skins of wild beasts and perished by the cruel mangling of dogs, or else put on crosses to be set on fire, and, as day declined, to be burned, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... seen them try to hang a despatcher for a passenger wreck—they can't do it, Bud, don't ever believe it. In this state ten years is the extreme limit for manslaughter, and the only complication is that if your train should happen to burn up they might soak you an extra ten years for arson; but a despatcher is usually handy around a penitentiary and can get light work in the office, so that he's thrown more with wife poisoners and embezzlers than with cutthroats and hold-up men. Then, too, you can earn nearly as much in State's prison as you can at your ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... expense of war. What gift or place would a slave-holding cabinet, or a Southern Confederacy, have thought too dear to bestow upon Captain Walker, whose criminal acts were feeding the concealed roots of the Great Conspiracy, if his murder and arson had become illustrious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... a stone at the judge. He was at once sentenced to death and removed to the Market Place, his right hand being cut off before he was hanged. As lately as 1835 two men here suffered the extreme penalty for arson. To the hanging of Lord Stourton, a just and well-merited punishment, reference has already been made. But perhaps the most vindictive execution of all was that of a boy of fifteen in 1632 when Charles I was in the town. ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... currier—on his hinder parts and drove him and a number of pigs over into Jelbo's village. Jelbo says he can bring evidence to prove that the wizard directing these proceedings, who is a Sansi, has been guilty of theft, arson, cattle-killing, perjury and murder, but would prefer to have him punished for bewitching them and ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... an' theft, For battery, arson and hate, >From breakin' the Sabbath to coveting cows, An' false affidavits an' perjurin' vows, I'm adept at whatever the law disallows, And the gallowsmen gape at the noose that I left, For I flit while the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... When any theft, assault, arson, or rape was discovered or complained of, immediately the bells Were rung, and the nearest detachment of soldiers of the brotherhood started on a pursuit which was carried to the boundaries of the next district, where its detachment took up the pursuit, and so ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... must be done, but I doubt if that's it. It's tough to be—disgraced, to have a thing like this hanging over you. I wouldn't mind it half so much if I were up for murder or arson or any ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... along the alleys, wharves, and streets; but what cares the wolf triumphant for that? for the 30,000 homeless in London? The policeman's club, or the bayonet, is the only thing that keeps down riot and arson, and the uncertainty of the result is all that hinders the French, German, and Russian wolves from turning a continent into a pandemonium. Is Europe truly a civilized country? Not if tried by an ethical standard. VON MOLTKE, the great man of Germany, who has so recently passed away, considered ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... amnesty hereby granted shall not include such persons committing crimes since May 1, 1902, in any province of the archipelago in which at the time civil government was established, nor shall it include such persons as have been heretofore finally convicted of the crimes of murder, rape, arson, or robbery, by any military or civil tribunal organized under the authority of Spain or of the United States of America, but special application may be made to the proper authority for pardon by any person belonging to the exempted classes and such clemency as is consistent ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... come out with some utterance which would put him plainly on record against the Germans and Pro-Germans who were filling America with their poisonous schemes. For we continued to entertain German diplomats and agents (paymasters, as they were, of murderers and plotters of arson) and to run on Germany's errands in various countries. The cry "He kept us out of war" was effectively used to reelect Mr. Wilson, although members of the Government must have been thoroughly well aware that war was ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... the murder, treason, and arson of John Brown? I have never known of his acts being approved or palliated by any other person than a Republican. Thousands of them have done it and are now doing it. In charging this dark catalogue of crime against this organization, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... Merrill Clark, a lad about 15 years of age, was indicted for the crime of ARSON alleged to have been committed in Newburyport, was arraigned the same day, and pleaded not guilty. The day for his trial is not yet fixed.—The Court assigned him Leverett Saltonstall and John G. King, Esquires, for his counsel on ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... transportation for seven years, with the alternative of imprisonment for two years and whipping. The fourth statute comprised those offences which consisted of maliciously injuring the property of another. This act reserved capital punishment for arson, for the demolition of buildings or machinery by rioters, for showing false lights to a vessel, &c.; but left other kinds of injury to be repaid by transportation or imprisonment. Altogether the number of capital offences was considerably diminished; and in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Wilson has this day made oath before me, a justice of said court, that William Hohan Zollern, alias Wilhelm, has at various times and places between July, 1914, and November, 1917, committed murder, assault, and arson upon the bodies of various people and sundry properties, against the peace and dignity of the Government of the United States, the State of Virginia and Broad Run ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... impairing the efficiency of every department of the government. Honours and public trusts, peerages, baronetcies, regiments, frigates, embassies, governments, commissionerships, leases of crown lands, contracts for clothing, for provisions, for ammunition, pardons for murder, for robbery, for arson, were sold at Whitehall scarcely less openly than asparagus at Covent Garden or herrings at Billingsgate. Brokers had been incessantly plying for custom in the purlieus of the court; and of these brokers the most successful had been, in the days of Charles, the harlots, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of these solemn admonitions, a large proportion of the criminals tried at the ensuing September Assizes were colored people; and among them were two aggravated cases of rape and arson; the former wantonly perpetrated on a respectable farmer's wife, in this township, to whom the wretch was a perfect stranger; the latter recklessly committed at a merchant's store in the vicinity of Sandwich, for the mere purpose of opening a hole through ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the machine or spoil the product of the machines in order to render the conduct of industry unprofitable, if not actually impossible. It may range all the way from machine obstruction or destruction to dynamiting, train wrecking, and arson. It may be some petty form of malice, or it may extend to every act advocated by ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... success, we should not discipline ourselves, which is the German lesson, so much as we should riot in the moral license of the German creed. Americans would worship at the altar of that queer "old German god," who apparently encourages rape, murder, arson, and tyranny in his followers. For in young America, with every social tradition in it seething blood, there is already an insidious tendency to accept this new-old religion of triumphant force. American "Big Business" can understand the Kaiser's philosophy, can reverence ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... a third, "when you think of all he's responsible for, even if he didn't do it with his own hands—arson, robbery, murder—think what that girl at Enterprise has been through! By gad! hanging's too ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... words directed against men and things to the need of destroying them. Sometimes the individual turns upon himself the revolutionary frenzy that he cannot otherwise exercise. Russia is full of these madmen, who, not content with committing arson or throwing bombs at hazard into the crowd, finally mutilate themselves, like the Skopzis and ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... get out of this pronto," Grief whispered to Peter Gee a few minutes later, "or we'll be a pair of boiled owls. Also, I am to be tried for arson, or heresy, or leprosy, or something, in a few minutes, and I must ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... else is that he shall produce an equivalent for what it costs to keep him alive, we may quite rationally compel him to abstain from idling by whatever means we employ to compel him to abstain from murder, arson, forgery, or any other crime. The one supremely foolish thing to do with him is to do nothing; that is, to be as idle, lazy, and heartless in dealing with him as he is in dealing with us. Even if we provided work for him instead of basing, ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... unterrified democracy went to arson and murder, hand in hand with the immense majority of Irishry. Meagher, Nugent, Corcoran and thousands like you, are exceptions. The O'Connors, O'Gormans, etc., are the unterrified. For these bloody saturnalia ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... allowed a compensatory profit upon one extra passenger.] in the rear of the roof, from which he could exchange his own yarns with those of the guard. No greater offence was then known to mail-coaches; it was treason, it was lsa majestas, it was by tendency arson; and the ashes of Jack's pipe, falling amongst the straw of the hinder boot, containing the mail-bags, raised a flame which (aided by the wind of our motion) threatened a revolution in the republic ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... corruption is effectually prevented, by the prohibition of intercourse amongst the inmates; and, above all, education, founded on a moral and religious basis, should be extended throughout society. Facts bear us out in asserting, that crimes of the greatest magnitude, such as murder, burglary, and arson, considerably diminish with the spread of civilization, which operates, like the circle formed by the pebble thrown into water, in extending its influence in proportion to its circumference. As philanthropists in many different countries are labouring simultaneously to promote this great end, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... than could have been expected. You have lost one comrade, whom you have buried with honor. Your wounded will, it is hoped, all recover, to join you and share honor. It is hoped that the severe but just chastisement which has been inflicted upon those guilty of riot, pillage, arson, and murder, will deter further attempts of that character. But if, arising out of political or other causes, there should be another attempt to interrupt public order, we shall call on you again to crush its authors, confident ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... fam'ly I reckon," said the captain, "kept a dry-goods store in New York city, and realised a handsome competency by burning his house to ashes. Same name, anyhow. David Polreath, Unchris'en Penrewen, John Tredgear, and old Arson Parvis." ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... of the Heptarchy is one of murder, arson, rapine, assault and battery, breach of the peace, petty larceny, and the embezzlement of the ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... from Cayenne," suggested the doctor, "or like a man who is wanted by the police of three countries for crimes ranging from arson ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... degree on the borderland of the observed and hence may be overlooked. To this class belong, for example, anger against the object, which serves as explanation of a group of so-called malicious damages, such as arson, etc. Everybody, even though not particularly lively, remembers instances in which he fell into great and inexplicable rage against an object when the latter set in his way some special difficulties or caused him pain; and he remembers how he created considerable ease ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... celebrities. I was present at a flogging, after which I dreamed for three or four nights of the executioner and the revolting accessories. I have talked to men who were chained to trucks. Once when I was drinking tea in a mine, Borodavkin, once a Petersburg merchant who was convicted of arson, took a teaspoon out of his pocket and gave it to me, and the long and the short of it is that I have upset my nerves and have vowed not to come ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... another circumstance interests me in the case—the whole question, so to say. Not to speak of the fact that crime has been greatly on the increase among the lower classes during the last five years, not to speak of the cases of robbery and arson everywhere, what strikes me as the strangest thing is that in the higher classes, too, crime is increasing proportionately. In one place one hears of a student's robbing the mail on the high road; in another place people of good social position forge false banknotes; in ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... states that "to John Huss and his followers are to be traced almost all those false principles concerning the power of the spiritual and temporal authorities and the possession of earthly goods and rights which before in Bohemia, and now with us, have called forth revolt and rebellion, plunder, arson, and murder, and have shaken to its foundations the whole commonwealth. The poison of these false doctrines has been long flowing from Bohemia into Germany, and will produce the same desolating ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... police, "I arrest you for murder, burglary, arson, and conspiracy. You put up a splendid fight, old man, and I am only sorry that it is our painful ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... brief—I swear it— For militant Sinn Fein; I really cannot bear it When constables are slain; But if you mention CARSON I feel that for the spread Of murder and of arson A good deal can ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... sir," she said. "Adieu, madame," replied the king's attorney, as in an almost joyful manner he conducted her to the door. Then, turning to his desk, he said, striking the letter with the back of his right hand, "Come, I had a forgery, three robberies, and two cases of arson, I only wanted a murder, and here it is. It will be a ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the Lass of seventeen who failed to get her Hooks on some roaming specimen of the Opposite Gender was in danger of being whispered about as an Old Maid. Celibacy was listed with Arson ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... concealed about their persons, had gone into the Bill Dalton business under the direct guidance—as they claimed—of their Deity, and were for some time eminently successful. Wholesale murder and robbery became their only industry, arson and oppression their recognized amusement. They had swiped up several cities—"leaving not a soul alive"—and were now grinding the snickersnee for Moab and Midian. The people of the petty nations of Palestine—whom ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... possessed they were wearing. These ladies were the Countess Orloff-Strelwitz, and a young girl, Theodorica, Grand Duchess of Esthonia.... I did what I could for them. After a while, in the course of other duty, I found out that the Bolsheviki had had nothing to do with the arson and robbery, but that the crime had been perpetrated by Jose Quintana's gang of ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... and Lucia conversed in the cottage of the former, M. Brianza, cure of Luserna, seated in the confessional, listened with horror and indignation to a tale of intended wholesale rapine, murder, and arson, which ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... religion; Christ to him was a pitiful weakling, a historic victim of the same system that still crucified those who fought the established order. In his new world there would be no churches and no laws. He advocated bloodshed, arson, sabotage of all sorts, as a means to ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... patriotic and noble leader of the human race. There is something in it which no man can comprehend. The doctrines which they inculcate harden the heart, and nerve the arm to crime, enabling them to commit robbery, arson and murder, for all is in her category; and as they commit those crimes, the appeal to God for the justness of their cause. That is what has deceived these men; it is this accursed phantom of secession that has blinded their eyes; that has cooled their hearts and filled ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... escaping from it, that we were compelled to put our handkerchiefs to our faces. This floor is appropriated for such crimes as assault and battery; assault and battery, with intent to kill; refractory seamen; deserters; violating the statutes; suspicion of arson and murder; witnesses; all sorts of crimes, varying from the debtor to the positive murderer, burglar, and felon. We should have enumerated, among the rest, all stewards, (colored,) whether foreign ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... linden boughs; Murder, bigamy, and theft; Travellers of goods bereft; Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,— Every thing but honest toil, Are the deeds that best define ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... of events that had been taking place in southern and western Russia during a period of nine months, between April and December of 1880. We do not need to recall the sickening details. The headings will suffice: outrage, murder, arson, and pillage, and the result,—100,000 Jewish families made homeless and destitute, and nearly $100,000,000 worth of property destroyed. Nor need we recall the generous outburst of sympathy and indignation from America. "It is not that it is the oppression of Jews by Russia," said Mr. Evarts in ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... the principal" was, in the minds of most thrifty New England women, a sin only second to arson, theft, or murder; and, though the rule was occasionally carried too far for common sense,—as in this case, where two elderly women of sixty might reasonably have drawn something from their little hoard ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... but a fellow named Baker," he said. "I deported him from the Ellice Islands for sedition, bigamy, selling gin to the natives, suspected arson and receiving stolen goods. If he called himself a Deputy Commissioner he was a rank impostor, and had no more authority to annex ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... do you yet want? At your request we have taken all power from the opposition; we have restored to the admonished the power to hold office. You demanded that those participating in the riots and guilty of robbery and arson be pardoned; even this to our shame, we have granted. Yet continuously you appear before us making new demands, continue rioting and by numbers and threats seek to intimidate our body. You have so terrorized the people that no business is transacted. Where will it all end? What more do you want? ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... type, 'I read a book with perfect comfort and much exhilaration, whose scenes the average Englishman would gasp in. Nothing happens; that is, nobody murders or debauches anybody else; there is no arson or pillage of any sort; there is not a ghost, or a ravening beast, or a hair-breadth escape, or a shipwreck, or a monster of self-sacrifice, or a lady five thousand years old in the whole story; "no promenade, no band of music, nossing!" as Mr. Du Maurier's Frenchman said of the meet for ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... reflection of scenes that no child ought to have witnessed and not even a child can forget. For these children come from the frontier villages, ravaged by the German advance, and still, some of them, in German occupation. And the orgy of murder, cruelty, and arson which broke out at Nomeny, Badonviller, and Gerbeviller, during the campaign of 1914, has scarcely been surpassed elsewhere—even in Belgium. Here again, as at Vareddes, the hideous deeds done were largely owing to ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dear old chum: Dad and I got here three days ago, and have begun to enjoy life. We didn't leave home a minute too soon, as we would have been arrested for running over that banana peddler, and for arson in setting a load of hay on fire and destroying the farmer's pants in our automobile accident. Ma writes that a policeman and a deputy sheriff have camped on our front doorstep ever since we left, waiting for dad and I to show up. Dad wants me to tell you ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... milder courses of crime by the persecutions of the police, found in Dick a devoted friend. It never occurred to the boy that the excuses given were anything but adequate and satisfactory justification for pillage and arson and homicide. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... taxes thereon. He also lived and throve in bodily health in spite of evil ways, and his children were many. There seemed no way to dispose finally of Jim Simmons and his house except by murder and arson, and the village was a peaceful one, and such measures were entirely ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... France, learning to walk in the cavalry, on the understanding that you'd make up for it when you got back by hunting them every day of the week? Have you no love or sympathy for dumb animals? Why are you here? What are you flying from? Tell me your dread secret. Is it debt, arson, murder—or is some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... serious as is the material destruction which this method of warfare entails, the destruction to the orderly habits of mind and thought which, at bottom, are civilization, is even more serious. Robbery and brigandage, murder and arson follow in its wake. ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... books. Presumably they were intended to prevent fires. Yet almost every forest community sees fire after fire set through ignorance, carelessness or purpose, and so far from punishing the offenders accords them every privilege of business and society. In cities, however insignificant the damage, arson leads to the penitentiary. A forest fire may destroy millions and the cause not even be investigated. If, aggravated by a particularly inexcusable case of malice or carelessness, some property holder (seldom the people) secures an arrest, ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... declared Josie. "He must be in fine fettle this morning, since his propaganda of murder and arson has ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... theft, highway robbery, cruelty to children and animals, obtaining money under false pretences, forgery, embezzlement, misappropriation of public money, betrayal of public trust, malingering, mayhem, corruption of minors, criminal libel, blackmail, contempt of court, arson, treason, felony, mutiny on the high seas, trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of unnatural vice, desertion from armed forces in the field, perjury, poaching, usury, intelligence with the king's enemies, impersonation, criminal assault, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... for arson with intent to kill. There are witnesses to prove you threatened to kill ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... knew not how; her head sank on his shoulder, she knew not why—faithlessness to her lord was as far from her thoughts as murder or arson; but for one poor little moment in a lifetime it is good to weep on someone's shoulder and to have someone's sympathetic arm ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... a bill was passed which made a woman punishable for the crime of arson, even though the property set fire to might belong to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... his coming to Potwell, and that to a philosophical review of his life. He began to think about Miriam, remotely and impersonally. He remembered many things that had been neglected by his conscience during the busier times, as, for example, that he had committed arson and deserted a wife. For the first time he looked these long neglected ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... forget what Lee owed to the fidelity of the negroes. Instead of insurrection, arson, pillage and murder in Southern towns and old homesteads, the Southern slave remained true to his mistress, and was the very soul of fidelity. Yet when the war was over, the town had become a wilderness, ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... imprecations, the fact that half a dozen people, inmates and attendants, joined in the confusion as if by magic, all this was nothing to Jones, nor was the subsidiary fact that one of the inmates, a quiet mannered clergyman, with a taste for arson, had taken advantage of the confusion and was patiently and sedulously at work, firing the thatch of the summer house in six different places, with a ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... would not abandon hope and accept the situation at its face value, as irremediable. Upon this was she firmly determined: the night was not to pass unmarked by some manner of attempt to escape or summon aid. She even found herself willing to consider arson as a last resort: the hotel afire would make a famous torch to bring assistance from the mainland. Only ... she shrank from the attempt, her soul curdling with the sinister menace ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... the farmer, starting from his chair. "Set fire to a barn! Why th' idea! Th' sheriff will git after you, sure pop. That's arson, man!" ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... the linden boughs; Murder, bigamy, and theft; Travelers of goods bereft; Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,— Everything but honest toil, Are the deeds that best define Every ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... highways, or other labor for public benefit, and the farming out thereof, where, and in such manner as may be provided by law; but no convict shall be farmed out who has been sentenced on a charge of murder, manslaughter, rape, attempt to commit rape, or arson: Provided, That no convict whose labor may be farmed out, shall be punished for any failure of duty as a laborer, except by a responsible officer of the State; but the convicts so farmed out shall ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... have only to look at the number of offences of a serious nature reported to the police. Comparing the number of cases of murder, attempts to murder, manslaughter, shooting at, stabbing and wounding, and adding to these offences the crimes of burglary, housebreaking, robbery, and arson—comparing all these cases reported to the police for the five years 1870-1874, with offences of a like character reported in the five years 1884-1888, we find that the proportion of grave offences to the population was, in many cases, as great in the latter ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... cauterization; ustulation^, calcination; cracking, refining; incineration, cineration^; carbonization; cupellation [Chem]. ignition, inflammation, adustion^, flagration^; deflagration, conflagration; empyrosis^, incendiarism; arson; auto dafe [Fr.]. boiling &c v.; coction^, ebullition, estuation^, elixation^, decoction; ebullioscope^; geyser; distillation (vaporization) 336. furnace &c 386; blanket, flannel, fur; wadding &c (lining) 224; clothing &c 225. still; refinery; fractionating column, fractionating ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... doctor's house with sparks from his own electrical machine; thereby giving the man they called an incendiary and raiser of sedition against Church and King, an appropriately experimental illustration of the nature of arson and riot. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... numbered thirty thousand. There was shouting, swearing, laughing, weeping, waiting. There was pallid stupefaction, sullen silence, faces of black despair—every kind of face except the happy variety. The air was thick with frightful stories of arson; of men hanged to lamp-posts; of incendiaries hurled headlong into the fires they had kindled; of riot, mobs and lawlessness. There was scarcely a suburb that was not reported to be burning up, and prairie-fires were said to be raging. The fate of Sodom was believed to have overtaken Chicago ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... night was weak assurance of any kindred feeling in the bosom of man. It so happened (as I afterwards learned) that felony—bloody felony—was at that very time busy, at no great distance; that murder, that arson in its direst character, were stamping their first damnable characters on a province noted, through ages, for innocence and simple piety; that the first victim to rebellion was, at that moment, bleeding to death under the hands of those wearing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... the suddenness of the calamity, the rapidity with which destruction rushed upon them, the flames leaping from house to house, spanning chasms of emptiness, darting hither and thither like lizards or winged scorpions, or breaking out mysteriously in fresh places, so that already the cry of arson had arisen, and the ever-growing fire was set down to fiendish creatures labouring secretly at a work ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... severe penalties against robbery, murder, false coining, arson; and ordained that these crimes should be punished by the amputation of the right hand and right foot [r]. The pecuniary commutation for crimes which has a false appearance of lenity, had been gradually disused, and seems to have been entirely abolished by the rigour of these statutes. The ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... prevent the strengthening of the Navy, the time being opportune for parsimony in Mr. Lloyd George's opinion because our relations with Germany were "far more friendly than for years past."[60] The militant women suffragists were carrying on a lively campaign of arson and assault all over the country. Labour unrest was in a condition of ferment. Land agitation was exciting the "single-taxers" and other fanatics; and the Tariff question had not ceased to be a cause of division in the Unionist Party. But, while these matters were sharing with the Irish ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... year, during the days of Pentecost, peace was established between the men of Utrecht and Holland, and those of Geldria, for during a whole year they had been at grievous enmity, and many deeds of rapine, murder, and arson had been wrought in evil wise ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... previously that creature had stolen Wilkins, the best cook I ever had. Mere man may not understand the enormity of this offence; but every woman knows there is no crime more heinous, more despicable, more unforgivable. She might find it in her heart to condone larceny, think lightly of arson, or even excuse murder; but there is not one who would extend even a deathbed pardon to the person who had robbed her of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... that is to say, never on a large scale; though I daresay, if the truth were spoken, a considerable amount of small matters might be raked up against me, as well as against another man; but then, I've never committed piracy, nor high treason, nor arson, nor any of them sort of things. As to smuggling, and the like of that, why, I'm a seafaring man, and I suppose all callings have their weak spots. I daresay your trade is not altogether without blemish, honorable and useful as it seems ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... woman. What made me so sure, you know, was the infernally odd coincidence of the name; and then I only saw her off and on, you know, and I never heard her voice. Then, you know, I was mad with jealousy; and so I made myself worse and worse, till I was ripe for murder, arson, assasination, and all that sort of ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... committed. A few clever horse-stealers may ruin many families, and a fire-raiser, in his desire to avenge himself on an enemy, may reduce a whole village to destitution. These and similar considerations tend to make the peasants very severe against theft, robbery, and arson; and a Public Prosecutor who desires to obtain a conviction against a man charged with one of these crimes endeavours to have a jury in which the peasant class ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... en grand, becomes that of Delhi, Teheran, and Constantinople. The Governor farms the place from the Porte: he may do what he pleases as long as he pays his rent with punctuality and provides presents and douceurs for the Pasha of Mocha. He punishes the petty offences of theft, quarrels, and arson by fines, the bastinado, the stocks, or confinement in an Arish or thatch-hut: the latter is a severe penalty, as the prisoner must provide himself with food. In cases of murder, he either refers to Mocha or he carries out the Kisas—lex talionis—by ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... embraced the refusal of rent and extended over the whole field of agrarian relations. The Whiteboys of the eighteenth century reappeared as "Whitefeet," and other secret associations, under grotesque names, enforced their decrees by wholesale murder, burglary, arson, savage assaults, destruction of property, and mutilation of cattle. In two counties, Kilkenny and Queen's County, nearly a hundred murders or attempted murders were reported within twelve months, and the murderous intimidation of witnesses and ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... of Irish politics at the time. In studying any history of the period, we cannot but be struck by observing on the one hand how completely in some respects circumstances and ideas have changed since then; it is hard to realize that Ulster was for a time the scene of wild disorder—assassination, arson, burglary and every form of outrage—brought about mainly by a society which claimed to be, and to a certain extent was, formed by a union of the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic parties—whilst the south and west remained fairly orderly and loyal. And yet on the other hand we find many of ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... same token Saint-Pol might be a liar. He saw that he must by all means find Saint-Pol, and find him at once. He began to shout for Gaston. 'To horse, to horse, Gaston!' The court rang with his voice; to the clamour he made, which might betoken murder, arson, pillage, or the sin against the Holy Ghost, out came the vassals in a swarm. 'To horse, to horse, Bearnais! Where out of hell is Gaston of Bearn?' The devil of Anjou was loose in ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... blow-out his brains. In the progress towards any of which consummations, do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough; breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of furniture, if not arson itself? ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Negroes commissioned! A baker's dozen of captains, six hundred odd lieutenants, and five hundred who dropped by the way. German propaganda had taken contrary suggestion and forced the Negro to this point of moral advantage. Plunder, arson, lynching and burning at the stake were employed against him to break his morale or incite him against America. But he held on. Seven hundred of the "sub-species, dark of skin, wooly of hair, long of head, with dilated nostrils, thick lips, thicker ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... clue, the offenders having succeeded in eluding altogether the vigilance of the Law. For instance a celebrated outlaw has only recently been apprehended in Central India after several years of successful and daring robbery, arson, mutilation and murder. Indeed in many parts of India there are predatory tribes and communities of thieves who have to be perpetually under Police surveillance, and who are brought up from their infancy to thieving as ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... between the rampart and the canal, among the chaos of already abandoned baggage. It was exposed there to a vicious jezail fire poured into it by the Afghans, who abandoned the pleasures of plunder and arson for the yet greater joy of slaughtering the Feringhees. When the rear-guard moved away in the twilight, an officer and fifty men were left dead in the snow, the victims of the Afghan fire from the rampart of the cantonment; and owing to casualties in the gun teams it had been found necessary ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... ruled by murder and arson were heroes and martyrs, the defenders of law and order were criminals according to British Socialists: "The thirst of the well-to-do classes for the blood of the Communards was insatiable. The ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... clerks, against nobles, ecclesiastics, corn-dealers and land-owners, against every species of public authority whatever its origin. Everywhere the authorities are constrained to tolerate or excuse murders, pillage and arson, or, at the very least, insurrections and disobedience. For two years a mayor runs the risk of being hung on proclaiming martial law; a captain is not sure of his men on marching to protect a tax levy; a judge on the bench is threatened if he condemns the marauders ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of his words and Grant's face lighted madly, "our property—the property we have earned, we must guard against the violence of the very master class themselves; for under this infernal Russian ukase of little Joe Calvin, the devil only knows what arson and loot and murder—" the crowd howled wildly; a policeman blew his whistle and when the melee was over Grant Adams was in the midst of the blue-coated ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... constitute happiness, there is plenty for all: but can any one, who has read of the American doings in the late frontier troubles, and the daily disputes on the slave question, praise the GOVERNMENT of the States?—a Government which dares not punish homicide or arson performed before its very eyes, and which the pirates of Texas and the pirates of Canada can brave at their will? There is no government, but a prosperous anarchy; as the Prince's other favorite government is a prosperous slavery. What, then, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... deposited there, were not so deposited at the time of the fire. He likewise procured a long array of facts tending to fix the burning upon the "merchant princes" who held the policies. To his mind, they were convincing. He therefore confronted these men, accused them of the arson, and demanded payment for his own loss. This was, of course, declined. Whereupon he gave them formal notice, that, if his demand were not liquidated within thirty days, never thereafter would an opportunity be afforded for a settlement. That the notice produced peculiar ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... its character, and therefore came within the treaty proviso of nonsurrender. The Mexican contention was that the exception only related to purely political offenses, and that as Guerra's acts were admixed with the common crime of murder, arson, kidnaping, and robbery, the option of nondelivery became void, a position which this Government was unable to admit in view of the received international doctrine and practice in the matter. The Mexican Government, in view of this, gave notice January 24, 1898, of the termination of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to arson, We can't recommend a wooden parson: But if the Church any such appoints, They'd better at least have iron joints. In parts, not much by Protestants haunted, A figure to look at's all that's wanted— A ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... do something to suppress the league immediately, he would burn down the place. The next day Marten and his co-workers went to the Royal Administration of the Superior Court, No. 1, in Berlin, and through his attorney lodged a criminal charge of "threat of arson" against ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... accordance with the law of the land, incurred the penalty of death as guilty of witchcraft and arson. This sentence is herewith pronounced upon you, and forthwith right here on the spot ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... management of the house were the outcome of a naturally malignant disposition. This was, however, not the case. There is no reason to suppose that Mr Kay did not mean well. But there is no doubt that he was extremely fussy. And fussiness—with the possible exceptions of homicidal mania and a taste for arson—is quite the worst characteristic it is possible for ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... thing—there is no denying that. If he had been proven guilty of theft, arson, licentiousness, infanticide, and defiling graves, I believe they would have suspended ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... "Mental arson!" shrugged the Duke of Connecticut, relighting his cigarette with a blazing twig. "For that singular crime. Excellency, my ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... public order, protecting life and property and punishing the criminal, was approached by our forbears with more gusto than success. The laws were terrible, but they {481} were unequally executed. In England among capital crimes were the following: murder, arson, escape from prison, hunting by night with painted faces or visors, embezzling property worth more than 40 shillings, carrying horses or mares into Scotland, conjuring, practising witchcraft, removing landmarks, desertion from the army, counterfeiting ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... The chastisement of crime— Arson and theft and marrying more Than one wife at a time— I like to feel some sins there be For which the law can't hurt you, In whose regard your heart is free To follow vice ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... were easily procurable. Unfortunately, the women must first qualify for it, and their crimes would disembarrass the Government. Mrs. Leigh could have been safely left to starve had her attempted arson of that theater really come off, especially with loss of life. Thus violence may be "militant," but it is not "tactics." And violence against society at large is peculiarly tactless. George Fox would hardly occupy so exalted a niche in history if he had used his hammer ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... exploited by the Extremists of both denominations, and a day of general mourning for the Delhi "martyrs" was appointed. The spark had been laid to the train, and Hindus and Mahomedans continued to "fraternise" in lawlessness, arson, and murder wherever the mob ran riot. Systematic attempts to destroy railways and telegraphs at the same moment in widely separated areas pointed to the existence of a carefully elaborated organisation. Public buildings as well as European houses ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... painful wounds, Are to our neighbour given; and in his substance Ruin, and arson, ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Sioux Indians, a writer says: "They regard most of the vices as virtues. Theft, arson, rape, and murder are among them regarded with distinction, and the young Indian from childhood is taught to regard killing as the highest of virtues." And a writer who had spent many years among the natives of the Pacific coast said that "whatever is {119} falsehood ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... it ain't arson, that's flat," observed that functionary; "but we don't draw no such fine distinctions in our profession. If we did, the judges ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... The authorities arrested a number of Negroes but ran the risk of having the jail broken open by their sympathizing fellowmen. After a reign of terror for half a week, order was restored and twenty of the accused were convicted of arson. ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson |
