"Belfry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but the exterior is none the less remarkably impressive with its solemn simplicity of outline. And those two square towers, pierced with narrow windows and overlooked by a round tower resting so calmly, so firmly on an open arcade of columns joined by round arches, are a belfry at once dignified and ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... from one of the branches, I had hung a miniature "belfry," containing a tiny brass bell, and had led the string into the water, letting it go down to a considerable depth. At first, I tied bait at intervals upon the line, and the sticklebacks, of course, seized upon it, and thus rang the bell. Generally the ringing was done in a very grave and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... his steps and regain the road. A five o'clock morning bell is also rung at Kidderminster. This and the curfew bell have been rung for many years past by "Blind William," who, notwithstanding his total blindness, finds his way along the streets that lead from his house to the church, and gains the belfry with the greatest ease. So well is he acquainted with the path to church, that he may be seen to turn the corners of the streets in as decided a manner as if his wide-open eyes were endowed with sight; and, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... often to spend hours in the bazaars and streets and among the common people, and it was in this way probably that he became so familiar with the peasant life of the country. When he came back from his wanderings on the banks of the Volga he used to mount to the village belfry, where he could write undisturbed by the gnats and flies, and the children found him there one day fast asleep among the bells. A failure at forty, with the publication of his first fables in verse he became famous, and for many years ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... the church without the summons of the King, and so hold them there to hunger and thirst and belike die, so long as it pleased him so to hold them? As he hugged the fancy, chuckling over attendant thoughts, a little bell sounded, clear and sweet as the voice of a child, calling from the belfry of the church. It was vesper-time, and the servants of the church were fulfilling their service for the largest congregation their temple had known since its foundation. Robert frowned at the sound. How did the shavelings dare not to wait for his ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and the moat is glistening in the moonlight, and the old trees are silvered over and blackened alternately by its beams; the church tower stands out massively against the sky. How dark the old belfry looks on such a night as this, contrasting with the white tombstones in the churchyard, and the slated roof shimmering above the aisle! There is a faint breeze sighing amongst the few remaining leaves, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... dwelling for a queen, No belfry for the swinging of great bells. No bolt or stone had ever crush'd the green Shafts, amber and rose walls, no soot ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... remains of two cloistered cells, one above another, very small, roofed and floored with stone, belonging to a building adjoining the church. Climbed up the little triangular steps of stone that led into the belfry tower, and looked forth from the tower windows over woodland hill, green carpet and blue waters, with a blessing in my heart for the fair land, and an earnest wish for the ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... oaks. It had a flowery churchyard, and around it a white paling, keeping in the dead, and keeping out all roaming cattle. There was a small cracked bell, and the swallows forever circled above the eaves and in and out of the belfry. Without the yard, beneath the oaks, were a horserack and a shed for carriages. To-day there were horses at the rack and tied beneath the trees; coaches, chaises, and curricles, not a few, beneath the shed and scattered through the oak grove. The church within was all ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... their manner. But this attempt at Goldsmith's manner followed a long time after I tried to write in the style of Edgar A. Poe, as I knew it from his 'Tales of the Grotesque erred Arabesque.' I suppose the very poorest of these was the "Devil in the Belfry," but such as it was I followed it as closely as I could in the "Devil in the Smoke-Pipes"; I meant tobacco-pipes. The resemblance was noted by those to whom I read my story; I alone could not see it or would not own it, and I really felt it a hardship ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of the long, shady street of which Princeton chiefly consists, stands the crowning glory of the place, the venerable College of New Jersey. The college proper is a long, four-story edifice of stone, its center adorned with a tower and belfry, conspicuous from afar. At either side of it are clustered other buildings, embracing its ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... he said. 'How interesting! Now, what's that bell for?' he went on, pointing to an old ship's bell in a rude belfry at the end of an outhouse. 'Was that a chapel once?' The red-eyed giant seemed to have difficulty in expressing himself for the moment and ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... town with its seven canals. The cathedral, belfry and the theatre are, of course, wonderful, but there is ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... posted the battalions. Towards evening, however, we had orders to fall back into the town—the French taking over the outposts—and billet there, our Headquarters being in the Grande Place—a large square with a curious old belfry in the middle—at a wine-shop, No. 34. Here we were well looked after, and had each of us a lovely hot bath, provided by a marvellous system of gas-jets which heated the water ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... the two great elms were almost half in leaf over the blacksmith's shop which stood across the wide road. Farther along were two small old-fashioned houses and the old white church, with its pretty belfry of four arched sides and a tiny dome at the top. The large cockerel on the vane was pointing a little south of west, and there was still light enough to make it shine bravely against the deep blue eastern sky. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... seen the solid walls, the array of towers, the high belfry, the iron gates, and the ponderous drawbridges of the Chateau de Lomervo; and many are the dependent buildings, courts, and gardens, surrounded by the thick copse wood that covers its domain, which extends over three neighbouring hills. Under the principal facade is a large lake, whose blue ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... thing the boys did was to go up into the belfry, and out on the top of the tower, and Busy Bee had a great mind to follow them; but she thought it would not be fair to Mr. Franklin, and the wide field upon which she had to work began to alarm ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they had been closed. The moon was shining even more brightly than on the previous night, but the rays did not fall as they fell on the loggia at the inn; the roofs of the low houses opposite were partly illuminated, and the belfry of San Stefano, and of the little church of Santa Marta and the Minerva much farther away; but that side of the irregularly built Altieri palace and the street below were almost in darkness. Looking down between the shutters, ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... the church so anshunt in history, Read yo the Latin words high in the steeple, Hear yo the sounds that arose from the belfry, It seem'd to be shaating along ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... had gone to bed without praying. She remembered that now, but with indifference. Dead people do not pray. The living pray for them. But even the watcher could not pray. Another hour struck in the belfry of the church. She listened to the chime and left off counting the moments, and this act of cessation made more perfect the peace of ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... of half an hour, the flooring of the belfry in the tower began to be forced by the falling bells and lighted beams. At this period, my nerves were strung to the highest excitement. The noise was extraordinary. The shouting of the firemen, the roaring of the flames rushing up the tower with the rapidity ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... on the belfry the old sexton stands, Grasping the rope with his thin bony hands!... Bon-fires are blazing throughout the land... Glorious and blessed tidings! Ring! Ring ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... London, was pulled down, the bells sold, and the sacred edifice rebuilt without a belfry. The children of the neighbouring parishes soon afterwards jeered ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... order to live. The Pacific giant, without teeth, supplies his organism with plancton alone, absorbing it by the ton; that imperceptible and crystalline manna nourishes his body (looking like an overturned belfry), and makes purple, fatty rivers of warm blood ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the white and cream-colored houses with green or grey shutters and pale, red-tiled roofs. At the end, stained golden with lichen, the mauve-grey tower of the church held up its bells against the sky in a belfry of broad pointed arches. In front of the church Andrews turned down a little lane towards the river again, to come out in a moment on a quay shaded by skinny acacia trees. On the corner house, a ramshackle house with roofs and gables ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... tidings of the wreck at Egg Island. Once more Providence had intervened to save them, and Quebec was delirious with joy. Every belfry in New France pealed forth its hymn of thanksgiving. The little church on the Lower Town market-place changed its name from Notre Dame de la Victoire to Notre Dame des Victoires, and the citizens added a portico in token of their ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... were a paper bag, a first reader, and a spelling-book, and she was on her way to school. Beneath her the white turnpike wound around the hill and down into a little hollow, and on the crest of the next low hill was a little frame house with a belfry on top. Even while she sat there with parted lips, her face in a tense dream and her eyes dark with dread and indecision, the bell from the little school-house clanged through the still air with a sudden, sharp summons that ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... family were obliged to alight, in order that their passports might be examined, and the truth of the people's suspicions ascertained. At the same instant the friends of Drouet rushed into the town, knocked at the doors, mounted the belfry, and rang the alarm-bell. The affrighted inhabitants awoke, the national guards of the town and the adjacent villages hastened one after another to M. Sausse's door; others went to the quarters of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... her standing outside,—or rather, I felt her going out, as I ran lightly on, up the rude stairway. Past a few of the landings, (how short the way seemed this day!) and I was beside the window. I looked across into the belfry of the church, lying scarce a hundred feet away. I thought it was bird-time; but no,—deserted were the beamy rafters and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... have been a point of some importance in the past. It has a large brick church with a decidedly Flemish facade, and a detached pagoda-like belfry. Its streets are overgrown with fine soft grass, and its houses had somehow or other an air of comfort and ease. Here we made quite a stop, first of all quenching our thirst with bubud, beer, cocoanut milk, ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... the iron framework of this factory remained; the ashes had commenced to smoke, giving forth flames from time to time. Here also every house had been destroyed and pillaged. Only the church remained standing, and on the belfry which was silhouetted against the sky, the weather cock seemed to shudder ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... splendour of old Muscovy; the picture-gallery, with Ivanof's gigantic picture, in which patriotic Russian critics discover occult merits which place it above anything that Western Europe has yet produced! Of course I climbed up to the top of the tall belfry which rejoices in the name of "Ivan the Great," and looked down on the "gilded domes"* of the churches, and bright green roofs of the houses, and far away, beyond these, the gently undulating country with the "Sparrow ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... world. The one-mullioned window in the eastern gable might have been seen by Tam O'Shanter blazing with devilish light as he approached it along the road from Ayr, and there is a small square one on the side next the road; there is also an odd kind of belfry, almost the smallest ever made, with a little bell in it,—and this is all. But no grand and storied cathedral pile in all Europe is better known, and to no shrine of famous minster do more pilgrims journey than to this wee kirk immortalized ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... lofty tops were silhouetted against the darkness of the night, with the majesty of things immovable, the while their shadows fell upon a charming little country house known in the neighborhood as the Chateau des Noires-Fontaines. As Morgan reached the chateau wall, the hour chimed from the belfry of the village of Montagnac. The young man counted the strokes vibrating in the calm silent atmosphere of the autumn night. It was eleven o'clock. Many things, as we have seen, had happened during the last ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... sometimes encircled with rude annulated mouldings; this shaft supports a plain oblong impost or abacus, which extends through the whole of the thickness of the wall, or nearly so, and from this one side of the arch of each light springs. Double windows thus divided appear in the belfry stories of the church towers of St. Michael, Oxford; St. Benedict, Cambridge; St. Peter, Barton-upon-Humber; Wyckham, Berks; Sompting, Sussex; and Northleigh, Oxfordshire. In the belfry of the tower of Earls Barton Church are windows of ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... of his lips, when he caught sight of Jung Erh running out of the belfry. "Look at him," shouted Chia Chen. "Look at him! I don't feel hot in here, and yet he must go in search of a cool place. Spit at him!" he cried to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... it from a belfry, or the beating heart Of the year, this swell, Solemn like the steps of friends who have to part? Ding, ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... tourists, following their leader like sheep, have made impostors of. To say nothing of its houses with grave courtyards, its queer by-corners, and its many- windowed streets white and quiet in the sunlight, there is an ancient belfry in it that would have been in all the Annuals and Albums, going and gone, these hundred years if it had but been more expensive to get at. Happily it has escaped so well, being only in our French watering-place, that ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... In the one case he comes into a scene of wild revelry, and there at his feet lie, stark and stiff, corpses in their gay clothing and with garlands on their brows, and feasters and musicians are flying in terror from the cowled Skeleton. In the other he comes into a quiet church belfry, where an aged saint sits with folded arms and closed eyes, and an open Bible by his side, and endless peace upon the wearied face. The window is flung wide to the sunrise, and on its sill perches a bird that gives forth ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... have an unfortunate effect upon the intellectual faculty. Too much wine—though it must have required an inordinate quantity in certain mendacious periods—was regarded as provocative of truth; and too many books as clearly put bats in a man's belfry. The explanation is of course simple enough. If one overweights the head the whole structure is apt to become unbalanced. This is the reason why we hold scholars in such light esteem. They are an unbalanced lot. And ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... hurried steps have I stole noiselessly by to our rural home. O, how many associations crowd upon the memory, in connection with that rude old meeting-house! It was an old-fashioned, square building, without portico, or steeple, or belfry. The winter's hail and summer's rain had beaten against it for half a century. Its numerous small windows, without curtain or blind, let in floods of light. Its small pulpit, perched high upon one side, and close to the wall, concealed ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... curious," he admitted. "When things are flat and lacking flavour they put in a pinch of this or that to spice them up. Fact is—there's a change of wind and it ain't sot yet. While it's shifting around it hits, once so often, a chink in the belfry that's got to be mended some day. That's the sum and tee-total ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... like slavery; vastly fond of great noises that fill the ear, such as the firing of cannon, drums, and the ringing of bells, so that it is common for a number of them, that have got a glass in their heads, to go up into the belfry, and ring the bells for hours together for the sake of exercise. If they see a foreigner very well made, or particularly handsome, they will say, "It is a pity ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... Look out, sir! We're coming level with the church now." And, glancing to their left as they lay flat, they saw a curl of smoke wreathing out of the embrasure, and another succession of little puffs above it, which told them that the second gun had been hoisted to the first floor of the ruined belfry. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... brought to the altar of the Virgin Mother the first tribute of spring—fresh sheaves of greenery; everything was decked with nosegays and garlands—the altar, the image, and even the belfry and the galleries. Sometimes a morning zephyr, stirring from the east, would tear down the garlands and throw them upon the brows of the kneeling worshippers, and would spread fragrance abroad as from a ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... pointing at the skyscrapers before him, "they're not afraid to stand by themselves; they mean something, they have a use, while a spire just sticks straight up, pointing at nothing and being of no service unless it is to hang bells in a belfry. I don't care what people say about those crazy old tumble-down buildings of the Middle Ages, they may be beautiful and all that, but they're useless nowadays. The New York skyscraper is the greatest example of architecture ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the centre of Deadham village, backed by a row of big elms.—A wide, low-roofed structure, patched throughout the course of centuries beyond all unity and precision of design; yet still showing traces of Norman work in the arch of the belfry and in the pillars supporting the rafters of the middle aisle. At the instance of a former vicar, the whole interior received a thick coat of whitewash, alike over plaster and stone. This, at the time in question, had been in places scraped off, bringing ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... closed. But all the night through they heard in the streets the unceasing clamor: "A Roman pope, a Roman pope!" Toward the morning the tumult became more fierce and dense. Strange men had burst into the belfry of St. Peter's; the clanging bells tolled as if ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... worm-bored book, "listen to this motto printed in raised letters on the bronze robe of the great bell of Schaffhausen, 'I call the living, I mourn the dead, I break the thunder.' And this other which figured on an old bell in the belfry of Ghent, 'My name is Roland. When I toll, there is a fire; when I peal, there is a tempest ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... lapping, over-lapping, and cross-lapping, and first and second quality of cedar shingles. Miss Lobelia Brewster, who had a rooted distrust of anything done by mere man, created strife by remarking that she could have stopped the leak in the belfry tower with her red flannel petticoat better than the Milltown man with his new-fangled rubber sheeting, and that the last shingling could have been more thoroughly done by a "female infant babe"; whereupon the person ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Lotbiniere, who immediately was followed by her mother. I leaned forward, perfectly hidden, and listened to the singsong voices of the priests, the musical note of the responses, heard the Kyrie Eleison, the clanging of the belfry bell as the host was raised by the trembling bishop. The silence which followed the mournful voluntary played by the organ was most painful ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... river the rebels were increasing daily, and at Pasig a thousand of them threatened the civil guard, compelling that small force and the parish priest to take refuge in the belfry tower. On the river-island of Pandacan, just opposite to the European Club at Nagtajan, a crowd of armed natives, about 400 strong, attacked the village, sacked the church, and drove the parish priest up the belfry tower. In ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the first time since his induction to his living, given permission for the bells to greet the happy pair. After, however, sounding a merry peal a short hour and a half, a message was received at the belfry that the Rector thought they had rung long enough. The tardiness with which this mandate was obeyed soon brought the rev. gentleman in person to enforce his order, which was then reluctantly complied with to the great disappointment of the inhabitants, and mortification of the ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... story-and-a-half cottages, executed along simple Federal lines, are owned by the families who occupy them. They look out on a street lined with fine old elms and at the end is the stone mill with its belfry where still hangs the bell that once ruled the lives of spinners and weavers with its clanking iron tongue, morning, ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... off Desmond to assist him. They stood side by side watching the progress of the grab, which gained steadily in spite of the plunging due to its curious build. Presently another shot came from her; it shattered the belfry on the forecastle of the Good Intent, and splashed into the sea ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... it. All of a sudden some one seemed to win. They broke away, and ran wildly to the front of the stage with their arms outstretched, yelling to beat three of a kind. The band cut loose something fierce. The leader tore out about $9.00 worth of hair, and acted generally as though he had bats in his belfry. I thought sure the place would be pinched. It reminded me of Thirsty Thornton's dance-hall out in Merrill, Wisconsin, when the Silent Swede used to start a general survival of the fittest every time Mamie the Mink danced twice in succession with the young fellow from Albany, ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... his history of Chelsea, adheres to this opinion, and says that the tomb in that church is but "an empty cenotaph." His grandson, in his Life, says, "his body was buried in the Chapel of St. Peter, in the Tower, in the belfry, or, as some say, as one entereth into the vestry;" and he does not notice the story of his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the door-step of a house, and took off one shoe. As he did so, the clock in a church belfry ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... in 1709), may be added, from my own collections for the history of this, my native parish. "In ye great storm in ye year 1703, ye spire of this church was blown down, and two of ye old bells I remember standing in ye belfry till ye tower was pulled down in 1724, in order to be rebuilt It was rebuilt accordingly, and the bells were then new cast, with ye assistance of Mr. Harington ye Vicar, who gave a new bell, on which his name is inscribed, so as to make a peal ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... offered him bread and salt. Chekhov was much embarrassed in responding to their gratitude, but his face and his shining eyes showed that he was pleased. Besides the schools he built a fire-station for the village and a belfry for the church, and ordered a cross made of looking-glass for the cupola, the flash of which in the sun or moonlight was visible more than ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the belfry where the ringers came. Punch caught hold of one of the frayed ropes which hung down through the apertures in the oaken roof. But he started; other hands seemed on it; he shrank from the thought of waking the deep Bell. The Bells themselves were ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... steeple: but as room was insufficient for the admission of bells by the dozen, means were found to hoist them tier over tier. Though the round dozen is a complete number in the counting-house, it is not altogether so in the belfry: the octave is the most perfect concord in music, but diminishes by rising to an octave and a half; neither can that dozen well be ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... the belfry's light arcade He saw, or thought he saw, beneath its shade, No shape of human form of woman born, But a poor steed dejected and forlorn, Who with uplifted head and eager eye Was tugging at the vines of briony. "Domeneddio!" cried the Syndic ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... afraid that I, Beholding him out in the rain, a kite about to fly, And noticing upon its tail the barn door's rusty key, Would, with the scoffers on the street, have chortled in my glee; And with a sneer upon my lips I would have said of Ben, "His belfry must be full of bats. He's raving, ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... either chalk or lime. The church is the largest building in the town, and is a rough specimen of architecture, which is rudely finished within. It has a flat-sounding bell, propped up in a sort of a belfry. To make a noise on this, a piece of iron, or several stones are used; and, when an attempt at chiming is made, it is very laughable. The figures representing saints, and even the altar, are a strange compound ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... down on the mossy wall that surrounded my churchyard, when I had more time for reverie than I have now—sat upon the mossy wall, under a great oak, whose brandies came low down and projected far out—and looked at the rough gnarled bark, and at the passing river, and at the belfry of the little church, and there and then thought of Mansie Wauch and of his vision of Future Years! How often in these hours, or in long solitary walks and rides among the hills, have I had visions clear ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... a very handsome fish upon a neighboring belfry, which was veering in the wind; and this glittering object seemed to Verty an excellent mark. As he was about to take aim, however, his quick eye caught sight of a far speck in the blue sky; and he lowered his ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... afternoon sermon, and after it the ceremony. We were not to enter the church until the proper moment, and Ben said he could manage it, for when the minister began his last prayer he would climb the rickety ladder into the old square box of a belfry and hang out a yard of white cloth on ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... A service was just over, and we met a crowd coming out as we entered the great building. "Service is over, and two pence for all that wants to stay," was the first sound that caught our ears. In the Burlesque of "Esmeralda," a man is met in the belfry of the Notre Dame at Paris, and being asked for money by ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... and reeled, as that peal rang out, now merry, now scornful, now plaintive, from whose narrow belfry windows, into the bosom of the soft south-west wind, which was playing round the old grey tower of Englebourn church. And the wind caught the peal and played with it, and bore it away over Rectory and village street, and many a homestead, and gently waving ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... thieves would have to be clever and fortunate to get the better of them. Silver Stick, the bell-ringer, and the sacristan made their nightly inspection before locking up, Mariano then taking the keys away with him to the belfry. No one could think of breaking the locks and bolts, for they were of antique and extremely strong work; besides, they two were there inside to give the alarm on hearing the slightest noise. Formerly, by the help of the dog, the watching had been more ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... lifting his hand, "the Angelus is ringing from tower and belfry, and thousands of knees are bending with the simplicity of little children in prayer, without one thought of theology or philosophy. Every prayer rising from a sincere heart, asking pardon for the past and grace for the future, is heard ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... But in thy belfry, O Malines, The master of the bells unseen Has climbed to where the keyboard stands,— To-night his heart is in his hands! Once more, before invasion's hell Breaks round the tower he loves so well, Once more ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... them of Spain and the Moorish seal that is set upon it! Here we have evidence of it painfully wrought out by the hands of rude Indian artisans. The ancient bells have been carried away into unknown parts; the owl hoots in the belfry; the hills are shown of their conventual tenements; while the wind and the rain and a whole heartless company of iconoclasts have it all ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... A-bloom with beauty, a white rose full-blown, Yet rich in sacred dust, in storied stone, Precious past all the wealth of Indian isles— From olive-hoary Fiesole to feed On Brunelleschi's dome my hungry eye, And see against the lotus-colored sky, Spring the slim belfry graceful as a reed. To kneel upon the ground where Dante trod, To breathe the air of immortality From Angelo and Raphael—TO BE— Each sense new-quickened by a demi-god. To hear the liquid Tuscan speech at whiles, From citizen and peasant, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... its summit with such a flying-footed nymph as poises on our own tower, the figure of Faith which crowns it is at least a good weather-vane, and from its office of turning gives the mighty bell-tower its name. Long centuries before the tower was a belfry it served the mosque, which the cathedral now replaces, as a minaret for the muezzin to call the faithful to prayer, but it was then only two-thirds as high. The Christian belfry which continues it is not in offensive discord with the structure below; its other difference in ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... order and surmounted with classic urns and flame motives. Above this level the construction of the clock tower is of white-painted wood, one story with Corinthian pilasters and another balustraded, rising in four-sided diminutions to the octagonal, open arched belfry and superstructure, above which is a tapering pinnacle and gilt weathervane. It is a tower of grace, dignity and repose, a tower suggestive of ecclesiastical work, perhaps, yet withal in complete harmony with its situation and purpose. In the ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... in the village, how a cow had escaped from the cowhouse and had been found the next morning in front of Prosper Malet's mill, looking at the sails turning, or about a hen's egg, which had been found in the church belfry without anyone being able to understand what creature had been there to lay it, or the story of Jean-Jean Pila's dog, who had been ten leagues to bring back his master's breeches, which a tramp had stolen while they were hanging up to dry out of doors, after he had been in the rain. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... original objects of the trust were repairing the streets of the town and relief to poor. From time to time other charities have been incorporated, and the funds administered with those of Lench's Trust. Among these are the "Bell Rope" fund for purchasing ropes for St. Martin's Belfry, the donor of which is not known; Colmore's Charity, dating from 1585, for relieving the poor and repairing streets; Redhill's and Shilton's (about 1520), for like purposes; Kylcuppe's 1610, for the poor, and a small sum towards repairing the church; Vesey's 1583, known ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... all to assure me that, after a year of melancholy and eventful absence, I looked again upon the precincts of home. A little farther on rose the gray wall and tower of the library and belfry, half concealed by its heavy coating of ivy, glossy and dark, and shutting away all other view of the mansion. Beyond these last was the pavilion my father had built for the playhouse of his children, through the ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... it, they are fast falling into ruins. At last, under Charles the Fifth, a large room for sales and for the assemblies of the citizens was required, and a tasteful building of stone and brick was added. I went up to the belfry; and under a gloomy sky, which harmonized with the edifice and with my thoughts, I saw at my feet the whole of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... in 1855, whose chancel is pierced by two narrow stained-glass windows, lifts its square belfry from out a leafy grove hard by. Here and there rustic bridges cross the rivulets that dance merrily along toward the river. In the distance are two or three primitive saw-mills, run by water-power, with ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round; And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl in the belfry sits. ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... a rapid vibration, with a melody silv'ry and strong, The bells from the sound-shaken belfry are singing their first maiden song; Not now for the dead or the living, or the triumphs of peace or of strife, But a quick joyous outburst of jubilee full of their newly-felt life; Rapid, more rapid, the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... consists of two parts, separated by the belfry, and built at different times. The original church had, like others, the altar at one end, and tower at the other: but as it grew too small, another building of equal dimension was added, and the tower then was ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... of candle guttered and went out. The cold increased. It had ceased snowing, and a keen wind had arisen, tearing the clouds into shreds through which the stars gleamed. And presently the moon climbed up behind the belfry of the old church across the square, and sent one broad white ray through the dingy window and across the floor. All at once the great bell began to strike the midnight hour, its mingled vibrations filling the garret with tumultuous sounds. The vision of the fair girl faded, and old Marg was herself ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... brought to focus at last, however, by their arrival at Charlotte Bedford's lodgings, which, like most houses in the town, had a lookout or belfry fitted with green blinds and a telescope, and had a green-painted wooden ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Nourrigat had originally indicated as the direction of our friend Pistre. Presently he led us into the church, a humble little village sanctuary. A shell had carried away half the apse, and sadly damaged the altar. The belfry had been demolished and the old bronze bell split into four pieces had been carefully fitted together by some loving hand, and stood just ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... inhabitants. The church dedicated to St. Nicholas is of the time of Henry III, or Edward the I. Its exterior is particularly rustic especially the low tower at the west end, which is formed of entire trunks of trees fastened together by wooden bolts. Against one of the walls of timber in the belfry is an ancient painting representing Moses receiving the ten commandments on mount Sinai, it was most probably used as a kind ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... proceedings, which was, perhaps, not unnatural, taking all the circumstances of the case into consideration. Why have I mentioned him? I know not, save that even now, degraded as I am, memories of better things sometimes steal over me like the solemn sound of church-bells pealing in a cathedral belfry. But I have done with home, with father, with patriotism, with claret, with walnuts, and with all simple pleasures. Ca va sans dire. They talk to me of Good, and Nature. The words are meaningless ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... picturesque—more picturesque, indeed than in the days of its pride and splendour. The tower with its lofty crocketed spire was still standing, though the latter was cracked and tottering, and the jackdaws roosted within its windows and belfry. Two ranges of broken columns told of the bygone glories of the aisles; and the beautiful side chapels having escaped injury better than other parts of the fabric, remained in tolerable preservation. But the choir and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... embarkation, on Friday, July 21/31 1620, was at Leyden, doubtless upon the Dutch canal-boats which undoubtedly brought them from a point closely adjacent to Pastor Robinson's house in the Klock-Steeg (Bell, Belfry, Alley), in the garden of which were the houses of many, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... a great golden dragon on the belfry of Bruges, of which the Bruges people were very proud. That dragon had once stood on the Church of St. Sophia in Constantinople, and the Emperor Baldwin had sent it as a present to Bruges. In token of their victory Van Artevelde's "troublesome burghers" took down the golden dragon ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... once served as a belfry may possibly be still of use to some Father Secchi to "tick Venus off in transit"; only never bring ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... was dark, but Ralph knew by the scent that came in on the light wind, and a little stir of blended sounds, that it was hard on dawning; and even therewith he heard the challenge of the warders on the walls and their crying of the hour; and the chimes of the belfry rang clear and loud, and seeming close above him, two hours and a half after midnight. Roger spake not, and Ralph was man-at-arms enough to know that he must hold his peace; and though he longed sore to have his horse Falcon with him, yet he wotted that it availed not to ask of his horse, ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... use of their tongues, and strive to avoid them in your own. A heart and head united in being right will do almost everything in making the tongue right. When the interior of a watch is in order, it will generally indicate the right time: when a man in the belfry wisely pulls the rope attached to a bell, it will give a proper sound: when a musician is perfect in his art, and his instrument in tune, the music he plays will agree thereto. So, reader, is it ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... dry Indian corn. The grass has still considerable greenness. Wild rose-bushes devoid of leaves, with their deep, bright red seed-vessels. Meeting-house in Danvers seen at a distance, with the sun shining through the windows of its belfry. Barberry-bushes,—the leaves now of a brown red, still juicy and healthy; very few berries remaining, mostly frost-bitten and wilted. All among the yet green grass, dry stalks of weeds. The down of thistles occasionally seen flying ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ruin," said Gerald; "a dilapidated, romantic ruin. Something's gone wrong in the belfry to-day. Is my face ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... at the New Year that was upon them. High in a belfry made of small sticks piled on each other criss-cross hung a small bell. Silver cords ran from it to each place so that every guest might in turn "Ring out the old, ring in the new." Beside the tower on one side stood the Old Year bending with the weight of his twelve-month of experience; ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... grumbling among the rafters, tipping the golden grain into its funnel, while the rattling hopper below poured out its soft stream of flour. Beyond the mill, the ground sank to a valley; the roofs clustered round a great church tower, the belfry windows blinking solemnly. Hard by the ancient Hall peeped out from its avenue of elms. That was a picture as sweet as anything I have ever seen abroad, as perfect a piece of art as could be framed, and more perfect than anything that could be painted, because it was a piece out of the old ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in these northern forests commonly are. The peasants' huts, built on both sides of a straight road, were colourless enough, and the big church, with its five pear-shaped cupolas rising out of the bright green roof and its ugly belfry in the Renaissance style, was not by any means beautiful in itself; but when seen from a little distance, especially in the soft evening twilight, the whole might have been made the subject of a very pleasing picture. From the point that a landscape-painter would naturally have chosen, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... handiwork; and following it round the bend of a valley, where a stream sang its way down to the creek, came suddenly on a flat meadow swept by the pale light and rising to a grassy slope, where a score of whitewashed houses huddled around a tall belfry, all glimmering ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... other of our finest edifices have been constructed. The tower has below an entrance doorway, finished with rich mouldings and tracery; on each side are the arms of his Majesty and the City of London. Above is a clock with three dials, and a belfry to admit the fine set of bells[2] from the old church, the sound of which will doubtless receive effect through the four large upper windows which are the main features of the tower. Above these windows, the tower, hitherto square, becomes gradually octagonal, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... insisted on his case more strongly. Other voices, silent till now, struck in from boughs lower down and higher up and midway, and to the right and left, and from the tree-tops; and others, arriving hastily from the grey church turrets and old belfry window, joined the clamour which rose and fell, and swelled and dropped again, and still went on; and all this noisy contention amidst a skimming to and fro, and lighting on fresh branches, and frequent change of place, which satirised the old restlessness of those who lay so still beneath the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... elms, just then opening into leaf; and about a dozen graves, principally of very young children, were memorials of the mortality of the settlement. The building was of stone, the work of Jamie Allen's own hands, but small, square, with a pointed roof, and totally without tower, or belfry. The interior was of unpainted cherry, and through a want of skill in the mechanics, had a cold and raw look, little suited to the objects of the structure. Still, the small altar, the desk and the pulpit, and ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... Caderousse, rising with all the offended dignity of a drunken man, "I can't keep on my legs? Why, I'll wager I can go up into the belfry of the Accoules, and without ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the dangling gaitered legs, which spoilt the solemn effect. A very curious figure did he cut upon his shaggy, ambling steed. On the top of the hill was a village, in the midst of which stood a little old Gothic church with a gable-belfry, and hard by was a half-timber house, its ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the royal comrades stand beside the gigantic monument in the centre of the Great Market, and above the shouting of the multitude the music of the old belfry floats unheard. Ghent and Antwerp have put on their glad raiment, and in their crooked streets and crowded squares joy flows like a river surging as it goes. Into Brussels I see this man and woman ride through a welcome that ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... Ombos,' I thought as I looked at his shrivelled fearsome figure, 'has turned your head. There are certainly a few bats in your belfry. You will find your way into an asylum ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... days is the old church bell, which hung till recently in the belfry of old Blackford Church. The bell is inscribed with the words "O Mater S.D., O Mater S.D., O Mater S.D., I.S.," and the sign of a hammer. The thrice repeated phrase is evidently a contraction for "O Mater Sanctissima Domini"—"O Most ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... is the granary. The church stands apart from the building; it is within the square, but unconnected. The west door is decorated with the most elaborated carvings of flowers, images of angels, and figures of the apostles; the interior is plain. To the right is a handsome tower and belfry, and above the altar a large stone cupola. Behind the church is a long range of rooms for the missionaries, with a corridor of nine arches in front. The Texan troops were long quartered here, and, although always intoxicated, strange to say, the stone carvings ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... thoughts of the fated king. He had turned his face from the field, and his eyes were fixed upon the tower of the church behind. And while he so gazed, the knoll from the belfry began solemnly to chime. It was now near the hour of the Sabbath prayers, and amidst horror and carnage, still the holy custom ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... town. Giver of all good! but she is a brave lass, and a right and stout one, and fit to be helpmate to any knight-errant that is or is to be, who may make her his lady: the whoreson wench, what sting she has and what a voice! I can tell you one day she posted herself on the top of the belfry of the village to call some labourers of theirs that were in a ploughed field of her father's, and though they were better than half a league off they heard her as well as if they were at the foot of the tower; and the best of her is that she is not a bit prudish, for she has plenty of affability, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Ghirlandajo, who repainted it, availed himself greatly of the invention put into it by Orcagna, who also painted in fresco in the same church the Chapel of the Strozzi, which is near to the door of the sacristy and of the belfry, in company with Bernardo, his brother. In this chapel, to which one ascends by a staircase of stone, he painted on one wall the glory of Paradise, with all the Saints and with various costumes and head-dresses of those times. On the other wall he made Hell, with the abysses, centres, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... town. But Dr. Warren was before him, and, as the troops crossed the river, Paul Revere was rowing over the river farther down to Charlestown, having agreed with his friend, Robert Newman, to show lanterns from the belfry of the Old ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... Christendom a sombre murmur hung in the keen air over the country side like the belling of bees in the heather, and this murmurous tumult grew to a clangour in the cities. It was the tolling of the bells in a million belfry towers and steeples, summoning the people to sleep no more, to sin no more, but to gather in their churches and pray. And overhead, growing larger and brighter as the earth rolled on its way and the night passed, ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... numerous and splendid. The sumptuous church of Saint John or Saint Bavon, where Charles the Fifth had been baptized, the ancient castle whither Baldwin Bras de Fer had brought the daughter of Charles the Bald, the city hall with its graceful Moorish front, the well-known belfry, where for three centuries had perched the dragon sent by the Emperor Baldwin of Flanders from Constantinople, and where swung the famous Roland, whose iron tongue had called the citizens, generation after generation, to arms, whether to win battles over foreign kings ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was ringing from the belfry at Chamonix of a cold night shivering with the north wind and rain; the black streets, the darkened houses (except, here and there, the facades and courtyards of hotels where the gas was still burning) made the surroundings still more gloomy under the vague ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... ascend to a height often of fifty or sixty feet. During the war times they make use of these fires as signals from band to band, and each fire has a conventional meaning. Like the phares that flashed the alarm from hill-top to hill-top or the tocsin that sang from belfry to belfry in the Basse Bretagne, in the days of the rising of the Vendee, so those beacons would communicate as swiftly the tidings that one band or tribe had to convey to another. Again, speaking of the danger of fire-making, ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... belfry tower, Tolling the soft bell of Dreams. Four times he rings it each hour, Heaven with sound of it teems. Moons long past the Spirits said: "For untold Sins you must pay, Morning's gold but Evening's red, Your crimes must be paid each day." Worn and ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.
... high heaven Told the saints this mortal's lot, As the Angelus at even Rose to day that dieth not; And from out the nightly wonder Of the darkened world would float, Mingling with the near sea's thunder, Yonder belfry's ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... you met on the corridor just now—to let you in the church by the side door and give you the key, with which you will lock yourself in. Then go up into the belfry and watch. It is the full of the moon and clear. If you merely see a dozen or more figures gliding about the rancheria, that will mean that they are plotting, and intend no action to-night. If you see several hundred, run down and bring me word. But if you see ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... though,—carries on three diff'rent business propositions left by her late string of husbands, goes in deep for classical music, and is some kind of a high priestess in the theosophy game. A bit faddy, I judged, with maybe a few bats in her belfry. ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... cry escaped her, and she sank back an instant in the corner of the seat; but the chatter of the nurses, and the whimpering wail of one dissatisfied baby mercifully drowned the sound. The car, the trees on the Street, the belfry of a church seemed spinning in some witch's dance, and an icy wind swept over and chilled her. She threw aside her veil, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... chimes of the belfry rang forth with startling resonance, and twelve o'clock struck upon the stillness. Then followed upon the bells a solemn ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... belfry and farm bell were put on the comb of the roof of the first girls' hall. An axle was obtained and a wooden wheel and frame were made for the large old bell, and it was then mounted in the tower ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... the Ave Maria of Cherubini, which has a final amble with the organ, sounding well enough on the piano; but on that particular organ it sounded like two hens cackling and chasing each other. I had to mount the spiral staircase behind the belfry and wobble over the rickety planks before reaching the organ-loft. Fortunately, Count Metternich went with me and promised to stay with me till the bitter end; at any rate, he piloted me to the loft. The organ was put up in the ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... my work to get no leather to-day, Mester. Soon as I've putt in these here four nails, I'm gooing over to belfry." ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... whose belfry crowned The hill of Science with its vane of brass, Came the Preceptor, gazing idly round, Now at the clouds, and now at the green grass, And all absorbed in reveries profound Of fair Almira in the upper class, Who was, as in a sonnet he had said, As ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... roof had crumbled into dust. Some of the slender stone framework still dropped gracefully from the Gothic arch, and at the apex of all there still adhered a foot or two of the sturdy masonry of the old belfry. ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... to the farm in a dream, and only the thought of Lorna's death, like a heavy knell, was tolling in the belfry of my brain. Into the old farmhouse I tottered, like a weakling child, with mother helping me along, yet fearing, except by stealth, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... bastions. Within the enclosure are the low log buildings occupied by the Governor and his officers, the barracks of the soldiers, the arsenal, and storehouses. In one corner stands the Greek chapel, with its cupola and cross-surmounted belfry. The silver chimes have rung this night. The Governor, his beautiful wife, and their guest, Natalie Ivanhoff, have ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... brings us to the village of Newington, which possesses one of the quaintest little churches in Kent. Among other things it boasts some seventeen brasses—some dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries—an ancient dial, on oaken shaft fast mouldering away—and a picturesque wooden belfry surmounted by a vigorously modelled gilt ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... but his heart beat fast. He had found something upon which he could exercise his mathematics. He and Novarra sat up all night in the belfry of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... and 359. "The peasants had the right to deliberate on their own affairs directly and to elect their principal agents. They understood their own needs, were able to make a sacrifice for school and church.... for repairs of the town clock and the belfry. They appointed their own agents and generally elected the most capable."—Ibid, "La Ville sous 1'Ancien Regime," p.29. The artisans' guilds numbered at Paris one hundred and twenty-four. at Amiens sixty-four, and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... they'll atrophy and disappear like the tails of our ancestors. Meanwhile, I suppose they are bound to get sore. Mine is such a fierce, ill-bred, impudent sort of a brain, and it's as busy as a bat in a belfry. I often wish that I had one of those soft, flexible, paralytic, cocker-spaniel brains, like that of our friend Mrs. Seavey. She is so happy with it—so unterrified. She is equally at home in bed or on horseback, reading the last best seller or pouring tea and compliments. Now just ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... the belfry of a far-off church as the horses, plunging and panting, struggled up the road that led to ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... if it should keep its promise of leaving me at last, will have been preparing me for the accomplishment of such a project. Should I get thinner and thinner at this rate, I shall soon be able to mount not only a turret or a belfry, but a tube of macarone, while a Neapolitan is suspending it ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... to the listening skies; Come out forgetful of the week's turmoil, From halls of mirth and iron gates of toil; Come forth, come forth, and let your joy increase Till one loud paean hails the day of peace. Sing trembling age, ye youths and maidens sing; Ring ye sweet chimes, from every belfry ring; Pour the grand anthem till it soars and swells And heaven seems full of great celestial bells! Behold the Morn from orient chambers glide, With shining footsteps, like a radiant bride; The gladdened brooks proclaim her on the hills And every grove with ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... saddle until he fell fainting from his horse, Grant gained considerable distinction by his quick action in relieving a dangerous pressure on part of the American lines by posting a small gun in the belfry of a church and galling the enemy with his deadly accurate fire. It was characteristic of the man that when complimented upon this achievement and told that a second gun would be sent to him, Grant merely saluted. He might, with truth, have informed his commanding officer that the belfry ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... They slaughtered the monks also, among them my uncle Petzoldt; the prior Mikolaj was tied to a horse's tail. The next morning there was no man alive in this town except the Krzyzaks and myself. I hid on a beam in the belfry. God punished them at Plowce;[90] but they still want to destroy this Christian kingdom, and nothing will deter them unless ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... up the mountain side, while at our feet an unfathomable abyss seemed ready to engulf us. A little later we were passing through a charming village with its cottages and graceful belfry, above which light fleecy clouds floated lazily. Farther on a great lake with its blue waters, so calm and clear, would blend with the glowing splendour of the setting sun. I cannot tell you how deeply I was impressed with this scenery so full of poetry and grandeur. It was a foretaste ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... a long, long story that they would tell, all about the ages; and it would vary wonderfully little, much less perhaps than we think; and the repetitions rambling on and on in the evening, as the old belfry spoke and the cottages gathered below it, might sound so soothing after the boom of shells that perhaps you would nearly sleep. And then with one's memory tired out by the war one might never remember the long story ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... to reproduce the old faithfully, and it was found possible to utilize a little of the old material. The figures of Venice on the east wall above the belfry canopy and Justice on the west are the ancient ones pieced together and made whole; the lions on the north and south sides are new. The golden angel on the summit is the old one restored, with the novelty, to her, as to us, of being set on a pivot ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... see the belfry from this side—plays a polka by Haydn every hour. My aunt lives here." "Ghent—Hotel de Ville, some say finest specimen of Gothic architecture in Europe—where my mother lives. You could see the house if that church wasn't there." "Just passed Alost—great hop centre. My grandfather used ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... not mad, far from it. He's just a bit queer—he's got 'bats in the belfry', as men say. He gets these attacks when he's at home in the dark winter days and has nothing to occupy him. But there's little sign of it in the summer. And he's ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... into which a lot of Heinze's men had broken their way from the rear. They were firing up at the men in the towers of the cathedral. My position was not a pleasant one, for every time I raised my head the soldiers in the belfry would cut loose at me; and, though they failed to hit me, I did not dare to get up and run. Already the trough was leaking like a sieve. There was no officer with the men in the cafe, so they were taking the word from one of their own number, and were firing regularly ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... office in its time. A curious punishment was inflicted upon the priest who proved false to his own vows of chastity, and there is a most amusing old ballad—by no means cleanly in its language—purporting to be the lament of a priest suspended in the iron cage, appointed for the purpose, from the belfry of the Campanile San Marco, and enduring the jeers and insults of the mob below. We may suppose that with advancing corruption (if corruption has indeed advanced from remote to later times) this punishment was disused for want of room to hang out the delinquents. ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... and comes out at the Place de l'Hotel de Ville, close to St. Ouen. The Rue Cauchoise leads straight into the Place du Vieux Marche where Jeanne d'Arc was burnt. From there begins the Rue de la Grosse Horloge, the central artery of old Rouen, in which is the town's focal point, the belfry with its fountain and its archway. The other end of this street comes out on the open space or Parvis before the west door of the Cathedral. If you will go still further eastward by way of the Rue St. Romain, past the Portail des Libraires, the most characteristic ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... as a path of snow in the opal twilight. Then, in a wide-reaching plantation of olives, spraying silver on a ruddy soil where glimmered irrigation tanks and grinding mills, we came upon a large, irregular clump of white buildings grouped together, and made one by a high wall with an open belfry at one corner. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... turned into barbarity, so his religion had turned into foolish fanatic observance. He had built a monastery near Moscow for himself and three hundred chosen boyards, and every morning at three or four o'clock he took his two sons into the belfry with him and proceeded to strike the bells, the Russian mode of ringing them, till all the brethren were assembled. This bell-sounding was his favorite occupation, and in it he was engaged when Vasili arrived. The servant ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge |
