"Decapitation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and teachers of sects, as also those who conceal heretical meetings, or cause any other public scandal, shall be punished with the gallows, and their estates, where the law of the province permit it, confiscated; but if they abjure their errors, their punishment shall be commuted into decapitation with the sword, and their effects shall be preserved to their families." A cruel snare for parental affection! Less grievous heretics, it was further enacted, shall, if penitent, be pardoned; and if impenitent shall be compelled to leave the country, without, however, forfeiting their estates, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of a statute requiring the death penalty to be inflicted by means of electricity. The object was to deter evildoers by surrounding the penalty with scientific horror, [Footnote: Hence also the new lingual atrocity, the word "electrocute," derived from "execute" by decapitation and the addition of "electro"] and the idea had its origin in the accidents which formerly occurred much more frequently than now. The "death current" is now almost everywhere, though the care ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... But here arose a fresh difficulty, the earls saying that this permission did not extend to women, women not being used to be present at such sights, and when they were, usually upsetting everyone with cries and lamentations, and, as soon as the decapitation was over, rushing to the scaffold to staunch the blood with their ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... they have not to register their households, or attend to any magistrates and their rules; only those who cultivate the royal land have to pay (a portion of) the grain from it. If they want to go, they go; if they want to stay on, they stay. The king governs without decapitation or (other) corporal punishments. Criminals are simply fined, lightly or heavily, according to the circumstances (of each case). Even in cases of repeated attempts at wicked rebellion, they only ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... Constance gravely,—"makes a futile attempt semi-weekly to beat his brains out with a club; and every successive failure encourages him to try again; the only effect being a temporary decapitation of his family; and I believe this is the night on which he periodically turns a ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... moment, Knox, with peculiar mal-appropriateness, "in a foolish, incoherent sort of speech," says Jefferson, "introduced the pasquinade, lately printed, called The Funeral of George Washington"—a parody on the decapitation of the French king, in which the president was represented as placed on a guillotine. "The president," says Mr. Jefferson, "was much inflamed; got into one of those passions [which only for a moment and very rarely occurred] where he can not control ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... to entertain the spectators with the tortures of St. Dennis, and at length, when more than dead, they mercifully behead him: the Saint, after his decapitation, rises very quietly, takes his head under his arm, and walks off the stage in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... waits at the gate of the seraglio to compel thee," thundered the Hakim Bashi; "thou shalt die with tortures. The mercy of decapitation shall be denied thee, for thou knowest well Mohammedans will not pollute their swords with the blood of a Jew. Be advised by me, Sabbatai," he continued, lowering his tone. "Become one of us. After ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Stukely was a quaker, who went to Turkey with an intention of converting the Grand Turk: he narrowly escaped decapitation, by the interposition of the English ambassador. He was afterwards confined in an asylum: in answer to inquiries how he came there, he replied—"I said the world was mad, and the world said I was ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... fateful hour 1483-1485 Smothered his nephews in the Tower, He murdered them the Crown to gain; A heavy price for three years' reign. The Scutcheon's blotted terribly Of this King Richard number Three, For it seems his recreation Was ordering decapitation. 1485 On Bosworth Field when sorely pressed He made a bid th'uncommonest 'My kingdom for a horse' he cried; No offers coming, there ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... concern, which, according to them, would dispute their monopoly of exploitation. The defection of certain of their members who had found it to their advantage to go over bag and baggage to the rival house had roused them, to the wildest fury. They talked of decapitation. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... years before aggravated by persistence in them. Finally, I needed his place in Congress for a useful lieutenant of Woodruff's and ordered him beaten for the renomination. He made a bitter fight against decapitation, and, as he was popular with the people of his district, we had some difficulty in defeating him. But when he was beaten, he was of course helpless and hopelessly discredited,—the people soon forget a fallen politician. ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... It was a fine monster, about sixteen feet long; and although it had appeared dead, it bit furiously at a thick male bamboo which I ran into its mouth to prevent it from snapping during the process of decapitation. The natives regarded my men with disgust as they cut huge lumps of the choicest morsels and stowed them in the canoes; this did not occupy more than a quarter of an hour, and hurrying on board, we continued our voyage, well provided with meat —for all who liked ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... these men appeared to be chiefs; "sheiks" as the sailor heard them called by their followers, a party of whom—also with arms in their hands—stood behind each "sheik"—all seemingly alike eager to perform the act of decapitation. ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... Singh for his followers were to dress in blue clothes and especially eschew red or saffron-coloured garments and caps of all sorts, to observe personal cleanliness, especially in the hair, and practise ablutions, to eat the flesh of such animals only as had been killed by jatka or decapitation, to abstain from tobacco in all its forms, never to blow out flame nor extinguish it with drinking-water, to eat with the head covered, pray and recite passages of the Granth morning and evening and before all ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... can get. When a man reaches a stage where he depends for his living altogether on public office and to obtain that office is compelled to fight politicians with their own weapons, not much more need be said than a simple statement of the case. When the day of his decapitation arrives—and it comes to him soon or late—he is apt to develop into a lobbyist. Having been a congressman gives him the right to the floor of the House or Senate. He will be found later on championing any bill that has money in it, no matter ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... kinetic energy. Each is a vital organ, each equally vital. It may be said that excision of the brain may apparently cause death in less time than excision of the liver or adrenals, but this statement must be modified by our definition of death. If all the brain of an animal be removed by decapitation, its body may live on for at least eleven hours if its circulation be maintained by transfusion. An animal may live for weeks or months after excision of the cerebral hemispheres and the cerebellum, while an overtransfused animal may live ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... inches from the ground. The idea in this was to make things easier for the executioner; the same reason also explaining why the straw rope was tied to each man's top-knot; for in this way another man could hold him fast to the stool when the decapitation was to take place. A somewhat closer examination of the first body in the illustration will at once show how distorted it is. This is what must have happened: in the final struggle with death the owner had attempted to resist his fate, when several ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... that "to the victors belong the spoils of the enemy," and that during his month of cabinet service eighteen hundred employees in his department were dismissed. The Democrats evidently thought that "turn about was fair play," as a few years later, under President Polk, the work of decapitation was equally active. Ransom H. Gillett, Register of the Treasury at that time, became so famous at head-chopping, that he was ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... connected with it in the Low Countries, and in Germany, because in those parts there was a great and important difference between the punishments of persons of quality who had committed crimes; that decapitation in no way influenced the family of the decapitated, but that death on the wheel threw such infamy upon it, that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters, and the three next generations, were excluded from entering into any noble chapter, which, in addition to the shame, was a very injurious deprivation, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... it, and freed him. For the same reason, I committed to him the appeal to the Audiencia in the other cause of Don Joan de la Vega. While the latter, on my conscience, was more than guilty enough to suffer decapitation (to which I sentenced him), the same auditors so managed the cause that at last they did the same thing; they set him free, and condemned Captain Lucas de Manozca, formerly alcalde-in-ordinary of this city—who aided me in this cause and others to the service of your Majesty—to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... family names beginning with Gill-, may be from Gillian (see p. 46), or from Fr. Guillaume. A famous member of the latter family was Guillotin, the humanitarian doctor who urged the abolition of clumsy methods of decapitation. His name is a double diminutive, like Fr. diablotin, goblin. Leggatt is a variant of Lidgate, swing gate, and of Legate. Lovell is an affectionate diminutive or is for Old Fr. louvel, little wolf. It was also in Mid. English a dog's name, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... under-clothing and buckles of suspenders; by forcing teams of horses to tear their heads off; by drowning themselves in vats of soft soap; by plunging into retorts of molten glass; by jumping into slaughter-house tanks of blood; by decapitation with ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Daniel, Darerca, mother of Ciaran, Darerca, St., dates of Ciaran's life, dates of documents, deafness cured, decapitation, Decies, Deece, Delbna, Derercha. See Darerca. Dermag (Durrow, King's Co.), Dermicius. See Diarmait (deacon). Desi, Dessi, Diarmait, deacon, See also Iustus. Diarmait, St., Diarmait mac Cerrbeil, king, Dompnanus. See Donnan. doors open automatically, Donnan, brother of Ciaran, ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... same hour. It was a most evident attempt to establish an alibi; it was as much as to say, "If you miss any wheat, we didn't take it; we are honest birds, and stay at home o'nights, Dr. Percival." The next morning, however, a general decapitation overtook the flock of feathered hypocrites. "It was a curious instance of the domestic goose reverting to its wild habit of nocturnal feeding," remarked my narrator, dwelling characteristically upon the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... of the public mind may readily be conceived. The capital exhibited a scene of confusion and excitement only exceeded by that displayed four years afterward, when the decapitation of Louis XVI. was announced ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... tightly pressing the precious fowl in his arms, watched the carriage drive slowly away. Then, after an interval in the kitchen devoted to hiding his purchases, he sought the library, striving to simulate a decent depression over the assumed decapitation of Job. ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple
... accurately proportioned as the cases will permit. One species of capital punishment has been ordained instead of that multitude of cruel and barbarous deaths which were marshalled in terrible array along the columns of the former code. This punishment is decapitation. The only exception to this is in the case of parricide, in which, previous to decapitation, the right hand is cut off; and in the punishment for high-treason, in which the prisoner is made to walk barefoot, and with a crape veil over his head ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... character occurred afterwards, which amused me, but in a very different style. Our new Danish friend, the Baron B——, told us he had once been present at the decapitation of nine men, having first fortified himself with a large goblet of brandy. After describing the scene in all its horrible details, and assuring us in his bad German French that it was "une chose bien mauvaise a voir," I could not help asking him with ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... little remorse as Laud and his Star Chamber clipped the ears of Bastwick and Burton. We dug up and mutilated the remains of the Mahdi the other day exactly as we dug up and mutilated the remains of Cromwell two centuries ago. We have demanded the decapitation of the Chinese Boxer princes as any Tartar would have done; and our military and naval expeditions to kill, burn, and destroy tribes and villages for knocking an Englishman on the head are so common a part ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... considered a common murderer. This provision was clearly a limitation of the law of revenge. These laws of Ieyasu also describe the old methods of punishing criminals, and then add: "Criminals are to be punished by branding, or beating, or tying up, and, in capital cases, by spearing or decapitation; but the old punishments of tearing to pieces and boiling to death are not to be used." Torture was finally legally abolished in Japan only as late ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... his favors. Coke is no exception to the rule. It is true enough that to him we are mainly indebted for the movement which, beginning on the 30th of January, 1621, ended that very day eight-and-twenty years with the decapitation of the king; but it is likewise undeniable that the nation's difficulties would have waited some time longer for solution had not the defender of the people's rights been inoculated with a love of liberty by the sudden application of the royal lancet, whose sharp edge his judicious ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... have reached a trifle wide perhaps; too many celebrities? Though I was delighted to re-encounter my old friend Du Chaylu. Old Murat is perhaps your high-water mark; 'tis excellently human, cheerful and real. Do it again. Madame de Maintenon struck me as quite good. Have you any document for the decapitation? It sounds steepish. The devil of all that first part is that you see old Dumas; yet your Louis XIV. is distinctly good. I am much interested with this book, which fulfils a good deal, and promises more. Question: How far a Historical Novel ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her fore foot, with her claws, however, sheathed, and not in anger, but in the way of philosophic inquiry and examination. To prevent her falling a victim to so laudable an exercise of her talents, I interposed in a moment with the hoe, and performed on him an act of decapitation which, though not immediately mortal, proved so in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... him that I loved him by my obedience and my trust. He took me a long carriage journey, where to I know not, for we never spoke of that day again; I was led through a prison, into a closed court-yard, where, decently draped in the last robes of death, concealing the marks of decapitation, lay M. de la Tourelle, and two or three others, whom I ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... were ill-fed and in rags. There is, however, a limit beyond which a government calling itself civilized may not go, and as the public opinion of the world, crystallized into what we call international law, will not permit the wholesale decapitation of prisoners, as might be done by a king of Ashantee or Dahomey, so it forbids the herding of captive men in a mere corral, leaving them utterly without shelter of any sort through the sleet and rain of winter, near the North Carolina mountains. It forbids starving them to death ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... nailed to wooden crosses, while across their corpses were slashed a cross in derision of the religion of his foes. The bodies were then cast into the harbour, and were washed up at the foot of Il Borgo. Instantly the Grand Master ordered the decapitation of all the Turkish prisoners, and their heads were fired from cannon into ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... of Europe immediately remonstrated, and it was hoped that the law against apostates from Mohammedanism would be permitted to become a dead letter. In a few months, however, a firman issued from the government ordering the decapitation of a young man near Brooza, who was put to death for having promised in a passion, but had afterwards refused, to become a Mohammedan. Lord Aberdeen, the British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, then demanded of the Turkish ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... present instance, however, the prisoner was prodigal of words. He did not seem to think that there was any danger of his being the medium of accomplishing his own decapitation. He did not hesitate like those who are afraid of misplacing a word of the romance they are substituting for the truth. Under other circumstances, this fact would have been a strong ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... she made careful enquiry, and found that the number of lives sacrificed annually at the instance of this custom could not have averaged fewer than 150 within a radius of twenty miles, while the same number must have died from ordeals and decapitation on charges of causing sickness. To these had to be added the number killed in ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... Trade and Navigation, as if they were acts of royal despotism and designed to oppress the colonies for the benefit of England; whereas they originated with the Commonwealth, and were designed to benefit the colonies as well as the mother country. "After the decapitation of Charles I.," says Minot, "the confused situation of England prevented any particular attention to the colony until Cromwell's Government. The very qualities which existed in the character of the inhabitants to render them displeasing to the late King, operated as much with ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... that the Astrologer Royal was not only absent, but incapable of such a liberty; it really was the boar's head that had spoken, as animals in Maerchenland would on rare occasions—even after suffering decapitation. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... This is because of its resistance to any arrest of the circulation and also because its survival is easily shown by its contractility. In man the heart has been seen to beat spontaneously and completely 25 minutes after a legal decapitation (Renard and Loye, 1887), and by massage of the organ its beating may be restored after it has been arrested for 40 minutes (Rehn, 1909). By irrigation of the heart and especially of its coronary vessels the period of revival may be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... America that he wanted to die, and that the Shah of Persia wrote a letter to Uncle, all in his own writing, except the longest words, and said that he had ordered Uncle's speech on America to be printed and read aloud by all the schoolmasters in Persia under penalty of decapitation. Nearly ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... crime in Canton, one would look in vain for justice, but there is plenty of cruelty. We visited the execution yard, a circumscribed space in the very heart of the city. Here, our guide told us, twenty condemned prisoners were executed weekly, by decapitation, each Friday being devoted to clearing the docket. The executioner takes off a head with one stroke of the sword, and the guide said he had witnessed the decapitation of eleven heads in seven minutes. Through a grating in the wall of the yard, an open area was seen where a crowd of manacled ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... When he was hardly four years old, the discharge of a high moral lesson shook his ears: it was the French troops who were shooting brigands in the outskirts of Sonnino. After the return of Pius VII. he witnessed the decapitation of a few neighbouring relatives who had often dandled him on their knees. Under Leo XII. it was still worse. Those wholesome correctives, the wooden horse and the supple-jack, were permanently established in the village square. About once a ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... until he shall have arrived at an age when he can be taught a trade. The tiny fellow is small for his eight years, and his little wizened face, sallow and delicate, has a plausible tale to tell. He is always fretting and grieving for those whose heads were shown to him after decapitation. However, he is being cared for, and it is doubtful whether the authorities—or even the emperor himself—will mete out punishment to him when he grows older. He did nothing; he knew nothing. At the present time he is going through a class-book which teaches him ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Courage, my brave lads! give them no quarter unless they surrender; and struck a furious blow upward with his sabre, that would have divided the steward into moieties by subjecting him to the process of decapitation, but for the fortunate interference of the muzzle of the swivel. As it was, the gun was dismounted at the critical moment that Benjamin was applying his pipe to the priming, and in consequence some five or six dozen of rifle bullets were projected ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... life by the scenes of the Greve. It was the theatre of the day. The gibbet and the wheel did their work almost periodically, and people looked on while poor wretches writhed in slow agony all day long. Sometimes the programme was varied by decapitation and even by the stake. Torture had its legends and its heroes—the everyday talk of the generation which, having begun by seeing Damiens torn by red-hot pincers, was to end by rending Foulon limb ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... the same way, and then he turns his attention to "Mrs. Maruf," whom he threatens with death if she refuses to marry him. At a banquet she makes the Vizier drunk, obtains possession of the ring, secures the return of Maruf and the Sultan, and the decapitation ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... a pretty fair specimen of revolutionary reasoning; but it is rather a definition of Democracy, as Lamartine understands it, than a constitutional argument in favor of the decapitation of "Louis Capet." Lamartine is, indeed, a "Conservative Democrat," that is, ready to immolate the king to preserve the rights of the people; but he does not distinguish in his mind a justifiable act ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... Rome, who, albeit that he spoke very good French and Italian, always broke out in English when he saw a picture of a martyrdom of any kind soever; 'That one very good man, cut his head off.' The man had but one idea of death, and the same may be said of these primitive people, who look upon decapitation as the easiest ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... palace, situated on the banks of a river. In one of the rooms, there was a painting of Ogurlu- Mohammed, the kings eldest son, leading the sultan Busech, or Abu Said, tied with a rope; and in another picture the decapitation of Busech was represented. We were again invited to an entertainment, at which many different kinds of confections were served up. We remained at Ispahan till the 25th of November, during which period ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... Hannah, had been cunningly secreted by Aileen between the imbricate petals, and then tied, in a manner invisible at night, with a fine thread of pink silk begged from Ann. It was now acting and re-acting on the lining of the serenader's olfactory organ in a manner to threaten final decapitation. Champney was still young enough to resent being made a subject of such practical joking by a little girl; but he was also sufficiently wise to acknowledge to himself that he had been worsted and, in the end, to put a good face on it. It is true ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... us to tell how eager spirits not only groped after God, but sought the living Christ—though often this meant to them imprisonment, suicide enforced by the law, or decapitation. Yet over all Japan, long before the broad pennant of Perry was mirrored on the waters of Yedo Bay, there were here and there masses of leavened opinion, spots of kindled light, and fields upon which the tender green sprouts of new ideas could be detected. To-day, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... who visited nightly Van Amburg's exhibition of the head-in-the-lion's-mouth feat, in the moral certainty that a single absence would fall inevitably upon the one night when Leo would vary the programme by decapitation,—so we lost the one afternoon when that dull discourse diversified the pious eloquence of Jotham Baxter, D.D., disciple of Dr. Hopkins and believer in Cotton Mather. Many a refreshing slumber has sealed our eyes under subsequent outpourings of divinity, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Lady Sarah, the daughter of Sir John Evelyn and widow of Sir John Wray. [Footnote: The ancient Lincolnshire family of Wray is mentioned in the Introduction of "King Monmouth" in connection with the remarkable portrait of the Duke after decapitation, which formerly was in the possession of Sir Cecil Wray. Since writing on this subject it occurs to me that it is very possible that the picture may have come originally to the Wrays through Lady Sarah Fanshawe, her husband being a cousin of the Duke's sister's second husband. Mary Fanshawe, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... presided over by the king himself. Lancaster, not allowed to say a word in his defence, was at once sentenced to death as a rebel and a traitor. In consideration of his exalted rank, the grosser penalties of treason were commuted, as in the case of Gaveston, to simple decapitation. On the morning of March 22 Thomas was led out of his castle, clad in the garb of a penitent and mounted on a sorry steed. He was conducted to a little hill outside the walls. The crowd mocked at his sufferings and in scorn called him "King Arthur". In two or three blows of the axe, his head ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... his knife into the defenceless young throat, he nevertheless controlled his sentiments and looked up for instructions. Since the splendid decapitation which Coronado had performed, Texas respected him as he had never heretofore hoped to ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... his own language, 'on the last day of June, when the people were celebrating in Rome the festivity of the most happy decapitation of Saint Paul the Apostle, whose head was cut off by the most cruel Nero—on that very day, about an hour and a half after sunrise, the aforesaid Holiness of our Sovereign Lord caused the Protonotary Colonna to be beheaded in the Castle; and there were present the Senator and the Judge of ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... a horrible law into execution as was devised to meet the requirements of the case. First an arm was chopped off, then the other; the two legs in the same way. Two slits were made transversely on the breast, and the heart was torn out; decapitation finished the proceedings. Now, a slight gash only is made across each collar-bone, and three gashes across the breast in the shape of the character meaning one thousand, and indicative of the number ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... Alabama Ranch who seems undisturbed by Peter's departure is Whinstane Sandy. He reminds me of a decrepit but robustious old rooster repossessing himself of a chicken-run after the decapitation of an arrogant and envied rival. He has with a dour sort of blitheness connected up the windmill pump, in his spare time, and run a pipe in through the kitchen wall and rigged up a sink, out of a galvanized pig-trough. It may not ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... account of his integrity, committed his treasure to the care of this good man. But Decius, not finding as much as his avarice made him expect, determined to wreak his vengeance on the good prelate. He was accordingly seized; and on the 20th of January, A. D. 250, he suffered decapitation. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Australian, for instance, not content with slaying his enemy, cuts off the right thumb of the corpse, so that the departed soul may be incapacitated from throwing a spear. Even the half-civilized Chinese prefer crucifixion to decapitation, that their souls may not wander headless about the spirit-world. [171] Thus we see how far removed from the Christian doctrine of souls is the primeval theory of the soul or other self that figures ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... was skimming along the ground as a moor-hen scuppers across the water, the mechanics having assisted her initial progress by pushing the lower stays and then ducking under the planes, as she gathered way, and just missing decapitation. It's a way they have. She took a run for it, her engine humming like a top, and then rose, and gradually climbed the sky. Peter gazed at her wistfully. "And he promised to take me up ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... for her little girl, Minnie. She had promised the head this year. Next Christmas they would buy a body for it. Molly Brandeis's quick sympathy went out to the little girl who was to lavish her mother-love on a doll's head for a whole year. She saw the head, in ghastly decapitation, staring stiffly out from the cushions of the chill and funereal parlor sofa, and the small Minnie peering in to feast her eyes upon ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... a fate not by any means to be lived down. If George rode the huge rocking-horse, he was Paul Revere, or some equally historic figure, and sometimes, to Edith's terror, he was compelled to assume the role of Bluebeard, when Honora submitted to decapitation with a fortitude amounting to stoicism. Hide and seek was altogether too tame for her, a stake of life and death, or imprisonment or treasure, being a necessity. And many times was Edith extracted from the recesses of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... by some of the princes of Malabar. Thus we are informed by a native authority on that country that "in some places all powers both executive and judicial were delegated for a fixed period to natives by the sovereign. This institution was styled Thalavettiparothiam or authority obtained by decapitation. . . . It was an office tenable for five years during which its bearer was invested with supreme despotic powers within his jurisdiction. On the expiry of the five years the man's head was cut off and thrown up in the air amongst a large concourse ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... to the imagination of the mother are so numerous that they cannot be refuted. The case mentioned here is taken from Van Helmont's De Injectis Materialibus. The woman in question had been present at the decapitation of thirteen soldiers, condemned to death by the Duc d'Alva. In the same work are two other instances which occurred under similar circumstances: in the first, the foetus at birth was lacking a hand; and in the second, it was the whole arm ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... the persecuted the deluge hero [the one floating in the ark]. II, A: Eve's apple Moses in the ark Onan's seed fire soma draught of knowledge, etc. III, B: Tearing open of the womb decapitation or dismemberment exposure separation of the first parents. IV, B: The dismembered [man or woman] the rejuvenated the reborn [m. or w.]. VI, A: Potiphar motive separation of first parents Onan motive. VII, A: The wicked stepmother Potiphar's wife ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... the Presidency. When he entered the Elysee, the executive authority went out of it. The Third French Republic, such as it now exists, was constituted on that day—the anniversary, by the way, oddly enough, of the decapitation of Charles I. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... in the hall of the castle, before a small number of peers, among whom were the Spencers, his mortal enemies. The earl was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered; but the punishment was changed to decapitation. After sentence was passed, he said, "Shall I die without answer?" He was not, however, permitted to speak; but a certain Gascoign took him away, and having put an old hood over his head, set him on a lean mare without a bridle. Being attended by a Dominican friar as his confessor, he was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... unhappy poet, has produced a wonderful piece of literature in his treatment of {497} the brutal facts connected with Salome's dance and Jokanaan's decapitation. ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... was, whether the decapitation of Charles the First were a justifiable act, and the debate was opened in the affirmative by a young man with a singularly sunny face and a voice of music. His statement was clear and calm. Though nothing could be more uncompromising than ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... in the plate), the author remarks that it is "celebrated for the leap of Sappho, and the death of Artemisia." From this variety in the expression, a reader would hardly conceive that both the ladies perished in the same manner: in fact, the sentence is as proper as it would be to talk of the decapitation of Russell, and the death of Sidney. The view from this promontory includes the island of Corfu; and the name suggests to Mr. Gell the following note, which, though rather irrelevant, is of a curious nature, and we therefore conclude our ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... H. V. Alaeddin promises, "if I fail to find and fetch the Princess, I will myself cut off my head and cast it before the throne." Hindus are adepts in suicide and this self- decapitation, which sounds absurd further West, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... identified with, a god or goddess, e.g., the hair with Nu, the face with Aten (i.e., the solar disk), the eyes with Hathor, and the deceased exclaims triumphantly, "There is no member of my body which is not the member of a god." Chapter XLIII. A spell to prevent the decapitation of the deceased, who assumes in it the character of Osiris the Lord of Eternity. Chapter XLIV. An ancient and mighty spell, the recital of which prevented the deceased from dying a second time. Chapters XLV and XLVI preserved the mummy of the deceased ...
— The Book of the Dead • E. A. Wallis Budge
... festival of a god of learning,—came together in small groups and passed the night without sleep, in reading aloud by turns. Pilgrimages to all sorts of uncanny places—to execution grounds, to graveyards, to houses reputed to be haunted, were favorite pastimes of the young. In the days when decapitation was public, not only were small boys sent to witness the ghastly scene, but they were made to visit alone the place in the darkness of night and there to leave a mark of their visit ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... to the eldest she intrusted Solyman's signet-ring and the pass-key which Aischa had sent her. The slaves bowed three times to the empress mother—laid their hands on their heads to imply that they would deserve decapitation if they neglected the orders they had received—and then withdrew. There was something terribly sinister in their appearance, as they retired noiselessly but rapidly through the long, silent and darkened corridors of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... figure. Sixteen years after this event the purchaser applied to me for a Stradivari scroll, that he might make his instrument complete. The mongrel Violin described above being in my possession, decapitation was duly performed, and the Stradivari received its head again. Here was a fortuitous course of circumstances! This exchange of heads took place without my being at all aware that the "Strad" scroll had returned to its original ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... is named after the Chinese philosopher-warrior, Sun Tzu. The "Sun Tzu" example is based on selective, instant decapitation of military or societal targets to achieve Shock and Awe. This discrete or precise nature of applying force differentiates this from Hiroshima and Massive Destruction examples. Sun Tzu was brought before ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... domination toward the end of the Manchu Period, but chiefly owing to the bait held out by Western Powers, that extraterritoriality would be abolished when China had reformed her judicial system, a new Provisional Criminal Code was published. It substituted death by hanging or strangulation for decapitation, and imprisonment for various lengths of time for bambooing. It was adopted in large measure by the Republican regime, and is the chief legal instrument in use at the present time. But close examination reveals the fact that it is almost an exact copy of the Japanese penal code, ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... its imprecations against Capet, which, on the 2d of December, 1804, acclaimed the Emperor and the Empress, and which, on this occasion, welcomed with cries of joy the orphan of the Temple after having applauded the decapitation of his father and his mother." When this same populace, turned Republican again, thronged along the boulevards and into the Place Vendome in 1831, singing the Marseillaise, Marechal Lobau, unwilling to fire on them, contented ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... as if some Clericalist or Royalist writer should give a list of the Archbishops of Paris from 1750 to 1850, noting how one died of small-pox, another of old age, another by a curious accident of decapitation, and throughout all his record should never once mention the nature, or even the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... in cages whose skills astonished the passer-by, and whose accomplishments prove the patience of the fifteenth-century artisan. Such curiosities did more to enrich their fortunate owners than the signs of "Providence," "Good-faith," "Grace of God," and "Decapitation of John the Baptist," which may still be seen ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... oozes out entirely as soon as it liquifies in youth. The pipkin, therefore, goes through life empty and cracked, ever sounding flat and false. While in others the Me is enclosed in a sealed straw-covered flask and can only be awakened by either evaporation or decapitation, in other words, by a spiritual revolution. And in the very few among mortals, it emerges out of the iron calyx of a flower of red-hot steel, or flows from the transparent, odoriferous bosom of a rose of light. In the first we have a Caesar, an Alexander, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... in finding him guilty of the acts recorded in their narrative, but three of them had held out for some time in favour of a sentence of perpetual imprisonment rather than decapitation. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... here, represents, on the right, the Union Generals who had been defeated by the Confederates in battle, and had suffered decapitation in consequence—McDowell, who lost at Bull Run; McClellan, who failed to take Richmond, when within twelve miles of that city and no opposition, comparatively; and Burnside, who was so badly whipped at Fredericksburg. To the left of the block, where the President is standing ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... was always one or two beef cattle to kill. Sheep had also to be slaughtered, with the turkeys, geese and ducks, which had been getting ready for decapitation. After home wants were provided for, the rest ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... was not more successful. When a pair of mantis were put together in a glass they fought viciously, the fight ending with the decapitation of the male and his being ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... French revolution, and time. Among the lower and smaller basso-relievos upon these porches, is the subject of the daughter of Herodias dancing before Herod. She is manoeuvering on her hands, her feet being upwards. To the right, the decapitation of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... decapitation of the King reached Scotland, that loyal people were moved with horror ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... unhappy Count, was the great object of their solicitude. They now endeavored to obtain a minor grace. They represented that in the Netherlands, and in Germany, there was an important difference in the public mind as to the mode of inflicting the punishment of death upon persons of quality. That decapitation had no influence on the fortunes of the family of the executed, but that the punishment of the wheel was such an infamy, that the uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters of the criminal, and his whole family, for three succeeding generations, were excluded from all noble chapters, princely abbeys, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... the death of our hero. The manner of it was decapitation, the instrument a mowing machine. A young son of the deceased, dumb with horror, seized the paternal head and ran with ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... from a great mind induced him to sacrifice rank, fortune, and power, to the cause of Greece, his native land. He only saved his life by flight; for the angry Sultan with whom he had previously been a great favourite, had already sent an order for his decapitation! Never was a reverse of fortune borne with greater equanimity than by this charming family, whose virtues, endowments, and acquirements, fit them ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... difference with the Spaniards was speedily settled by negociation [sic], the jealousy entertained of the French Anarchists occasioned our Government to keep the country in armed preparation; till the indignation universally excited by the decapitation of the unfortunate French King, and the invasion of Holland by the armies of the French Republic, caused us to enter into that war, whose wide-extended fluence has deluged the continent of Europe with blood, tumbled the papal throne in ruins, dethroned the ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... transom-stone over the door, is sculptured the genealogical tree of Christ, arising from the root of Jesse. The carving over the north entrance is yet more peculiar, and evidently far older. It represents the decapitation of the Baptist, with "Salome dancing in an attitude, which perchance was often assumed by the tombesteres of the elder day; affording, by her position, a graphical comment upon the Anglo-Saxon version of the text, in which it is said, that she tumbled before King Herod."[101] ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... ritual suicide by disemboweling themselves with a long, sharp knife. Across the abdomen—so!—and up into the heart—so! It was considered very bad form to faint or die before the job was done. Nearby, a relative or a close friend stood with a sharp sword, to administer the coup de grace by decapitation. It was all very sad and very honorable. Their loved ones bore the ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... that their king was slain, and Edmond had a lively quarter of an hour in correcting the error and restoring order. He finally did so and won victory at last. The chronicler gave the name of the Saxon who thus suffered untimely decapitation as Hosmer. I told the story and Freeman at once insisted that it should be confirmed. He sent his daughter to the library, who returned bearing a huge tome containing the chronicle of Florence of Worcester. Freeman turned ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... a second altar, garnished - as Mr. Verdant Green soon perceived, to his horror and amazement - with a human head (or the representation of one) projecting from a black cloth that concealed the neck, and, doubtless, the marks of decapitation. Its ghastly features were clearly displayed by the aid of a wax light placed in a tall silver candlestick by ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... by hoodwinking his honor and his conscience; otherwise intact, and far more so than his colleagues, he likewise undergoes moral and mental mutilation; constrained by the duties of his post and the illusions of his creed, he succeeded in an inward decapitation of the two noblest of human faculties, common-sense, the most useful, and the moral sense, the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... ear; blow &c. (impulse) 276; stripe, cuff, kick, buffet, pummel; slap, slap in the face; wipe, douse; coup de grace; torture, rack; picket, picketing; dragonnade[obs3]. capital punishment; execution; lethal injection; the gas chamber; hanging &c.v.; electrocution, rail-riding, scarpines[obs3]; decapitation, decollation[obs3]; garrotte, garrotto[It]; crucifixion, impalement; firing squad; martyrdom; auto-da-fe[Fr]; noyade[obs3]; happy dispatch. [suicide as punishment] hara-kiri, seppuku [Japanese]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... royal Audiencia of Manila can be seen in what they did. For after two years of imprisonment of one of the Indians whom that expedition prosecuted, his property was confiscated. Another was tortured and condemned to death by decapitation. Another was reduced to extreme poverty. All were persuaded that the heavy hand was entering there. Finally the governor committed the examination of the causes to Licentiate Manuel Suarez de Olivera, auditor-general of war and assessor of the governor of Manila. He declared in favor of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... woman—the actual fact or legality of it was ignored—his ill-treatment and sale of her; all these in terror he denied. Once he had looked upon banishment from Edo as the limit of his punishment. Now decapitation would be a merciful end. He strove to secure the favour of a quick and painless death. Again he was beaten almost to a jelly. He clung to his denial, so important was the issue. At the next appearance he was seized and dragged to a post fixed in the ground not far from the judge's ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... to speak as of the harp itself: "He was one of those politicians who are never contented; who plot and counterplot incessantly; who are always running their heads fearlessly, to be sure, but indiscreetly, into danger of decapitation." This fine analytic power appears throughout the book. Describing the enthusiasm of the Londoners for Henry of Bolingbroke, and their coldness towards the captive King Richard, the historian acutely observes: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Mandarin's wig. Yes, of course it is one of his props. He has just been engaged on a great work: "The Decapitation of a Mandarin after a Chinese Reverse." The gentleman who sat for the Mandarin ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... the Decapitation of S. John the Baptist, the emperor attended service at the Studion in great state. Early in the morning the members of the senate assembled therefore at the monastery, while dignitaries of an inferior rank took their place outside the gate (Narli Kapou) in the city walls below the monastery, ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... indomitable energy, the Folk went on with their daily tasks. Stern concluded the great funeral ceremony, which must have taken place over the fallen defenders, and the horrible rites attending the decapitation, boiling, and hanging up of the trophies of war, the Lanskaarn skeletons, certainly must have formed a series of barbaric pictures more ghastly than any drug-fiend's most diabolical nightmare. He thanked God that the girl had ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... was found in a field that belonged of old to the Priory of Pomfret, but at least a quarter of a mile distant from the hill where the chapel stood. Within was the skeleton of a full-grown man, partially preserved; the skull lay between the thighs. There is no record of the decapitation of any person at Pomfret of sufficient dignity to have been interred in a manner showing so much care for the preservation of the body, except the Earl of Lancaster. The coffin may have been removed here at the time ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.19 • Various
... the inventory writer describes. It is entitled "An Inventory of the Goods, Jewels, Plate, &c. belonging to King Charles the First, sold by order of the Council of State, from the year 1619 to 1652." So that from the decapitation of the king, a year was allowed to draw up the inventory; and the sale ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... gentleman approached me with a letter: I received him with a strange nervousness; was there any crime in my record, I asked fitfully, for which I had been traced to this obscure suburb for condign arrest and decapitation? Ha! ha! it was my heart, not my lips, that laughed. I could have cried out like Enoch Arden in his ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... smiled and whispered. Elizabeth inquired the reason. They were amused, answered Oxford, to see that when jacks went up heads went down. The point of the sarcasm is presumed to have been the connexion of Ralegh's influence with the decapitation of Essex. That the reference was to Ralegh might have seemed rather dubious had not Bacon taken it for granted. The fact of the favour of ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Tchatcha-em-ankh before King Khufu, 3766 B. C. In this manuscript it is stated of the magician: "He knoweth how to bind on a head which hath been cut off; he knoweth how to make a lion follow him, as if led by a rope; and he knoweth the number of the stars of the house (constellation) of Thoth." The decapitation trick is thus no new thing, while the experiment performed with the lion, possibly a hypnotic feat, ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... spent a month and a year trying to establish peace, and promulgating rules and good customs in every district, among the laity and clergy. His efforts to teach "good rules and manners" seem to have been scarcely effectual, for we find an immediate entry of the decapitation of Ruaidhri, after he had made a "treacherous prey" in Aictheara. In the year 1128 the good Archbishop succeeded in making a year's truce between the Connaught men and the men of Munster. The following year the saint died at Ardpatrick, where he was making a visitation. He was only ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... authorities have accumulated much important evidence in the matter and the attorneys for the prosecution claimed with perfect confidence that they would be able to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that both Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling are guilty of the murder, and decapitation of Pearl Bryan. It was claimed by them that enough evidence has been secured to reveal how, when, where and by whom Pearl Bryan was murdered; to reveal the secret of her whereabouts on the night proceeding ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... during the reigns of the emperors Valerian and Gallienus. The legends recount some ridiculous miracles wrought in favour of this saint, both before and after his death. Charles V. emperor of Germany and king of Spain, caused this monastery to be built on the spot where Pontius suffered decapitation. But to return to the inscription: it ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... him that, under advantageous circumstances, would enable him to spring again to his former height of power and riches. But he struck me as happy, although some of his social customs recalled the feudal age, and he lived under the always-present contingency of decapitation. May it be long before speculation rears the horrid front of a joint-stock hotel in Tangier, or the prospectors go divining for copper, coal, iron, silver and gold. I could wish the Moorish women, however, would wash ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... wipe, douse; coup de grace; torture, rack; picket, picketing; dragonnade^. capital punishment; execution; lethal injection; the gas chamber; hanging &c v.; electrocution, rail-riding, scarpines^; decapitation, decollation^; garrotte, garrotto [It]; crucifixion, impalement; firing squad; martyrdom; auto-da-fe [Fr.]; noyade^; happy dispatch. [suicide as punishment] hara-kiri, seppuku [Jap.]; drinking the hemlock. V. punish; chastise, chasten; castigate, correct, inflict punishment, administer ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... three of our fellow-sufferers, knowing the horrible fate in store for them, managed to snatch knives from the belts of our captors and commit suicide before our eyes, preferring death by their own hands to decapitation by the executioners of Prempeh, that bloodthirsty monarch who has now happily been deposed by the British Government, but who at that time was sacrificing thousands of human lives annually, defiant and heedless of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... of dissection; the abdomen had been already cleared out, and the corpse was portioned out to the different students of anatomy for the purpose of illustration; the arms to one class, the legs to another, the head to a third, &c. so that in less than a quarter of an hour, decapitation and dismemberment were completely effected; and the trunk was deserted, as an uninteresting object, from which there could not be derived any information of importance, further than that which ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... have chosen a more effective way of crippling the expedition. The resolution of the most wealthy of the armed housekeepers were shaken. They feared a confiscation more than hanging or decapitation. One hundred and seventy of the followers of Bacon obeyed the ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... haul, he had made fervid promises, after the fashion of his race, to the shoemaker Mahommed Nafar. At first the shoemaker would have nothing to do with it: helping prisoners to escape meant torture and decapitation; but then he hated the Khalifa, whose Baggaras had seized his property, and killed his wife and children; and in the end Macnamara prevailed. Mahommed Nafar found some friendly natives from the hills of Gilif, who hated the Khalifa and his tyrannous governments, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... retained more of their original brightness than those we had already seen, although the pictures were the production of a somewhat inferior hand, a pupil of Perugino. They seemed to be very striking, however, not the less so, that one of them provoked an unseasonable smile. It was the decapitation of John the Baptist; and this holy personage was represented as still on his knees, with his hands clasped in prayer, although the executioner was already depositing the head in a charger, and the blood was spouting from the headless trunk, directly, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are among the worst vices of volcanoes. Every visitor to Naples remembers how plainly the landscape north of Vesuvius tells of a prehistoric decapitation, which left only a low, broad platform, on the south rim of which the little Vesuvius that many of us have climbed was formed by later eruptions, while a part of the north rim is well defined in "Monte Somma." Similarly, here at home, ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... their households, or attend to any magistrates and their rules; only those who cultivate the royal land have to pay a portion of the gain from it. If they want to go they go; if they want to stay on, they stay. The king governs without decapitation or other corporal punishments. Criminals are simply fined, lightly or heavily, according to the circumstances of each case. Even in cases of repeated attempts at wicked rebellion, they only have their right hands ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... body of which was markedly wasted. There was complete absence of amniotic fluid during labor. Blumenthal presented to the New York Pathological Society an ovum within which the fetus was under going intrauterine decapitation. Buchanan describes a case illustrative of the etiology of spontaneous amputation of limbs in utero Nebinger reports a case of abortion, showing commencing amputation of the left thigh from being encircled by the funis. The death of the fetus was probably due to compression ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Danilograd, I learned that this was practically impossible, the road beyond Podgoritza being not only dangerous for persons, but impracticable for beasts, as the country was under water. No Montenegrin would venture into the Turkish territory with the certainty of incurring decapitation,—if not in my company, at any rate on his return without me; so, on consultation with the sirdar in command at Danilograd, I sent back to Cettinje the horses we had come with, and hired those of ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... had solidly voted against the Tenure-of-office bill two years before, voted now with entire consistency for its repeal, and with them also, in solid ranks, voted the men who, in the preceding Congress, had clamored most loudly for Johnson's decapitation. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... past two hundred and fifty years, these have been—beating with the light bamboo, beating with the heavy bamboo, transportation for a certain period, banishment to a certain distance, and death, the last being subdivided into strangling and decapitation, according to the ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... Lisia obliges the saints and their three brethren to sacrifice to idols; in the third the angels save them from drowning; in the fourth they are condemned to be burnt alive, and sing psalms in the midst of the flames; in the fifth is the stoning; and lastly the decapitation. ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... little; a squeaking of scrannel pipes; a feminine 'break-down' of the most effrenee description, and a general libation to the Bacchus of Blackland. A debauched and drunken Ashanti, who executed for our benefit a decapitation-dance, evidently wishing that we had been its objects, thanked us ironically for a sixpence. We met some difficulty in seeing the swords, which were not to be sold. They were the usual rusty and decayed fish-slicers; Cameron, however, was kind enough ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... the Porte. His offers were at once accepted; and he now displayed singular activity in the extirpation of all the other popular chiefs, who still held out in the woods and fastnesses, and sent their heads to the Pasha; but the decapitation of Glavash, who was, like himself, supporting the government, showed that when he had accomplished the ends of Soliman Pasha, his own turn would come; he therefore employed the ruse described in page 55, made his escape, and, convinced that it was impossible ever to come to terms with Soliman ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... from their heavenward gaze, they fell upon the shrouded face of her master. A napkin concealed the wound of decapitation. "Chiefs," cried she, in a burst of recollection, "ye have not seen all the cruelty of these murderers!" At these words she suddenly withdrew the linen, and lifting up the pale head, held it wofully toward Wallace. "Here," cried she, "once more kiss these lips! ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... consternation, he found his old father, of some seventy years of age, had got possession of the young blooming widow, the object he had so fondly cherished on his weary way over the solitudes of The Sahara! But like the doomed Pasha, who receives the imperial order of his decapitation from the hand of the executioner, and kisses it and then bows his head to the stroke, so the young merchant, full of filial veneration for his aged sire, submitted silently and without a murmur to this cruel decree of heaven. It is said of the lady that she pines and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... easy to forecast the first stages of the End's approach: Rioting. Disaffection of constabulary and troops. Subversion of the Government A policy of decapitation. Upthrust of the serviceable Anarchist. His prompt effacement by his victorious ally and natural enemy, the Socialist. Free minting and printing of money—to every citizen a shoulder-load of the latter, to the printers a ton each. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... driver's brutal lash, he saw himself, ever lashed and stung by the torturing consciousness of what might have been, by the recollection of what had been. Or did they fall exhausted, fainting, to die, or to undergo decapitation to insure that such exhaustion should not open even a feeble possibility of escape, there too, he saw himself sinking, borne down by the sheer blank hopelessness of fate, taking refuge in the Dark Unknown, his end the grave ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... he could rise and slay and eat, vampire-like, as in the tale of Asmund and Aswit. He must in such case be mastered and prevented doing further harm by decapitation and thigh-forking, or by staking and burning. So criminals' bodies were often burnt ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... above. At last the court was reopened. D'Ormesson, a man of excellent family and social position, who had favored the accused throughout the trial, delivered his opinion at length. He concluded for banishment. The next judge voted for decapitation, but with a recommendation to mercy. Next, one Pussort, a malignant tool of the Chancellor, inveighed against Fouquet for four hours, so violently that he injured his case. His voice was for the gallows,—but, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... a hand against them. Have you noticed how ready we are to forgive those on our side for doing that for which we would bitterly condemn our opponents? The same people who condemn the Empress Dowager for beheading the six young reformers stand ready to forgive Kuang Hsu for ordering the decapitation of Jung Lu, and the ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... propped it up with a short billiard-cue which fitted into a notch. All danger of sudden decapitation having been removed, I put ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... how few of us realise what a respecter of persons was French law under the ancien regime. Hard as seems the fate of this dashing young duke, we must remember what would have been his punishment, but for his titles of nobility. Death swift and sudden, in other words, by decapitation, was the choicest prerogative of the nobility; tortures before and after condemnation, breaking on the wheel, burning alive, and other hideous ends, being ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Imperial funeral arrangements—a lucrative appointment. During that interval it is understood that the new Regent, brother of the Emperor Kwang-hsu, consulted all the most trusted magnates of the empire regarding the manner in which the secret decapitation Decree should be treated. All advised him to be warned in time, and not to venture on a course of action which would be condemned both by the nation and by the Powers. Another Edict was therefore prepared simply dismissing Yuan Shih-kai from office and ordering him to return ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... the employer, to discover that, invariably, these same lamenting young men were those who, from the employer's point of view, were either greatly overpaid or so entirely worthless as to be marked for early decapitation. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... their inclination tempts them. In this country it is every person's interest, however wealthy, to exhibit an appearance of abject poverty; as the suspicion of wealth instantly produces from the Sultan or Pasha a demand for some large sum, which must be forthwith paid or decapitation or torture are the severe alternatives. Here justice is indeed an empty name, the most atrocious criminals escaping unpunished if able to offer a bribe sufficient to tempt the cupidity of those whose duty it is to administer it. Here money is sought ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... in the exquisite temple forming the high altar; or than the St. James on horseback, with his horse's hoof planted on the throat of a Moor; or than the Blessed Virgins in jeweled crowns and stomachers and brocaded skirts; or than that unsparing decapitation of John the Baptist bloodily falling forward with his severed gullet thrusting at the spectator. Nothing has ever been too terrible in life for Spanish art to represent; it is as ruthlessly veracious as Russian literature; and of all the painters and sculptors who have portrayed the ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... claws, however, sheathed, and not in anger, but in the way of philosophical inquiry and examination. To prevent her falling a victim to so laudable an exercise of her talents, I interposed in a moment with the hoe, and performed an act of decapitation, which though not immediately mortal proved so in the end. Had he slid into the passages, where it is dark, or had he, when in the yard, met with no interruption from the cat, and secreted himself in any of the outhouses, it is hardly possible but that some of the family must have been bitten; ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... further his plan to become a real monarch instead of a Roman Tetrarch. But when the pro-consul Vitellius wins the support of the people and Herod learns that the maiden who has spurned him is in love with the prophet, he decrees his decapitation. Salome, baffled in her effort to save her lover, attempts to kill Herodias; but the wicked woman discloses herself as the maiden's mother and Salome turns the dagger against her ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... women still alive, including Ghiberti himself, and his father; while the frame-posts, with their masses of vegetation and flora wrought in bronze, are admirable for their truth to nature. Bronze groups representing the "Decapitation of St. John the Baptist," by Danti, and the "Baptism of our Lord," by Andrea Sansovino, surmount two of the gates, which were at one time heavily gilded, tho few traces ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... culminated on Giovedi Grasso, the last Thursday before Lent, when the Piazzetta became the scene of ceremonies in which the Doge himself took part. These opened with the decapitation of three bulls: a rite said to commemorate some long-forgotten dispute between the inveterate enemies, Venice and Aquileia. The bulls, preceded by halberdiers and trumpeters, and surrounded by armed attendants, were led ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... extinct since the twelfth century amounted to five hundred and sixty-five. The War of the Roses had begun the extermination of dukes, which the axe of Mary Tudor completed. This was, indeed, the decapitation of the nobility. To prune away the dukes was to cut off its head. Good policy, perhaps; but it is better to corrupt than to decapitate. James I. was of this opinion. He restored dukedoms. He made a duke of his favourite Villiers, who had made him a pig;[22] a transformation from the duke ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Inquisition, consist in flaying the prisoner alive, crushing his limbs, cutting the sinews out of his feet, and so on. Their modes of carrying out the sentence of death appear to be mild in comparison, and are generally confined to strangling and decapitation, although, as I was informed, in certain extraordinary cases, the prisoner is executed by being sawed in two, or left to die of starvation. In the first case, the unhappy victim is made fast between two planks, and sawed in two longitudinally, beginning ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer |
