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Gauntlet   Listen
noun
Gauntlet  n.  
1.
A glove of such material that it defends the hand from wounds. Note: The gauntlet of the Middle Ages was sometimes of chain mail, sometimes of leather partly covered with plates, scales, etc., of metal sewed to it, and, in the 14th century, became a glove of small steel plates, carefully articulated and covering the whole hand except the palm and the inside of the fingers.
2.
A long glove, covering the wrist.
3.
(Naut.) A rope on which hammocks or clothes are hung for drying.
To take up the gauntlet, to accept a challenge.
To throw down the gauntlet, to offer or send a challenge. The gauntlet or glove was thrown down by the knight challenging, and was taken up by the one who accepted the challenge; hence the phrases.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gauntlet" Quotes from Famous Books



... she hit among the Christian peers Was the bold son of England's noble king, Above the trench himself he scantly rears, But she an arrow loosed from the string, The wicked steel his gauntlet breaks and tears, And through his right hand thrust the piercing sting; Disabled thus from fight, he gan retire, Groaning for pain, but fretting more ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... be my only apology for the part I have taken. You know that no work of the kind has ever been really and seriously attempted by any one who is avowedly of our order; that our religious opponents are continualiy throwing the gauntlet of aspersions at us, as being nothing more than mere pretenders to christianity, but in reality, Deists in disguise. To repel, therefore, those charges, as well as to let the unbelieving world know our views on this subject, I thought a work of this ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... cook, he indooces a bullet to become sufficient intimate with one o' the herder's anatomy, but gits a hole in the leg himself an' is laid up. The other cowpuncher runs the gauntlet an' gits out safe. He hikes back the next day with a bunch o' boys, an' they follows up the herders an' wipes out that camp for fair, an' stampedes the herd over the nearest canyon. Then they circles back to the coulee ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... entire confidence in the Administration, and unbounded regret for the indignities to which he had been subjected. Lord Elgin, however, felt bound to tender his resignation to the Home Government. Meanwhile the Bill which had caused such an explosion in the colony, was running the gauntlet of the British Parliament. On June 14th it was vehemently attacked in the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone himself describing it as a "measure for rewarding rebels." The strongest pressure had already been put upon Lord Elgin to induce him to refuse the Royal Assent to the Bill. ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... guide is not to be found, because nearly all the men are enlisted in the army," Merritt replied, "we've made up our minds not to hold back. Fellows who have had as much experience in running the gauntlet as the scouts of the Eagle Patrol can point to, needn't worry about how they're going ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... left the villa one dark night, a good deal of plate, jewels, doubloons, and other valuable property disappeared with him. Ay, the sly old fellow had a faint recollection as well of seeing a heavily-armed schooner running the gauntlet through the forts before daylight, and that she left a certain bag of gold ounces for him—Don Ignacio Sanchez—somewhere in a secret hole beneath a well-known rock inside the harbor. Oh, a wonderful memory for matters of this nature had ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... that she had high courage. No remonstrance could restrain Dr. Shrapnel from going out to watch the struggle, and she went with him as a matter of course on each occasion. Her dress bore witness to her running the gauntlet beside him. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... see him bear, this dreadful man of gore, A brace of battleaxes at the slope; I see him fling his gauntlet on the floor, And (shouting, "BYLES for REDMOND and the POPE!") Let loose the Nonconformist Dogs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various

... only laziness and malingering and for which they would be returned to a point near the laager, where we were, for their punishment. By the Commandant's orders this consisted of forcing them to run the gauntlet of two lines of soldiers who jabbed them with bayonets if they fell into a walk—until the victims could run no more and dropped in their tracks. The Germans would then roll their eyelids back for signs of shamming, and if any such ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson

... the Haunted Mesa and its mysteries, of the Subterranean River and its strange uses, of the value of gasolene and steam "in running the gauntlet," and you will feel that not even the ancient splendors of the Old World can furnish a better setting for romantic action than the Border of ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... hitting a player, a goose egg is placed in the hole of that player. The one to whom is awarded the goose egg is the next to roll the ball from the dead line in the endeavor to get it into a hole. Any player getting three goose eggs has to run the gauntlet, which is the name given to running between two lines of players while they slap at his back. The faster he runs the lighter the slaps. No player is allowed to hit from ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper

... live under them without serious inconvenience. For the future George Sand to confine her activities within the very narrow restrictions laid down by the social code of La Chatre was, it must be owned, hardly to be expected. It was perhaps premature to throw down the gauntlet at sixteen, but her inexperience and isolation were complete. The grandmother in her dotage was no counsellor at all. Deschartres, an oddity himself, cared for none of these things. Those best acquainted with her at La Chatre, families ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... He lifted the gauntlet from his left wrist to snatch a glimpse at his watch, In five minutes Graham would be getting off the train at Eldorado. Dick, himself homeward bound west from Sacramento, was eating up the miles. In a quarter of an hour the train that he identified as having brought ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... fire of round and grape on the head of the dike, a contain proof that the boats had been accounted for. The French party now ceased firing, and retreated by the edge of the inundation, keeping the dike between them and the brig, all except the artillery, who had to scamper off, running the gauntlet on the crest of the embankment until they got beyond the range of the carronades. I was conveyed between two grenadiers along the water's edge so long as the ship was firing; but when that ceased, I was clapped on one of the limbers of the field—guns, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... business with me; Mary drove me all in the rain to Basingstoke, and still more all in the rain back again, because it rained harder; and soon after our return to Deane a sudden invitation and an own postchaise took us to Ashe Park to dine tete-a-tete with Mr. Holder, Mr. Gauntlet, and James Digweed; but our tete-a-tete was cruelly reduced by the non-attendance of the two latter. We had a very quiet evening. I believe Mary found it dull, but I thought it very pleasant. To sit in idleness ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... the war not a single battle had been fought at close quarters; there had been plenty of instances of brilliant manoeuvring, of torpedo-boats running the gauntlet and hurling their deadly missiles against the sides of battleships and cruisers, and of ships rammed and sunk in a few instants by consummately-handled opponents; but the days of boarding and cutting out, of night surprises and fire-ships, had ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... cautiously looked in the direction of the sound, and the next moment saw a herd of deer close in to the fence, and coming down at full speed. Without a miss, I shot the four leading ones as they tried to run the gauntlet, for in passing between the stand and the fence, the innocent creatures were not more than ten to fifteen paces from me. At the fourth I stopped, but the gamekeepers insisted on more butchery, saying, "No one but the King ever did the like" (I guess no one else had ever had the ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... than any adversary can give. 'Twill be a daily 'minder of thy thwarted hopes. For foiled ambition is the hydra-headed monster of the Lerna marsh. Two heads will rise for every one thou severest. 'Twill be a fight till death. Art brave enough to lift the gauntlet that Despair flings down and wage this warfare to ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... shirking—a form of crime which, to do justice to primitive society, is rare—is promptly and effectively resented by the host. Amongst American tribes the coward's arms are taken away from him; he is made to eat with the dogs; or perhaps a shower of arrows causes him to "run the gauntlet." The traitor, on the other hand, is inevitably slain without mercy—tied to a tree and shot, or, it may be, literally hacked to pieces. Naturally, with the evolution of war, these spontaneous outbursts of wrath and disgust ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... Maid had said. But once arrived at the foot of the cross, he suddenly became perfectly quiet. He stood like a statue whilst the Maid approached, caressed him gently with the hand from which she had drawn her mailed gauntlet, and, after speaking kindly words to him, vaulted lightly ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... gauntlet successfully, I passed through a house which is a store containing photographs and mementoes of the place and a couple of persevering, persuasive maidens, whose efforts to make life a burden to you until you buy some of the rubbish ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... had ever before realized. But it was not this which led me to say to the maid standing before me that I preferred to see Mrs. Ocumpaugh herself, and would call early the next day. It was the thought that this sorrowing girl would have to pass the gauntlet of many prying eyes on her way to the station and that she might be glad of an escort whom she knew and had shown some trust in. Also,—but the reasons behind that also will soon ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green

... that, just as necessity will force a person to visit a pawnbroker, so will inherited superstition force a person to visit a palmist, no matter what the inconveniences. If he had erected a wigwam in the middle of Crown Square and people had had to decide between not seeing him at all and running the gauntlet of a crowd's jeering curiosity, he would still have ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... Half of the platform of that station is in Russia; half of it in East Prussia, the easternmost province of the German empire. All trains that pass from one country to the other stop there. There are customs men, soldiers, policemen, Prussian and Russian, who form a gauntlet all travelers must run. Here passports must be shown, trunks opened. Getting in or out of Russia is not a simple business, even in the twentieth century. All sorts of people can't come in while a good many who try to get out are ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine

... talking and laughing with those he knew, and making soft speeches to ladies, though many showed fear of him, and crossed their fingers while he spoke to them, to fend off the evil of his eyes. Very soon Sir Garlon noticed the fixed, stern look of Sir Balin, and came across to him and flicked his gauntlet across his face. ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... jointly by the Dutch and the Austrians as a barrier against French aggression. This arrangement was overthrown at the French Revolution. The French annexed the Austrian Netherlands and Liege in November, 1792; and immediately afterwards threw down a gauntlet to England by opening to all nations the navigation of the Scheldt. This, and the threatened French attack on Holland, her ally, drew England into conflict with the Revolution; for, first, Antwerp in French hands and as an open port would be a dangerous menace; and secondly, the French ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... in the least what Jane had purposed to say. She had intended to broach the subject on the diplomatic basis of a mistake having been made. She realized that she had thrown down the gauntlet with a vengeance, but she was now ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft

... were gravely informed that it was an act of war to call a free school free! In this same petty and childish spirit the congregations are called "associations" in the text of the law. When a free school is to be opened, the teacher who is to have charge of it must run the gauntlet of a series of public officers, all of them, if they are on good terms with the Government, presumably hostile to him as a Christian. He begins with the mayor of the Commune, who may object to his opening the school in the place he has chosen, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... herself, I will carry her off, in spite of the devil, her master!" he cried. "How say you, Captain Gauntlet—and you too, Captain Storks, is not this an expedition to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... up and down the stairs and along the wooden galleries, and men and women went and came by the entrance gateway between the two effigies of knights in armour. Some were servants bringing helm or gauntlet for repair, or taking the like away. Some might be known by their flat caps to be apprentices, and two substantial burgesses walked in together, as if to greet Master Headley on his return. Immediately after, a man-cook appeared with white cap and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... lose their dangerous qualities on arriving at belle-hood? Why were our primary billets-doux confiscated, and our offending palms, like Cranmer's, visited with the first penalty, though we had been obliged to walk blushingly the gauntlet of fifty pairs of maiden eyes and deliver to the "female principal" of the girls' school across the entry notes which we have since but too much reason to conclude bore no reference to the affairs of the school-realm? There is a bit of the Blarney-Stone (always of the nursery formation) ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... stereotyped compliments of society were poured into her ear. Sir Victor was congratulated, sincerely by the men, with an under-current of pity and mockery by the women. Then they were all at dinner—the bride in the place of honor—running the gauntlet of all those eyes on the alert for ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... enlist the other members of the squatter community on her side, and how could she—Mehetabel—maintain herself against such a combination? To return to the Punch-Bowl would be to enter on ignoble broils, and to run the gauntlet of a whole clique united to sting, wound, bruise her to death. How could she carry on the necessary business of the farm when obstructed in every way? How manage her domestic affairs, without some little assistance from outside, which ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... condition, but to increase the consumption of exciseable articles in Ireland; not to take away from the general taxes of the country, but to add, from the proceeds of Irish taxes, between L600,000 and L700,000 a-year to British revenue. That exposition, he said, had now run the gauntlet of three Chancellors of the Exchequer and a Prime Minister, and he thought they might take it for granted that no man in the House could gainsay it. Turning to the threat of resignation made by the Russell Cabinet, Lord George said, it was ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... small cattleman who is being forced out of the business by the octopus of combined capital. It was not less bitter that the woman he loved was one of the tentacles reaching out to crush him. And they could do it; they—the whole affair resolved itself into a very simple scheme, to Keith. The gauntlet had been thrown down—because of this girl beside him. It was not so much business acumen as it was the antagonism of a rival that had prompted the move. Keith squared his shoulders, and mentally took up the gauntlet. He might lose in the range ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... Commissaire du Roi of the Congo, a position which ranks with, but after, that of Governor General. By a simple and practical device, the relative rank of all the Administrative and Military officials can be determined at a glance. Each wears a blue gauntlet on each wrist and forearm over the white sleeve of his coat and affixed on this are a number of gold bands. A captain of a river steamer, perhaps has three or four bands, a Chef de Poste, four or five, a Commissaire ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman

... of a mechanical age. The burden of history is for him always the need of the Able Man. "I say, Find me the true Koenning, King, Able Man, and he has a divine right over me." Carlyle thus throws down the gauntlet at once to the scientific and to the democratic movements of his time. His pronounced antagonism to the modern spirit in these two most important manifestations must be kept steadily in mind in our ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... its snug respectability of iron fence. His courage failed him at the thought of walking over that trim lawn and knocking at that closed front door. He would slip around by the back way; perhaps, who knew, he might come upon Joey without running the gauntlet of his sister's cold, offended eyes. If he might only find the boy and talk to him for a little while without betraying his identity, meet his son's clear gaze without the danger of finding scorn or fear in it—his heart ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... critics, referring to the last sentence of the above edict, asks: "Do not these words throw down the gauntlet?" And we answer, yes. Did not the thirteen colonies throw down the gauntlet to England for less cause? Did not Japan throw down the gauntlet to Russia for less cause than the Empress Dowager had for desiring that "each strive TO PRESERVE FROM DESTRUCTION ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... long apprehended by the church had fallen. Joseph had thrown down the gauntlet, and had dealt his first blow at the chair of St. Peter. This blow was directed toward the chief pastors of the Austrian church—the bishops. Their allegiance, spiritual as well as temporal, was due to the emperor alone, and no order emanating from Rome could take effect without first being submitted ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... when they Their first bold venture made, Scorning to cry for aid. They dared to stand to fight alone, Took up the gauntlet life had thrown, Charged full-front to the fray, Mastered their fear of self, and then, Learned that our ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest

... herself thus pilloried for general contempt, yet not for a moment did she flinch. White to the lips, but with her head held up in silent self-justification, she moved slowly down the room, running the gauntlet of public disdain. Did I say all had abandoned her? No, there was one who remained faithful, one who was, not merely a fair-weather friend, but ready to believe in her and stand by her through the severest ordeal. Janie, ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... partial planting over necessary; if so, this is done promptly. I put twenty seeds in the hill, to insure against loss. For a succession or long-continued crop, plant a few hills in rich moist land about the last of May. The young plants always run a gauntlet of insects, and a little striped bug is usually their most deadly enemy. These bugs often appear to come suddenly in swarms, and devour everything before you are aware of their presence. With great ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... by the Short View was immense. The nation was on the side of Collier. But it could not be doubted that, in the great host which he had defied, some champion would be found to lift the gauntlet. The general belief was that Dryden would take the field; and all the wits anticipated a sharp contest between two well-paired combatants. The great poet had been singled out in the most marked manner. It was well known that he was deeply hurt, that ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... into the rear room and presently reappeared with a decanter and glass; poured out a stiff tot of Monongahela; "A little water?" he asked, as the trooper's eye brightened gratefully. A little water was added and off came the right hand gauntlet. "I drink the major's health and long life to him," said the soldier, gulping down the fluid without so much as a wink. Then, true to his training, set down the glass and stood ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... caps in the air. Away to the seaward the whitened sails of the Federal fleet were seen moving up towards the bar. Anxiety and expectation are now on tip-toe. Will the fleet attempt the succor of their struggling comrades? Will they dare to run the gauntlet of the heavy dahlgreen guns that line the channel sides? From the burning fort the garrison was fighting for their existence. Through the fiery element and hail of shot and shell they see the near approach of the long expected relief. Will the fleet accept ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... demanded, "should anything in the shape of violence take place? The ship can be searched, every article of baggage ransacked, and every passenger made to run the gauntlet." ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... of far-reaching importance, were introduced later. Capital punishment, which still disgraces human justice in more enlightened states, was unconditionally abolished; the number of offences amenable to corporal punishment was gradually reduced, until, on April 29, 1863, all the horrors of the gauntlet, the spur, the lash, the cat, and the brand, were consigned to eternal oblivion. The barbarous system of the judiciary was replaced by one that could render justice "speedy, righteous, merciful, and equitable." ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... in an embrace like that of a lover. She brings the ends of the bond together, and kneels on the sheaf while she ties it, beating back her skirts now and then when lifted by the breeze. A bit of her naked arm is visible between the buff leather of the gauntlet and the sleeve of her gown; and as the day wears on its feminine smoothness becomes scarified ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... Motomichi, though lawful head of the Fujiwara family, son-in-law of Kiyomori, and of full age, had been refused the post of chunagon, the claim of a twelve year-old son of Motofusa being preferred.* The significance of these doings was unmistakable. Kiyomori saw that the gauntlet had been thrown in his face. Hastening from his villa of Fukuhara, in Settsu, at the head of a large force of troops, he placed the ex-Emperor in strict confinement in the Toba palace, segregating him completely from the official world and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... IV revealed another important fact. The critical flying height of the airship is between 3,300 and 4,000 feet. To attempt a raid at such an altitude would be to court certain disaster, inasmuch as the vessel would have to run the gauntlet of the whole of the French artillery, which it is admitted has a maximum range exceeding the flying altitude of the Zeppelin. That the above calculation is within reason is supported by the statements of Count Zeppelin himself, who has declared that his airships are useless at a ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... attempted to seize him, suffered for their temerity. He still cried out, "Where is my cousin, the prince of Wales?" and seemed unwilling to become prisoner to any person of inferior rank. But being told that the prince was at a distance on the field, he threw down his gauntlet, and yielded himself to Dennis de Morbec, a knight of Arras, who had been obliged to fly his country for murder. His son was taken ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... moment Mr. Hornblower seemed tempted to take up the gauntlet with himself, challenging his own forcibly expressed convictions. And then as if realizing the uselessness of such an attempt, he sighed heavily and sought consolation in the gravy. And Mrs. Hornblower demonstrated the sweeping character of her victory ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... palace in royal session; the keeper of the seals, Lamoignon, expounded the necessity of the edicts. "To the monarch alone," he repeated, "belongs the legislative power, without dependence and without partition." This was throwing down the gauntlet to the whole assembly as well as to public opinion. Abbe Sabatier and Councillor Freteau had already spoken, when Robert de St. Vincent rose, an old Jansenist and an old member of Parliament, accustomed to express his thoughts roughly. "Who, without ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Fowler, of Rochester, took up the gauntlet thrown down by Miss Anthony, and presented the other side of the question, taking the ground that boys and girls should not be educated together, and that women should not be paid equal wages even for equally good work. The gentlemen who sustained the side demanding ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... my mind," she said inconsequently, stuffing the fabric in her gauntlet. "You have something else in that pocketbook that I should very much like ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... children, who likewise confessed they were engaged in the witchery, died as the rest; six and thirty youths, between nine and sixteen years of age, who had been less guilty, were forced to run the gauntlet; twenty more, who had no great inclination, yet had been seduced to those hellish enterprises, because they were very young, were condemned to be lashed with rods upon their hands for three Sundays ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... that means he might reach the open plain, and fight his way until his horse could come up. Once in the saddle he would have laughed at their attempts to take him. It was a desperate resolve,—a perilous running of the gauntlet,—almost certain death; but still more certain death was the alternative if he remained ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... of old Mullaghmast, On the blood-bolter'd ground where your gauntlet was cast; Hurrah for the vengeance of Tara's proud hill, Where the bones of our monarchs are blood-sprinkled still. Hurrah for Clontarf, though the Saxon may smile, The last, greatest triumph ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... than half a Frenchman, from assuming a dignity that would result in a strong bond of union between Scotland and France. Albany was therefore quietly allowed to escape at a given moment; and when, after running the gauntlet of Henry's ships, which were watching for him, he landed in Scotland, Margaret resolved, for once wisely, to be ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... standing upright in his canoe, and to crown the occasion, a squad of soldiers, marching in haste from Quebec, fired a salute of musketry, to the boundless delight of the Indians. Much to the surprise of the two captives, there was no running of the gauntlet, no gnawing off of finger-nails or cutting off of fingers; but the scalps were hung, like little flags, over the entrance of the lodges, and all Sillery betook itself to feasting and rejoicing. One old woman, indeed, came to the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... resembled somewhat the teaching of religion with letters during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thousands of Negroes like Edward Patterson and Nat Turner learned to read and write in Sabbath-schools. White men who diffused such information ran the gauntlet of mobs, but like a Baptist preacher of South Carolina who was threatened with expulsion from his church, if he did not desist, they worked on and overcame the local prejudice. When preachers themselves dared not undertake this task it was often done by their children, whose benevolent ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson

... the German, picking up the gauntlet; "there have been a good many things said here to-night which sound well but won't stand fire. It is precisely for following conventions in ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... others whom we had relied upon had, as Richard told us, already left Bent's Fort. Thus far on our journey Fortune had kindly befriended us. We resolved therefore to take advantage of her gracious mood and trusting for a continuance of her favors, to set out with Henry and Delorier, and run the gauntlet of the Indians in the best ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... of getting away to America. This was by no means an easy task, as all the ports were closely watched, and as, like his brother John, he was a fine handsome man, of splendid physique, and well known, of course, to the Irish police, it required all his caution successfully to run the gauntlet; but this eventually ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir

... undergoing the customary bullying by strange officers and the insolence of strange servants, repeated over and over again within the compass of every month. They have also that other misery of packing and unpacking trunks—of running the distressing gauntlet of custom-houses—of the anxieties attendant upon getting a mass of baggage from point to point on land in safety. I had rasher sail with a whole brigade of patriarchs than suffer so. We never packed our trunks but twice—when we sailed from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... although hidden from direct observation from the enemy lines, the Hun had the exact position of these bridges, and, what was more disconcerting, he also had the exact range. So he "dusted" them at irregular intervals with various calibres, and trips across resembled the noble game of running the gauntlet. This portion of night reliefs was naturally particularly exciting. The late Lt.-Col. Marshall, V.C., when second in command to the 6th L.F's., provided an amusing story for the division one day when a couple of officers failed to salute him ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson

... "when you first went out, and we didn't know one another. Then, I distrusted you, and you distrusted me. We didn't understand one another's characters. But now we can settle it all as a family affair. Men who have camped out together under the open sky on the African veldt, who have run the gauntlet of Korannas and Barolong and Namaqua, who have stood by one another in sickness and in fight, needn't be afraid of disagreeing about their money matters in England. Cyril will meet us to-morrow and talk it all over, and I'm not ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... as it does in the Constitutions of the United States and the States no woman in any State of this Union can have a jury of her peers, I protest in the name of justice against going into the court-room and being compelled to run the gauntlet of the gutter and of the saloon—yes, even of the police court and of the jail—as we are compelled to do to select a male jury to try the interests of women, whether relating to life, property, or reputation. So long as ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... ring" was summoning all its powers to strike at the prosperity of the country, the authors of this address called upon Populists to take up the gauntlet and meet "the enemy upon his chosen field of battle," with the "aid and cooperation of all persons who favor the immediate free coinage of silver at a ratio of 16-1, the issue of all paper money by the Government without the intervention of banks of issue, and who are opposed to ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck

... pleasant names by which children may be called, what right has a parent to place on his child's head a disadvantage at the start? Worse than the gauntlet of measles and whooping-cough and mumps which the little ones have to run ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... was blooming in its utmost profusion, and her prowess had been fairly tried. She took a large house, furnished it like unto a palace, and proceeded to throw her gauntlet in the face of the impregnable social caste. There she drew about her a circle of bon-vivants, artists, litterateurs, politicians, and men of finance—with never a woman in the group. Yet in her new home she established ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... summons hunger as an ally, for the purpose of imposing upon a civilized people of 70,000,000 the choice between destitution and starvation or submission to Great Britain's commercial will, then Germany today is determined to take up the gauntlet ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... said he. "Best be getting on." And so, reluctantly, they led him down the gauntlet of widened eyes. Even so, the tenth Earl of Brinstead had dined publicly with them. More than repaid they were for the slight the Honourable George had put upon them in the affair of the ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... guests out of town. That this was not done gently is clearly disclosed by subsequent official evidence. Culprits were loaded into auto trucks at night, taken to the county line, made to kiss the flag, sing the national anthem, run the gauntlet between rows of vigilantes provided with cudgels and, after thus proving their patriotism under duress, ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... had now succeeded to the command of the frigate, and the yards of the latter were braced sharp to the wind, when she proceeded to the dangerous experiment of forcing her way to the shores of America, by attempting the pass of the Straits of Dover, and running the gauntlet through the English ships that crowded their own Channel; an undertaking, however, for which she had the successful example of the Alliance frigate, which had borne the stars of America along the same hazardous path but a few ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... captive they tortured to death. "And that the reader may understand," says Cotton Mather, "what it is to be taken by such devils incarnate, I shall here inform him. They stripped these unhappy prisoners, and caused them to run the gauntlet, and whipped them after a cruel and bloody manner. They then threw hot ashes upon them, and, cutting off collops of their flesh, they put fire into their wounds, and so, with exquisite, leisurely, horrible torments, roasted them out ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... flies. Just as it trembled on the rise; Not lighter does the swallow skim Along the smooth lake's level brim; And when Lord Marmion reached his band, He halts, and turns with clenched hand, And shout of loud defiance pours, And shook his gauntlet at the towers, "Horse! horse!" the Douglas cried, "and chase!" But soon he reined his fury's pace: "A royal messenger he came, Though most unworthy of ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... morning that he had wandered off, I would not let him be pursued, for I would rather have gone through a starving time of three entire days, than let him be killed after he had successfully run the gauntlet so far among the Indians. I have been told by Mr. Bent's people of an ox born and raised at St. Vrain's fort, which made his escape from them at Elm grove, near the frontier, having come in that year with the wagons. They ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... Hereford and Lancaster!" said the herald, flinging a steel gauntlet on the floor with a ringing clash, "there lieth my lord of Percy's gage! thus doth he defy thee ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... picture as the lanistae placed them and stepped back: Murmex, burly, stocky, heavy of build, thick-set, massive, with vast girth of chest and bull-neck, his neatly-fitting plated gauntlet, huge on his big right hand, his big plated boots planted solidly on the sand, his polished helmet, the great expanse of his silvered shield, his silvered kilt-strap-scales and silvered greave-boots ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... are bad. Runnin' the gauntlet is one of them. Each member of the crew is armed with three tarry rope-yarns, knotted at the ends. Then between the master-at-arms with a drawn sword and two corporals with drawn swords behind, the thief, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... withheld, refused the proposed armistice, and swore by the pipe of St. Nicholas, which, like the sacred fire, was never extinguished, that unless the fort were surrendered in ten minutes, he would incontinently storm the works, make all the garrison run the gauntlet, and split their scoundrel of a commander like a pickled shad. To give this menace the greater effect, he drew forth his trusty sword, and shook it at them with such a fierce and vigorous motion that doubtless, if it had not been exceeding rusty, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... be aware, that until the late Revolution of 1688, this kind of punishment was unknown here and elsewhere, save in Holland; and though I have seen soldiers run the gauntlet, ride the mare, and beaten by the martinets, I shall never, oh, no! never forget the sensation of horror with which this (to me) new punishment of the poor Frenchman inspired me; and, sure I am, that our great Duke of Marlborough could ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... Solyman crossed the Danube with three hundred thousand men, and advancing to Mohatz, encamped for several days upon the plain, with all possible display or Oriental pomp and magnificence. Thus proudly he threw down the gauntlet of defiance. But there was no champion there to take it up. Striking his tents, and spreading his banners to the breeze, in unimpeded march he ascended the Danube two hundred miles from Belgrade to the city of Pest. ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... the same liberty in Mexico, as in Canada, and he will prefer going South to going North. His risk is no greater in getting there. Go either way, and he in the majority of instances must run the gauntlet of the ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany

... silent moods, had preceded him at some distance, when he heard the soft sound of ambling hoofs on the thick dust, and suddenly the light touch of Jack Hamlin's gauntlet on his shoulder. The mustang Jack bestrode was reeking with grime and sweat, but Jack himself was as immaculate and fresh as ever. With a delightful affectation of embarrassment and timidity he began flicking the side buttons of his velvet vaquero trousers ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... Here Johnson and Fennemore left us, going out with Lee to Kanab, and two days later we were relieved to see some of our men arrive with a large amount of supplies and mail. We then waited for the coming of Powell and Thompson with the others, when we were to cast off and run the gauntlet of the Grand Canyon. ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... was interrupted by my uncle; who asked peevishly if he was Don Quixote enough, at this time of day, to throw down his gauntlet as champion for a man who had treated him with such ungrateful neglect. 'For my part (added he) I shall never quarrel with you again upon this subject; and what I have said now, has been suggested as much by my regard for you, as by my contempt of him' — Mr Serle, then pulling ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... himself thrown down the gauntlet, and I will take it up," he said, and at once began to prepare for ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... infer, that the amicable gauntlet, which had been thrown down, having been courteously taken up, the ungloved hands were forthwith to be grasped in token of good fellowship; we had left our names for them, and by the invitations that poured in upon us, they seemed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various

... sight flatter," Polly stoutly maintained. "She's got as pretty shape as ever I see,—all our people's got good shapes from old Missis down. I reckon this chile's got her back from her pa's fambly." When Polly said this, Mammy felt that the gauntlet had been flung down, and, at once, with an eloquence all her own, so defended the "shapes" of her "fambly" that Polly was fairly beaten in the war of words, and was forced to admit, with many apologies, that Miss Caroline's back was as ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux

... and landed at the top with emphasis. Her knock on the door was clear sharp, unfaltering; it was impossible to pretend not to hear it. Her "Good-evening" announced business; her manner of taking a chair suggested the throwing-down of the gauntlet. Invariably she asked for my father, calling him Mr. Anton, and refusing to be corrected; almost invariably he was not at home—was out looking for work. Had he left her the rent? My mother's gentle "No, ma'am" was the signal for the storm. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... in such condition. Other little trifles made in similar style are the embroidered gauntlets of the buff leather glove worn at the time. These have become rarer than any other embroideries, as they were not merely for ornament but for actual wear. Four or five of these gauntlet gloves are in the South Kensington Collection, but are of a later date than ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... down. He had forgotten to take off his cap and gloves, but he removed one gauntlet now, and picked up a pen which lay beside a little inkstand, a pad of coarse paper on the ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler

... in high-top boots and gauntlet gloves may be softened and made waterproof by the use of plain mutton tallow. Apply hot and rub in well ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... they encountered. One began to stumble over corpses in nearly every street, and the risk of encountering parties of the murderers increased, every minute. Again and again I came into the midst of the work of butchery, and every now and then ran the gauntlet of a flight of bullets fired down the narrow avenues. At length I lost my way completely, and wandered about through the pandemonium around, thinking that each minute would be my last. At length, in emerging from a dark lane ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... circulating library that stands still, where the shew-picture is a last year's Valentine, and whither the fame of the last ten Scotch novels has not yet travel'd (marry, they just begin to be conscious of the Red Gauntlet), to have a new plasterd flat church, and to be wishing that it was but a Cathedral. The very blackguards here are degenerate. The topping gentry, stock brokers. The passengers too many to ensure your quiet, or let you go about whistling, or gaping—too ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... slightest hope for clemency. Yet, with all the sad, quiet look of resignation in his eyes, behind them glowed a wonderful light—the light of self-sacrifice. For he had chosen to put on the tender glove of humanity and grip hands with the mailed gauntlet of war, and though he had been crushed yet even in this bitter hour they could not take from him the knowledge that the Commander in Chief of all spiritual armies would stand forever on his side. They could take his sword and shoulder straps but ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple

... bore the same legend. At the threshold a very prim, ceremonious little man, spare and straight, met Mrs. Munger with a ceremonious bow, and a solemn "How do you do, ma'am I how do you do? I hope I see you well," and he put a small dry hand into the ample clasp of Mrs. Munger's gauntlet. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... of the educational "percentage norm," the source of sorrow and tears for two generation of Russian Jews—both fathers and sons now having run the gauntlet. In the months of July and August of every year, thousands of Jewish children were knocking at the doors of the gymnazia and universities, but only tens and hundreds obtained admission. In the towns of the Pale where the Jews form from thirty to eighty per cent of the total ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... Cheviot estate and that of the official valuers caused the former to give the Government of the day the choice between reducing the assessment or buying the estate. Mr. McKenzie, however, was just the man to pick up the gauntlet thus thrown down. He had the Cheviot bought, cut up, and opened by roads. A portion was sold, but most leased; and within a year of purchase a thriving yeomanry, numbering nearly nine hundred souls and owning ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... stand off!" Tonty warned them. And every brave in the town knew what they called the medicine hand in his right gauntlet, powerful and hard as a war club. They stood in awe of it as something more than human. He put his followers behind him. The Frenchmen crowded back to back, facing the savage crowd. Hampered by his imperfect knowledge of their language, he hearkened intently to the jangle of raging ...
— Heroes of the Middle West - The French • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... till well into the night. The new moon would go down at nine o'clock; the tide then would be half flood. What route should he take? Were he to go directly up the Charles River to join the army at Cambridge, he must run the gauntlet, not only of three or four of the warships, but of the marine patrol in the river and the sentinels on both banks. If he were to strike eastward toward the Mystic, he would encounter the guard in that direction and the warship Scarborough anchored in the channel. ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... on the south shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Hannibal laid siege to the independent city of Saguntum, on the northeast of New Carthage, and, after several months of desperate resistance, took it, thus throwing down the gauntlet to Rome and completing the dominion of Carthage in that region (B.C. 218). Rome sent ambassadors to Carthage, to ask reparation and the surrender of Hannibal: but "War!" was the only response, and for seventeen years a struggle of the ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... there are no words to tell the story. Solid water swamped us; the thunder of the surf stopped the mind. But we didn't touch, there was a way through, we had crossed the outer margin of the reef. We ran the terrible gauntlet of the reef, surrounded on every hand by towering breakers, lost in the appalling roar of the elements. Without warning, we were flung between a pair of jagged ledges and launched bodily on the surface ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Mitford a visit in the autumn, writes to her on September 22, to explain that all his plans were altered. 'Just before starting with Miss Jane Porter on a tour that was to include Reading,' he says, 'I went to a picnic, fell in love with a blue-eyed girl, and (after running the gauntlet successfully through France, Italy, Greece, Germany, Asia Minor, and Turkey) I renewed my youth, and became "a suitor for love." I am to be married (sequitur) on Thursday week.... The lady who is to take me, as the Irish say, "in a present," ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... ineffectual broadside at the other ships, and tacked after the Growler and Julia. Then, when too late, Chauncy tacked also, and stood after him. The schooners, meanwhile, kept clawing to windward till they were overtaken, and, after making a fruitless effort to run the gauntlet through the enemy's squadron by putting before the wind, were captured. Yeo's account is simple: "Came within gunshot of Pike and Madison, when they immediately bore up, fired their stern-chase guns, and made all sail for Niagara, leaving ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... opinion was in truth erroneous, for, when the time of testing came, the Indians of the West fought on the side of France. Montcalm had many hundreds of them under his banner. The expedition meant the definite and final throwing down of the gauntlet by France. With all due ceremony she had declared that the Ohio country was hers and that there she would allow no ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... them a retreat to the north. Pole-Carew with the XIth Division and French followed Rundle, but De Wet abandoned the siege on the approach of Hart and Brabant from the south, and his brother P. De Wet scuttled away from Dewetsdorp on the approach of Rundle; and the commandos ran the gauntlet successfully. Their hereditary trekking instincts told them when to move and how to move, and their mobility had not at that period been recognized by the British Staff. Wepener was indeed relieved, though not from ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... itself off, there must necessarily follow a controversy, none the less sharp and bitter, but not depending essentially on abuse. The first point the recusants got hold of was the error of the two years which contrived to run the gauntlet of so many pairs of eyes. Some of them were made happy by mouthing and shaking this between their teeth, as a poodle tears round with a glove. This did not last long. No sensible person could believe for a moment you ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... the door. No other attempt was made that night. Sunday night a quick sortie was made, it being the hope of the besieged that two selected men might elude Marlanx's watch-dogs during the melee that followed. Curiously enough, the only men killed were the two who had been chosen to run the gauntlet in the gallant, but ill-timed attempt ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... behind her. Her cheeks were of the same tinge as the sky. They glowed with the flush of the gallop, and her eyes were bright with the happiness of it. She sat telling of the new mare's wonderfully correct saddle gaits, flipping her ungloved hand with the gauntlet she ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... were rather dull and vacant, not because he was either slow or stupid, but because he felt or affected to feel, a sublime indifference to all things sublunary. You would have taken him for a man who had run the gauntlet of all human experiences—a man to whom nothing presented itself in the light of a novelty, and who disdained to appear much interested in anything you might say or do. Taken altogether he had that foreign or rather cosmopolitan look characteristic of the citizen of the United ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... Bar Harbor, to Wiesbaden, or to Mentone, according to circumstances. I have met several of them, and they all agree in saying that the hardest work they ever did in their lives was to keep pace with Mr. Pulitzer while they were running the gauntlet of ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... dressed just like any other of the village girls. It was in her gait, her deportment, in her very being that she differed from the rest of the girls. From the moment she entered the house she had to run the gauntlet of inquisitive looks, which seemed to pierce her very body and made her look like a sieve, as it were. I looked at Marusya, and it seemed to me that her face had become longer and her lips more compressed; ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg

... battle-axe the swing; Right on De Boune, the whiles he pass'd, Fell that stern dint—the first—the last!— Such strength upon the blow was put, The helmet crash'd like hazel-nut; The axe shaft, with its brazen clasp, Was shiver'd to the gauntlet grasp. Springs from the blow the startled horse, Drops to the plain ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... hatred at the deanery had been mild in comparison with the hatred at Plumstead. The archdeacon was a sound friend; but he was also a sound enemy. From the very first arrival of the Proudies at Barchester, Mrs Proudie had thrown down her gauntlet to him, and he had not been slow in picking it up. The war had been internecine, and each had given the other terrible wounds. It had been understood that there should be no quarter, and there had been none. His enemy was now dead, and the archdeacon could not bring ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... the same sharp pocket-knife, coarse black thread, and big-eyed needle, which he had used the previous evening, while making Frances a pair of moccasins out of his own gauntlet gloves. With the help of Mr. Eddy, he then ripped out the sleeves, cut off the waists about an inch above the skirt gathers, cut slits in the skirts for arm-holes, and tacked in the sleeves. Then, with mother's wish in mind, they put the dove-colored silk on Frances, the light ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... dreamt he was on leave and walking through the City. At every doorway he had to run the gauntlet of lithe and implacable managing directors, all ready to pounce on him, drag him within and chain him permanently to a stool—with the complete approval of the Army Council. In another he was appearing before a tribunal of employers as a conscientious objector to all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various

... religion. Every doctrine, every theory comes into the open and makes a strong bid for our hearing, for our following. Why should not the true doctrine of Christ assume this new shining armour of sane aggressiveness, come more into the open, and throw down the gauntlet to unbelief and indifference everywhere rampant and openly defiant? For, if conviction is the father of devotion, if our belief in the mastery of ideas is genuine, we cannot help but be aggressive. Needless to say we are not asking for vulgar aggressiveness, we are not asking ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... of the Court. Walking, chaises, levees, and audiences fill the morning. At night the king plays at commerce and backgammon, and the queen at quadrille, where poor Lady Charlotte runs her usual nightly gauntlet, the queen pulling her hood, and the Princess Royal rapping her knuckles. The Duke of Grafton takes his nightly opiate of lottery, and sleeps as usual between the Princesses Amelia and Caroline. Lord Grantham strolls from one room to ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... in the tone of a proud parent, "'Through Fire to Moloch' was my first. In that book I threw down the gauntlet to Society. It shrugged its shoulders and took no notice. My second, 'Sour Grapes,' was a back-hander in its face. It shrieked that time, but it read ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... existence. In addition to its embattled parapet, it is protected by three high slender towers, machicolated, crenellated, and loopholed. The archway of each spans the road over the bridge, so that an enemy who forced the portcullis of the first, and ran the gauntlet of the hot lead from the machicolations, would have to repeat the same performance twice before reaching the bank on which the town is built. This bridge was raised at the commencement of the fourteenth century. By what wonderful chance was it preserved intact, together with its towers, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... helplessly with our useless guns, watching and waiting for the seemingly inevitable doom of our comrade. Not so with the Major! Knowing that he was a marked man by the Indians and feeling that any death was preferable to the gauntlet, the knife, the stake and torch of the merciless savage, he had grasped at a desperate chance. He saw his enemies stealthily darting from rock to tree, and tree to bush, creeping through the brush, and slipping closer and closer every moment. On three sides were his hated foes ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... them, one battery bearing on their right, another on their left, and all the intermediate ground covered with riflemen. The guns were charged and forced through, the forces drawn up in rear were overpowered. They then had to turn, and, retiring up hill, ran through the same gauntlet. In the Sikh war, at the battle of Ferozeshah, the 3d Light Dragoons charged the enemy's entrenchments at a point defended by some of their heaviest batteries. When within 250 yards the regiment moved at speed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various

... He had begun to refold, but ceased, and held it forth. "Read it yourself, if you like." Harris's gauntlet came up in protest. He bit his lip hard, but said no word. The scouts were but white specks in the distance now. There was sudden cry, low, like that of the night-bird, and 'Tonio dug his moccasined heels in his lop-eared charger's ribs and drove out to the front, then ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... the embrasures. The usually quiet town was metamorphosed into a scene of riot and clamor, and fandangos, at which Bacchus rather than Terpsichore presided, often welcomed the new-born day. The few Americans[A] in San Antonio viewed with darkened brows the insolent cavaliers. The gauntlet was flung down—there was no retraction, no retreat. They knew that it was so, and girded themselves for a ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... an hour, and having this time to run the gauntlet of the street alone, entered with a mien which caused his wife's complaints to remain unspoken. The cough of Mr. Brown, a particularly contagious one, still rang in his ears, and he sat for ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs

... saw that his opponent was not going to challenge him, he made up his mind to throw down the gauntlet himself, for he was too indignant to let the matter drop without ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... to go to Brampton upon a very troublesome errand, Chester Perkins appeared again. It is always easy to stir up dissatisfaction among the ne'er-do-wells (Jethro had once done it himself), and during the three days which had elapsed since Chester had flung down the gauntlet there had been more or less of downright treason heard in the store. William Wetherell, who had perplexities of his own, had done his best to keep out of the discussions that had raged on his cracker boxes and barrels, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the unwearying patience that is needed to face the lightless gloom of another's misery. It taints all life, discolours all pleasures, tracks one—dogs one, like a shadow on the wall. Yet Janet passed the test with love the greater, even at the end of the gauntlet of those three weeks. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... the destitute Ste. Marie, Father Jogues and his companions fell into the hands of a Mohawk war-party. Some were killed on the spot, and the others were carried up the Richelieu and across Lake Champlain to a more awful fate. First they were made to run a gauntlet of Mohawk war-clubs; then they were placed upon a scaffold, where the women lacerated them with knives and clam-shells, and the children applied fire-brands to their naked bodies. This torture was repeated ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... served out to me a week before it was denuded of one-half its contents, and I was reduced to a draft of one penny a day for pocket-money until such time as the depredations were made good. The sergeant-major's nephew was found in the act of pipeclaying a pair of gauntlet gloves which bore my number, and the immediate consequence of this was a stand-up fight in the riding-school in the presence of some fifty or sixty of the men and two or three officers who looked on from the gallery. I came out more than conqueror and recovered the stolen property; but ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... haughty Dares in the lists appears: Walking he strides, his head erected bears: His nervous arms the weighty gauntlet wield, And loud applauses echo through the field. * * * * Such Dares was, and such he strode along, And drew the wonder of the gazing throng His brawny breast and ample chest he shows; His lifted arms around his head he throws, And deals in whistling air ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... mad pride of its contempt for democracy, Prussianism has thrown down the gauntlet to us. We have taken up the challenge and now stand arrayed by the side of the other freedom-loving nations of the world, giving our fresh strength and our boundless resources to them, who, heroically striving, have borne the heat and burden of a dreadfully long and exhausting ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn

... decided by the sixth-form that he should run the gauntlet of the school. The boys instantly took out their handkerchiefs, and knotted them tight. They then made a double line down each side of the corridor, and turned Barker loose. He stood stock-still at one ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... off to the group of waiting grooms. Delgrado ran the gauntlet of congratulations, for Paris likes to see Chantilly's flag lowered, and escaped to the dressing room. He gave a letter, already written and sealed, to an attendant, and drove away in his dogcart. Bowling quickly along the broad Allee de Longchamps, he turned into the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... he had a curious sense of relief, as though he had at last thrown down the gauntlet to the thing in ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... it seems when they got to Khartoum they found it in the hands of the Mahdi, and it was with the greatest difficulty they got away, having to run the gauntlet of several batteries and a tremendous fusillade. Both steamers were wrecked coming down, and Sir Charles Wilson, with the crews and the Royal Sussex men who went with him, is on an island watched by the enemy, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... Reviews. The assault upon the Edinburgh Review, of which I shall speak presently, made an impression, and, as J. S. Mill tells us, brought success to the first number of the new venture. The gauntlet was thrown down with plenty of vigour, and reformers were expected to rally round so thoroughgoing a champion. In later numbers Mill afterwards (Jan. 9, 1826) fell upon Southey's Book of the Church, and (April 1826) assailed church establishments in general. He defended toleration during ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... near Green Street. Fond women—sentimental, as usual—dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood of the martyrs, and a noble lady spread fine linen over their corpses. The University students picked up the gauntlet. They seized the bodies of the three young men, and carried them to be buried in the Bethlehem Chapel. At the head of the procession was Hus himself, and Hus conducted the funeral. The whole city ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... Lee's army; the slaves freed from overseers would not work. The production of cotton was halved. The Northern navy blockaded the exit of cotton ships from the Southern ports. English ships hung around the Southern shores trying in vain to find access, hoping to run the gauntlet and obtain a cargo of cotton. One by one the great English mills shut down for want of raw material, and when two winters had passed, and the autumn of 1863 had come, and the English working people fronted a third winter, the ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... in a week. They had meant to stay longer, but suddenly Tommy wanted to go back. Yes, it was Lady Pippinworth who recalled him, but don't think too meanly of Tommy. It was not that he yielded to one of those fierce desires to lift the gauntlet; he had got rid of them in fair fight when her letter reached him, forwarded from Thrums. "Did you really think your manuscript was lost?" it said. That was what took Tommy back. Grizel did not know the reason; he gave her another. He thought very little about her that ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... bought by the Quakers; the eastern half of the province was restored to the rule of Carteret. The Atlantic coast, from Canada down to Florida, continuously, was English ground, and so remained until, a century later, the transplanted spirit of liberty, born in England, threw down the gauntlet to the spirit of English tyranny, and won ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... to get to the rear of the city by digging canals across the strip of land on which it stood, and making an inland route; but each one, after herculean labor, had been abandoned. He now decided on the bold enterprise of running the gauntlet of these batteries with his transports. This desperate feat was successfully accomplished; but before he could land his troops at Grand Gulf, which he had selected as his starting-point, it was necessary to run its batteries as he had those ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... which a moment before had beat audibly to my own ear, sank like a stone in my breast, and I sat for a time holding the letter mutely, uncertain how to proceed. Should I return it unread, and thus hurl the gauntlet in the traitor's face, or be governed by expedience (word ever so despised by me of old), and trace the venom of the viper, by his trail, back ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... Patrimondi beyond the limits of Westminster, and as the futile little remarks trickled on they carried with them his complacent smile, for in every quiet response he read Christopher Masters' fatal determination, and prepared himself for battle. It was Christopher, however, who flung down the gauntlet. He answered the question anent the use of Patrimondi in the metropolis, and then ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... whichever way I turned one was always ready with his "Ou allez-vous, Monsieur?" to which the only sensible reply would have been "Pas au ——, comme vous," but silence and an utter indifference were better still, and armed with these I ran the gauntlet of the pests, and finding the "Chef de Gare" in his "bureau," at once received the desired permission. There was not much time for perambulation, as the train soon steamed in, though without Mr. Sydney, ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... set in the delicate, feminine head, with its great waves of gorgeous hair? It would not be long, he guessed. He might remember the way she rode her pony, how she swung from her Mexican saddle and caught up a gauntlet from the ground. Yes, he certainly would remember that, and he would remember the day he had galloped after her and ridden with her through the Indian village, and again that day when they rode to the water-fall and the Lover's Leap. And he would remember her face at night ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... gauntlet and held her hand up. If his breath caught he did not betray it, but while he touched her she could very plainly feel his hand tremble; yet for that matter his hand, she knew, trembled frequently. He struck a match. It was no part of her audacity to betray herself, and she stepped directly ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman

... the spirit of love, too much darkened by the shadow of eternal punishment, but unless that religion had communicated something of its own dominating inflexibility to the colonist, he would never have braved the ocean, the wilderness, the Indians; he would never have flung the gauntlet down to tyranny at Lexington ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... decree, And break him on the wheel he meant for me; 1060 To spurn the rod a scribbler bids me kiss, Nor care if courts and crowds applaud or hiss: Nay more, though all my rival rhymesters frown, I too can hunt a Poetaster down; And, armed in proof, the gauntlet cast at once To Scotch marauder, and to Southern dunce. Thus much I've dared; if my incondite lay [lxxx] Hath wronged these righteous times, let others say: This, let the world, which knows not how to spare, Yet rarely blames ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron



Words linked to "Gauntlet" :   coat of mail, gantlet, glove, body armor, body armour, suit of armor, cataphract, pick up the gauntlet, metal glove, challenge, corporal punishment, suit of armour



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