"Hangman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vial and inkstand. This may enflame my zeal against Bankrupts—but it was my speculation when I could see better. Half the world's misery (Eden else) is owing to want of money, and all that want is owing to Bankrupts. I declare I would, if the State wanted Practitioners, turn Hangman myself, and should have great pleasure in hanging the first after my salutary law should be establish'd. I have seen no annuals and wish to see none. I like your fun upon them, and was quite pleased with Bowles's sonnet. Hood is or was at Brighton, but a note, prose or rhime, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Twice he let him pass under his arm. At the third attempt he thrust his blade up to the hilt into the neck of the beast. For another minute perhaps the bull rages, then he begins to bleed from his mouth, he totters and then collapses. Immediately a kind of hangman's assistant sneaks up from behind and plunges a dagger into the neck of the bull, who ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... but no scribbling of name on walls.—Warwick. The castle. A village festival, "The Opening of the Meadows," a true exhibition of the semi-barbarism which had come down from Saxon times.—Yorkshire. "The Hangman's Stone." Story told in my book called the "Autocrat," etc. York Cathedral.—Northumberland. Alnwick Castle. The figures on the walls which so frightened my man John when he ran away from Scotland in his boyhood. Berwick-on-Tweed. A regatta going on; a very pretty show. Scotland. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... victorious over frankness and confidence. The struggle for the means of existence and for the maintenance of achieved power fill the entire space of the menagerie with an infernal noise. Among the methods which are used to secure this organized bestiality the most prominent ones are the hangman, the judge with his mechanical: "In the name of the king," or his more hypocritical: "In the name of the people I pass sentence"; the soldier with his training for murder, and the priest with his: ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... him attentively, and seeing how he trembled, Granger knew that he had not answered truly. With a shrug of his shoulders, twisting round on his heel, he had said sneeringly, "On the Last Chance River we don't run away from loneliness as though the hangman were behind us. If we did, we should be running all ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Hungary! Tread now the measure so long delayed. Murdered our sons by the shot or the hangman! In this land of pleasure, oh! be not dismayed;— Now is the time, brown daughters of Hungary, To dance to the ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... recompence that Couetise yeelds those that haue serued it all their life, is oftentimes like that of the Deuill: whereof the ende is, that after a small time hauing gratified his disciples, either he giues them ouer to a hangman, or himselfe breakes their neckes. I will not heere discourse of the wickednes and mischiefes wherevnto the couetous men subiect themselues to attaine to these goodes, whereby their conscience is ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... restless heart and conscience ought to cause them to tremble, to stand aghast, and to be afraid to lift their eyes to our excellent Emperor, who loves uprightness, still they have the courage of the hangman, they act like the very devil and like all reckless, wanton people, proceeding in blind defiance and forgetful of all honor and decency. And these pure chaste gentlemen dare to admonish His Imperial Majesty, ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... seems a precious swell. His curly poll will grace the hangman's pole, A charming barber's block, upon my soul! 'Twill cut a figure in our "Rotten Row;" I think that jest ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... God's light. Send Sir John to me to tell me of his resolves and I'll tell him something of mine. Tell him from me, Master Godolphin, that if he will trouble to come as far as Penarrow I'll do by him what the hangman should have done long since. I'll crop his pimpish ears for him, by ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... One thought of the lark in its musical glee; One breath of the sweet breeze, balmy and free; One prayer from two hearts that falter; And Lo! in reply to a mortal's nod, From the gibbet-tree dangle two pieces of clod, Their souls standing face-to-face with their God, Each wearing a hangman's halter. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... thee to the earth, if thou but think'st it, Thou slave! thou galley-slave! thou mountebank! 255 I leave thee to the hangman! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... The following day, the hangman with a hot iron burned out Lazarus' eyes. Then he was sent home. The deified Augustus ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... if one could be found who would reply to the marchioness: "Well, he did you no harm. You know, to me it all seems rather funny." And yet most things have their funny side if you look on them in the right spirit. It would have been a funny thing if the hangman had executed the wrong prisoner instead of Crippen. The hanged man would not have seen the joke, but impartial onlookers would have seen it, and Crippen would have seen it. Similarly, if a drunken ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... mercy; let no mercy be shown to them!" said one voice, in low, menacing accents. "Six saintly priests have died in cruel agonies by the bloody hangman's hands but a few weeks past; and look ye, what has been the fate of that godly, courageous old man of Lancashire who has dared to raise his voice in reprobation of these barbarities? Fined, imprisoned, despoiled of all; and all but condemned to be nailed ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... indifferently, it is the hangman's Budget; and because he thought too much of his labour to set this head upon the bridge, and the legs upon the gates, he flings them into the streete for men to stumble at, but If I get him in my boate, Ile so belabour him in a stretcher, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... of followers Each in its turn becoming orthodox, and therefore persecuting Exorcising the devil by murdering his supposed victims Foremost to shake off the fetters of superstition God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of injustice Gomarites accused the Arminians of being more lax than Papists Hangman is not the most appropriate teacher of religion He often spoke of popular rights with contempt John Wier, a physician of Grave Necessity of extirpating heresy, root and branch Nowhere were so few unproductive consumers Paving the way towards atheism (by toleration) ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... hurried to the new mines, and puzzled the slow-moving Minnesotians by their bustle and activity. Claims advanced rapidly in price, and the discoverers reaped fortunes. A city rose like an exhalation. Yet I never saw better order than in the earliest days of Helena, though I am afraid that Hangman's Tree could tell some stories of too much haste and injustice in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... an energetic woman, using her time for some purpose, either good or bad, not sleeping it away in bed. If one has to be hung on a given day, would it not be well to be hung as soon after waking as possible? I can fancy that the hangman would hardly come early enough. And if one had to be hung in a given week, would not one wish to be hung on the first day of the week, even at the risk of breaking one's last Sabbath day in this world? Whatever be the misery to be endured, get it over. The horror of every agony is ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... you'll ever get paid in this life, and there's a tolerably heavy bill against you for the next. It looks to me as if it would be a good thing if you went off there to settle up the account right now. But I'm not going to take upon myself to be your hangman. I'm just going to give you a chance of pegging out, and I sincerely hope you'll take it. I've brought our friend here to be your room mate for the evening. It's just about nightfall now, and you've got to stay ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... attention, obedience, or decent behaviour; their benighted ignorance in reference to the Deity, or to any social duty (how could they guess at any social duty, being so discarded by all social teachers but the gaoler and the hangman!) was terrible to see. Yet, even here, and among these, something had been done already. The Ragged School was of recent date and very poor; but he had inculcated some association with the name of the Almighty, which was not ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... not prepared for an extremely faint-hearted criticism; I did not expect that some of my opponents would be so utterly inexperienced in that most necessary work of literary execution. No, no: give me the Germans or the Jews for executioners: they can do the hanging properly, while the English hangman is like the Russian, to whom, when the rope broke, the half-hanged revolutionary said: "What a country, where they cannot hang a man properly!" What a country, where they do not hang philosophers properly—which would be the proper ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of faces! One would think it were the eve of Dick's execution, and you were the hangman measuring him ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... and keeper of the jails, and instigating and urging him, by malicious insinuations and untruths, to increase, rather than relax his severities, heightening the cruelty of his orders by his manner of executing them, offering at one time a reward to one man to be hangman for another, threatening his life on refusal, and taking from his prisoners the little property their ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the other squirrel was stolen from me by the hangman boys in the market-place; and then I offered her mine own, who is a dog as big as ten of yours, and therefore the gift ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... turned on their heels, and beheld, standing at the door, a short, dirty man in a faded suit of black, and a cold-shining satin vest. He wore an old hat set well back on a bald head, and his cravat was tied on one side in hangman's fashion. One leg of his trowsers was tucked into the top of his boot; the other hung down in its proper position. The man's face and hands wanted washing. This was Mr. Persimmon, postmaster. The secrets of his popularity ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... thy neck, I wish it may not be ominous: but I think thou seemest not to be in so enterprising a way as formerly; and yet, merry or sad, thou seest a rake's neck is always in danger, if not from the hangman, from his own horse. But, 'tis a vicious toad, it seems; and I think thou shouldst never venture upon his back again; for 'tis a plaguy thing for rider and horse ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... into ruffian hands, will say: And serve the people right! If they will not bear witness let the victims suffer. You cannot help people who will not help themselves. The police are there, the magistrates are there, the prisons are there, the hangman, if need be, is there. If they will not avail themselves of the protection provided, let them suffer. Let them go at it. All their own fault. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... man who spells "Druid" with a "w," all things must be possible, from a hangman's noose to a Presidential nomination, and the danger to be apprehended in this case is, that some of "Tragedian's" posterity may slip into one or the other of them. A parental raid upon all the pens, ink ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... by the crowd gathered round the pillory where some too easy-going husband sat crowned with a paper-cap in a hail-storm of mud and egg-shells and fruit-peelings, round the scaffold where some petty offender was being flogged by the hangman, until the fortunate appearance of a clement cardinal or the rage of the sympathising mob put a stop to the proceedings. Barbarous as we remember the Rome of the Popes, we must imagine it just a hundred times more barbarous, more squalid, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... foremost towards the old jaded mule's head, and her face turned towards the crupper. Now Frederick being returned, mastered them, and caused so careful a search to be made that he found out and got the famous mule Thacor. Then the hangman by his order clapped a fig into the mule's jimcrack, in the presence of the enslaved cits that were brought into the middle of the great market-place, and proclaimed in the emperor's name, with trumpets, that whosoever of them would save his own life should publicly pull the fig ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Something of this I attempt, my dear sir, in my humble way: 'tis a panegyric I mean to write, and not a satire. Were I to sing as you would have me, the town would tear the poet in pieces, and burn his book by the hands of the common hangman. Do you not use tobacco? Of all the weeds grown on earth, sure the nicotian is the most soothing and salutary. We must paint our great duke," Mr. Addison went on, "not as a man, which no doubt he is, with weaknesses like the rest of us, but as a hero. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Her whole beauty seemed to be focussed in one passionate protest. Knouted to death! I saw the form before me stripped, and lashed to the triangles, while the knotted thong, wielded by the hangman's hands, buried itself ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... I haue beene an vnlawfull bawd, time out of minde, but yet I will bee content to be a lawfull hangman: I would bee glad to receiue some instruction from ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... to death when they entered there, In the hut at the Stockman's Ford, For their grandsire's words were as false as fair — They were doomed to the hangman's cord. He had sold them both to the black police For the ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... waiting to receive the rents, four priests, a reporter of the Freeman's Journal, some local reporters, and four of the tenants rushed into the room; and the priests in the rudest possible manner (the Rev. P. Farrelly, one of them, calling me "Francy Hyne's hangman," and other terms of abuse) informed me that unless I re-instated a former Roman Catholic tenant in a farm which he had previously held, and which was then let to a Protestant, and gave an abatement of 30 per cent., no rent would be paid me that day. Dr. Dillon, ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... long in the fust place," commented Ike Hoe; "it bothers a man to git his mouth around it and it hain't any music, like the other names such as Starvation Kenyon, Hangman's Noose, Blizzard Gorge and the rest. I stick to mine ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... him forth to where, under the light of the hanging lamps, the table shone with napery and crystal; followed him as the criminal goes with the hangman, or the sheep with the butcher; took the sherry mechanically, drank it, and spoke mechanical words of praise. The object of his terror had become suddenly inverted; till then he had seen Attwater trussed and gagged, a helpless victim, and had longed to run in and save him; he saw him now ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... swallowed by a whale, and , wonderful to relate, did not perish. At a distant point of the sea-coast the monster spewed him forth unharmed. He was found by compassionate passers-by, and grew up ignorant of his descent. The government appointed him to the office of hangman. As luck would have it, he had to execute his own father. By the law of the land the wife of the dead man fell to the share of his executioner, and Joshua was on the point of adding to parricide another crime equally heinous. He was saved by ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... a heller; my father was hangman of Lucerne, and when he died, his body was seized to ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... mister," said the goldsmith, quietly, "and don't call the lady names, or you'll repent it. She happens to be my particular friend. And let me tell you before you go, that the one thing that will save you from the hangman's noose is that you don't set foot inside this door ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Duodecimos to have so much wildfire in it, This MAN A MACHINE, though tumultuous La Mettrie meant nothing but open-mouthed Wisdom by it, gave scandal in abundance; so that even the Leyden Magistrates were scandalized; and had to burn the afflicting little Duodecimo by the common hangman, and order La Mettrie to disappear ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... of his pocket, ran it through the bird's neck, and stowed the creature that had died miserably, without a chance for its life, away in one of his big pockets, a self-satisfied grin on his face as he glanced down the hedge and saw another bird swinging. So he followed his hangman's hedge, treating each bird to his pointed stick, carefully resetting the snares after him and clearing away the fallen leaves from the fatal pathways. When he came to the rabbit he harled him dexterously, slipped him over his long gun barrel, took his bearings in a quick look, and struck ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... Be broke with wheels of chariots passing by! And him that hewed you out for needful uses, I'll prove had hands impure with all abuses. Poor wretches on the tree themselves did strangle: There sat the hangman for men's necks to angle. To hoarse scrich-owls foul shadows it allows; Vultures and Furies[202] nestled in the boughs. 20 To these my love I foolishly committed, And then with sweet words to my mistress fitted. More fitly ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... over, gentlemen. There is no need for me to tell you that Mr. Fauntleroy was found guilty, and that he died by the hangman's hand. It was in my power to soothe his last moments in this world by taking on myself the arrangement of some of his private affairs, which, while they remained unsettled, weighed heavily on his mind. They had no connection with the crimes he had committed, so I could do him the ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... Soldier; he is associated with known Cowards; his assailants are vigorous, sudden, and bold; he is conscious of guilt; he has dangers to dread of every form, present and future; prisons and gibbets, as well as sword and fire; he is surrounded with darkness, and the Sheriff, the Hangman, and the whole Posse Commitatus may be at his heels:—Without a moment for reflection, is it wonderful that, under these circumstances, "he should run and roar, and carry his guts away with as much ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... Lord Edmund are making brief work of them," quoth the jailer. "Ha!" with an oath, "what's that? Nought will daunt those lads till the hangman is at their throats." ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... impatiently, and playing with his dagger hilt; "thy words, stealthy and evasive, prove thy guilt! Sure am I that this iron traitor with its intricate hollows and recesses holds what, unless confessed, will give thee to the hangman! Confess all, and ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Black Elliotts in "Weir of Hermiston" is historically veracious, we might fancy that one of their descendants would feel his activities somewhat cramped on Beacon Street, Boston. The Elliotts were a wild lot, and some of them did not escape the hangman. Their family tree appears to have been the gallows. But Stevenson tells us they were noted for their prayers, and at least one of them wrote poetry, and declaimed it, drunk, to Walter ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... three grey cats with gifts— (For uniformity of metaphor, Since Bacchus, Satan, and the Hangman Are not contemporaneous in my mythology) I send you three grey cats with gifts, Queen Guinevere, To warn you, sleekly, silently To pay ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert
... by the contagion of a general grief as by a sorrow of my own. But there was no general grief on Saturday. Swinburne had written for fifty years, and never once moved the nation, save inimically, when "Poems and Ballads" came near to being burnt publicly by the hangman. (By "the nation," I mean newspaper readers. The real nation, busy with the problem of eating, dying, and being born all in one room, has never heard of either Tennyson or Swinburne or George R. Sims.) There are poems of Tennyson, of Wordsworth, even of the speciously ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... monopolised by the cottage and the drawing-room, has been the aim and the achievement of many recent authors of distinction. How they have succeeded, let the populous state of the public jails attest. The office of 'dubsman' [hangman] has ceased to be a sinecure, and the public and Mr Joseph Hume have the satisfaction of knowing that these useful functionaries have now got something to do for their salaries. The number of their pupils has increased, is increasing, ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... his execution a shocking brutality was shown. "When Mr Cook was cut down and brought to be quartered, one they called Colonel Turner calling to the Sheriff's men to bring Mr Peters near, that he might see it; and by and by the Hangman came to him all besmeared in blood, and rubbing his bloody hands together, he tauntingly asked, Come, how do you like this, Mr. Peters? How do you like this work?"[137] This Colonel Turner can ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... What, 'mongst my rude companions, Whose names are registered in the hangman's book? Whose hearts are ever eager as their swords, Edged by a personal impulse of revenge? Will you become the queen, dear, of my band? Will you become a hunted outlaw's bride? When all Spain else pursued and banished ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... took alarm at these bold doctrines, seldom heard across the channel since the days of Patrick Darcy and the Catholic Confederacy. They ordered the book to be burned by the hands of the common hangman, as of "dangerous tendency to the crown and people of England, by denying the power of the King and Parliament of England to bind the kingdom and people of Ireland, and the subordination and dependence that Ireland ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... my child," he said, "nothing! It is a case for the jury. They have to hear the evidence, and then they pass judgment accordingly. If they condemn him as guilty, I must pass judgment of death, I cannot help myself. I am as helpless as the hangman. If the jury says 'Guilty,' I must pronounce death, and the hangman must ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... And when the hangman's task was done, Joy filled the stricken mother's breast. She felt her dear misguided son, Through Jesus' ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... Jem. Not a word to George for the world. I want to talk to you. If it hasn't turned me sick! I should make a poor hangman. But it was in self-defense, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... treason. Treason, indeed! What did the poor devil know about his new allegiance? But so it was; and as the jail was overstocked with others awaiting trial, it was deemed expedient to hasten the execution, and the culprits were sentenced to be hung on the following Friday—hangman's day. ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... the hangman," shrieked Griffith, still staring at the horizon. "Stay me not; my hands itch for their throats; my heart thirsts for their blood; but I'll not hang for a priest and a wanton." Then he suddenly turned on Leicester, "Let thou go, or—" and he lifted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... While in office, even, his life had often been secretly attempted by the seamen whom he had brought to the gangway. Of dark nights they had dropped shot down the hatchways, destined "to damage his pepper-box," as they phrased it; they had made ropes with a hangman's noose at the end and tried to lasso him in dark corners. And now he was adrift among them, under notorious circumstances of superlative villainy, at last dragged to light; and yet he blandly smiled, politely offered his cigar-holder to a perfect stranger, and laughed ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... too sure of that. The boldest fellows in that exploit were the liberated felons: they fought with desperation, for they had left the hangman behind.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... assigned. Not that from death absence might save my mind, But that it might take death more patiently; Like him, the which by judge condemned to die, To suffer with more ease, his eyes doth blind. Your lips in scarlet clad, my judges be, Pronouncing sentence of eternal "No!" Despair, the hangman that tormenteth me; The death I suffer is the life I have. For only life doth make me die in woe, And only death I for my ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... from the rest of London. Among the people who lived here were the descendants of them who came away with the English on the taking of Calais, Guisnes, and Hames. They settled in a street called Hames and Guisnes Lane, corrupted into Hangman's Gains. A census taken in the reign of Queen Elizabeth showed that of those resident in the Precinct, 328 were Dutch, 8 were Danes, 5 were Polanders, 69 Were French—all hat-makers—2 Spanish, ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... that nothing but onely his old gray beard and hoarie haire of his head stuck there, but nothing else to be seen of him; and, if you will have that, compound for it, lest it be sold among the sequestred goods, or burnt with the next Popish pictures, by the hand of the hangman. ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... harp for harmony, But daggers only do I see; I search a heart for love and hope, But find a ghastly hangman's rope. Woe! Woe!" ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... government. One may often nowadays hear from persons in authority the naive complaint that the best people are always, by some strange—as it seems to them—fatality, to be found in the camp of the opposition. As though men were to complain that those who accepted the office of hangman were—by some strange fatality—all persons of very little refinement ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... would take such terms?" asked Balian in dismay. "Rather, I think, would she choose to die by her own hand than by that of your hangman, since she can ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... to play with are still in my possession; kept, like my poor wife's favorite jewels, for old remembrance' sake. These I took from their repository when the attraction of my watch showed signs of failing. The child pounced on them with her chubby hands, and screamed with pleasure. And the hangman was waiting for her mother—and, more horrid still, ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... and praying that his life might be spared. His crime, however, had awakened such indignation that the law was allowed to take its course, so early one wet cold morning Barty Jarper was delivered into the hands of the hangman, and his mean, pitiful little soul was ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... poem in which he had made a similar unflattering comparison between England and Poland. A far more substantial case for Defoe's authorship can be made from the existence of the anecdote of John White, Edinburgh's hangman, in both a letter to Harley (18 November 1710) and the Review (for 30 November 1710), as well as ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... to Edinburgh, which he entered on a horse with his head bare and his face to the tail, the hangman carrying Cameron's head on a halter before him. The indignities and cruelties which were perpetrated on this man had been minutely pre-arranged by the Privy Council. We mention a few in order that the reader may the better ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... expression in describing diabolical horrors, capital trials, and condemnations to death—we are "entertained" throughout by the Reviewer. The truth is, we have no particular knowledge of the machinery, or its operations, at these executions. A "halter," a "ladder," a "gallows," a "hangman," are spoken of. The expression used for the final act is, "turned off." There is no shadow of evidence to contradict Calef. The probabilities seem to be against the supposition of a structure, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... servant to be hanged. As he was being led away the Jew again screamed after him, "You vagabond! you dog of a fiddler! now you are going to receive your well-earned reward!" The servant walked quietly with the hangman up the ladder, but upon the last step he turned round and said to the judge, "Grant me just one request before ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... you by his name! I never thought of such a thing," politely retorted Bywater. "You are not promoted to that honour yet. D.H., stands for Deputy-Hangman. Isn't it affixed to the cathedral roll, kept amid the archives in the chapter-house"—John Ketch, D.H., porter to the cloisters! "I hope you don't omit the distinguishing initials when you sign ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... believed me to be plotting against him, as they so often do. Some such insane conviction must have been at the root of it. But who can sound the abysses of a lunatic's fancy? Can you imagine the state of mind in which a man dooms himself to death with the object of delivering someone he hates to the hangman?" ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... rebellion was easily put down, and the revenge was stern. To the men who had risen at the instigation of the Pope and in the cause of Mary, Elizabeth gave, as she had sworn "such a breakfast as never was in the North before." The hangman finished the work on those who had escaped the sword. Poetry, early and late, has recorded the dreary fate of those brave victims of a mistaken cause, in the ballad of the Rising of the North, and in the White Doe of Rylstone. It was the signal ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... I've arranged everything with the—hangman. You're going to touch those pleasant dollars. What ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... wrong way out of his crotch and was dangling like the victim at the end of a hangman's rope. Langdon ran to him, caught him boldly in his bare hands, lifted him up over the limb and placed him on the ground. Muskwa did not snap at him ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... abandoned the reforms which he had declared to be the expression of his "inflexible will,"[29] and permitted his governors and governors-general to "put down sedition" in the old arbitrary way, with imprisonment, exile, the Cossack's whip and the hangman's noose. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... to the pictures, which were not drawn (as is generally supposed) in illustration of the text. The portraits are taken from almost every grade in life: from the dressmaker to the draper's assistant, and from the housekeeper to the hangman; the last, by the way, being perhaps the most characteristic sketch of the series. The best of these forty-three "pictures" is the one which faces the title-page, a gathering of the company which individually ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... have an exact picture of those mysterious excavations some of which still survive to puzzle antiquaries under the name of Dene Holes. They are found in various localities; Kent, Surrey, and Essex being the richest. In Hangman's Wood, near Grays, in Essex, a small copse some four acres in extent, there are no fewer than seventy-two Dene Holes, as close together as possible, their entrance shafts being not above twenty yards apart. These shafts run vertically downwards, ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... his Stadtholder, the Prince, who reigns in his name. The perjured hangman needs a guardian. Ask on; I'll ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... loneliness of the place. Rather than remain another hour within the limits of such a dreary old city, I would have taken passage in a tread-mill, and relied upon the force of imagination to carry me to some other place. Nay, a hangman's cart on the way to the gallows would have presented a strong temptation. In saying this I mean nothing disrespectful to Birger Jarl, who founded Stockholm, and made it his place of residence in 1260; nor to Christina Gyllenstierna, who ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... The nineteenth century was a period of unprecedented modification of social relationships; but great as these changes were, they were trivial in comparison with the changes in religious thought and the criticism of moral ideals. Hell was the basis of religious thinking in A.D. 1800, and the hangman was at the back of the law; in 1900 both Hell and the hangman seemed on the verge of extinction. The creative impulse was everywhere replacing fear and compulsion in human motives. The opening ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... future was impossible, unthinkable. At the best of times he could not hope that proud Lord Dunseveric would consent to let him marry Una; and now, of all times, now, when he was engaged in a dangerous conspiracy, pledged to a fight which he felt already to be hopeless; when he had the hangman's ladder to look forward to, or, at best, the life of a hunted outlaw and exile to some foreign land; what could he expect now to come of his love for Una? His mind refused to dwell on such thoughts for long. It went back to the simple fact, the glorious, incredible ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... in the midst—the red, gold, and white about the pavilion, the steel of the soldiers, the drooping women between them—were about as real as a handful of marionettes. It seemed impossible such puppets could decide issues of life and death. But the red hangman and his machines were grim touches ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... 10 William III., c. 40—An Act aimed at the Irish woollen manufacture. Molyneux published his famous Case of Ireland being bound by Acts of Parliament passed in England. This book, by order of the English House of Commons, was burned by the hangman. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... hastiness, the clever wiles of Fergus Mac-Ivor, Flora's beauty, and most of all the rascality of Donald Bean Lean had indeed brought his neck, as old Major Melville had prophesied, within the compass of the hangman's rope. ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the lonesome wind blowin' through trees. On, on to the gallows the sheriffs are gone, An' the cart an' the sojers go steadily on; An' at every side swellin' around of the cart, A wild, sorrowful sound, that id open your heart. Now under the gallows the cart takes its stand, An' the hangman gets up with the rope in his hand; An' the priest, havin' blest him, goes down on the ground, An' Shamus O'Brien throws ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... of them," he said, and as a terrible figure, all rags and sores, with blind red eyes and toothless mouth rose croaking and entreating from the ditch by the road, the servant pointed with tight lips and solemn eyes to Hangman's Acre. Chris fumbled in his purse, threw a couple of groats on to the ground, and ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... compared her to a storm-tossed ship, which sank beneath the howling waves because the sailors were fighting each other. "It is better," he said, "to tie a dog to a pulpit than allow a priest to defile it. It is better, oh, women! for your sons to be hangmen than to be priests; for the hangman only kills the body, while the priest kills the soul. Look there," he suddenly exclaimed one Sunday, pointing to a picture of St. Peter on the wall, "there is as much difference between the priests of to-day and the twelve apostles as there is between that old painting and the living ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Pamphlet: The Response by Monk and the Parliament of the Secluded Members in their Proceedings of the next fortnight: Dissolution of the Parliament after Arrangements for its Successor: Royalist Squib predicting Milton's speedy Acquaintance with the Hangman at Tyburn: Another Squib against Milton, called The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's Book: Specimens of this Burlesque: Republican Appeal to Monk, called Plain English: Reply to the same, with another attack on Milton: ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... that thick-headed insolent pedant, his confederate, who emptied my own jordan upon me while I slept, he had better have been in his beloved Paris, botching schemes for his friend the Pretender, than incur the effects of my resentment. Gadsbodikins! I won't leave him a windpipe for the hangman to stop, at the end of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... is safe! He will not again return; the dead sleeps without a witness.—I may lay this working brain upon the bosom that loves me, and not start at night and think that the soft hand around my neck is the hangman's gripe. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... theologian. As to theory, his treatise on Demonology supported the worst features of the superstition; as to practice, he ordered the learned and acute work of Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, one of the best treatises ever written on the subject, to be burned by the hangman, and he applied his own knowledge to investigating the causes of the tempests which beset his bride on her voyage from Denmark. Skilful use of unlimited torture soon brought these causes to light. A Dr. Fian, while his legs were crushed in the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... screeched out, and alarmed the house, and all run out here. Be careful there, Jovial! Don't be afraid of singing your old wool nor breaking your old neck either! because if you did you'd only be saving the hangman and the devil trouble. Go nearer to that window! dash the water ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... destroying angel! You inexorable fate! To be a murderer without drowning in filth; to take me on board like a released convict, or hang me up over the morass! You joy of my old age! You hangman's noose! ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind
... sigh) It does grieve me to see the poor old gentleman at this gaoler's job for his poor son's sake. (in lower tone) However, if he only manages to get the lad back here somehow, let him turn hangman, ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... lass had been taken to York to be hanged; she was brought out on the scaffold, and the hangman said, "Now, lass, thou must hang by the neck till thou be'st ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... and was henceforth to stand in the place of her whose mere memory had been half divine. Her vile life, forfeited for her crimes as shamefully as though she had died by the defaming hands of the common hangman, her hideous existence was thrust before him in all its abomination, as the source of his own, in the stead of all that had seemed most holy and chaste and worthy of his reverence. Was not her blood in his veins? Must not her evil nature of necessity show itself ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... themselves might have to undertake the unpleasant office, that they would have given the prospective victim almost anything he liked, on the principle of letting the condemned criminal choose what he prefers for his final meal before that brief interview with the hangman. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... at Covent Garden, in a house recommended to him by Colonel Danvers, and there—an outlaw himself—he threw himself with a will into his task. He heard of the burning of Monmouth's Declaration by the common hangman at the Royal Exchange, and of the bill passed by the Commons to make it treason for any to assert that Lucy Walters was married to the late King. He attended meetings at the "Bull's Head," in Bishopsgate, where he met Disney and ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... was the threatening of punishment, which is salutary when it follows these other two, the revelation of a divine love and the unveiling of the essential nature of my own act; but which without these is but 'the hangman's whip' to which only inferior natures will respond. And these three, the appeal to God's love, the revelation of his own sin, the solemn warning of its consequences—these three brought to bear upon David's heart, broke ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... an order of the House of Commons for his arrest and for the burning of his books, possibly, as Masson thinks, obtained by his friends to make it seem unnecessary to except him in the Indemnity Bill. The books were duly burnt, or such copies of them as came to the hands of the hangman; and ultimately, at some uncertain date, Milton himself was got into the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms. He was soon released, and the story would not be worth relating but for a curious proof ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... tongue and foul with slander, Poisonous treacherous tongue of pander, Tongue the hangman's knife should sever, Tongue in ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... that they would never be wanting or backward on their parts in what might be necessary to his majesty's honour, the good of his kingdoms, and the quiet of Christendom. The commons, in the first transports of their zeal, ordered two seditious pamphlets to be burned by the hands of the common hangman. They deliberated upon the estimates, and granted above six millions for the service of the ensuing-year. They resolved that a supply should be granted for making good the deficiency of parliamentary funds, and appropriated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... ancient Rue Briconnet, quite near,—indeed nothing is very far away in this old town,—is the house attributed to Tristan l'Hermite, who held the unenviable position of hangman-in-chief to His Majesty, King Louis. There is no foundation for this tradition, which probably owes its origin to a knotted rope and some hooks on the wall, which are sufficiently suggestive of hanging. This sculptured cord, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... of the murderer. This terrible broadsheet I read, was certain that he had read it also, and fancy ran riot over the ghastly fact. For him no hope, no rest, no peace, no touch of hands gentler than the hangman's; all the world is after him like a roaring prairie of flame! I thought of Doolan, weary, foot-sore, heart-sore, entering some quiet village of an evening; and to quench his thirst, going up to ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... he went too far; that Religion, being a great sanction to civil morality, is of use for keeping society in order, at least the lower classes, who have not the feeling of Honour in due force; and therefore, as a considerable help to the Constable and Hangman, /ought/ decidedly to be kept up. But such toleration is the fruit only of later days. In those times, there was no question but how to get rid of it, root and branch, the sooner the better. A gleam of zeal, nay ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... to call in the assistance of Dr. Baxter, the principal medical officer of the island, but this offer Napoleon refused at once, alleging that, although "it was true he looked like an honest man, he was too much attached to that hangman" (Lows), he also persisted in rejecting the aid of medicine, and determined to take no exercise out-of-doors as long as he should be subjected to the challenge of sentinels. To a representation that his determination might convert a curable to a fatal malady, he replied, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... him once more; and losing all patience at his continued refusal, turned on his heel, and exclaiming, "Die, then, as thou wilt, mean-spirited wretch! thou art fit only to perish by the hands of the hangman!" left him ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... together. Some cried "Kill him!" and some (but they were not near enough) strove to trample him to death. Tug as he would at the old man's wrists, the hangman could not force him to unclinch ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... line of princes, the passionate admirer of that fair queen who sits by your side, shall be the cause of her ruin and your own,* and shall die in disgrace and exile. You, son of the Condes, shall live long enough to see your royal race overthrown, and shall die by the hands of a hangman.** You, oldest son of Saint Louis, shall perish by the executioner's axe; that beautiful head, O Antoinette, the same ruthless blade shall sever." "They shall kill me first," says Lamballe, at the queen's side. "Yes, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Forties the House was made indignant one morning by the introduction of a petition by Mr. Tolman, of Worcester, asking that the clergy who approved of capital punishment should be appointed hangman. A motion was made to reject the petition without reference. I interposed and called attention to the similarity between the position the House was thus taking and the position occupied by the National House of Representatives in regard to petitions upon the subject of slavery. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... over the prairie, ducked precipitately, and went clattering away down the hollow to the farther side; dodged around a spur of rocks, forced his horse down over a wicked jumble of boulders to level land below, and rode as if a hangman's noose ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... their heads cut off; and their loathsome trunks thrown into a deep hole under the gallows. The heads of those three notorious regicides, Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw, and Ireton are set upon poles on the top of Westminster Hall by the common hangman. Bradshaw placed in the middle (over that part where the monstrous high court of justice sat), Cromwell and his son-in-law Ireton on either side ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... moreover, the impossibility of making terms with a slave whose obedience was as blind as the hangman's. Nor was it this passive instrument upon whom his ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... card-player was pilloried; a tire-woman, a mother, and two bridesmaids were arrested because they had adorned the bride too gayly; an adulterer was driven with the partner of his guilt through the streets by the common hangman, and then banished. These things taxed the temper of the city sorely; it was not unfamiliar with legislation of the kind, but it had not been accustomed to see it enforced. Hence, men who came to be known as "libertines," though ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... forgiveness, whom she forgave most willingly. Then he willed her to stand upon the straw, which doing, she saw the block. Then she said, I pray you despatch me quickly. Then she kneeled down, saying, Will you take it off before I lay me down? and the hangman answered No, Madam. She tied a kerchief about her eyes; then, feeling for the block, she said, What shall I do; where is it? One of the bystanders guiding her thereunto, she laid her head down upon the block, and stretched forth her body, and said, Lord, ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... we understand you correctly, you think that we of the Confederacy have committed treason; are traitors to your Government; have forfeited our rights, and are proper subjects for the hangman. Is not that about what your ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... a placard in which the pope was described as Antichrist. Having been arrested on the spot, he was, by decree of the Parliament of Paris, whipped publicly, three days consecutively, and branded on the forehead by the hangman in the presence of his mother, who cried, "Jesus Christ forever!" He was banished, and retired in July, 1525, to Metz; and there he was working at his trade when he heard that a solemn procession was to take place, next ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... him from every part of the Union. The sailors and shipowners of Portsmouth burned Jay and Grenville in effigy, together with a miniature ship of seventy tons. In Charleston, the flags were put at half-mast and the public hangman burned copies of the treaty in the open street. While remonstrating with a disorderly crowd in Wall Street which was vilifying Jay, Hamilton was stoned and forced to give way with the blood streaming down his face. Personal ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... sighed Wynnette, in a tone of regret; "he has not broken his neck. Fate reserves that for the hangman to do! He has only left the neighborhood to return to England. But let us hope that the ship may be lost! I'm sure his presence on board will be enough to raise the demon and ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... reign, and what the horrors of the Cromwellian wars were to complete - the thorough fusion of Irish and Anglo-Norman Catholics, both transplanted to Connaught, perishing under the sword of the soldier, the rope of the hangman, or dying of starvation in the recesses of their mountains - united forever in the bonds ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... is hangman's day; Fast in the noose I dangle. At four A. M. the clam I seek, And get into a tangle. Alas! my wish—a one-eyed fish[B]— To find a juicy ration; The clam on high began to die— A sweet anticipation! Beware the scent, tho' hunger groan! My gentle kiss (a fishing smack) Shot far amiss ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... He has told us that it is fitting that we should leave the question of life and death in the hands of the Almighty. If so, why is all Europe bristling at this moment with arms,—prepared, as we must suppose, for shortening life,—and why is there a hangman attached to the throne of Great Britain as one of its necessary executive officers? Why in the Old Testament was Joshua commanded to slay mighty kings? And why was Pharaoh and his hosts drowned in the Red Sea? Because the Almighty so willed ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... in my youth, there were detestable books which ought to have been burned by the hands of the common hangman, for they contained questions and answers to be learned by heart, of this sort, "What is a horse? The horse is termed Equus caballus; belongs to the class Mammalia; order, Pachydermata; family, Solidungula." Was any human being wiser for learning that magic formula? Was he not ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... down and hung; another, M. Debaux, succeeding in making his escape, hides away, scales the ramparts during the night, breaks his thigh and lies there on the ground; he is discovered the next morning; a band, led by Jassaud, a harbor-laborer, and by Lemaille, calling him self "the town hangman," come and raise him up, carry him away in a barrow, and hang him at the first lamppost. Other bands dispatch the public prosecutor in the same fashion, a district administrator, and a merchant, and then, spreading over the country, pillage ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... we realise the sufferings of others! Even your brutal Government, in the heyday of its lust for cruelty, though it scruples not to hound the patriot with spies, to pack the corrupt jury, to bribe the hangman, and to erect the infamous gallows, would hesitate to inflict so horrible a doom: not, I am well aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but with the fear before it of the withering scorn of ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... and there was old Campana, naked to the waist, with his large sombrero and long pigtail hanging down his back, like a mandarin of twenty buttons. Next followed his two black assistants, naked as I have described them, all three with their coils of rope in their hands, like a hangman and his deputies; then advanced friend Bang and myself, without our coats or hats, with handkerchiefs tied round our heads, and our bodies bent down so as to stem the gale ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... lips," he shrieked, "which spoke the lie that Margaret was dead; may they rot before the grave, and kiss white-hot iron in hell thereafter; doubly cursed be the hands that changed those letters, and be they struck off by the hangman's knife, and handle hell fire for ever; thrice accursed be the cruel hearts that did conceive that damned lie, to part true love for ever; may they sicken and wither on earth joyless, loveless, hopeless; and wither to dust before their time; and burn in eternal fire," ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... evinced much readiness to die, whereas he manifested great fear. It was also reported that the people interposed and prevented the executioner from quartering him while he was alive, but this favour was granted by the command of the king; that the crowd nearly destroyed the hangman, whereas no violence of any sort was used; and that the people were perfectly silent when the head was held up on the scaffold, whereas that act was attended with loud acclamations. On the contrary, the people were with difficulty restrained from taking the law into their own hands, and inflicting ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... of trades have their moments of pleasure. Now, if I were a grave-digger, or even a hangman, there are some people I could work for with a great deal ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... hear. The comrades were also silent. Evidently everybody knew. In the corridors and in the cells everything was as still as death all that evening. They did not tap the wall nor sing. At ten the watchman came again and announced that a hangman had arrived from Moscow. He said it and went away. I began calling him back. Suddenly I hear Rozovsky shouting to me across the corridor: 'What's the matter? Why do you call him?' I answered something about asking him to get me some tobacco, ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... this in the whole compass of history. That which bears the nearest resemblance is the well-known instance of Tiberius; when determined to destroy a noble family root and branch, finding a young virgin who could not, by the Roman laws, be put to death, he ordered the hangman to ravish the poor innocent, young and helpless creature, and then to strangle her. Such a horrid picture do these low advocates draw of the justice of the Supreme Being!—And what shall we say of ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... of the day before the execution, I made ready everything that I could possibly need. So far our plans, or rather mine, had worked to a marvel. Certain of File's old accomplices succeeded in bribing the hangman to shorten the time of suspension. Arrangements were made also to secure me two hours alone with the prisoner, so that nothing seemed to be wanting. I had assured File that I would not see him again previous to the operation, but during the morning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... first we meet well fraught with Furs; Or if there's Two, and we can make sure Work, By Jove, we'll ease the Rascals of their Packs, And send them empty home to their own Country. But then observe, that what we do is secret, Or the Hangman will ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... around us for some path leading down to the river, but could find none; so perforce we had to continue on along the trail. Thus we entered the camp of Hangman's Gulch for if it had been otherwise, I am sure we would have located promptly where we ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... hangman no, twelve times within this hour, when I was at the last gasp; and that is a time, I think, when ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... cruel; to think then how much he can save when others tell him how much he can destroy; not to consider what the impotence of others hath demolished, but what his own greatness can sustain. These are a prince's virtues: and they that give him other counsels are but the hangman's factors. ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... bad living with these brothers of mine who are thieves to the very bone. Moreover, you know the rhyme, 'Though the thief may thrive for many a day, he becomes at last the hangman's prey.' So it is my wish and counsel that we separate from them at once and for ever, and go and live at your father's house, where, though we may not be so rich, we shall at any rate be ...
— The Story of Tim • Anonymous
... of a soldier!" shouted the prisoner, enraged beyond all control. "They are orders for a jailer, a hangman, a scullion—no soldier who wears the sword of a civilized nation can take such orders. The war is over; the South is conquered; I have no country save America. For the honour of the flag, for which I once poured out my blood on the heights of Buena Vista, ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... chances were that he would either punish you himself or invoke the law to do it for him; while if you removed him by means of the garrot, the knife or the poisoned glass, no matter how discreetly the deed was done the hangman was pretty sure to get you sooner or later. But the gang—it was as safe as an epidemic! The fact was not lost upon the community. People in almost every station of life appreciated it at its true worth, and, encouraged by the example of the Admiralty, availed themselves of the gang ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... and, if that fails, turn atheist! We might fall foul of the four Gospels, get our book burned by the hangman, and then it would sell ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... awful doom, the man grew faint and in a few minutes fell down dead. He had swallowed poison on hearing the verdict from the jury. In this vault, over which Mr. Gladstone peers anxiously, you can see a group of heads, all of 1798 men and there on one of them, is the hangman's crape as it stuck in the wounded neck since the day on which it and its owner parted company. Mr. Gladstone is silent as he sees all this and at last mournfully ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... have told all. I knew not what to do. I strove between patience and despair, and felt as if I were dying for want of food. At last on the eighth day, with rage in my heart and in a voice of thunder, I bade him, under the name of "hangman," and in the presence of the archers, give me an account of my money. He answered drily that I should have it the next day. Then as he was about to go I took my bucket, and made as if I would go and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... I swear," passionately returned Afy. "Make myself a companion of my father's murderer! If Mr. Calcraft, the hangman, finished off a few of those West Lynne scandalmongers, it might be a warning to the others. I ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... father," replied she, "that my wrongs cry aloud for vengeance. To begin with, I shall have this trollop thrown into the river, sewn up in a sack, for having diverted the seed of the House of Cande from its proper channel. It will be saving the hangman a job. For ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... a gallows was built outside the town, and all the people crowded round to see the execution of the young man who had dared to beat the king's daughter. The prisoner, with his hands tied behind his back, was brought out by the hangman, and amidst dead silence his sentence was being read by the judge when suddenly the sword clanked against his side. Instantly a great noise was heard and a golden coach rumbled over the stones, with a white flag waving out of the window. It stopped underneath the gallows, ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... hurry off to some distant market, and there sell a score or two of sheep to which he had no title? The penalty on conviction, no doubt, was heavy—at the least, in Scotland, flogging at the hands of the common hangman, or banishment to the Plantations; but more commonly death. The fear of punishment, however, has never yet put an end to any particular form of crime, and here detection was improbable if the thief were but clever. He might be aided, too, by a clever dog, for "some will hund their dowg whar ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... mean disposition, and still sulky over the encounter with Ajeet, was in an evil mood as they trudged through the jungle to their camp. When Ajeet spoke of the priest's success in his appeal, he snarled: "The hangman always advises the one who is to have his neck stretched that he ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... except to the palate of the vindictive Father, who was of too hot a constitution to relish the delicacy of our author's wit. Maimbourg stirred up all the intrigues he could rouse to get the Critique burnt by the hangman at Paris. The lieutenant of the police, De la Reynie, who was among the many who did not dislike to see the Father corrected by Bayle, delayed this execution from time to time, till there came a final order. This lieutenant of the police was ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli |
