"Rope" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heart was untouched. As his pains increased, his impatience increased with them. He demanded with violent cries that a knife might be given him to stab himself, which being refused, he called for a rope, and persisted with such vehemence that his wife and son, wearied out by his constant shrieking, gave him one, with which he put an end to his own existence. Lamentable as these awful examples of the deceitfulness and depravity of the human heart were, yet they ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... of Therese d'Aubray, her sister; in punishment whereof the court has condemned and does condemn the said d'Aubray de Brinvilliers to make the rightful atonement before the great gate of the church of Paris, whither she shall be conveyed in a tumbril, barefoot, a rope on her neck, holding in her hands a burning torch two pounds in weight; and there on her knees she shall say and declare that maliciously, with desire for revenge and seeking their goods, she did poison her father, cause to be poisoned her two brothers, and attempt the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... they took up part of the floor of the cabin, and patched up a sort of tray with rope-yarns, to paddle on shore to get a little water to preserve their lives. When their patience was almost exhausted, the boat returned, but instead of provisions, brought the unpleasing information, that the lieutenant, one Kennedy, had run off ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... patent and made his fortune by inventing of them, new and ingenious. Then he used to kick the lad down the fo'castle ladder; he used to work him, sick or well, as he wouldn't have worked a dray-horse; he used to chase him all about deck at the rope's end; he used to mast-head him for hours on the stretch; he used to starve him out in the hold. It didn't come in my line to be over-tender, but I turned sick at heart, Tom, more times than one, looking on helpless, and me ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... and pointed with shining bronze, and where the bronze met the timber there was a circlet of diamond of the diamonds of Banba. He had also a short-handled scourge with a haft of walrus tooth, and the rope, cord, and lash of that scourge were made of delicate and delicately-twisted thread of copper. This equipment was the equipment of a proved charioteer; the apprentices wore only grey capes with white fringes, fastened by loops ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... we have held our friends there as solid customers. I say 'solid customers' but actually there is no such thing as a 'solid customer.' The very best friend you have will slip away from you sometime, break out your corral, and you must mount your broncho, chase him down and rope him in again." ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... blows, it is a study to see three or four of these air-kings at the head of the valley far up toward the mountain, balancing and oscillating upon the strong current: now quite stationary, except a slight tremulous motion like the poise of a rope-dancer, then rising and falling in long undulations, and seeming to resign themselves passively to the wind; or, again, sailing high and level far above the mountain's peak,—no bluster and haste, but, as stated, occasionally a terrible earnestness and speed. Fire at him as he sails overhead, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... the duel by lassoing his adversary, riata and all," was the answer. "It is not an uncommon thing for them to settle their differences by such a fight, and I have heard of the trick of ringing the other man's rope, but if that man can catch an antelope one hundred feet away, by the foot or any other way, he is a better riata man than I ever encountered. In the first place mighty few men are strong enough to throw ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... until they were alone with the rushing of the screw, two Lascars, some coils of rope, and a couple of brass compasses. Then she opened the packet. "These," she said, "these are pressing ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... of water. This was denied. Then I asked if I could wash in the lake; and this favor was granted, and the advice volunteered that it would be a good thing to do. And further the kind lady made a motion toward a dangling red tassel that hung from a rope, and suggested that I get me to a gunnery and quickly, too, otherwise she would ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... do or know, he longed to know and do also. "I never learned anything," he wrote, "not even standing on my head, but I found a use for it." In the spare hours of his first telegraph voyage, to give an instance of his greed of knowledge, he meant "to learn the whole art of navigation, every rope in the ship, and how to handle her on any occasion"; and once when he was shown a young lady's holiday collection of seaweeds, he must cry out, "It showed me my eyes had been idle." Nor was his the case of the mere literary smatterer, content if ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... front of the village inn, his hand upon the lead-rope of a sturdy pack mule. The two men looked at each other intently, Drennen showing no surprise, Sothern experiencing none. It was the older man who first ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... nor them nuther. Dat's my notion. What good did fightin' er prayin' either used ter do in ole slave times? Nary bit. An' dey's got us jest about ez close ez dey hed us den, only de halter-chain's a leetle mite longer, dat's all. All dey's got ter do is jes ter shorten up on de rope an' it brings us in, all de same ez ever. Dat's my notion. So I'se gwine ter move on ebbery time dey axes me tu; kase why, I can't help it. Berry'll git enough ter eat most ennywhar, an' dat's 'bout all he 'spects ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... first rises, Whether he has succeeded at all; whether he has not been defeated miserably forevermore? Let him come with world-wide Io-Paeans, these avail him not. Let him come covered over with the world's execrations, gashed with ignominious death-wounds, the gallows-rope about his neck: what avails that? The word is, Come thou brave and faithful; the word is, Depart thou quack ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... the two scurrilous paragraphs." "Some scamp, no doubt; some beggarly scoundrel." "A monsieur Ledoux." "Ah, I know the fellow. His bad reputation has reached me. It must be stopped at last." So saying, Louis XV went to the chimney, and pulled the bell-rope with so much vehemence that ten persons answered it at once. "Send for the duc de la Vrilliere; if he be not suitably attired let him come in his night-gown, no matter so that he appear quickly." ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... the statements was self-evident I decided I would give myself a practical demonstration. To be perfectly safe I purchased a clothes-line, then, hiring a row-boat, went as far away from shore as was desirable, undressed, tied one end of the rope around the seat, the other around my body, and—jumped in. I did not sink. Far from it. I was never more stimulated to swim in my life. My ten or fifteen feet dive took me into colder water than I had ever experienced before and I felt as if suddenly, and at ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... moonlit kitchen was ajar, and to her surprise she saw that a large trunk, corded and even labelled, stood in the middle of the floor. Close to the trunk was a large piece of sacking—and by it another coil of thick rope. ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... and repute in this our world Are not an even path on which the pace, Simple and forward, shows the tendency, The goal, our worth. They're like a juggler's rope, On which a misstep plunges from the heights, And every stumbling makes a butt for jest. Must I, but yesterday all virtues' model, Today shun every slave's inquiring glance? Begone then, eager wish to please the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... tourism, shipping, boat building, coconut processing, garments, woven mats, rope, handicrafts, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... deserving—Charles the Base. When we entered the presence he sat throned, with his tinseled snobs and dandies around him. He looked like a forked carrot, so tightly did his clothing fit him from his waist down; he wore shoes with a rope-like pliant toe a foot long that had to be hitched up to the knee to keep it out of the way; he had on a crimson velvet cape that came no lower than his elbows; on his head he had a tall felt thing like a thimble, with a feather it its jeweled ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... hacer, senores?" said the culprit, casting an appealing, imploring glance around him. "The rope was round my neck; I have an aged father and am his only support. Life is very sweet. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... earth the "barrel-machine" could be, and rather suspicious of it, we limped after. On arriving at the house, we found him getting ready a sort of sedan-chair. It was nothing more than an old barrel suspended by a rope from the middle of a stout oar. Quite an ingenious contrivance of the Yankee's; and his proposed arrangement with regard to mine and the doctor's shoulders ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... defeated its own end. Mask is driven mad by the loss of his friend and, seeking to join him by the sea, is overwhelmed and drawn out by the undertow. As the officers come to arrest her, Mrs. Font hangs herself from the landing of the great staircase of Font Hill with the rope Guy used there ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... but the fist got home, and for a moment or two there was a swaying and plunging of man and beast amidst the hurled-up snow. Then the Cayuse was borne backwards until the vicinity of the hotel verandah left no room for kicking, and another man hastily flung a rope round the bundles he piled upon its back. He was also tolerably capable, and in another minute the struggle was over. The Cayuse's attitude expressed indignant astonishment, while Alton stood up breathless, with his ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... after a while turned to the right and stopped in front of an old building partially in ruins. Following a path around the ruin, they came to the place where the wall was highest, and stopped in front of a door. Pignana pulled a rope. A bell sounded, and the door was opened by a man in the costume Pignana wore. The three then crossed a long paved court, and through a vestibule entered a corridor leading into a vast hall, which had been the refectory of the monastery of San Paolo. A few torches lit up the room; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Say! You ever seen a feather bed tied up with a rope? You sit tight and I'll slip you a ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... not what. Nothing so familiar, as for men in such cases, through anguish of mind to make away themselves. A poor fellow went to hang himself, (which Ausonius hath elegantly expressed in a neat [2343]Epigram) but finding by chance a pot of money, flung away the rope, and went merrily home, but he that hid the gold, when he missed it, hanged himself with that rope which the other man had left, in ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... tonnage warranted. Royson was sailor enough to perceive that her masts and spars were intended for use, and, when he reached her deck, to which much scrubbing and vigorous holy-stoning had given the color of new bread, he knew that none but men trained on a warship had coiled each rope and polished every inch ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... save a suit of mine and some garments of my daughter's, there was naught in them. I should like to have seen the villain's face when he opened the money bags and found the trick that I had played him. He had best never show his face in London, for if I catch him he will dance at the end of a rope. And now, sirs, with your permission, I will repair to my home, for my wound smarts sorely, and I must have it dressed by a leech, who will pour in some unguents to allay the pain. My wife, too, will be growing anxious, for I had written to her that we should return ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... hall, damp like a well, with a whirring snarling clock on the wall and a heavy glass door pulled by a rope swinging and shifting, the walls and door and rack with the letters shifting too. In this rocking world there seemed to be no stable thing. He was dirty and tired and humiliated. He explained to ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... men took some things that were in the trench. All that David saw was what looked like some old frazzled-out rope, and he laid the things he had taken up around the new pipe in the joint, and he hammered them in tight with a kind of a dull chisel. That was so that the ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... The rope of the rich is long and long— The longest of hangmen's cords; But the kings and crowds are holding their bream, In a giant shadow o'er all beneath Where God stands holding the scales of Death Between the cattle ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... round his wounded arm, sat up and looked about him. A knife thrown aside by one of the drunkards lay near enough to be grasped by his bound hands, and he had just reached it when Sir Eberhard made a sign to him to put it into his hand, and therewith contrived to cut the rope round both hands and feet—then pointed to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his ideas were very bright. He was at the end of his rope. He had tied a knot in it and hung on. But the rope seemed ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... shut in by high rocks that they can laugh at enemies, and through a hollow in the rocks with softest pace creeps the river Oysivius (the Idle). There is only one way up, their rocks for the inhabitants, and that is not by zigzag steps, but by a rope and basket. Birds wholly peculiar to the place supply food by being themselves eatable, and by the great multitude of their eggs, and by the loads of fish they bring into their nests to feed their young. The citizens make to themselves also beds of the ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... they had cast anchor and hauled down the sail, the negroes went into the hold and brought up a long rope-ladder, heavily weighted with lead. The master of the galley threw it over the side, making the ends fast to two iron stanchions. Then the negroes seized the youngest of the slaves and knocked his gyves off, and filled ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... that he had given himself the trouble to accept conversion and all that it entailed at the hands of the Brethren of St. Dominic. It began to appear to him that he had but wasted time and escaped the clerical fire to be dangled on a secular rope as an offering to the vengeful gods of ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... remain where he was. So that all efforts of Nekhludoff to lead a simple, student life, came to naught. Not only was the old arrangement of things continued, but, as in former times, the house received a general cleaning. First were brought out and hung on a rope uniforms and strange fur garments which were never used by anybody; then carpets, furniture, and the porter, with his assistant, rolling up the sleeves on their muscular arms, began to beat these things, and the odor of camphor ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... best plan when caught in an open boat in a gale, was to tie the oars and mast, if she had one, together, and to throw them overboard with the head rope tied to them, as by that means the boat would ride head to sea. The oars, sculls, mast, and sail were firmly tied together and launched overboard, the rope being first taken off the anchor and tied round the middle of ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... forgave us; and I had a flask of Tokay with him in his tent that very after-dinner. I have seen a man keel-hauled at sea, and brought up on the other side, his face all larded with barnacles like a Shrove-tide capon. Thrice I have stood beneath the yardarm with the rope round my neck (owing to a king's ship mistaking the character of my vessel).[E] I have seen men scourged till the muscles of their backs were laid bare as in a Theatre of Anatomy; I have watched women's limbs crackle and frizzle in the flames at an Act of Faith, with the King and Court—ay, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... began to feel quite pensive and apprehensive. It is very well to talk of the pleasures of the milkmaid going out in the balmy freshness of the purple dawn; but imagine a poor fellow pulled out of bed on a drizzly, rainy morning, and equipping himself for a scamper through a wet pasture lot, rope in hand, at the heels of such a termagant as mine! In fact, madam established a regular series of exercises, which had all to be gone through before she would suffer herself to be captured; as, first, she would station herself plump in the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... politeness, she gave out a loud scream just as the major, unconscious of the state he was in, for he was too gallant a soldier to have exposed himself to a female, not even in the starlight, tripped over a rope and fell against her with such force that both came to the deck, and with so much noise as to bring Captain Luke, (who would have sworn some strange craft was grinding the timbers out of the "Two Marys,") immediately to the rescue. Unfortunately for the gallant major, he ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... his grasp gradually until the brown face grew scarlet, then purple, and the goggling eyes seemed to start out of their sockets; "that is what it feels like to be hanged. They squeeze your neck so; and they leave you dangling at the end of a rope till you are dead, dead, dead, and the crows come and eat you. Do you want ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the town. Among them walked with a firm step, a large black man, dressed in a long white frock, white pantaloons, and a white cap with a long peak which fell backward on his shoulders. He was the murderer; his hands were tied together by the wrists; in one of them he held a crucifix; the rope by which they were fastened was knotted around his waist, and the end of it was held by another athletic negro, dressed in blue cotton with white facings, who walked behind him. On the left of the criminal walked an officer of justice; on his ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... lead and be followed. Drake touched the true mainspring of English success when he once (in his voyage round the world) indignantly rebuked some coxcomb gentleman-adventurers with, "I should like to see the gentleman that will refuse to set his hand to a rope. I must have the gentlemen to hale and draw with the mariners." But those were days in which her Majesty's service was as little overridden by absurd rules of seniority as by that etiquette which is at once the counterfeit ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... that he spent his days in the hold of a collier or on the deck, guiding the coal basket which ascends from the hold through a "way" made of broken oars lashed together, and by means of a wheel and rope is sent on and emptied. Whether in hold or on deck it is one of the most exhausting forms of labor, and the men, whose throats are lined with coal dust, wash them out with floods of beer. Naturally they are all intemperate, and the wages taken home are small in proportion ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... that the right of secession, if conceded, makes of our government a mere rope of sand; that to assert its existence imputes to the framers of the Constitution the folly of planting the seeds of death in that which was designed for perpetual existence. If this imputation were true, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... people, who watched my progress with interest, but when I seized a rope and swung myself on board, I found that I had only escaped death at the hands of the genius to perish by those of the sailors, lest I should bring ill-luck to the vessel and the merchants. "Throw him into the sea!" cried one. "Knock him on the head with a hammer," ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... tear-choked words he informed the audience that after seeing the actors all die, and nothing but corpses around him, he could and would not survive, and so he made an end of himself, too, using a rope for the purpose. ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... engines. With a working model the professor had demonstrated that when the endless screw was revolved it acted on the water just as another sort of screw does in wood. The water coming in through the shaft served as a rope, so to speak, and the screw, acting on it, pulled the craft ahead or to the rear, according to the direction in ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... of from six months to a year that I was terribly haunted by a feeling as if hung over a precipice. I was hanging only by a rope above my head held by a hand out of a cloud. At night or in the day, it was the same uneasy dread of falling. The precipice below was black and horrible. There were banks on each side. At last I swung over, landing on the right side. Oh! ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... sight. We'll simply slip in there, and if I can't run away with one of those fliers, then I'm no engineer. To tell the truth, I'm not altogether sure that it is wise for us to escape, for I have a feeling that Ala will help us; still, when Providence throws one a rope, it's best, perhaps, to test its strength. Come on, now, and make ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... to make Valentine betray the secret himself. For this purpose the duke awaited the coming of Valentine in the evening, whom he soon saw hurrying towards the palace, and he perceived somewhat was wrapped within his cloak, which he concluded was the rope-ladder. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... miller, "as clerk's not here. And say, parson, I'll goo and get key of owd Chakes, and, at the first streak o' daylight, I'll goo to belfry, and pull the rope o' the ting-tang to rouse people oop. You'll ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... level, Miller, old chap—we'll hev you out of that in no time. Hurry up, somebody, and borrow the barkeeper's ropes. While I'm cuttin', throw a rope over the top, and when she commences to go, haul all together and suddenly, then 'twill clear ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... gifts. Mere contact with her, the mere necessities of the situation, will drive me back to life, teach me how to live normally, like other men. I have not forced her love—it has been a free gift. Who can blame me if I take it, if I cling to it, as the man freezing in a crevasse clutches the rope ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and, failing to make themselves heard by the boy, they stripped off their clothes, and chilly as the night was, swam aboard. The master and his wife had been for hours snug in their bed, when they were awakened by the screams of the boy: the drunken men were unmercifully bastinading him with a rope's end apiece. The master, hastily rising, had to interfere in his behalf, and with the air of a man who knew that remonstrance in the circumstances would be of little avail, he sent them both off to their hammocks. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... he answered out of the darkness, "I'm coming." And after a slight delay he appeared with the lantern and hung it from a nail in the front pole of the tent. The shadows of a hundred trees shifted their places quickly as he did so, and when he stumbled over the rope, diving swiftly inside, the whole tent trembled as though a ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... thirty-six hours, Rathburn was congratulating himself; at the end of thirty-seven he was crying, "Down, sir—down!" to a joy-crazed little dog which had come leaping down the mountain-side with eighteen inches of rope dangling at his heels—a rope whose frayed and tattered end showed the marks of ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... into place Reade slipped the loop of a guy-rope around it, partly tightening the rope. Then he slipped to the next corner, where the process ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... Now, Sir, to talk of respect for a player!' (smiling disdainfully). BOSWELL. 'There, Sir, you are always heretical: you never will allow merit to a player[517].' JOHNSON. 'Merit, Sir! what merit? Do you respect a rope-dancer, or a ballad-singer?' BOSWELL. 'No, Sir: but we respect a great player, as a man who can conceive lofty sentiments, and can express them gracefully.' JOHNSON. 'What, Sir, a fellow who claps a hump on his back, and a lump on his leg, and cries ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... interior for a few seconds, then put first one foot, then the other over the side. He sat down and stared at a peeling blue-paper liner. He rolled over and curled up. The bottom of the trunk was a good fit. He reached up and found a rope dangling down toward him. He pulled the lid down, smiling at his own credulity, and was engulfed ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... the new expedition started from Adelaide to proceed to Chambers Creek, and get everything in order there for a final start. Mr. Stuart accompanied them for a few miles to see that everything went on well, when, one of the horses becoming restive, he advanced with the intention of cutting the rope which was choking the animal; the horse reared and struck him on the temple with its fore foot, knocking him down and rendering him insensible. The brute then sprang forward and placed one of his hind feet on Mr. Stuart's right hand, and, rearing again, dislocated two joints of ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... the appointment of the cardinal, two executioners came to him, and arraying him in a black linen coat, they fastened some bags of gun-powder about him, put a rope about his neck, a chain about his waist, and bound his hands behind his back, and in this dress they led him one to the stake, near the cardinal's palace; opposite to the stake they had placed the great guns of the castle, lest any should attempt to rescue him. The fore tower, which ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... a flight of perhaps one hundred stone steps, and find at their summit a second torii, from whose lower cross-beam hangs festooned the mystic shimenawa. It is in this case a hempen rope of perhaps two inches in diameter through its greater length, but tapering off at either end like a snake. Sometimes the shimenawa is made of bronze, when the torii itself is of bronze; but according to tradition it should be made ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... sensation of walking a tight rope, we sought the mayor to ask for permission to stay in town—finally to ask for safe-conducts to Soissons. The charming old gentleman, undisturbed by war's alarms, ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... it, like a huge window of light opening on to the neighbouring valley. It must have been the very hole that Albine had one day spoken of, which she said she had blocked up with brambles and stones. But the brambles now lay scattered around like severed bits of rope, the stones had been thrown some distance away, and the breach itself seemed to have been enlarged by ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... henceforth own thee as superior to mortal nature." Upon this the king did neither rebuke them, nor reject their impious flattery. But as he presently afterward looked up, he saw an owl [21] sitting on a certain rope over his head, and immediately understood that this bird was the messenger of ill tidings, as it had once been the messenger of good tidings to him; and fell into the deepest sorrow. A severe pain also arose in his belly, and began in a most violent manner. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... there's something that's worse than hanging, to my mind, and that is the state of a man whom nobody will trust. You've come to that; and if you had a spark of gentlemanly feeling, you'd have bought two-pennyworth of rope and hung yourself rather than come ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... righteousness. 17. Then shall the lambs feed after their manner, and the waste places of the fat ones shall strangers eat. 18. Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope: 19. That say, Let Him make speed, and hasten His work, that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it! 20. Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... that there is something in what he says, if he would only say it better. It makes me feel as I should feel if I saw an elderly, heavily-built clergyman amusing himself in a public place with a skipping-rope, to show what a child of ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... out to a tree, put the rope round his neck, when some of his old acquaintances, who were not quite so hardened as his accusers, said that the evidence was not sufficient to hang him. They took him back to the court. He came under heavy bonds to report himself ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... upon Bill as though from the clouds. (He stood a full four inches higher than Bill.) His huge jaws, stretched to cracking-point, took Bill where the base of the skull meets the spinal cord. One jaw on either side that rope of life, they drove down; through the matted armor of Bill's coat, through skin and flesh, and on to their ultimate destination, under the crushing pressure of a hundred and forty pounds of steel-like muscle, bone, ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... apply what we now style Lynch law to Big Swinton, David Garnet, and Fred Taylor. "Let's hang 'em," suggested Grummidge, at a meeting of the men when the culprits were not present. "Sure an' I'll howld the rope wid pleasure," said Squill. "An' I'll ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... further down the river, was, for a time, the home of George Stephenson, and here his son, Robert, was born. At Howdon, which used to be known as Howdon Pans, from the salt-pans there, the painter John Martin and his brothers once worked when boys, being employed in some rope-works. Here, too, the Henzells, a family of refugees who settled in the district in the days of Elizabeth, founded some glass works, for which industry the Tyne has been famous ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... told the artist Frank Carpenter, when he was to paint "The Signing of the Emancipation Proclamation": "It had got to be mid-summer, 1862. Things had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy; and without consultation ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... beautiful! It's one of the oldest and noblest of the three hundred and sixty-four ancient German principalities, and one of the few that was allowed to retain its royal estate when Bismarck got done trimming them. I know that farm, I've been there. It's got a rope-walk and a candle-factory and an army. Standing army. Infantry and cavalry. Three soldier and a horse. Aleck, it's been a long wait, and full of heartbreak and hope deferred, but God knows I am happy now. Happy, and grateful to you, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... wire rope works are situated not far from these; and between the two, at the foot of the inclined plane, an ingenious device for transferring boats from one canal to the other, is the celebrated "Tar Tunnel," driven into ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... me to this point will perhaps be willing to give me a few minutes more in which we may trace the different threads of the argument and see if we can twine them into a rope which will be of some use ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... Ted carried the blankets to where the body of Flatbush lay. Spreading them out, he rolled the remains of Flatbush into them, and bound them securely with a rope. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... a shilling, for which he was to receive a mouse with a "plum saddle," and two others had invested ninepence each in white mice. With Porter's half-crown, the total came to precisely five shillings—all Paul had in the world, the one rope by which he could ever hope to haul himself up ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... Woodstead," answered Mrs. Moses; and she showed the children two large bills with pictures on them, of a beautiful young lady with yellow hair, who was walking on a tight-rope, a dark lady balancing herself on a golden globe, a young man riding, bare-back, on a fierce white horse, and a lion jumping through flames of fire, while in the corner was the picture of a clown ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... up and noose them. They are such heave sleepers, as I have myself witnessed, that this is not a difficult task. At Valparaiso, I have seen a living condor sold for sixpence, but the common price is eight or ten shillings. One which I saw brought in, had been tied with rope, and was much injured; yet, the moment the line was cut by which its bill was secured, although surrounded by people, it began ravenously to tear a piece of carrion. In a garden at the same place, between twenty and thirty were kept alive. They were ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... name given to a coarse, hardy mat, suitable for the veranda. It is made of buffalo grass, which grows six to twelve feet high in India. This is harvested, the fibre extracted by pounding, and then it is twisted into rope or ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... Another man now came to the rescue; but his assistance was not of the slightest rise, as the animal was so powerful and of such weight that he could have run away with half a dozen of us unless his legs were tied. Unfortunately we had no rope, or I could have secured him immediately, and seeing that we had no power over him whatever, I was obliged to run back for one of the guns to shoot him. On my return it was laughable to see the pace at which he was running away with the two men, who were ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... waving "good-byes" to those on board as well as they could for the intervening bulk of the two ships. But as the bows of our ship came about level with those of the New York, there came a series of reports like those of a revolver, and on the quay side of the New York snaky coils of thick rope flung themselves high in the air and fell backwards among the crowd, which retreated in alarm to escape the flying ropes. We hoped that no one was struck by the ropes, but a sailor next to me was certain he saw a woman carried away to receive attention. And then, to our amazement ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... that, if she should become a Huguenot, the like fate would befall her. And a crowd of boys, between nine and ten years of age, was seen dragging through the streets the body of a babe yet in its swaddling-clothes, which they had fastened to a rope by means of a belt tied ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... mother's idea, and he had a high respect for her opinion in such matters. Among other things, he had seen her one day defy a vicious and fierce Corsican—a common terror in the town—who had chased his grown daughter with a heavy rope in his hand, declaring he would wear it out on her. Cautious citizens got out of the way, but Jane Clemens opened her door to the fugitive; then, instead of rushing in and closing it, spread her arms across it, barring the way. The man raved, and threatened her with the rope, but she ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... were, however, again forward, and were galloping down the road, which was here sunken between somewhat high banks. Tom and Peter were with the last company, which turned and prepared to receive them, when Tom, pointing to a coil of rope upon a cart which had broken down, shouted, "Quick, tie it to these posts across the road." Two or three men sprang to assist him, and in a minute the rope was stretched across the road at a foot from the ground, and fastened ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... then, did Wilder relax in his exertions. He had arranged his sails ready to be hoisted in an instant; he had carefully examined that no straggling rope connected the boat to the wreck, to draw them under with the foundering mass; and he had assured himself that food, water, compass, and the imperfect instruments that were there then in use to ascertain the position of a ship, were all perfectly disposed of in their several places, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... string, With neck in rope and tail in knot, - Rough colts, with careless country-swing, In lazy ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... you do, I will take your place. If the plan fails it is the Bastille for you, and perhaps a rope with a running ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... to pull for the Lord, his perverted congregation began to flock to the devil; and, instead of being an instrument for saving souls, I was made the innocent means of destroying them. Oh, gentlemen, it was a shocking thing to tug away at the rope till the sweat ran down one, for four shillings a week; and to see all the time that one was thinning one's own congregation ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... part of his career; and he made it a point with his nephew (of whose affection he was jealous) to break with those fine grand connections, who plunged him into a sea of extravagance, and then never threw him a rope to save ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the bed while Martin unpacked. The box was a packing-case for breakfast food, and Mr. Higginbotham had charged him half a dollar for it. Two rope handles, nailed on by Martin, had technically transformed it into a trunk eligible for the baggage-car. Joe watched, with bulging eyes, a few shirts and several changes of underclothes come out of the box, followed ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Like the revolving centre of a huge shell, it went up out of sight, with plain promise of endless convolutions beyond. It was of ancient stone, but not worn as would have been a narrow stair. A great rope of silk, a modern addition, ran up along the wall for a hand-rail; and with slow-moving withered hand upon it, up the glorious ascent climbed the serving man, suggesting to Donal's eye the crawling of an insect, to his heart the redemption of the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... to ignorance. When in the dark of night you mistook the rope for a snake, you shrieked out in terror. Cause? IGNORANCE. But when you saw the rope as a rope, you laughed out in amusement. Cause? KNOWLEDGE. All your fear is due to your ignorance of your real nature. All the fear at the last is fear of ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... reconcile the lad, as well as he could, to the extraordinary application. He was one of those considerate persons, who disguise pills in gold-leaf, and if compelled, as a judge, to hang a gentleman, would decree that a rope of silk should carry out the painful requisitions ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... large and in general possession; and what glared him thus in the face was the act that this would determine for him. It would send him straight about to the window he had left open, and by that window, be long ladder and dangling rope as absent as they would, he saw himself uncontrollably insanely fatally take his way to the street. The hideous chance of this he at least could avert; but he could only avert it by recoiling in time from assurance. He had the whole house to deal with, this fact was still there; only he now ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... length, where at my feet the sunlit waters broke On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly wall of rock; The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard clear lines on high, Tracing with rope and slender spar ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... twist a rope of beams of the sun, Or have you power to seize, And round your hand, like threads of silk, Wind up the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... streak; cord, rope, thread, string, cable; course, route; branch, department; boundary, contour, periphery, circumference, outline; lineament; row, series, rank, file; secant; hachure, hatching. Associated Words: aliner, alignment, allineation, align, linear, lineal, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... do that," exclaimed Dick, waving his hands up and down in the air. "They can't do it. Their government will fall to pieces like a rope of ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... said the Sticks, and men broke them; "We are weak!" said the Threads, and were torn; Till new thoughts came and they spoke them; Till the Fagot and the Rope were born. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... think they have him. They will bring him back. I must dress and go down." He caught his trousers and began pulling them on by the window. "Yes, here they come, half a dozen men. And they have tied him with a rope, Paulina!" ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... wisely. And if, like Ananias and Sapphira, you try to hold back your little shop or what not from the common stock, represented by the Trust, or Combine, or Kartel, the Trust will presently freeze you out and rope you in and finally strike you dead industrially as thoroughly as St. Peter himself. There is no longer any practical question open as to Communism in production: the struggle today is over the distribution ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... good old father. Accordingly, they repaired to the choir loft, got the bellows-blower away, and started in to give the Master a surprise. They tied the handle of the bellows to the door of the choir, and with a long rope fastened to the outside knob they pulled the door open and shut, and of course the wind ran low. Johann Sebastian—who looked more like E. M. Bowman than E. M. B. himself—suddenly found himself clawing ivory. He rose and went softly to the rear. Discovering no blower, he investigated, and began ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... swung—far out; the city seemed a speck of light below, There 'twixt heaven and earth suspended as the bell swung to and fro; And the sexton at the bell-rope, old and deaf, heard not the bell, Sadly thought, "That twilight curfew rang young Basil's funeral knell." Still the maiden clung more firmly, and with trembling lips so white, Said, to hush her heart's wild throbbing: "Curfew shall not ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... town are of considerable value. Besides a considerable agricultural trade, Deventer has important iron foundries and carpet factories (the royal manufactory of Smyrna carpets being especially famous); while cotton-printing, rope-making and the weaving of woollens and silks are also carried on. A public official is appointed to supervise the proper making of a form of gingerbread known as "Deventer Koek," which has a reputation throughout Holland. In the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... sound when he bent down and taking her foot placed it upon a little parapet which they had to cross, and she stood perfectly still until he lifted her down. A few paces more and Barrington stopped. He guided her hand to a rope. ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... the dock, our observer remarked their son, who had found a place where, between the sides of two big ships, he could see the ferry-boats pass; the large pyramidal low-laden ferry-boats of American waters. He stood there, patient and considering, with his small neat foot on a coil of rope, his back to everything that had been disembarked, his neck elongated in its polished cylinder, while the fragrance of his big cigar mingled with the odour of the rotting piles, and his little sister, beside him, hugged a huge post and tried to see how ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... had gone early that day [7]to practise[7] his feats [8]of valour and prowess.[8] These are the names of them all: the Apple-feat, and the Edge-feat, and the Level Shield-feat, and the Little Dart-feat, and the Rope-feat, and the Body-feat, and the Feat of Catt, and the Hero's Salmon-leap,[a] and the Pole-cast, and the Leap over a Blow (?), and the Folding of a noble Chariot-fighter, and the Gae Bulga ('the Barbed Spear') and the Vantage (?) ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... she's fainted," cried Margaret. But no one heeded. All eyes were directed upwards. At this point of time a rope, with a running noose, was dexterously thrown by one of the firemen, after the manner of a lasso, over the head and round the bodies of the two men. True, it was with rude and slight adjustment: ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... night of the 19th December, lost sight of the Victory, Dreadnought, Vigo, and Orion. On the 20th at half past eight A.M. signal from the St. George to wear; at ten A.M. the St. George cast off the tow rope; moderate breezes and hazy weather; hauled up to the S.E. to get soundings on the Jutland shore, in order to round the Scaw the better. During the night fresh breezes and hazy weather; a strong current ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... helpless, and looked at each other. They could not say to the river that it must rise no farther, and they could not go to the house, nor let a rope down, and there was the crumbled moiety of the hill which blocked the way to the house: elsewhere it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cowl—that homely, repulsive man with the curved nose, the protruding lower lip, the dark, leathery skin—that man who lured and fascinated by his poise and power, whose words were whips of scorpions that stung his enemies until they had to silence him with a rope; and as a warning to those whom he had hypnotized, they burned his swart, shrunken body in the public square, just as he had ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... on a single pivot, so that at the end of the play they were wheeled round with all the spectators within them, and formed into one circus, in which gladiator combats were exhibited. In the gratification of the eye that of the ear was altogether lost; rope-dancers and white elephants were preferred to every kind of dramatic entertainment; the embroidered purple robe of the actor was applauded, as we are told by Horace, and so far was the great body of the spectators from being attentive and quiet, that he compares their noise ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... "Boswell. There, Sir, you are always heretical, you never will allow merit to a player. Johnson. Merit, Sir, what merit? Do you respect a rope-dancer or a ballad-singer?"—Boswell's Life ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... the river, to take a look at the surrounding country, they heard a faint whinny, and there, in the bottom of the gulch, lay one of their horses, stretched at full length. His feet had become entangled in the long picket rope, and he had fallen at the edge of the washout with a badly-broken leg. The party gathered about the unfortunate animal, lamenting the fact that he must be shot to relieve ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... savage. I said, 'You have committed, what we consider in England, a murderous assault. If Mrs. Gallilee doesn't mind the public exposure, you may find yourself in a prison.' She snapped her fingers in my face. 'Suppose I find myself with the hangman's rope round my neck,' she said, 'what do I care, so long as Carmina is safe from her aunt?' After that pretty answer, she sat down by her girl's bedside, and ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... throat, as Millard, in grim silence, jerked the rope noose tight about the boy's neck. A sharp pull, a twist, and Millard had the boy face down in that hallway, and was kneeling ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... to retrace his steps than when he struggled alone through the blinding snow, and presently Mr. Taylor passed them on the back of a horse, carrying a coil of rope and a bundle of rugs, and he was the first ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... recovered when he had been run through by an enemy; one, when all his fellow-soldiers were killed upon the spot, as cunningly perhaps as cowardly, made his escape from the field; another, while he was a hanging, the rope broke, and so he saved his neck, and renewed his licence for practising his old trade of thieving; another broke gaol, and got loose; a patient, against his physician's will, recovered of a dangerous fever; another drank poison, which putting him into a ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... Ah-Fou's father said to him, "Come here, my boy, and I will tell you a story. Do you remember the great lion we saw one day, which Ah-Kay caught? You know a strong rope held him, and he roared and tried to free himself until he died. Then when Ah-Kay took him from the net, he looked at the rope and the bamboo carefully, and found five ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... said Gatewood indignantly, "to put the Tracer of Lost Persons on your trail. He'd rope you and ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... for the gentleman holding that office by law, in sheer despair (and some debt) has absconded, actually leaving a man to be hung, who was not hung, do you see, because there was nobody to hang him. Plenty of rope there was, to be sure, and a most beautiful gallows—but no sheriff! Of course, the thing came to a stand—perhaps it would not be proper to say a Dead stand—and the embarrassed Governor was obliged to commute the sentence! ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... when we rose and fell in a fury of wind. She must needs be on deck, so I fastened her to one of the masts with a rope and held on next to her while we watched the war of the elements. The rain was strong, and it soaked all the clothes on her body to a pulp; and her long hair floated on the wind, and sometimes flapped across my face and made my blood tingle. She stuck to her post like a man—or, let ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... paddle box. A portion of the wave, and an immense mass of spray, dashed up on board the ship, and a quantity equal to several barrels of water came down upon the stairs where Hilbert was ascending. The poor fellow was almost strangled by the shock. He however clung manfully to the rope railing, and as soon as he recovered his breath he came back into ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... could be seen the back of a man bending down. He was arranging stones in the well of the boat. He was dressed in overalls made of skin, which reached up to his armpits and which were fastened by pieces of thin rope crossing over his shoulders. Further forward there was a second man, and a third was up ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... move, for the least motion of a muscle might be sufficient to frighten the deadly little rope of ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... Temple Bar. The captain of the frigate into whose keeping the coffin was committed in order to be conveyed back to Brunswick had been, by a curious, sorrowful coincidence, the midshipman who, "more than a quarter of a century before, handed the rope to the royal bride whereby to help her on board the Jupiter," which was ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... They were both little figures down by the chair-leg. Then they began walking with swaying steps toward the tiny railing of the white slab. The white reflection from the slab plainly illumined then. Polter's arm was around Babs. I had not realized how small they were until I saw Polter lift the rope of the four-inch little fence, and he and Babs stooped and walked under it. The fragment of quartz lay a foot from them in the center of the white surface. They walked unsteadily toward it. But soon they ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... facts is laced together by a series of assumptions, and repetitions of the one false principle. You cannot make a good rope out of a ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... sea were considered to belong. We saw Brig Place, where Walter Gay visited Captain Cuttle. Then we went with Pip in search of Mrs. Wimple's house, at Mill-Pond Bank, Chink's Basin, Old Green Copper Rope Walk; where lived old Bill Barley and his daughter Clara, and where Magwitch was hidden. It was the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a dark corner as a club ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... walk," went on the sullen voice, "I came at once to Washington. I tried to sell the notes to Bronson, but he was almost at the end of his rope. Not even my threat to send them back to you, Mr. Blakeley, could make him meet my figure. ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the former; "and I have been expecting you'd wonder some why I led you on such a jaunt as we've had. But the fact was, your chance of getting off has been a little scaly, to-day, to say nothing of the shadow of a rope that's been round my own neck in the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson |
