"Scaffold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better part of this day to a refitting of his wedding-suit, just come from London; for Moncrieff, an invaluable man, had adjudged the pockets to be placed too high; and, be the punishment deserved or no, Mr. Wycherley had never heard that any victim of law appeared the more admirable upon his scaffold for ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... most calamitous situation that ever poor lady was exposed to; she was obliged to sollicit Cromwel to pay her an allowance, as Queen Dowager of England, which, no doubt, she had a right to demand; but to demand it, nay worse, to be obliged to beg it of a man who shed her Husband's blood upon a scaffold, is an affliction, so excessively heightened, that few of the human race ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... and that of Northumberland, who followed him to the scaffold, the dread of revolt within the realm which had so long hung over England passed quietly away. The failure of the two attempts not only showed the weakness and disunion of the party of discontent and reaction, but it revealed the weakness of all party feeling before ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... employed at the present time by our patent-ridden compatriots. The shirt, for instance, which was formerly such a simple-minded and straightforward garment, knowing no guile, has become, in the hands of the inventors, a mere pretence, a frail scaffold, on which an elaborate superstructure of ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... of mutations in public sentiment equally sudden and extraordinary. Ten thousand swords that would have leaped from their scabbards—as the English statesman thought—to avenge even a look of insult to a lovely queen, hung idly in their places when she was led to the scaffold in the midst of the vilest taunts and execrations. The case that we have been considering was, perhaps, only an illustration of the general truth that, in times of revolutionary excitement, the higher and better elements are crushed and silenced by the lower and baser—not so much on account of ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... breaches were mending and the thunder showr arose, one standing in the church-yard observed a black cloud to come sayling along towards the steeple, and called to the workman as he was on the scaffold; and wisht him to beware of it and to make hast. But before he went off the clowd came to him, and with a terrible crack threw down the steeple, sc. about the middle, where he was at worke. Immediately they lookt up and their steeple ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... prostrate foe. It is sad, but these recluses, praying for the pope, instilling a love for the papacy in the confessional, these honest and conscientious but dangerous men must be shorn of their power to encourage rebels. There was a farce of a trial. Houghton was brought to the scaffold and died protesting his innocence. His arm was cut off and hung over the archway of the Charterhouse, as other arms and heads were hideously hanging over many a monastic gate in Merry England. Nine of the monks died of prison fever, and others were banished. The king's court went into mourning, ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... A scaffold was erected at the Tron, just under the tolbooth windows, by Thomas Gimblet, the master-of-work, who had a good penny of profit by the job, for he contracted with the town-council, and had the boards after the business was done to the ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... and my abhorrence of the military rule to which we had been subjected, impelled me towards liberty. On the other hand, family recollections; the influence of daily associations; the touching situation of a royal family, passing from a throne to a scaffold or to exile, and brought back from exile to a throne; the orphan princess in the palace of her fathers; those old men, crowned by misfortune as much as by their ancestry; those young princes, schooled ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... retention of simple and high sentiments in obscure duties is hardening the character to that temper which will work with honor, if need be, in the tumult or on the scaffold. ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... one man? I have only done what thousands have thought and intended. What better is the man who effects my capture, and gets the thousand dollars which they have set upon my head, and sends me to the scaffold, than I myself who without premeditation shot a man. You're a nice one to talk about playing fair to the fellow who gave you your chance, and was your friend, and whom you tried to murder! Which of us, do you ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... admired for it: to smile at terror has, before this, been allowed the mark of a hero. The dying Socrates discoursed his friends with great composure; he was a philosopher of a grave cast: Sir Thomas Moore (old enough to be my lord's father) jok'd, even on the scaffold; a strong instance of his heroism, and no contradiction to the rectitude of his mind. The verses the Emperor Adrian wrought on his death-bed (call them a song if you will) have been admired, and approved, by several great men; Mr. Pope has not only given ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... people determined to mark their opinion of this awful tragedy, for all regard Seery as a martyr. At eleven o'clock the military were paraded before the gaol, and not one human being appeared before the scaffold but themselves and the police. Even the magistrates of the county stayed away—not one of them appeared, except Mr. Uniacke, who walked up and down with Captain Despard. Under the imposing head of the 'Mullingar ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and precarious position. But nothing would have induced him to abandon it, so long as he could possibly maintain himself there, no matter at what cost of discomfort, or even actual distress, for from it he had a capital view of the scaffold, and all its horribly fascinating details—the wheel upon which the criminal was to revolve, the coil of rope to bind him to it, and the heavy bar ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Lyons," founded, indeed, upon a genuine cause celebre, was a drama of this kind. Here it was indispensable that the respectable Monsieur Lesurques and the criminal Dubosc, between whom so extraordinary a likeness existed that the one suffered death upon the scaffold for a murder committed by the other, should be both impersonated by the same performer. "The Corsican Brothers," it need hardly be said, narrated the fortunes of the twin-born Louis and Fabian dei Franchi, reasonably supposed to be so much alike that they could not be known ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... that murderer's father. Gianpaolo Baglioni, who reigned by parricide and lived in incest, was severely blamed by the Florentines for not killing Pope Julius II. when the latter was his guest at Perugia. And when Gabrino Fondato, the tyrant of Cremona, was on the scaffold, his only regret was that when he had taken his guests, the Pope and Emperor, to the top of the Cremona tower, four hundred feet high, his nerve failed him and he did not push them both over. Upon this anarchy of religion, morals, and conduct breathed suddenly the inspiring breath of Pagan ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... its wall of rock The flower of the brave Have perished with a constancy unshaken. From the dungeon to the block, From the scaffold to the grave, Is a journey many gallant hearts ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... at that moment, looking round upon the people, "Will no charitable body," cried he, "bring me a little water to quench my thirst?" Which immediately they did, and handed it up to him upon the scaffold. The vizier Saouy perceiving this delay, called out to the executioner from the king's closet window, where he had planted himself, "Strike, what dost thou stay for?" At these inhuman words the whole place echoed with loud imprecations against him; and the king, jealous of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... stubborn," said the judge, "lead them to death instantly." So they were taken out, and the host had to go with them into the circle. When they were taken hold of by the executioner's men, and were just going to be led up to the scaffold where the headsman was standing with naked sword, a coach drawn by four blood-red chestnut horses came up suddenly, driving so fast that fire flashed from the stones, and someone made signs from the window with a white handkerchief. Then said the headsman, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... all swelled up. Plenty of scoundrels have been sent to the galleys for less than that, but the courts won't concern themselves with a wife-beater. Especially since the woman said she had hurt herself falling. She wanted to save him from the scaffold, but she screamed all night long before ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... inexorable. Three days from the time of signing the bill, arrangements were made for conducting the prisoner to the scaffold. Laud, who had been his friend and fellow-laborer in the king's service, was confined also in the Tower, awaiting his turn to come to trial. They were not allowed to visit each other, but Strafford sent word to Laud requesting him to be at his ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Addison climbed on a scaffold and thrust the lantern close up to the one with the turkey's head in its mouth. The bear struck at the lantern with one paw, started back, but lost its claw-hold on the beam and fell, turkey and all, eighteen or twenty feet to ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... and joined in prayer. After prayer was over, he stood up, and stepped on the scaffold again, to have the fatal rope placed around his neck. While the rope was being adjusted, he prayed audibly, and his last words ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... February, Lord Guilford Dudley was beheaded on Tower Hill. It is plain that he died a Protestant, seeing that no priest was present at his death. And like the fiends they were, his executioners brought him, both going to the scaffold, and his dead body in returning, past the windows of Partridge's house, where his poor young wife had her lodging. They let her—that tender bird of seventeen short summers—from her chamber lattice see all the horror she could see, and feel all ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... others give thee their lives in frenzied fight on the battlefield. But what matter the surroundings! Be they cypress, laurel or lilies, scaffold or open country, combat or cruel martyrdom, it is all the same, when for ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... whose heart teemed with the most admirable qualities, and who would not wantonly have injured the lowest creature that crawls upon the Creator's footstool—he to die the death of a malefactor, upon the scaffold! ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... upon a full-rigged ship must have noticed some distance up the main-mast a frame-wood or platform, like a little scaffold. A similar construction may be observed on the fore and mizen-mast, if the ship be a large one. This platform is called the "top," and its principal object is to extend the ladder-like ropes, called "shrouds," that reach from its outer ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... disguise? (55) What, I say, can be more hurtful than that men who have committed no crime or wickedness should, simply because they are enlightened, be treated as enemies and put to death, and that the scaffold, the terror of evil-doers, should become the arena where the highest examples of tolerance and virtue are displayed to the people with all the marks of ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... might reason thus: "How will it serve the other cause to send one poor wretch to the scaffold, where there are so many just as ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... visited him; and his advice was sought on all questions of importance. Yet at this time he undertook a service to the state, more invidious, and perhaps more perilous, than any in which his politics ever involved him. On the very day of the king's execution, and even below the scaffold, had been sold the earliest copies of a work admirably fitted to shake the new government, and for the sensation which it produced at the time, and the lasting controversy which it has engendered, one of the most remarkable known in literary history. This was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Bianchon, "the censor flourished; you must show as much indulgence to a man who underwent the ordeal by scissors in 1805 as to those who went to the scaffold in 1793." ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... seems the great avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... the bold enterprises of ambition? His only place of refuge is a throne. He who has won a queen must protect her with a sceptre. You must be mine—my very queen—you must extend your hand and raise me to the royalty of Poland, or see my blood flow ignominiously upon the scaffold." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the weak were oppressed, and the mighty Ruled with an iron rod. Then it chanced in a nobleman's palace That a necklace of pearls was lost, and erelong a suspicion Fell on an orphan girl who lived as maid in the household. She, after form of trial condemned to die on the scaffold, Patiently met her doom at the foot of the statue of Justice. As to her Father in heaven her innocent spirit ascended, Lo! o'er the city a tempest rose; and the bolts of the thunder Smote the statue of bronze, and hurled in wrath from its left hand Down on the pavement below ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... it would not be mercy to kill it, and cruelty, damnable cruelty, to tear off a wing one day, and a limb the next, and so on, till nothing remained of its tortured frame but the quivering pulse of life. I spoke of men who die on the scaffold, or who drag on existence in jails and hulks, and whose hearts are not so hard, whose spirits are not so brutal, as those of others who come into our houses, who sit at our tables, with smiles on their lips and poison in their tongues, whose language is refined, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... your Compassion, Lady, yet awake? Remember that the scaffold, hangman, sword, And all the Instruments death playes upon, Are hither calld by you; 'tis you may stay them. When at the Barre there stood your Ravisher You would have savd him, then you made your choyce To marry him: will you then ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... believe me the monster of ingratitude, the treacherous coward which appearances pronounce me. No!" he continued, raising his right hand as high as his fetters would permit, and speaking in a tone which fell with the eloquence of truth, on every heart—"No: here, as on the scaffold—now, as with my dying breath, I will proclaim aloud my innocence; I call on the Almighty Judge himself, as on every Saint in heaven, to attest it—ay, and I believe it WILL be attested, when nought but my memory is left to be cleared from shame—I am not the murderer of Don Ferdinand Morales! ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... it may well appear amazing that so wholesale a destruction of privileges enjoyed for thirty-six years should have provoked so feeble an opposition. It is still more amazing that it should have passed without a protest from O'Connell himself, who had solemnly vowed to perish on the field or on the scaffold rather than submit to it. Yet so it was. These ignorant voters, it is true, had never ventured to call their souls their own, and had only ceased to be the servile creatures of their landlords in order to become the servile creatures of their priests. Still, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... the mill-yard it was to find half-a-dozen people there with ladders, scaffold-poles, ropes, blocks, and pulleys. There was a short consultation, and soon after the men began work, unbolting the woodwork of the sails, while others began to disconnect the millstones from ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... some way in which he could force himself to die, to invent some device against himself, which would not permit of any hesitation on his part, any delay, any possible regrets. He envied condemned criminals who are led to the scaffold surrounded by soldiers. Oh! if he could only beg of some one to shoot him; if he could, confessing the state of his soul, confessing his crime to a sure friend who would never divulge it, obtain from ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... constables, who seemed fully to appreciate the consequence which the modicum of authority dealt out to persons of their standing in society cannot fail to impart. Then the anxiety to complete their task, which the workmen who were still employed in preparing the scaffold evinced, gave another feature perfectly distinct from what had before caught my attention, while the eagerness of the inhabitant housekeepers to let "excellent places for seeing," and of certain ambulatory pastrycooks to accommodate the rapidly increasing multitude with such delicacies ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... In front of the Banquetting House, on a scaffold, Charles I. was beheaded on the 30th of January, 1648;—His Majesty passed from the Banquetting House to the scaffold through ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... was he carried to the Greve, where was builded a very substantial scaffold of strong timber, whereupon he was to be tormented to death. By the executioners, he was bound to an engine of wood and iron, made like to a St. Andrew's Cross; and then the hand, with the knife chained to it, wherewith he slew the king, and half the arm, ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... do not pity Joan of Arc: that heroic woman only paid the price which all must pay for celebrity in some shape or other: the sword or the faggot, the scaffold or the field, public hatred or private heart-break; what matter? The noble Bedford could not rise above the age in which he lived: but that was the age of gallantry and chivalry, as well as superstition: and could Charles, the lover of Agnes Sorel, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... over the court of justice which condemned Charles I. to the scaffold, and who by his extreme republican principles had rendered himself obnoxious to Cromwell, began again to be distinguished in public affairs after the Protector's death, and was elected President of the Council of State. He did not live long ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... to his feet). They have gone—and in the morning I have got to die! To-morrow! And on the scaffold, as a thief! To-night I have begun—to-morrow, then, sees how I end! Here, here, I must not think of that. No, no; I will not. That is not for me. Five hours more! The time is very short. Show me, dear ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... upon a Point of Religion, and is respected as a Martyr by that Side for which he suffer'd. The innocent Mirth which had been so conspicuous in his Life, did not forsake him to the last: He maintain'd the same Chearfulness of Heart upon the Scaffold, which he used to shew at his Table; and upon laying his Head on the Block, gave Instances of that Good-Humour with which he had always entertained his Friends in the most ordinary Occurrences. His Death was of a piece with his Life. There was nothing in it new, forced, or affected. He did not look ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... a very virulent partisan woman, and, according to my Grandmother's showing, was so bitter against the Crown that, being taken, when a young woman, to witness the execution of King Charles, and seeing one who pressed to the scaffold after the blow to dip her kerchief in the Martyr's blood, she cried out "that she needed no such relic; but that she would willingly drink the Tyrant's blood." This is the same Alice Lisle who afterwards, in King James's time, suffered at Winchester for harbouring ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... official travelling companion with neglect, and had the unhappy Hofrath Meyer hanged without process for this crime. One of the gentlemen of his realm, for a pasquinade on the Margrave, was brought to the scaffold; he had, at various times, twenty-two of his soldiers shot with arrows and bullets or hanged for desertion, besides many whose penalties his clemency commuted to the loss of an ear or a nose; a Hungarian who killed his hunting-dog, he had broken ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the head of King Capet, We called for the blood of his wife; Undaunted she came to the scaffold, And bared her fair neck to the knife. As she felt the foul fingers that touched her, She shrank, but she deigned not to speak; She looked with a royal disdain, And died with a blush on ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... now that his father would so feel any degradation—now that, being raised so high, his fall would be so bitter, his disgrace so deeply felt, and the stigma so doubly severe! "No, no," thought Joey, "were I to impeach my father now—to accuse him of a deed which would bring him to the scaffold—I should not only be considered his murderer, but it would be said I had done it to inherit his possessions; I should be considered one who had sacrificed his father to obtain his property. I should be scouted, shunned, and deservedly despised; the disgrace of my father ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... her tears, and trying hard to win him to her with her voice. On these occasions he always called her Mary. One unlucky day that Grace and Julia were his only attendants he became very restless and wild, said he had committed a great crime, and the scaffold was being prepared for him. "Hark!" said he; "don't you hear the workmen? Curse their hammers; their eternal tip-tapping goes through my brain. The scaffold! What would the old man say? A Clifford hung! Never! I'll save him and ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... may rise from crystal waters spanned By other marbles: founts may plash on stone, And fashionably-branched trees may stand As thieves upon a scaffold. Yet, how cold! ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... King was declared guilty, but on a legal technicality a new trial was ordered. By this time the witnesses were all back home. But they were brought back, including the brother of the missing man from England. The verdict again was guilty and King paid on the scaffold the penalty for his mean and cold-blooded murder of a travelling companion. A very curious thing in this trial was the sworn statement of Hayward, the witness from England, that his sister had told him there, the morning after the shot was heard by the Indians near the Lesser Slave Lake, that ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... besides, all in conformity with an Act of the late Parliament prescribing the mode of trial for such prime offences. Five of the seven were either acquitted or spared: only Slingsby and Dr. Hewit were brought to the scaffold. They were beheaded on Tower Hill, June 8. Much influence was exerted in behalf of Hewit; but, besides that he had been deeply implicated, he had been contumacious in the Court, challenging its competency, and refusing to plead. Prynne had stood by him, and prepared his demurrer.—From the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... with women's affairs? Did you not bid me leave you to follow your own judgment? You have followed it—to a pretty purpose, as God lives! These gentlemen of the King's will cause you to follow it a little farther," she pursued, with heartless, loathsome sarcasm. "You will follow it as far as the scaffold at Toulouse. That, you will tell me, is your own affair. But what provision have you made for your wife and daughter? Did you marry me and get her to leave us to perish of starvation? Or are we to turn kitchen wenches or ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... only did not die. November, December, January, and February, went over in recovering him and preparing for his trial; physicians and judges alike made him the object of their care—the former healed his wounds, the latter made ready his scaffold. To be brief, on the 5th of April, 1834, he appeared, being perfectly cured, before the Court ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... hour, brought in a verdict of guilty, fixing the punishment at death within twenty-four hours, on the Place de la Republique. Upon hearing her sentence, she broke down completely and confessed everything she had hidden in the garden at Luciennes. On her way to the scaffold, she was a most pitiable sight to behold—the only prominent French woman, victim of the Revolution, to die a coward. The last words of this once famous and popular mistress were: "Life, life, leave me my life! I will give all my wealth to the nation. Another minute, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... and some years ago, I fell from a scaffold which in time almost killed me. I wasn't hurt very much at the time, but a dull aching pain seemed to take me in the left side of the scrotum, and after I could stand it no longer, I went to my doctor. He said that I had a rupture ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... a peaked roof, all over little sham domes, which went far to justify its title of the Rat-house, since nothing larger could well use them. The facade was thus somewhat imposing; of the rear the less said the better; and as to the interior, it was at present one expanse of dust, impeded by scaffold-poles, and all the windows had large blotches ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Bumping against a scaffold, clutching with hands and feet; a breaking plank, a ghastly yell ... and then a body with arms and legs outspread in space, a thunderbolt ... a thud as of a bag of earth ... and there he lay, stretched ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... that La Salle would not allow it to go unavenged. Though punishment might be postponed until they should emerge from their long and perilous journey through the wilderness, there could be no doubt that as soon as they should reach a French military post they would all die upon the scaffold. ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... he never forgot to be kind. Oh, my dear, you may thoroughly rely on his fine, affectionate temper. Rarely did he come to a lesson without bringing me some message from his mother and little present in his hand—a few flowers, a spring chicken, some nice fruit, a partridge. This queer rustic scaffold for my books and work, Harry constructed it himself, and I would not exchange it for the most elegant and ingenious of whatnots. I could do nothing for him but listen to his long thoughts and aspirations: that was when you were out of hearing, and he ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... died on the scaffold, Rudge, the murderer, was hanged, cursing all men to the last; Maypole Hugh died glorying in his evil life and with a jest on his lips, and Dennis, the hangman, was dragged to the gallows ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... express my gratitude then, and I don't know that I can describe it now. I can only say that it has outlived the crime, the disgrace, and the awful death on the scaffold. I am grieved to speak of that death at all; but I have no other alternative. The course of my story must now lead me straight on to the later time, and to the terrible discovery which exposed my benefactor and my friend to all England ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... same time a new treason act imposed the death penalty on anyone who called the king a "heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper." The great majority of the English people seem to have accepted this new legislation without much objection; those who refused to do so perished on the scaffold. The most eminent victim was Sir Thomas More, [19] formerly Henry's Lord Chancellor and distinguished for eloquence and profound learning. His execution sent a thrill of horror ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... terrific power over the mind, and clamours for emotion, though that emotion is to be purchased by scenes of horror and of crime. "What a magnificent spectacle," said the Parisian mob, "how interesting a spectacle to see a woman of the wit and courage of Madame Roland on the scaffold!" And it is precisely the same power, which excites the sensitive admirer of works of fiction to ransack the shelves of a library for works ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... had been only their equal once. It was only a joke, a witless, mirthless, coarse saloon joke, and they drank on and grew hilarious, never dreaming that they had sent one man to his grave, and another to the foot of the scaffold. ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... those criminals who are pampered with all the good things of life before being led to the scaffold." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... delay the exercises by pausing to make long and irrelevant speeches from the scaffold, or to sing depressing Methodist hymns; and from medical examiners who forget their stethoscopes, and clamor for waits while messenger boys are sent for them; and from official witnesses who faint at the last minute, and have to be hauled out by the deputy sheriffs; ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... and sanded or earthen floors, rows of benches, a few pews, all of unpainted wood, and a pulpit which was usually a high desk overhung by a heavy sounding-board, which was fastened to the roof by a slender metal rod. The pulpit was sometimes called a scaffold. When pews were built they were square, with high partition walls, and had narrow, uncomfortable seats round three sides. The word was always spelled "pue"; and they were sometimes called "pits." A little girl in the middle of this century attended ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... matter is," continued the King, "that either thou wilt repair forthwith to my son's chamber, and subsequently to church; or else unto the scaffold." ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... His conduct had been unmasked. A single syllable from Fouquet, a single proof formally advanced, and before the youthful loyalty of feeling which guided Louis XIV., Colbert's favor would disappear at once; the latter trembled, therefore, lest so daring a blow might overthrow his whole scaffold; in point of fact, the opportunity was so admirably suited to be taken advantage of, that a skillful, practiced player like Aramis would not have let it slip. "Sire," said Fouquet, with an easy, unconcerned air, "since you have had the kindness to ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 15th happened to be a warm, moist day for the season. The channel of the river where we lay was about thirty yards wide. A scaffold was built on the opposite shore (which was about three feet under water), and our baggage ferried across, and put on it. Our horses swam across, and received their loads at the scaffold, by which time the troops were also ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... folding series appeared before him: Tartarin captured, extradited... Of course he was frightened, but his attitude was heroic. Quickly detaching himself from Sonia: "Fly, save yourself!" he said to her in a smothered voice. Then he mounted the stairs as if to the scaffold, his head high, his eyes proud, but so disturbed in mind that he was forced to cling ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... is—when the rebellion had passed, Canada had overthrown a system of government by oligarchy. She had ousted special interests forever from her legislative halls. In a blood and sweat of agony, on the scaffold, in the chain gang, penniless, naked, hungry and in exile, her patriots had fought the dragon of privilege, cast out the accursed thing and founded national life on the eternal rocks of justice to all, special privileges to none. Her patriots had themselves learned on the scaffold ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... delight most in absurd situations that appeal to the risibilities without any injury to the feelings of others. For example, Dickens relates an anecdote concerning two men, who were about to be hanged at a public execution. When they were already on the scaffold in preparation for the supreme moment, a bull being led to market broke loose and ran amuck through the great crowd assembled to witness the hanging. One of the condemned men on the scaffold turned ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... way he gave up his sword to Cromwell, of the way he came into the room in the last act and shut the door behind him. It was not a man coming on to a stage to meet some one. It was a king going to the scaffold, quietly, unobtrusively, and courageously. However often I played that scene with him, I knew that when he first came on he was not aware of my presence nor of any earthly presence: he seemed ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... aristocracy and to the magistrature; and that they rapidly paved the way to the absolutism of Louis XIV, to the shameless saturnalia of the Regency, and to the dishonouring and degrading excesses of Louis XV, who may justly be said to have prepared by his licentiousness the scaffold of his successor. ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... me a Bible in French, and bade me read it, was a Franciscan like yourself. And therein I learned the religion that I now hold, which is the only true religion. Having lived in it ever since, I wish, by the grace of God, to die in it to-day." On the scaffold, after a touching address to the spectators, he recited in a loud voice the Apostles' Creed, in the confession of which he protested that he died, and then, "having made his prayer to God after the manner of those of the (reformed) religion,"[1387] ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... on to be of the company, very much against her inclination, for she was naturally tender-hearted; and as for myself, although I abhorred such kind of spectacles, yet my curiosity tempted me to see something that I thought must be extraordinary. The malefactor was fixed in a chair upon a scaffold erected for that purpose, and his head cut off at one blow with a sword of about forty feet long. The veins and arteries spouted up such a prodigious quantity of blood, and so high in the air, that the great jet d'eau at Versailles was not ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... preserved the same appearance of knowledge, and contempt of what was generally esteemed pleasure, during the whole of her life, for she declared herself displeased with being appointed Queen, and while conducting to the scaffold, she wrote a sentence in Latin and another in Greek on seeing the dead Body of her ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... an elaborate argument for the constitutional rights of the Southern rebels by a melodramatic exclamation, that, if we hanged the traitors of the country in the order of their guilt, "the next man who marched upon the scaffold after Jefferson ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... such a crime? While he yet looked round in horror, the doomed man, already apparently almost dead with fear, was dragged forward by his guards. Paralyzed as he was, at sight of the stage which he knew to be the scaffold, he uttered shriek after shriek of frenzied despair, and struggled like a madman to get free. But as well might Laocoon have struggled in the folds of the serpent; they pulled him on, bound him hand and foot, and held his head forcibly down on ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... jousts the trumpets began to blow in the field where they should be held. King Arthur sat on a great scaffold which was raised at one end, to judge who did best in the jousting. So great was the press of folk, both noble and common, earls and chiefs, that many did marvel to think that the realm of Britain ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... him, and he bearing it all with that haggard, imbecile look peculiar to an over-courted man. And as their wedding-day approaches is it any wonder that poor ARCHIBALD looks forward to it as a condemned criminal to the scaffold, and watches day by day the setting of the sun with the same air of grim despair. Once he tried to run away, but BELINDA, in ambush, flanked him and led him home. Then she sent for his trunk, and made him board there. And so he is floating along in a hopeless ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... distinguished the words of heavenly peace and tranquillity, for the culprit had been reconciled to the church, had confessed and received absolution, and had been promised admission to heaven. He did not exhibit the least symptom of fear, but dismounted from the animal and was led, not supported, up the scaffold, where he was placed on the chair, and the fatal collar put round his neck. One of the priests then in a loud voice commenced saying the Belief, and the culprit repeated the words after him. On a sudden, the executioner, who stood behind, commenced turning the screw, which was ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... However, he had now begun to make headway, feeling that he had some thing new to say. He had long ago thrown into the fire his first poems, awkward imitations of favorite authors, also his drama after the style of 1830, where the two lovers sang a duet at the foot of the scaffold. He returned to truth and simplicity by the longest way, the schoolboy's road. Taste and inclination both induced him to express simply and honestly what he saw before him; to express, so far as he could, the humble ideal of the poor ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... overseer and director of a wooden bridge or of a causeway—administering a buffet to this one, a shove to another; praising that one, or calling this other a lazy fellow; giving a bunch of cigars to the one who stays an hour longer to work, or carries most bricks up to the scaffold; promising to kill a cow for the food of next day; and making them offers, often without any intention of fulfilling them, only with the object of encouraging them, and deceiving them like children. [106] But whoever knows the country can do no less than confess that this is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... square. The side facing this was formed by the wall of the city, and the fourth opened upon a street of the town. This side of the square was densely filled with citizens, while the men-at-arms of the baron and a large number of knights were gathered behind a scaffold erected in the centre. Upon this was a block, and by the side stood a headsman. As Cuthbert was led forward a thrill of pleasure ran through him at perceiving no signs of his followers, who he greatly feared might ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... mio! Take care of yourself, my son," hiccoughed the priest as he crossed himself. The captain gave a light laugh, sipped his coffee, and went on as if a dungeon, scaffold, and noose were the last things ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... therefore, it was necessary that Jacques Rollet should die; so the affair took its course; and early one morning the guillotine was erected in the court-yard of the jail, three criminals ascended the scaffold, and three heads fell into the basket, which were presently afterward, with the trunks that had been attached to them, buried in a corner ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... said Bat. "An acquaintance with that guy is one of the things I'd framed up for the near future. I'm interested in why he was promenading around on the scaffold at Nora's window, and why he shifted his attention to Stanwick in such a hurry." Bat looked at his hat which lay upon the table, and then to Ashton-Kirk once more. "Any particular time you'd like me to take ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... Popery plots!" chimed in the Buccaneer; "the innocent blood that has flooded the scaffold, as if the earth was thirsty for it—and upon what grounds? the evidence, I hear, of one villain, supported by the evidence of another! I grieve for one thing, truly—that I was ever instrumental in forwarding the King's views. Robin said a true word in jest the other day, that men as ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... captivity by his own Switzers. But the favourite instance was taken from the recent history of our own land. Thousands still living had seen the great usurper, who, strong in the power of the sword, had triumphed over both royalty and freedom. The Tories were reminded that his soldiers had guarded the scaffold before the Banqueting House. The Whigs were reminded that those same soldiers had taken the mace from the table of the House of Commons. From such evils, it was said, no country could be secure which was cursed with a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... absolute, their authority supreme. Where the councillors of the Departments or the municipal officers were good Jacobins, the Commissioners availed themselves of local machinery; where they suspected their principles, they sent them to the scaffold, and enforced their own orders by whatever means were readiest. They censured and dismissed the generals; one of them even directed the movements of a fleet at sea. What was lost by waste and confusion and by the interference of the Commissioners in military movements was ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... it is a scene that has been described by too many and too able writers for me to venture on a picture of it. But the continually lamented death of Mary of Scotland seems to me happy compared with the end of her greater and sterner rival. As I think on the two, the vision of the black scaffold, the grim headsman, the serene captive, and the weeping populace fades from me and is replaced by a sadder vision: the vision of the dimly-lighted state-bedroom of Whitehall. Elizabeth, haggard and wild-eyed has flung herself prone upon the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... The friends of Dame Isabelle died on the scaffold, four years later, even as he had died; and we heard it at Sempringham, and knew that God and the saints and angels had taken up our cause at last. Child, God's mill grindeth slowly, ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt
... thrust; as though my feet had been crushed in iron boots; as though I had been chained in the cell of the Inquisition and listened with dying ears for the coming footsteps of release; as though I had stood upon the scaffold and had seen the glittering axe fall upon me; as though I had been upon the rack and had seen, bending above me, the white faces of hypocrite priests; as though I had been taken from my fireside, from my wife and children, taken ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... Passion was followed by a crowd of imitations. The whole of the Old Testament, and the lives of all the saints, were brought upon the stage. The theatre on which these mysteries were represented was always composed of an elevated scaffold divided into three parts,—heaven, hell, and the earth between them. The proceedings of the Deity and Lucifer might be discerned in their respective abodes, and angels descended and devils ascended, as their interference in mundane affairs ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Antoinette's turn to ascend the scaffold, which she did October 16, 1793. Her daughter, Marie Theresa, was then left alone with ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... in vain? Could I tell him God did not want his help to paint the sky? True, he could mount no scaffold against the infinite of the glowing west. But might he not with his little palette and brush, when the time came, show his brothers and sisters what he had seen there, and make them see it too? Might he not thus come, after long trying, to help God to paint this glory of vapour and light inside ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the help of Mme. Graslin, he toiled for a material and moral betterment, bringing about an entire regeneration of a wretched country. It was he who brought the outlawed Tascheron back into the Church, and who accompanied him to the very foot of the scaffold, with a devotion which caused his own very sensitive nature much cringing. Born in 1788, he had embraced the ecclesiastical calling through choice, and all his studies had been to that end. He belonged to a family of more than easy circumstancaes. His father was a self-made ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... at his brother's feet, and entreated for mercy. Athelstane only replied, "You tried to persuade my faithful cup-bearer to take my life—your own life, therefore, is forfeited; but, as you are the son of my royal father, I will not shed your blood upon the scaffold. I commit you and your guilty companion, the son of the traitor Cendric, to the mercy of God, who can and will preserve the innocent if it be his good pleasure so ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... cry out, it was because fear had me by the throat; and if I did not fall, it was more by Heaven's mercy than my own strength. It was not only that the flash shone in on every side through breaches in the wall, so that I seemed to be clambering aloft upon an open scaffold, but the same passing brightness showed me the steps were of unequal length, and that one of my feet rested that moment within two inches of ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be wasting your dying moments,' interposed the doctor; 'day after day, I am called upon to witness the ravages of this insidious poison, but never yet has the scaffold punished the assassin. My dear friend, think not of your murderer; eternity is opening to receive you; in its solemn presence, mere human vengeance shrinks into ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... coming and going at different points in the Western Reserve, and in Ashtabula County where one of his sons then had a farm, he kept hidden the pikes with which he hoped to arm the slaves. One of the young men who died with him on the scaffold at Charlestown was the Quaker lad, Edwin Coppock, of Columbiana County, who wrote, two days before he suffered, a touching letter of farewell to his friends. "I had fondly hoped to live to see the principles of the Declaration ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... mankind" was broken off—Alphonso appearing. We left our men, to pace the hall—abandoning character for a slow march,—whilst the page constructed a scaffold of clothes-horses and table-covers, forming a repository for hats, over the back kitchen-stairs; the lobby beyond which, we discovered had been metamorphosed into a still-room, and was now presided ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... which will immortalize it? And if I were not withheld by my respect for a sacred event, I might recall that a priest has felt it to be his duty to disavow in public a sublime speech which will remain the noblest that has ever been pronounced on a scaffold: "Son of Saint Louis, rise to heaven!" When I learned not long ago its real author, I was overcome by the destruction of my illusion, but before long I was consoled by a thought that does honor to humanity in my eyes. I feel that France has consecrated this speech, because she felt the need of ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... at hand, and many of them fell victims. The comte de Rochambeau, made a marshal by Louis XVI., narrowly escaped death under Robespierre. In 1803 Napoleon gave him a pension and the grand cross of the Legion of Honor: he died in 1807. Lauzun perished on the scaffold, sentenced by the Tribunal in January, 1794. The night before his death he was calm, slept and ate well. When the jailer came for him he was eating his breakfast. He said, "Citizen, permit me to finish." Then, offering him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... Sir Thomas, never word would I have spoken till the breath was clean gone out of him, and then, if man coveted vengeance, let him take it on the silent dust. But no sooner was it known to the Queen—to her, a woman and a mother!—than she gave command to have the scaffold run up with all speed, and that dying man drawn of an hurdle through the city that all men might behold, with trumpets going afore, and at last hanged of the gallows till he were dead. Oh, the pity of it! the ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... to the Sisters of the St. Augustine Convent; and the beloved cure of the Madeleine beseeches people to pray for order to be restored. Poor martyrs! I hope that their prison will not prove to be the antechamber of the scaffold; as Rochefort says, "Mazas est ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... people—his very intolerance supplied him with his fittest instruments of success; and the soft Heathen began at last to imagine there must indeed be something holy in a zeal wholly foreign to his experience, which stopped at no obstacle, dreaded no danger, and even at the torture, or on the scaffold, referred a dispute far other than the calm differences of speculative philosophy to the tribunal of an Eternal Judge. It was thus that the same fervor which made the Churchman of the middle age a bigot without mercy, made the Christian of the early ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... the Marriage was celebrated with all the intended Magnificence, and on their return from the Mosque, the Prince and Princess repair'd to a stately Scaffold, adorn'd with inventive Luxury, whence they might behold a Tournament, the Prize of which was a Sword richly embellish'd with Diamonds, to be given by the Princess to him that should overcome; the whole Court were there, endeavouring to outshine each other in the Costliness of their ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... trial to ecclesiastical commissioners assembled at Paris, before whom Molay was brought, together with three of the principal leaders of the Temple, survivors like himself. They had read over to them, from a scaffold erected in the forecourt of Notre-Dame, the confessions they had made, but lately, under torture, and it was announced to them that they were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. Remorse had restored to the Grand Master all his courage; he ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... "The scaffold for his execution," says Burigni, "was erected in the Court of the Castle at the Hague, facing the Prince of Orange's apartments. He made a short speech to the people, which is yet preserved in the Mercure Francoise. 'Burghers!' he said, 'I have been always your faithful countryman; ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... into a gallop, intending to drag the girl for a short distance, as a punishment, and to rein up before he had done serious mischief. On this supposition he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to die on the scaffold. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... attempt to defend the rights of the civil power against the encroachments of the Church. The vengeance of the priesthood had pursued his house to the third generation. Manfred had perished on the field of battle, Conradin on the scaffold. Then a turn took place. The secular authority, long unduly depressed, regained the ascendant with startling rapidity. The change is doubtless to be ascribed chiefly to the general disgust excited by the way in which the Church had abused its power and its success. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "Dirt bank up. Fire make on dirt. Big pot. Cook. Fry meat. Come PeeDee get off flat. Bake. Bake. Iron oven. Stay PeeDee week. Bake. Pile coals on oven top." (Another slave told of scaffold—four posts buried and logs or planks across top with earth on planks. On this pile of earth, fire was made and on great bed of coals oven could be heated for baking. 'Oven' means the great iron skillet-like ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... to give way on the smallest point, and issued a proclamation, to be read at Edinburgh, declaring all who opposed him to be traitors. In answer the malcontents raised a scaffold beside the cross, and on it stood Warriston, with a reply written by the nobles representing the people, which was received with shouts of applause. Montrose sat at Warriston's side, his legs ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... then it ceases and two or three short boards follow the timbers and are laid across them. Behind them appear a man's head and a pair of vigorous arms. One hand holds the nail, the other swings the hammer that strikes it until the boards are firmly nailed down. The "flying" scaffold is ready. Thus the builder calls it, for whom it may become a bridge to heaven, without his desiring it. Then from the scaffold the ladder is built and, if the tower roof is very high, ladder upon ladder. Nothing holds it together but iron hooks, nothing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... 6th of July, 1534, in the 54th year of his age, the sentence of condemnation was executed upon him on Tower Hill, by severing his head from his body. As he was carried to the scaffold, some low people hired by his enemies cruelly insulted him, to whom he gave cool and effectual answers. Being now under the scaffold, he looked at it with great calmness, and observing it too slenderly built, he said merrily to Mr. Lieutenant, "I pray you, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... find, on reference to the novel, that Sir William died on the scaffold, not in prison. His last words were, "'My prayer is heard. Life's cord is cut by heaven. Helen! Helen! May heaven preserve my country, and—' He stopped. He fell. And with that mighty shock the scaffold shook to ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... calculated with extreme ability; the name that was pronounced, instead of the name which the marquise awaited, had precisely the same effect upon her as the badly sharpened axes, that had hacked, without destroying, Messieurs de Chalais and de Thou upon the scaffold. She recovered herself, however, and said, "I was perfectly right in saying you were a witty woman, for you are making the time pass away most agreeably. This joke is a most amusing one, for I have never seen ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... which were however eventually published. When the French Revolution broke out the Polignacs were among the first to emigrate. The duchess died at Vienna in December, 1793, a few months after Marie Antoinette had perished on the scaffold.-ED. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... a letter is sufficient to show that you have received a defective education."—C. Bucke cor. "Which misstatement the committee attributed to a failure of memory."—Professors cor. "Then he went through the Banqueting-House to the scaffold."—Smollet cor. "For the purpose of maintaining a clergyman and a schoolmaster."—Webster cor. "They however knew that the lands were claimed by Pennsylvania."—Id. "But if you ask a reason, they immediately ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... this day light such a candle in England, by God's grace, as shall never be put out;" or such, again, as that of Mary Dyer, the Quakeress, hanged by the Puritans of New England for preaching to the people, who ascended the scaffold with a willing step, and, after calmly addressing those who stood about, resigned herself into the hands of her persecutors, and died in peace ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... dense crowd round the scaffold. Sophie heeded them not; she ran girlishly up the steps to where the executioner was leaning on his axe. "Where do I put my head?" she asked simply. The executioner pointed to the block. "There!" said he. "Where did you think you put it?" Sophie reproved him ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... am very sorry for it on your account, but you must excuse my regretting it on my own. Another story and I have done;—the Newgate Calendar makes mention of a notorious housebreaker, who closed his career of outrage and violence by the murder of a whole family, whose house he robbed; on the scaffold he entreated permission to speak a few words to the crowd beneath, and thus addressed them:—"My friends, it is quite true I murdered this family; in cold blood I did it—one by one they fell beneath my hand, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... but for such work as ours—of which the aim is to return to France that liberty which has been stifled by the iron hand of Bonaparte and by the Bourbons—we need men who are ready to sacrifice their lives—to walk straight on, even if the scaffold stands at the termination of their road. Is Fanfar ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... that now rend the skies for her uncle must remind her of the shouts that followed her father to the scaffold: no wonder, then, that she grows pale as she hears them; and that the memory of the terrible past, written in characters of blood, gives a sombre hue to the ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... the square in front of the Hotel de Ville that Alva gloated over the flowing blood of his victims as it ran from the scaffold. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... list was read, in the vaulted chamber where Darnay had seen the associated prisoners on the night of his arrival. Every one of those had perished in the massacre; every human creature he had since cared for and parted with, had died on the scaffold. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... simplified and calls us simple souls. Mariana is about working with this woman from morning until night, scarcely sitting down for a moment, just like a regular ant! She is delighted that her hands are turning red and rough, and in the midst of these humble occupations is looking forward to the scaffold! She has even attempted to discard shoes; went out somewhere barefoot and came back barefoot. I heard her washing her feet for a long time afterwards and then saw her come out, treading cautiously; they were evidently sore, poor thing, but her ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... enclosure except the persons dedicated to the service of the god; only on days when human victims were sacrificed might ordinary people penetrate into the precinct. This human god received more sacrifices than all the other gods; often he would sit on a sort of scaffold in front of his house and call for two or three human victims at a time. They were always brought, for the terror he inspired was extreme. He was invoked all over the island, and offerings were sent to him from every side. Again, of the South Sea Islands in general we ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Annunziata, in the Piazza del Annunziata, erected in 1587, has a portal upborne by marble columns, while the brick facade is left quite unfinished, with great holes between the brick and mortar, where seemingly the scaffold-poles had been inserted, and in which the birds have built their nests. The interior presents a striking contrast in its splendid and almost over-gorgeous decorations. It is in the form of a cross, with a dome, the vaulting supported by twelve fluted ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... Kent, who had been esteemed a prophetess, was put to death as a cheat. She suffered with seven persons who had managed her fits for the support of the Catholic religion, and confessed her fraud upon the scaffold. About seven years after this, Lord Hungerford was beheaded for consulting certain soothsayers concerning the length of Henry the Eighth's life. But these cases rather relate to the purpose for which the sorcery was employed, than to the fact ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... "palace"—that is to say, a great thatched shed—on the fifth day of the "Customs." "Four corpses, attired in their criminal's shirts and night-caps, were sitting in pairs upon Gold Coast stools, supported by a double-storied scaffold, about forty feet high, of rough beams, two perpendiculars and as many connecting horizontals. At a little distance on a similar erection, but made for half the number, were two victims, one above the other. Between these substantial structures ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... crown. At last the two Hugh Despencers undertook it: under their leadership the barons were defeated, and Thomas of Lancaster in his turn paid for his enterprises with his life. For in England, if anywhere, the assumption of power led inevitably to the scaffold. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... pieces, were some distance away from them. A company of half a score of children were ascending in single file, along a slanting plane of planks, into the hollow in the cliff upon which work had been renewed. Along the rock-wall ahead of them a scaffold had been erected and here were men drilling holes in the stone, or driving wooden wedges into the holes already made, or pouring water on the wedges as the skins the children bore were passed up ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... celebrated Unitarian divine, a personal friend of John Brown, on hearing, in Rome, of his failure, trial, and sentence to the scaffold, in a letter to Francis Jackson of Boston, November 24, 1859, gave vent to what was then regarded as fanatical prophecy, but ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... necessary, on the part of my friend, to obtain the consent of the Prefect to make these drawings. A moveable scaffold was constructed, which was suspended from the upper parts—and in this nervous situation the artist made his copies—of the size of the foregoing cuts. The expense of the scaffold, and of making the designs, was very inconsiderable indeed. The worthy Prefect, or Mayor, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... death, he fell to counting the iron spikes before him, and wondering how the head of one had been broken off, and whether they would mend it, or leave it as it was. Then, he thought of all the horrors of the gallows and the scaffold—and stopped to watch a man sprinkling the floor to cool it—and then ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... St. Catherine for the Capuchin Church of Cadiz, Murillo fell from the scaffold, and soon died from his injuries: he was buried in the Church of Sta. Cruz, and it is a sad coincidence that this church and that of San Juan, at Madrid, in which Velasquez was interred, were both destroyed by the French under ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... associated. He died, as he had lived, the friend of true religion and a firm adherent of the reformed faith. He said that he hoped his death would do more for the Christian good of his country than his life could do. He was beheaded on Saturday, July 21,1683. Upon the scaffold, just before his execution, he handed to the sheriffs a written declaration, in which, after denial of the false charges on which he had been condemned, he concludes with a prayer which shows that far higher ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... the first opportunity I had ever had to see a man hung, we stayed and saw it through. We rode up to the edge of the crowd, which was about forty yards from the scaffold where the hanging was to take place, and had been there but a few moments when we saw the sheriff coming with the prisoner, having a very strong guard of some two hundred men all well armed. As soon as the prisoner stepped ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... reeling with intoxication, mount the scaffolds, take out serpents from the vessels, and allow them to bite their arms. Bite after bite succeeds; the arms run with blood; and the Mals go on with their pranks, amid the deafening plaudits of the spectators. Now and then they fall off from the scaffold and pretend to feel the effects of poison, and cure themselves by their incantations. But all is mere pretence. The serpents displayed on the occasion and challenged to do their worst, have passed through a preparatory state. Their fangs have been carefully extracted from their jaws. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... were these rejoicings; for the greater part was occasioned by a false rumour that the duke was to be sent to the Tower. No one inquired about a news which every one wished to hear; and so sudden was the joy, that a MS. letter says, "the old scaffold on Tower-hill was pulled down and burned by certain unhappy boys, who said they would have a new one built for the duke." This mistake so rapidly prevailed as to reach even the country, which blazed with bonfires to announce the fall of Buckingham.[234] ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... say no more. Brief words are best on such burning matters. To-morrow at six in the afternoon I will send for you. Be ready! Till then—try to rest—try to sleep without dreaming of a scaffold!" ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... than to assume that he was deaf or blind. It is said that on the occasion of his assassination by a conspiracy of moralists (it is always your moralist who makes assassination a duty, on the scaffold or off it), he defended himself until the good Brutes struck him, when he exclaimed "What! you too, Brutes!" and disdained further fight. If this be true, he must have been an incorrigible comedian. But even if we waive this story, or accept the traditional sentimental ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... the principles which they professed, and never intended to do so; they believed in them, and were willing to risk their lives in endeavouring to carry them out. The writer wishes to speak in particular of two of these men, both of whom perished on the scaffold—their names were Thistlewood and Ings. Thistlewood, the best known of them, was a brave soldier and had served with distinction as an officer in the French service; he was one of the excellent swordsmen of Europe; had fought several duels in France, where it is no child's play to fight ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... "I ask you anything about your adventures, I must explain to you the state of things here. Until November last Bordeaux, and indeed the whole of the Gironde, was moderate. All our deputies—who have now, as perhaps you know, either fallen on the scaffold or been hunted down like wild beasts—belonged to that party. They were earnest reformers, and were prominent among the leaders of the Revolution. They went with the stream, up to a certain point. They voted for most of the sanguinary ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... frightened into "squealing," he would not have been involved; without fear of exposure and with a clear conscience he could—and would!—have joined in the denunciation of the man who had been caught, and could—and would!—have helped send him to the penitentiary or to the scaffold. With the security of an honest man and the serenity of a Christian he planned his colossal thefts and reaped their benefits; and whenever he was accused, he could have explained everything, could have got his accuser's sympathy and admiration. I say, could have explained; ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips |
