"Bonfire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from above his simple tale receives, Whilst stupid matrons start, and think of thieves, Now daily fools unbar the narrow soul, All wise and gen'rous o'er the nightly bowl. The haunted wood receives its motley host, (By trav'ller shun'd) tho' neither fag nor ghost; And there the crackling bonfire blazes red, While merry vagrants feast beneath the shed. From sleepless beds unquiet spirits rise, And cunning wags put on their borrow'd guise: Whilst silly maidens mutter o'er their boon, And crop their fairy weeds beneath the moon: And harmless plotters slyly take the road, ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... others, the sagacious chairman, upon the first show of violence, roared out his resignation, and descended from his place. But this movement did not impair the industry of the regulators. A voice was heard proposing a bonfire of the merchandise, and no second suggestion was necessary. All hands but those of the pedler and the attorney were employed in building the pyre in front of the tavern some thirty yards; and here, in choice confusion, lay flaming calicoes, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... any helper with terrible eagerness of despair. A hundred feet away, lighted by the flames which were beginning to thrust quick tongues through the smoke and the darkness, was a long heap of shapeless wreck, about which dark figures were swarming like midges about a bonfire. She could distinguish in the middle of the line the two locomotives silhouetted against the darkness, standing half on end like two grotesque monsters rearing in deadly conflict. Every moment the flames became fiercer, and the hurrying lanterns ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... indulge in alcoholics at a very early age and has continued this habit during his lifetime. He states that he had an attack of delirium tremens, during which he received a severe burn on his left arm by jumping out of a window into a bonfire, while trying to escape imaginary persecutors. During the years 1903-04, he was addicted to the steady use of morphine and cocaine. He has led a very loose sexual life; has been infected with gonorrhoea on numerous occasions, and ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... to set the wet wood, but the men of his command, used to forest life, soon mastered it. Then they threw on boughs and whole tree trunks, until a great bonfire blazed and roared merrily, thrusting out innumerable tongues of ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... axe of his will give him out of the tree he has just prostrated. It is really pleasant to think of it. There will be the great fire-place, with a huge block for a back-log; then a pile will be built against it large enough for a bonfire—and then such a crackling and streaming! why the dark night just around there will be all in a blush with it. And the little window will glow like a red star to the people of the village; and then within, there will be the immense antlers over the door, belonging to a moose ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... like about patriotism, but patriotism ain't just marchin' off to fight for your country. It's usin' your neighbors and your country right every day in the week, includin' Sunday. Some folks think patriotism is buildin' a big bonfire once a year and lettin' her blaze up. But the real thing is keepin' your own little fire a-goin' steady, right here where you live. And it's thinkin' of that little fire to home that ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... have kept the Greshamsbury tenantry waiting under the oak-trees by far too long. Yes; when young Frank came of age there was still enough left at Greshamsbury, still means enough at the squire's disposal, to light one bonfire, to roast, whole in its skin, one bullock. Frank's virility came on him not quite unmarked, as that of the parson's son might do, or the son of the neighbouring attorney. It could still be reported in the Barsetshire Conservative ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... upon an Irish family, seven in number. The mother and two of her daughters were in. The mother had sore eyes. The place was dirty, and the air inside was close and foul. The miserable bits of furniture left were fit for nothing but a bonfire. "Good morning, Mrs K," said my friend, as we entered the stifling house; "how are you geting on?" The mother stood in the middle of the floor, wiping her sore eyes, and then folding her hands in a tattered apron; whilst her daughters gazed upon us vacantly from ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... through, and well greased. Your first baking will undoubtedly be burned on the bottom. It is almost impossible without many trials to understand just how little heat suffices underneath. Sometimes it seems that the warmed earth where the fire has been is enough. And on top you do not want a bonfire. A nice even heat, and patience, are the proper ingredients. Nor drop into the error of letting your bread chill, and so fall to unpalatable heaviness. Probably for some time you will alternate between the extremes ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... that women called for light wraps and men tied sweaters round their necks by the arms. Then at a long distance from the dinner-table a bonfire began to flicker, and then grow bright and red. And it was discovered that rugs and cushions had been placed (not too near the fire) for people to sit on while they drank their coffee and liquors, and that there were logs to lean against, and boxes of cigars and cigarettes where ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... that night, as on the occasion of the victory over Marshall. The town authorities had forbidden a single bonfire to be started in the streets of the town. That burning of the Adkins home must serve as a lesson, through which they should profit. Instead, a banquet was arranged for an a succeeding evening, by some of the friends and admirers of ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... doubtingly, for a more self-complacent face than his companion's he never saw—every wrinkle trembled with mirth; eyes, cheeks, chin, and brows surrounded that jolly red nose of his like a group of gay boys round a bonfire. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... brave, Essie. But you're a real coward. The reason for all this is your fear of being pitchforked into a big bonfire by a pantomime demon with horns and a long tail." He laughed bitterly. "To think that you, my adored Essie, should really have the soul of a Sunday school teacher. You, a Bacchante of passion, to be puling ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... us see if I can't make near as good a bonfire as Mike Clancy himself! Throw a sup more paraffin on, you, Pat; now stand back all of yous, an' look at the fine blaze. As soon as we have the roof off of it, you can all set to work an' pull the whole place ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... musical recollections of these evenings was a source of great annoyance to Mr. James Carker, who devoutly wished 'that he would make a bonfire of his violoncello, and burn his books with it.' There was only a thin partition between the rooms which these two gentlemen occupied, and on another occasion Mr. Morfin performed an extraordinary feat in order to warn the manager ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... tactics and all the appliances for instructing others in military matters. The conspirators having failed at Chicago during the convention to make their starting point, having failed to make the great bonfire, which was to be the signal for thousands of others not quite so large, to burn up brightly from almost every hill-top in Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, it was necessary for their leaders to meet again, and determine ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... forthwith harried he the countryside, bringing it into subjection under him, & withal encountering no resistance. Thereafter went King Harald into Scarborough, & fought there with the men of the town, and he went up on to the cliff there and ordered a vast bonfire to be made and a light thereto put, and when it was ablaze, his men took large forks and with them rolled it down into the town, and then one house after the other began to burn, so that there was naught for the townsmen to do save to surrender. There slew the Norwegians many men, and took all the ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... candle-nut torches gleamed through the foliage, and revealed dusky forms hurrying hither and thither. We pushed on through the wood at the top of our speed, until suddenly the outlines of the marae, illuminated by the glare of a large bonfire, loomed up before us. A score of half-naked men, were dancing around the fire in front of the inclosure, with the wildest and most extravagant contortions of body. Seen by the fitful and wavering light, their ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... and silent, their eyes roaming idly over the courtyard. The big bonfire burned brightly, and a wavering splash of light lay on the dark earth at their feet, while the lazy smoke wreathed itself slowly in gleaming coils amongst the black boughs of the trees. They could ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... their growers in a mass of fire! What a new existence!—what a temptation above Lucifer's! Would clod be any thing but a clod, if he could resist it? Why, here was a spectacle last night for a whole country!—a Bonfire visible to London, alarming her guilty towers, and shaking the Monument with an ague fit—all done by a little vial of phosphor in a Clown's fob! How he must grin, and shake his empty noddle in clouds, the Vulcanian Epicure! Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... said, when it was coming. We had a stock of empty flour barrels on Town-hill stuffed with leaves, and a big pole set in the ground, and a battered tar barrel, with its bung chopped out, to put on top of the pole. It was all to beat the last year's bonfire—and it did. The country wagoners had made their little stoppages at the back door. We knew what was to come of that. And if the old cook—a monstrous fine woman, who weighed two hundred if she weighed a pound—was brusque ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... sophomore class insignia. A formal trial followed, presided over by a Pontifex Maximus, in which a Judex, an Advocatus Pro, and an Advocatus Con participated, with the foregone result that the culprit was sentenced to be hanged, shot, and burned; a decree carried out on a gallows and bonfire previously prepared in spite of ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... greatly appreciated, and every remedy is thought a great deal of. I gave two rhubarb pills to a patient, and was told she had had no ache or pain since. She was rather poorly, and had taken to her bed, having caught a chill the night of the bonfire. ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... the part of Hertzog demanded prompt action on the part of Botha, who called upon his colleague either to suppress his particular brand of anathema or resign. Hertzog not only built a bigger bonfire of denunciation but ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... conscious of a growing chill in the atmosphere. A cockchafer whirred past her and buried itself in a tuft of grass hard by. In the wood behind her a robin trilled a high sweet song. From the farther side of the valley came a trail of smoke from a cottage bonfire, and the scent of it hung heavy in ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... no lack of these and as the boys carried them in the waterproof boxes they had used on their previous expeditions they were dry. Some were soon struck and a bonfire built of the brush and ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... when they rounded the point and came in sight of the cheery bonfire with its Rembrandt-like group, and the air was savoury with the smell of frying fish and crabs. The fisherman was not to be tempted by appeals to stay, but smilingly disappeared down the sands, the red glare of his torch making a glowing track in ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... right, too!" said Mrs. Tree. "Riding that nasty thing, running folks down and scaring their horses. I'd put 'em all in the bonfire-pile if I was Town Council. Your turn will come some day, young man, for all you go spinning along like a spool of cotton. How's ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... installing of the King of Denmarke by proxy and the Duke of Monmouth.... Spent the evening with my father. At cards till late, and being at supper, my boy being sent for some mustard to a neat's tongue, the rogue staid half an houre in the streets, it seems at a bonfire, at which I was very angry, and resolve to ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... labor, and care, and thrift, had gone for nothing. Not daring to leave Fetuao behind, he took her with him and started off to find the officer to whom he had at first complained. His protest had not apparently been very effective, to judge from the torn fragments of the boat now blazing in a bonfire, and he was hardly encouraged to make a second attempt. However, slim as the chance was, it was now the only thing left to do. Surely it was not possible that they would let his house be looted and ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... again a beautiful summer evening. In front of the sheepcotes everything was ready for a big bonfire. Bacha Filina called all his helpers and told them they would have a celebration such as none of them had seen before. Through the woods in the direction of the cottage wandered Petrik, Ondrejko, and between ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy
... of the road, amply anticipated any passion for entertainment which the passengers on the Overland might have possessed. As the engine came to a stop, a deafening yell pierced the night, punctuated with pistol-shots. Cautious investigation revealed figures dancing wildly around a bonfire; and the passengers remembered the worst they had ever heard about Indians. The flames shot upward, setting the shadows fantastically leaping up the precipitous bluffs and among the weird petrifactions of a devil's nightmare that rimmed the circle of flaring light. A man with a gun in his ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... lustramus et agros," puts into perfect verse a prayer for the welfare of the crops and flocks, and looks forward to a time when (if the prayer succeeds) the land shall be full of corn, and the peasant shall heap wood upon a bonfire—perhaps one of the midsummer fires that still survive in the Abruzzi. Virgil's lines are no less picturesque;[168] and though he does not mention the pagus, he is clearly thinking of a lustratio in which more ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the city. Several persons illuminated their houses in token of their joy. On the following day, when Mr. Aislabie was conveyed to the Tower, the mob assembled on Tower-hill with the intention of hooting and pelting him. Not succeeding in this, they kindled a large bonfire, and danced around it in the exuberance of their delight. Several bonfires were made in other places; London presented the appearance of a holiday, and people congratulated one another as if they had just escaped from some great calamity. The rage upon the acquittal of Mr. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... loved. His house was bowered in roses to the thatched roof, and in the garden grew lilies and lupins, a hundred roses and many bright tracts of shining, scented blossoms. Now, however, they had vanished and on a Saturday afternoon John Best was tidying up, tending a bonfire and ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... I come from," said the preacher, "we always kept up His Majesty's birthday with a bonfire and fireworks. But you don't seem so loyal ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that I sat with you before the walls of Calais. God's blessing and mine be on you, and to Richard the archer, greetings. Dunwich has heard how he shot the foul-tongued Frenchman before the great battle closed, and the townsfolk lit a bonfire on the walls and feasted all the archers ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... is a strange story attached to that, which I must tell you at once. But why did you come a night sooner than you said you would come? I am rather sorry—I really am!' (shaking her head playfully) 'for as a surprise to you I had ordered a bonfire to be built, which was to be lighted on your arrival to-morrow; and now it is wasted. You can see the outline of it ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the men laboured that in the hour and a half that had elapsed since Philo had arrived a large hut had been erected a hundred yards from the camp, with a small bower beside it for the use of the female slaves. A great bonfire burnt in front, and the interior was lighted ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... humble home. They generally kindled their fire inside the hut, which was made of most inflammable materials, and to judge by the clouds of smoke which poured out through the coarse thatch at cooking time, the operations were on rather a large scale. He also made a large bonfire of refuse bits of wood outside his hut on cold nights, and there he and a few friends would sit and toast themselves till a ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... probable that a week of pure vagabondia cured him of the idea that civilization is a disease, for he came back home, made a bonfire of his attire, and after a vigorous tubbing, was clothed in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... proportion was trumpery which had begun to accumulate in his father's day. Among the rest was a dried tapeworm. And now, after lying half a century in his garret and other dust holes, these things were not burned; instead of a bonfire, or purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, or increasing of them. The neighbors eagerly collected to view them, bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and dust holes, to lie there till their ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... there, the devils with pitchforks hurled them head foremost upon poisonous hatchels formed of terrible, barbed darts, thereon to struggle by their brains; then shortly, they threw them together, layer on layer, upon the summit of one of the burning crags, there to blaze like a bonfire. Thence they were snatched away up the ravines amidst the eternal ice and snow; {73a} then plunged again into an enormous flood of seething brimstone to be parched, stifled, and choked by the direful stench; thence to a quagmire of vermin, ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... said a few words of instruction, after which the Indians embraced each other as brothers and friends, in token of general satisfaction and peace. I heard all their confessions, and a large number had the happiness of receiving Holy Communion. On the eve of St. Anne's feast, they made a bonfire, and while the wood burned they fired off guns and danced around the fire, clapping their hands in imitation of musical instruments. This lasted for a great part of the night, however, they had previously said their evening prayers, and sung hymns ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... A great bonfire had been built in the road in front of Gray Gables, as had been the custom for years. The old doctor ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... for the day had been chosen on account of its being the day of her accession and of Queen Mary's death. She was set about with gilded laurel-wreaths, and bore a gilded sceptre; and beneath her, like some sacrificial fire, blazed a great bonfire, roaring up to heaven with its sparks and smoke. Half a dozen masked fellows, in fantastic dresses, tended the bonfire and replenished the flambeaux that burned about the effigy. Indeed it was strangely like some pagan religious spectacle—the goddess at the entrance ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... Mathews's room that year. Some time if you look under the carpet you'll find a depression in the middle of the floor. That's where Billy made a bonfire one night and offered up in sacrifice all his text-books. It took half an hour to put that fire out." Remsen was ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... keen scent or the acrid odor of the sacred wood—perhaps both. They had gone half a mile at least before his companion thought it necessary to show any caution. At last he stopped short, and then Jem smelled a smell as if "cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs and cloves," were all blazing in one bonfire. With some difficulty he was prevailed on to stand still and let the subtle native creep on, nor would he consent to be inactive until the other solemnly vowed to come back for him and give him his full share of the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... created an earl. The Mayor and Corporation of York voted an address to his Majesty "on the victory at Long Island;" at Leeds they rang the bells, lighted windows, fired cannon, and started a huge bonfire which made the town "quite luminous;" and at Halifax, Colne, Huddersfield, and many other places, similar rejoicings were held. At Limerick Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell ordered the garrison under arms, and fired three volleys "on account of the success of his Majesty's ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... seaward met the General's eyes. The Saint-Ferdinand was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men told off to sink the Spanish brig had found a cargo of rum on board; and as the Othello was already amply supplied, had lighted a floating bowl of punch on the high seas, by way of a joke; a pleasantry ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... were meetings held in many parts of the South, tremendous scenes enacted there. In Charleston, South Carolina, the post-office was broken open by an aristocratic mob, under the lead of the famous Robert Y. Hayne, and a bonfire made of the Abolition mail-matter which it contained. As this Southern excitement advanced, a passionate fear for the stability of the Union arose in the heart of the North. Abolition and the Abolitionists had produced these sectional disturbances. Abolition and the Abolitionists ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... had been surprisingly rapid in their consumption of the dinner, these later ones were startlingly so. Like grain before a flock of hungry birds, like ice beneath a bonfire, the viands, lavishly provided though they had been, melted away in almost the twinkling of an eye. And it was precisely as the last enormous mouthful of cherry pie vanished down Jiggers Quigg's happy ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... men by whose superior intelligence society has so greatly profited?" The obvious truth is, that such "celebrations" are not to our taste, that there is something burlesque, to our ideas, in this useless honour; and that we think a bonfire, a discharge of squibs, or even a discharge of rhetoric, and a display of tinsel banners and buffoonery, does not supply the most natural way of reviving the memory of departed genius. At the same time, they have their use, where they do not create their ridicule. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... at his face quickly. He had thrust out his neck as he had a trick of doing; and so brought his face abruptly into the light of the bonfire from below, like a face in the footlights. His long chin and high cheek-bones were lit up infernally from underneath; so that he looked like a fiend staring down into the flaming pit. I had an unmeaning sense of being tempted in a wilderness; and even as ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... screen was gone; part lay beneath the tower; part had been burned; Christ's Cross held up the roof of the shed where the minister kept his horse; the three figures had been carted off to Derby to help swell the Protestant bonfire. The projecting stoup to the right of the main door had been broken half off.... In place of these glories there stood now, in the body of the church, before the chancel-steps, a great table, such as the rubrics of the new Prayer-Book required, spread with a white cloth, upon ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... saw your father, but they tell me he has lately burned his bureau, making one vast bonfire of the gatherings of twenty years. That is not such ill news either; and maybe, now the great ado that worked such woe is put by and gone, he would rejoice to see you back at home, and open his hungering arms ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... decided to have a bonfire of its own. A printed bill was issued calling upon all students and other devout Christians to assemble at nine o'clock on the morning of December Tenth, Fifteen Hundred Twenty, outside the Elster gate, and witness a pious and religious spectacle. A large concourse gathered, a pyre of fagots ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... editor, the local parson had ventured to tell the truth from his pulpit, and even to intimate to his Grace that he might no longer receive the Body and Blood of the Lord at the altar of that parish! The parson would scarcely—in these days—have been therefore made bonfire of, and had a pretty martyr's memorial by Mr. Scott's pupils; but he would have lighted a goodly light, nevertheless, in this England of ours, whose pettifogging piety has now neither the courage to deny a duke's grace in its church, nor to ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the day's experience had been, the climax came after camp was made, supper served and cleared away, when a big bonfire was lighted and all sat about it talking over the happenings of the day, singing and putting on stunts. In the tourists' minds the guide and the grizzly were classed together; both were wild, strange and somewhat of a curiosity. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... one hour. Once the police-log gave buckshot to those on the roofs. How much use—the Sahib can see. Now they have sent a sowar for the Dep'ty Sahib. But these would not hear the Lat Sahib himself. One match will light such a bonfire; but a hundred buckets will not put ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... rose and replenished the fire and stamped about, shaking from his shoulders the little heaps of snow that had collected there. The flames rose high in the still air and stained the snow around his bonfire a rosy red. The redness of the fire-stained snow was not more deep and vital than the red blood pulsing through his heart. With all a strong man's virility and power he loved as only the strong can love, ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... Infidels, as he were a flame of fire, and drove at him, but Sa'adan charged home at him and dealt him with his club a blow which broke his ribs and cast him lifeless to the earth. Then he called out to his sons and slaves, saying, "Light the bonfire, and whoso falleth of the Kafirs do ye dress him and roast him well in the flame, then bring him to me that I may break my fast on him!" So they kindled a fire midmost the plain and laid thereon the slain, till he was cooked, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... "I'd need ear-muffs and mittens to handle her. I think I'll build me some bonfire and thaw out. She ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire." ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Mother Drum was well-nigh out of breath, and panted, and looked so hot, that they might have put her up by Temple Bar on Queen Bess's birthnight for a Bonfire, and so saved Tar Barrels. And as she spoke she brandished a large Frying Pan, from which great drops of hot grease—smelling very savoury by the way—dropped on to the sanded floor. The other Blacks seemed in nowise disturbed by this Dispute, but were rather amused ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... imputed to the Princess of Wales an undue intimacy with John Earl of Bute; and with a practical pun on his name the mob in some of the riots which were common in the first years of his reign showed their belief in the lie by fastening a jack-boot and a petticoat together and feeding a bonfire with them.] ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... steadily, but work went hand in hand with play at Warwick Hall, as Kitty's memory-book testified. She brought it out to liven the recreation hour one rainy afternoon, late in the term, when they were house-bound by the weather. Its covers, labelled "Gala Days and Bonfire Nights," were bulging with souvenirs of many memorable occasions. She sat on the floor with it spread open on her lap. Betty was on one side and Lloyd on the other, while Gay leaned against her back ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... become a Christian! The ancestors frizzled in the bonfire, and the descendants singled out and cursed for ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the rifles of the Zulus spoke, and a crackle of shots ran up and down their line. Then there was a flare of light as the bonfire was lit, and they could see the army of baboons in a fuss of panic dashing to and fro. They fired again and again into the tangle of them, and the beasts commenced to scatter and flee, and Shadrach and his men rose to their full height ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... pitch suit and a bonfire, rather than the lustring; and as her clothes are returned, le the lady's be put to her others, to be sent to her when it can be told whither—but not till I give the word neither; for we must get the dear fugitive back ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... will be hardly complete without a box of those matches with which Brother Stryker wanted to kindle a bonfire which was to consume the body of the heretical Briggs. But speaking of that novel of mine ('Monk and Knight') reminds me that I wrote a poem on the railway the other day, and I will read it now if there be no objection." (Cries of 'Read it,' 'Go ahead.') "The ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... have robbed long since of any colour of reality they once possessed. They express no creative purpose now, whatever they did in their inception, they point towards no constructive ideals. Essentially they are things for the museum or the bonfire, whatever momentary expediency may hold back the New Republican from an unqualified advocacy of such a destination. The old party fabrics are no more than dead rotting things, upon which a great tangle of personal ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... her head. "Too big for a bonfire!" she said. "I'll go out and see, Margaret. What a pity the boys should miss it! I'll come back and let ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... Is this religion Catholic to kill What even brute beasts abhor to do, your own! To cut in sunder wedlock's sacred knot Tied by heaven's fingers! To make Spain a bonfire To quench which must a second deluge rain In showers of blood, no water. If you do this There is an arm armipotent that can fling you Into a base grave, and your palaces With lightening strike, and of their ruins make A tomb for you, ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... you noticed that it was reeking with filth and bad smells, and safely by the falling walls, for the workmen are tearing down everything shaky. Look out, there, or you will get scorched by that huge bonfire. They are burning all over town. Everything that the men can lift is dragged to these fires and burned. This is the plan for clearing the town. You noticed it at the bridge and you notice it here. Men with ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... mist. So swift was their flight, however, that in an instant they emerged from the cloud into the moonlight again. Once a high-soaring eagle flew right against the invisible Perseus. The bravest sights were the meteors that gleamed suddenly out as if a bonfire had been kindled in the sky and made the moonshine pale for as much as ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... camp, Kobuk, yawning, rose from his post by Ellen's tent, to greet her. Boreland and Kayak Bill had gone to bed in the smaller tent, and about the greying embers of their bonfire, rubber boots stood, like grotesque plants, each one drying upside down over a ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... greater shoals, To roast — and broil us on the coals, And all the Grandees — of our Members Are carbonading — on the embers; Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses — 1515 Held forth by Rumps — of Pigs and Geese, That serve for Characters — and Badges. To represent their Personages: Each bonfire is a funeral pile, In which they roast, and scorch, and broil, 1520 And ev'ry representative Have vow'd to roast ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... furious advent of the Wild Man. Owls and other sagacious birds also came from afar to see the fun, attracted by the light of the fire; for the ballroom was the green sward of the forest, which was illuminated for the occasion by a bonfire that would have roasted a megatherium whole, and also would have furnished accommodation for a pot large enough to boil an elephant. Don't think, reader, in the vanity of your heart, that you have conceived that fire! You have not, as a Yankee ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... hurt that the police have not prohibited our village bonfire. Why shouldn't Zeppelins come to Little Pilswick? Why should an arrogant metropolis monopolise everything? Still we hid our mortification and the Guy Committee met as usual in the saloon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... the highest hill in the center of the island, where he would spend long periods, examining the sea from horizon to horizon with his strong glasses, searching vainly for a sail. He thought once of keeping a mighty bonfire burning every night, but he reconsidered it when he reflected on the character of the ship that it ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... shadows of evening were added to those of the storm I had my men gather materials for a big bonfire, and kindle it well out on the flat, where it could be seen from mountain and glacier. I placed dry clothing and blankets in the fly tent facing the camp-fire, and got ready the best supper at my command: clam chowder, fried porpoise, bacon and beans, "savory meat" made of mountain kid ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... wood and drawer of water. Also it was he who—since I professed no eagerness to get away—did the conventional thing that castaways do: erected a flag-staff, and hauled piles of brushwood up to the topmost lip of our volcano, for a bonfire to be lit if any ship should be sighted, lest it might pass in the night. I had resigned the binoculars to him, but he never brought ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... swung over the fire, hanging from the branch of a fir-tree, and I lay and saw the woods, and mountains, and lake all trembling, and as it were idealized through the suble smoke, which rose up from the clear, red embers of the fir-apples which we had collected: afterwards we made a glorious bonfire on the margin, by some elder bushes, whose twigs heaved and sobbed in the uprushing column of smoke, and the image of the bonfire, and of us that danced round it, ruddy, laughing faces in the twilight; the image of this in a lake, smooth as that sea, to whose waves the Son of God had ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... obsolete except in poetry, and more common in the adjectival form "baleful." In early alliterative poetry it is especially used antithetically with "bliss." (2) (O. Eng. bael, a blazing fire, a funeral pyre), a bonfire, a northern English use more common in the tautological "bale-fire," with sometimes a confused reference from (1) to evil. (3) (A word of doubtful origin, possibly connected with "ball "), a bundle ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... clothing. At one side of the camp was the tent of the mess sergeant, equipped like a portable species of corner grocery. Near by, Paddy apparently was in his element, presiding over his camp-kitchen, a vast bonfire encircled with a dozen iron pots. At the farther edge of the camp Weldon was umpiring a game of football between his own squadron and a company of the Derbys. Owing to the athletic zeal of the hour, it was big-side, and Weldon was too busy in keeping ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... said the leader; 'time we made the best of our way homeward. Our big bonfire is bright enough to bring the ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... successful revolt against this curious spiritual Caesarism until the son of a Saxon miner named Luther married out of monkdom, burnt the Pope's commands on a bonfire, and plunged all Europe first into a peasants' war, followed by a dividing of Europe between a Protestant union and a Catholic league, and then a thirty years' war, which destroyed two thirds of the population of what is now Germany. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... of green that it seemed like stepping out of a blazing sun into a fern hollow. The walls were green; the carpet was green as meadow grass; the sofas and chairs were cushioned with green satin. The glass balloon seemed to have a sea-green tinge in it, though it was blazing like a bonfire. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... all the temples erected to Buddha, destroy the images, and make a bonfire of all the sacred relics," finished Cleek himself. "I rarely forget history, Miss Lorne, especially when it is such recent history as that memorable Buddhist rising at Trincomalee. It began upon an utterly unfounded, ridiculous ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... athletic event of the year and the crisis of the football season. If Ridgley pushed back the sturdy Wilton team and snatched victory from the wearers of the purple, then there were reasonable grounds for hoping that three weeks later there would be a bonfire on the campus and a midnight parade to celebrate a victory over Jefferson, the ancient and honored foe of Ridgley. If, on the other hand, Wilton showed an impertinent disregard for the best line that Ridgley ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... could richtly be called rain. The village weans were yearning for the hour to arrive when they might sit on the wet golf-course and have tea; manifestly, therefore, it could not be a bad day for Scotland; but if it should grow worse, what would become of our mammoth subscription bonfire on Pettybaw Law—the bonfire that Brenda Macrae was to light, as the lady of ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Kaiser, too, had dreamed a dream. Von Tirpitz admired the English. His children had been brought up in England, as was also his wife. He imitated the English, but on the day of the declaration of war he absolutely forbade his family to talk English, and he made a bonfire of his fine scientific library of English books. The Kaiser treated Von Tirpitz as his friend, asked his advice, and followed his counsel. His son, Sub-Lieutenant Wolf Von Tirpitz, studied at Oxford, and is on the most friendly terms with many English gentlemen of importance. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... "put it by his things. That's just a sort of thing for a Brownie to have done. What will he say? And I say, Johnnie, when you've tidied, just go and grub up a potato or two in the garden, and I'll put them to roast for breakfast. I'm lighting such a bonfire!" ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... schoolmate. She was little and couldn't dance like Bertha, and she couldn't help noticing how well Bertha looked to-night, and what a well-matched pair she and Harry made; and so, when twelve o'clock came and they all went outside to watch the Old Year out and the New Year in—with a big bonfire on the distant ridge where the grass fires had reached a stretch of dry scrub—and to join hands all round and sing "Auld Lang Syne," little Mary was not to be found, for she was sitting on a log round behind the ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... much too cunning to be caught in such a trap. Why, he knows what you would do with him; he knows you would stake him, and make a bonfire ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... to be bent on shutting me out. But I was bound I wouldn't be beaten, and now, to-day"—he paused a moment to strike a match—"when I went to look at those things of mine it all came over me in a flash. By Jove! it was as if I'd made them all into a big bonfire to light ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... built in a locust grove to the rear of the house. To-night the negroes had lighted a bonfire, and were making merry in the old-time, ante-bellum way. Seated upon broken-down chairs, or strewn upon the grass in various attitudes, these dusky children of misfortune watched the performance of an exceedingly black old uncle, who, sitting upon a bench before his cabin, ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... present influence of the City of London. Demolish Gog and Magog, put down the civic banquets, break up and melt down the weighty and many-linked chains of solid gold round the neck of my lord mayor and the sheriffs, strip off the aldermen's gowns, make a bonfire of the gilded carriages, wring, if you will, the necks of both swans and cygnets. It is all vanity and vexation. Man is an intellectual animal: he wants none of these gewgaws. Alas! Wisdom may cry aloud in the streets, but no one will heed her ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... at quiet: What are you? but this place is too cold for Hell. Ile Deuill-Porter it no further: I had thought to haue let in some of all Professions, that goe the Primrose way to th' euerlasting Bonfire. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... doubt appears to you, boys, to be only fine fun, and you think Lloyd a very lucky fellow to have the chance. But a bonfire in the street, on a summer night, or down in a vacant lot, is a very different matter from Lloyd's work, alone, on a December night, with the salt water plashing about his legs, and his breath freezing about his mouth. Besides, he knew that the lives of the ship's crew depended on what he ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... for the freshmen—and Frank Merriwell, and that night a great bonfire blazed on the campus and the students made merry. They blew horns, sang, cheered and ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... he were memorizing their qualities against a time of need. With Satan saddled and Bart on guard at the mouth of the cave, he gathered up all the accumulation of odds and ends, provisions, skins, and made a stirring bonfire in the middle of the gravel floor. It was like burning his bridges before starting out to the battle; he turned his back to the cave and started ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... your way to the eternal bonfire," said Bradford, "but I am for righteousness. Now, listen to this, it's in the book we have to read for confirmagers, Daily Lies on the Daily Path: '... If you think that in your house things are being talked about that would shock your mother or sister, don't merely shun it as something ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... Alec had been gone only ten minutes or so, when the assembled pickets observed a bright light burst forth from the surrounding gloom and rapidly increase until it assumed the proportions of a large bonfire. ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... is a contemptible rascal whom nobody would consent to resemble. The sublimity of his wickedness is this, that he was himself the informer against his good friend the Israelite, of whom the Inquisition took hold when he awoke the next morning, and of whom a few days later they made a famous bonfire. And it was in this way that the renegade became the tranquil possessor of the fortune of the accursed descendant of those ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... it would have appeared, enough brands could have been collected to make a bonfire ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... torture at my hands she left Slip-Along and the buckboard at the Teetzel Ranch and vamoosed off into the great unknown. I have done up her valuables in an old sugar-sack, and if they're not sent for in a week's time I'll make a bonfire of the truck. Whinnie, by the way, is to help me with the house-work. He is much better at washing dishes than I ever thought he could be. And he announces he can make a fair brand of bannock, if we run ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... looked on with a pleased, satisfied expression. After a moment's thought Merwyn remembered that the draft had been begun in one of the burning houses, and was told by a bystander, "We smashed the ranch and broke some jaws before the bonfire." ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Mediterranean and make up their minds to follow it too. "For the sundown," writes Shakib, "was more appealing to us than the sunrise, ay, more beautiful. The one was so near, the other so far away. Yes, we beheld the Hesperian light that day, and praised Allah. It was the New World's bonfire of hospitality: the sun called to us, and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... decree or sentence; warrant, edict; — de fe, public punishment by the Inquisition, often a public burning; (hence) a great fire, a bonfire, a fire. ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... it at home without the consent of his Bishop would be equally dangerous. There would be a bonfire of every copy in the public square; for in this volume, all that the priests taught of astronomy had been contradicted ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... eighteen hours opened up a new world to Sam. With the fumes of liquor rising in his brain, he rode for two hours on a train, tramped in the darkness along dusty roads and, building a bonfire in a woods, danced in the light of it upon the grass, holding the hands of Prince and the little man with the wrinkled face. Solemnly he stood upon a stump at the edge of a wheatfield and recited Poe's "Helen," taking on the voice, the gestures and ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... captain stood on the bridge, and wherever there was a gap between the ice-blocks he made for it. It was only possible to sail in the daytime, and at night the Vega lay fastened by her ice anchors. One calm and fine evening some of our seafarers went ashore and lighted an enormous bonfire of driftwood. Here they sat talking of the warm countries they would sail past for two months. They were only a few miles from the easternmost extremity of ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... and wenches, Drabs, mopsies, doxies, minxes, trulls and queans, Rips, harridans and strumpets, pieces, jades. And likewise to the eternal bonfire lechers, All rakehells, satyrs, goats and placket fumblers, Gibs, breakers-in-at-catch-doors, thunder tubes. I think I have a fever—hell and furies! Or else this ale grows hotter i' the mouth. Ben, if I die before you, let me waste Richly and freely in the good brown earth, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters |
