"Ransacking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He has brought Bow Street with him, and likely enough at this moment the runners are ransacking the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Krook, and the rag-and-bottle shop was taken possession of by Grandfather Smallweed, a hideous, crippled money-lender, who had been his brother-in-law, and who at once went to work ransacking all the papers he could ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... to strike at the leaders who were planning a British Convention. Of these the most formidable was the Secretary of the London Corresponding Society. Accordingly, early on 12th May, some Bow Street officers made their way into Hardy's shop, No. 9, Piccadilly, arrested him, seized his papers, ransacking the room where Mrs. Hardy was in bed. The shock to her nerves was such as to bring on premature child-birth with fatal results. On the same day a royal message came to Parliament announcing that the efforts of certain Societies to summon a Convention in defiance ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... unique examples of the goldsmith's art in times and places of which one heard quite enough in the course of one's classical education; but, from a professional point of view, I would as lief have the ransacking of a single window in the West End as the pick of all those spoils of Etruria and of ancient Greece. The gold may not be so soft as it appears, but it certainly looks as though you could bite off the business ends of the spoons, and stop your own teeth in doing so. Nor should I care to ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... about for a fitting illustration, fumbling in imagery's twilight chamber and ransacking the halls of history, when lo! God sent one knocking at the door. I responded to the knock myself, and Geordie Lorimer stood before me. His face seemed strangely chastened, and the voice which craved a private interview ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... became pleasant and even half-apologetic. This made a good opening for a compromise, and the Major made a concession. He said he would give up the engaged state-room, but he must have a state-room. After a deal of ransacking, one was found whose owner was persuadable; he exchanged it for our section, and we got away at last. The conductor called on us in the evening, and was kind and courteous and obliging, and we had a long talk and got to be good friends. He said he wished the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... must share the blame of this famous transaction. He was one of the most furious assailants of the new ministry. He poured out a fresh invective against Lord Shelburne every day Cynical contemporaries laughed as they saw him in search of more and more humiliating parallels, ransacking all literature from the Bible and the Roman history down to Mother Goose's tales. His passion carried him so far as to breed a reaction in those who listened to him. "I think," wrote Mason from Yorkshire, where Burke had been on ...
— Burke • John Morley
... stiffened body, as it lay prone upon its face, was disturbed. Simpson stood there, pistol in hand, on guard until properly relieved, and as silent as a crouching rifleman on picket. The whole room bore the evidence of a thorough ransacking, and the disordered clothing of the nabob proved, too, that the body had been rifled. The mysterious nocturnal visits returned to Simpson's mind. "Could it have been some once-wronged woman?" he mused while waiting for his "military superiors." For the simple ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... not of suspicion or mistrust—whatever motive, we say, may have impelled him to the revelation of these important historical documents, there can exist no doubt as it respects the principle which sustains the ransacking of the grave, for the sake of truth. Begin at any period of history, however early, and it will be found that public men have always been considered as public property—their characters, their conduct and their opinions, belonging to the world, with no privilege of sanctuary, either in life or ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... and she called attention to the fact that she still believed herself entitled to dominion over the whole of Vermont. Massachusetts now began to suspect that the upshot of the matter would be the partition of the whole disputed territory between New Hampshire and New York, and, ransacking her ancient grants and charters, she decided to set up a claim on her own part to the southernmost towns in Vermont. Thus goaded on all sides, Vermont adopted an aggressive policy. She not only annexed the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... 'A Scrap of Paper.' In it a man wants to hide a certain compromising document. He knows that all his rooms will be secretly searched for it, so he puts it in a torn envelope and sticks it up where any one can see it on his mantel shelf. The result is that the woman who is ransacking the house to find it looks in all the unlikely places, but passes over the scrap of paper that is just under her nose. Sometimes the papers and packages they give us to carry about Europe are of ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... said about the mineral or fossil productions of a country which is yet in its infancy, and where the industry of the inhabitants can be more profitably employed on the surface of the earth than in ransacking its bowels. Minerals cannot be procured and manufactured without money. To work mines effectually, many things are requisite that cannot be expected in a new country. Such as capitalists who can risk money on experiments, and wait a long time for returns: for all property employed ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... to dine at Eldon's, and spent twelve francs at that restaurant. During the dinner Daniel admitted Lucien into the secret of his hopes and studies. Daniel d'Arthez would not allow that any writer could attain to a pre-eminent rank without a profound knowledge of metaphysics. He was engaged in ransacking the spoils of ancient and modern philosophy, and in the assimilation of it all; he would be like Moliere, a profound philosopher first, and a writer of comedies afterwards. He was studying the world of books and the living ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... in Paris, not long previous to the year 1816, that some lodgers had found in the cellars several jars filled with a dark-coloured ponderous matter. Upon the strength of the rumour, a believer in all the wondrous tales told of Nicholas Flamel bought the house, and nearly pulled it to pieces in ransacking the walls and wainscotting for hidden gold. He got nothing for his pains, however, and had a heavy bill to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the town we passed through on that day had been pillaged to the fullest extent. Not content with ransacking the interior of each house, the soldiers had broken up every article of furniture, and with wanton destruction had thrown everything portable out of the windows. Each street was filled with a mass of debris consisting of household effects of every kind, all lying in inextricable confusion ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... before your eyes, for the delight of your soul, that loves to gaze on the growing glory; but delight is lost in wonder, and you know that they, too, are warlocks. Some heap image upon image, piles of imagery on piles of imagery, as if they were ransacking and robbing, and red-reavering earth, sea, and sky; yet all things there are consentaneous with one grand design, which, when consummated, is a Whole that seems to typify the universe. Others give you but fragments—but such as ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... done through the nurse or Banneker, mainly the latter, though she was mastering the art of touch-writing on the typewriter. The very style of the earlier letters, as she remembered them, was different. And just here flashed the thought which set her feverishly ransacking the portfolio in which she kept her old correspondence. There she found an envelope with a Manzanita postmark dated four months earlier. The typing of the two letters was ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... face you because of the ransacking of the British Consul's safe at Leghorn," remarked the Princess, who, at the same moment, took Elma's hand tenderly in her own and looked at her. Then, turning to me, she said: "What you have told us to-night, Mr. Gregg, throws ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... remained just as he had left them. It used to be affirmed, that the dead shop-keeper, in a white wig, a faded velvet coat, an apron at his waist, and his ruffles carefully turned back from his wrists, might be seen through the chinks of the shutters, any night of the year, ransacking his till, or poring over the dingy pages of his day-book. From the look of unutterable woe upon his face, it appeared to be his doom to spend eternity in a vain effort ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in between the picture galleries and museums, to which some part of every day was devoted, the Peppers and Jasper and Adela, and old Mr. King, who always went, and Mother Fisher, who sometimes was of the party, the ransacking of the lovely shops took place. And it really seemed as if everything that the Henderson boys could possibly want, was in some of those places—no matter how out-of-the-way—and waiting to be bought ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... everywhere. Ushers had flown from loggia to loggia, ransacking the Theatre. Next to the Imperial Box, or was it the second? To the right?—no, the left! Below, or perhaps on the Bel-Etage?—All in vain. Was it only a dream? He stared down at the twist of paper ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... while visiting Mannheim, that the idea of "Der Freischutz" first entered his mind. His friend the poet Kind was with him, and they were ransacking an old book, Apel's "Ghost Stories." One of these dealt with the ancient legend of the hunter Bartusch, a woodland myth ranking high in German folk-lore. They were both delighted with the fantastic and striking story, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... ruefully, "I never broke out like this before. And the worst of it is that I know with the least encouragement from you I'll start again. I never wanted to talk so much in my life. I'm ransacking my brain this very minute to see if there's anything else I know that I haven't told you. Oh, yes, there is," he exclaimed putting his hand inside his coat, "there's some more money coming to you from Slim—I forgot to tell you. It isn't a great ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... that I remembered gave me the slightest encouragement that I could get a good play out of any of the existing materials. Still I was so bent upon acting the part that I started for the city, and in less than a week, by industriously ransacking the theatrical wardrobe establishments for old leather and mildewed cloth and by personally superintending the making of the wigs, each article of my costume was completed; and all this, too, before I had written a line of the play or studied a ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... he chooses to ascribe to hypocrisy, to ambition, and a passion for popularity. Of these the world must judge between us. It is no office of his or mine. To that tribunal I have ever submitted my actions and motives, without ransacking the Union for certificates, letters, journals, and gossiping tales, to justify myself and weary them. Nor shall I do this on the present occasion, but leave still to them these antiquated party diatribes, now newly revamped and paraded, as if they had not ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Nevertheless, he kept ransacking his memory for the circumstances in which he had before heard the name of Turl. To be sure, this Turl might not be the Turl whose name he had heard; but the fact that he had heard the name, and the coincidences in his observation of the man himself, made the question ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Nellie?" enquired the ugly little man, turning round suddenly from the book case which he had been industriously ransacking. ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... was Frau Schmidt, and over her, with a naked knife, stood a man, ragged and unkempt. A second man was ransacking the drawers of a dresser in the room beyond. The boys could see him through ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... hither and thither, ransacking houses in search of food or anything else worth carrying off. It might be that presently some of them would even be found putting the torch to any building that failed to meet with their approval, after a ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... was shown in making the arrest, do the sheriff and party explore the paternal mansion of him arrested, rudely ransacking it from cellar to garret; the outbuildings as well, even to the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... from the mistress of the house. He called for her, and in she came half dressed, and when she saw and heard the Breton bawling for his money, Colindres crying in her shift, the alguazil storming, the attorney in a passion, and the bailiffs ransacking the room, she was in no very good humour. The alguazil ordered her to put on her clothes and be off with him to prison, for allowing men and women to meet for bad purposes in her house. Then indeed the row grew more furious than ever. "Senor Alguazil and Senor Attorney," said the hostess, "none of ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Dover. But here I am going on farther and farther from home! We hope to reach Hong-Kong on Thursday next; but that is not the end of my voyage, though it is the beginning of my work. I am still comparatively idle, ransacking the captain's cabin for books. The last I have read is Kingsley's 'Two Years Ago.' I do not wonder that you ladies like Kingsley, for he makes all his women ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... shaved—there, on the spot. The doctor said he would be shaved also. Then there was an excitement among those two barbers! There was a wild consultation, and afterwards a hurrying to and fro and a feverish gathering up of razors from obscure places and a ransacking for soap. Next they took us into a little mean, shabby back room; they got two ordinary sitting-room chairs and placed us in them with our coats on. My old, old dream of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... remains that for the stage there is no character in greater demand by "star" actresses and "romantic" playwrights. They seem to find a peculiar interest in a woman who has "lived"—no matter how. If, in ransacking history, they are lucky enough to discover a courtesan who can be billed as a "king's favorite," they appear to smack their lips exultantly. One is almost inclined to believe that dead-and-gone kings must have chosen "favorites" merely for the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... estate would benefit very much by the adoption of such a course. 'Gude God, no!' the old man would cry; 'I haven't patience with ye! Puir thing! d'ye think she'll not be sufficiently sad when my coffin be borne away, and she be left desolate! Tearing my pictures from the walls, and ransacking every nook and corner, and packing up and carting away what's dearer to her than household gods, and all for filthy lucre's sake! No; let her enjoy the few years that will be spared to her; when she walks about the house ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... supposed dissimulation. A gentlewoman, named Fabry, with her aged mother and other females of the family, had taken refuge in the cellar of her mansion. As the day was drawing to a close, a band of plunderers entered, who, after ransacking the house, descended to the cellarage. Finding the door barred, they forced it open with gunpowder. The mother, who was nearest the entrance, fell dead on the threshold. Stepping across her mangled body, the brigands ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... searched the rooms, ransacking drawers and chests. They took everything of value they could find, including the ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... nights; I was continually haunted by wet, black eyes, and long eyelashes; my lips could not forget the touch of her cheek, smooth and fresh as a downy plum. I was sent out with a foraging party to a village some distance away. While my soldiers were ransacking the houses, I remained in the street, and did not dismount from my horse. Suddenly some one caught hold of ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... pursuit of alchemy, their medical tendencies led them simultaneously to cultivate another ancient delusion, the discovery of a universal panacea or elixir which could cure all diseases and prolong life for ever. Mystical experimenters for centuries had been ransacking all nature, from the yellow flowers which are sacred to the sun, and gold his emblem and representative on earth, down to the vilest excrements of the human body. As to gold, there had been gathered round that ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... forces were ransacking the South in search of horses, of which they were sorely in need. The Spy quickly hid her one remaining animal in the smoke-house, but it was not safe there. Confederate agents were prowling about the city, searching every building in which a horse ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... depths of a lounging-chair and lighted a cigarette. "So you're after Thomas Matthew, too, are you? Kittredge has been ransacking the town for him all day, and up to a couple of hours ago he hadn't found ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... had disheartened Tristan, who was not easily discouraged, Quasimodo continued the search alone. He made the tour of the church twenty times, length and breadth, up and down, ascending and descending, running, calling, shouting, peeping, rummaging, ransacking, thrusting his head into every hole, pushing a torch under every vault, despairing, mad. A male who has lost his female is no more roaring ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... forbid eating dinners in the yard. This order was interpreted as an insult to the white mechanics, and threats were made of an assault on the yard, which was put in a thorough state of defence by the commandant. The rioters swept through the city, ransacking the houses of the prominent Colored men and women, ostensibly in search of anti-slavery papers and documents, the most of the gang impelled undoubtedly by hostility to the Negro race and by motives of plunder. Nearly all the Colored school-houses were partially demolished and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... Hungarians are said to be quarrelling as to whether the occupied Serbian territory should eventually belong to the Monarchy or the Kingdom, and the jurists on either side are ransacking the history of the past for arguments to support their respective cases. Here we have another instance of the fondness of learned men for disputing about purely academic questions. Serbia will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... After ransacking the principal rooms and taking all that was valuable, the band of marauders lifted the still insensible body of Walter, and carrying it down-stairs flung it across a horse. One of the ruffians mounted behind it, and the others also ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... up the translation, and put it into his pocket; and, promising to send her some more letters in a few days, he took his leave. The banker went back to his private office. After ransacking his papers for a long time, he found an old letter directed to him, in the care of the firm, postmarked at Paris, with a French postage stamp upon it. Into the envelope of this letter he thrust the ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... marveled the poor woman as the janitor disappeared. 'Is he spending all this time ransacking the rooms? I wish I dared disobey him. I wish I ...
— The Gray Madam - 1899 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... period in the great city of Cincinnati, too; and though, as you hint, within that long interval, I must have had more or less favorable opportunity for studying mankind—in a business way, scanning not only the faces, but ransacking the lives of several thousands of human beings, male and female, of various nations, both employers and employed, genteel and ungenteel, educated and uneducated; yet—of course, I candidly admit, with some ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the P. M. G., which, being now edited by a chef,—at least, he is a man-Cook,—authoritatively informed us, in anticipation of this feast, "The Continent and Great Britain have been ransacked for delicacies." There is to be another banquet, we hear, and more "ransacking." Once again will that delightfully-entertaining Chairman, J. S. FORBES, of the Lucullus Chatting and Dining Line, present a menu which will be unexampled in culinary history. By great favour we are permitted to present a few of the delights of this bill of fare, in which a SOYER would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... her way to the trireme, which was a little off shore, Agias ran back to the villa; the pirates were ransacking it thoroughly. Everything that could be of the slightest value was ruthlessly seized upon, everything else recklessly destroyed. The pirates had not confined their attack to the Lentulan residence alone. Rushing down upon the ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... stateroom, he put a shoulder against the door, pushing it to as he fumbled for the switch. The circumstance that the lights were no longer burning as he had left them failed to impress him as noteworthy in view of his belief that, by the captain's orders, Mr. Warde had been ransacking his ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... declared to us by Moshi. If a dog, or a chicken, or a pet cat does not come home at the proper time, its master makes a great fuss about hunting for it, and wonders can it have been killed by a dog or by a snake, or can some man have stolen it; and ransacking the three houses opposite, and his two next-door neighbours' houses, as if he were seeking for a lost child, cries, "Pray, sir, has my tortoiseshell cat been with you? Has my pet chicken been here?" That is the way in which men run about under such circumstances. ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... had been occupied with Stuart's landlady two bluecoats had been ransacking the closet and searching the contents of a trunk that stood in the room. Here they had brought to light a bag of tools and a variety of garments, hats, and wigs evidently used ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... She recalled what a strain it had been on her nerves the day she watched on the roof while Dean installed the dictograph. She felt hardly equal to the task of ransacking desks and drawers. ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... party than to justify the other. The only witness who deposed against Sidney was Lord Howard; but as the law required two witnesses, a strange expedient was fallen on to supply this deficiency. In ransacking the prisoner's closet, some discourses on government were found; in which he had maintained principles, favorable indeed to liberty, but such as the best and most dutiful subjects in all ages have been known to embrace; the original contract, the source of power ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... prating, Jew, and let us dispatch this business," cried the officer. "You see," he added, glancing toward his men, "that with these at my disposal, the ransacking of your dwelling would be a ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... case of need, and never refused to them the shelter of our favour, wherefore we deserved to find them most special furtherers of our wishes and promoters thereof in act and deed, who compassing land and sea, traversing the circuit of the world, and ransacking the universities and high schools of various provinces, were zealous in combatting for our desires, in the sure and certain hope of reward. What leveret could escape amidst so many keen-sighted hunters? What little fish ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... told him he did not use him like a gentleman; that he would search him himself. In order to do this, clapping his knife into his mouth as he used to do when preparing a sheep for the shambles, he fell to ransacking the gentleman's pockets. He had hardly got his hand into one of them, but the gentleman snatched the knife out of his mouth and in the wrench almost broke his jaw. Lewis hereupon took to his heels, but the country being raised upon him, he was apprehended ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... set her teeth and did her best, keeping as jealous a watch on the purse-strings as she could, and furnishing their three rooms above the shop for as few shillings as might be, while Daddy was painting and decorating, composing menus, and ransacking recipes with the fever of an artist, now writing letters to the Manchester papers, or lecturing to audiences in the Mechanics' Institute and the different working men's clubs, and now plastering the shop-front with grotesque ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Antigonus, and that he had beforehand prevailed with the Megalopolitans to press the Achaeans to crave aid from Antigonus. For they were the most harassed by the war, Cleomenes continually plundering and ransacking their country. And so writes also Phylarchus, who, unless seconded by the testimony of Polybius, would not be altogether credited; for he is seized with enthusiasm when he so much as speaks a word of Cleomenes, and as if he were pleading, not writing a history, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the third floor held his fascinated gaze, and it was difficult to be interested in the conversation of even so pretty a girl as Miss Seebrook when an audacious thief was at work only a little way beyond her. For all Archie knew it was her own room that the venturesome Governor was ransacking and at that very moment he might be stuffing ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... a much keener stroke of mediaeval irony earlier in the play. The learned doctor has been ransacking all the libraries of the earth to find a certain rare formula, now almost unknown, by which he can control the infernal deities. At last he procures the one precious volume, opens it at the proper page, and leaves it on the table while he seeks some other ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... Ethan and Fanny seemed to be chained to the spot where they stood, fascinated, as it were, by the anguished cries of agony and death that were borne to their revolting senses by the airs of that summer morning. The savages were at that moment busy in ransacking and plundering the house, but Fanny realized that she might be the next victim; that the tomahawk of the terrible Lean Bear might be glaring above her head in a few moments more. She trembled like an aspen leaf in the extremity of her terror, as she heard the terrific ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... the men had finished ransacking the rooms, swearing terribly at finding so little there; and then they came out and made for the door at the end, which had an outside staircase leading on to the mountain. At last a noise of voices like distant thunder was heard getting nearer and nearer, and ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... has been displayed by many writers, in ransacking the pages of history, in order to fasten on certain prelates of the Church charges of despotism and oppression. But, apart from the fact that the narratives so carefully compiled have, in many cases, turned out to be perversions of the truth, and ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... He stood in considerable awe of the gambler, and now he was ransacking his brain to discover the object of this desire for a talk. He could find no adequate reason, except it might be that Bill was repenting of his bargain in purchasing a half-share in his claim. Yes, it might be that. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... collectors' hobbies. The philatelist is found in every civilized country, and the collection of postage stamps, used and unused, grows apace. A bundle of old letters in entire envelopes, posted forty or fifty years ago from one of the British Colonies, discovered when ransacking an old library, will probably prove the most valuable relic of the ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... some seconds in great surprise. When I had arrived in the afternoon the house had been plainly deserted; now it was as plainly occupied. It was my first idea that a gang of thieves might have broken in and be now ransacking Northmour's cupboards, which were many and not ill supplied. But what should bring thieves to Graden Easter? And, again, all the shutters had been thrown open, and it would have been more in the character ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The inceptions of true genius are always essentially imitations. A great writer does not begin by ransacking for the odd and new. He re-models—betters. Trusting not hypotheses unproven, he demonstrates himself the proposition ere he wagers his faith on the corollary; and it is thus that in time he grows to be a discoverer, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... house, where our confessions and secret conferences were heard, and my letters taken by some indiscretion abroad;—then the taking of yourself;—after, my arraignment;—then the taking of Mr Greenwell;—then the slander of us both abroad;—then the ransacking anew of Erith and the other house;—then the execution of Mr Hall;—and now, last of all, the apprehension of Richard and Robert: with a cipher, I know not of whose, laid to my charge, and that which was a singular ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... eyes did not notice details, the details which mean so much, for her home had always been in more or less of a muddle. There were so many of them, Audrey, Faith, Tom, Deborah and baby Joan. Five of them ransacking and romping all over the house, until granny had come and taken Audrey away to live ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Judson had been twenty-one to her twenty, when she first met him. Going the usual pace, too, and throwing money right and left. He had financed her as a star, ransacking Europe for her stage properties, and then he fell in love with her. She shivered as she remembered it. It had been desperate and terrible, because she had cared for some ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the Fountain of Trevi, and made himself a home to which books and pictures and prints and odds and ends of curious furniture gave an air of leisurely permanence. He had the tastes of a collector; he spent half his afternoons ransacking the dusty magazines of the curiosity-mongers, and often made his way, in quest of a prize, into the heart of impecunious Roman households, which had been prevailed upon to listen—with closed doors and an impenetrably wary smile—to proposals for ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... were ransacking the houses a little farther down the road. In Mr. Munroe's tavern they were compelling old John Raymond to bring them food, and because he could not give them what they wanted, sent ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... not derelict in the performance of his duty for, snatching a cane from the innkeeper, he poked underneath the bed, ransacking every corner, even to the cracks in the wall. Twisting his body out of reach, and cautiously drawing a full breath, Giton pressed his mouth against the very bugs themselves. (The pair had scarcely left the room) when ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... had joined the legion Rapax, had left a young son at home. This boy subsequently grew up and enlisted in the Seventh legion, raised by Galba.[74] Chance now sent his father in his way, and he felled him to the ground. While he was ransacking the dying man, they recognized each other. Flinging his arms round the now lifeless corpse, in a piteous voice he implored his father's spirit to be appeased and not to turn against him as a parricide. The crime was his country's, he cried; what share ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... a moment in perplexity. As for me, I was ransacking my memory—where had I heard that voice before? Somewhere, I was certain—a voice low, vibrant, repressed, full of color. Then, with a start, I remembered! It was Miss Holladay's voice, as she had risen to welcome our junior that morning at the coroner's court! I shook myself together—for ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... devices had been sold. The man also traced every sale of those dealers. He did not actually obtain the weapon, but if he is working on schedule-time according to agreement he is at this moment armed with a search-warrant and is ransacking every possible place where the person suspected of this crime could have concealed his weapon. For, one of the persons intimately connected with this case purchased not long ago a silencer for a thirty-two-calibre revolver, and I presume that that person carried ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... So the ransacking of the outgoing mail went forward. Now another bag was opened, but, as it contained nothing else but newspapers and small packages, the goldsmith desired to leave it intact. But not so his accomplices. They therein saw the chief ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Lydia Languish's maid ransacking the circulating libraries of Bath, and concealing under her cloak novels of sensibility and of fashionable scandal. Some twenty years later, in the self-same city, Catherine Morland is "lost from all worldly concerns of dressing ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... took them from this room last night. At the very time you pretend you were after the robber at Mrs. Canby's house you were here ransacking my desk." ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... revolt and wrath Out of the bloody fingers' ends of john. Methinks I see this hurly all on foot: And, O, what better matter breeds for you Than I have nam'd!—The bastard Falconbridge Is now in England, ransacking the church, Offending charity: if but a dozen French Were there in arms, they would be as a call To train ten thousand English to their side: Or as a little snow, tumbled about Anon becomes a mountain. O noble Dauphin, Go with me to the king:—'tis ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... 'speech-writers,' who composed speeches for litigants, and no doubt padded them out with quotations from poets, as well as with rhetorical commonplaces. Demosthenes taunts Aeschines particularly with ransacking unfamiliar plays, instead of those he ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... but one single cask of gunpowder stored there. He turned to Fortemani to inquire where Gonzaga had bestowed it, and Fortemani being as ignorant as himself upon the subject he went forthwith in quest of Gonzaga. After ransacking the castle for him, he found him pacing the vine-alley in the garden in animated conversation with Valentina. At his approach the courtier's manner grew more ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... Pilgrim, has declared thirty-four articles, and she doesn't know in which of her eight trunks any of them are. She and the citizen in glasses meted out to her, who insists on finding every one, are now engaged in ransacking her entire wardrobe. I intend to keep at a safe distance from the scene of worry. That's ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... lower as he thought on, ransacking his memory for some slight clue that would help him to find ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... you spoke, I was earnestly ransacking my memory for the passage to which you allude; but I am ashamed to say, it is as fruitless an effort as 'calling spirits from the vasty deep.' Pray be so kind as ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... up the police would have been already here ransacking the house. No sound reached him. This time it ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... memoranda, the proceedings of ayuntamientos and early departmental juntas, with other records of a primitive and superstitious people, have been my inadequate authorities. It is but just to state, however, that though this particular story lacks corroboration, in ransacking the Spanish archives of Upper California I have met with many more surprising and incredible stories, attested and supported to a degree that would have placed this legend beyond a cavil or doubt. I have, also, never lost faith in the legend myself, and in so doing ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... had up a man with a great bunch of keys; and after some ado they forced open the door, and forthwith entered the chamber. It was empty of its occupant; but they were by no means satisfied with that, and made great search everywhere, tossing everything about in the greatest confusion, ransacking his chest and flinging his clothes about hither and thither, examining every chink and cranny, and well-nigh pulling the bed to pieces in hopes of making some discovery. And here they did find somewhat, for out tumbled a small bundle that had been hid in the bedclothes. ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and the garrison to be sent to some French port; but no sooner were the English in possession than, like the French at Portland, they broke the pledge. There was no massacre as in Maine, but plunderers ran riot, seizing everything on which hands could be laid, ransacking houses and desecrating the churches; and sixty of the leading people, including Meneval and the priests, were carried off as prisoners. Leaving one English flag flying, Phips ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... caring about this room, busied themselves in ransacking the rooms below, in one of which I was said to be. In fact, they found the other hiding-place which I thought of going into, as I mentioned before. It was not far off, so I could hear their shouts of joy when they first found it. But after joy comes grief; and so it was with ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... impossible; that no one was allowed inside the inner precincts or had ever been there; and hinted, incidentally, that we must be mad. K—— listened to all this in that insulting silence which is a sure sign of gentility, and then, ransacking his pockets, brought out a letter and handed it to our man. That produced a change which might have been highly amusing at other times. There was the complete volte-face which amuses. The officer suddenly saluted, clicked his heels, and said in a silky ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... his vessels Spinola crept out of sight while the English were ransacking the carrack. On the 3rd of October he had entered the channel with a force which, according to the ideas of that day, was still formidable. Each of his galleys was of two hundred and fifty slave power, and carried, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Paul I met a man with eyes of cadet blue and a terra cotta nose. His eyes were not only peculiar in shape, but while one seemed to constantly probe the future, the other was apparently ransacking the dreamy past. While one rambled among the glorious possibilities of the remote yet golden ultimately, the other sought the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... purely motor exploration of the trial and error variety. Suppose you need the hammer, and go to the place where it is kept, only to find it gone. Now if you simply proceed to look here and there, ransacking the house without any plan, that would be motor exploration. But if, finding this trial and error procedure to be laborious and almost hopeless, you sit down and think, "Where can that hammer be? Probably where I used it last!" ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth |
