"Rifling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before, I had fortunately converted all the money that I had on hand into a bill of exchange, and this was concealed about my person. The great object of their search appeared to be newspapers; and, after rifling my boxes and desk of every thing in this form, I was marched off into the street, without a word being said by my captors. To all my remonstrances, the only reply that I got was the holding up before my face of a piece of ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark
... heart rebelled at this last rifling of the shrine, and he made for the door. Moira's sweet solicitude held him for an instant in check. "Oh, Tim, ye'd best stay in an' warm your knee by the good fire. I've a pile of mendin' to do, and you'll tell me all about your family in th' West and how you farmed ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... English ambassadours, at their being in Prussia, on the behalfe of them of Liuonia, who are the sayd Master his liege people, to haue restitution of their losses, vniustly (as he sayth) offered vnto them by the English, namely, for the robbing and rifling of three ships. [Sidenote: These ships were taken by the English the 20. Iuly 1404.] The value of which ships and of the goods contained in them, according, to the computation of the Liuonian marchants, doeth amount vnto the summe of 8037. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... helmet he had pressed down as low as he could on his forehead, and I could not discern his face ; but I was instantly certain he was not Bonaparte, on finding the whole commotion produced by the rifling crew above mentioned, which, though it might be guided, probably, by some subaltern officer, who might have the captive in charge, had left the field of battle at a moment when none other could be spared, as all the attendant throng were evidently amongst the refuse of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... who had been charged with rifling Lucius' mail in the primitive New York City of 1851—came to the end of his long life in 1919. He was succeeded immediately by his son, William Henry II, who had only recently returned from military service during ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... count desiring the thief to withdraw his pistol, as the lady was in great terror, delivered his purse without making the least resistance; but not satisfied with this booty, which was pretty considerable, the rascal insisted upon rifling her of her car-rings and necklace, and the countess screamed with affright. Her husband, exasperated at the violence with which she was threatened, wrested the pistol out of the fellow's hand, and turning it upon him, snapped it in his face; but the robber knowing ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... collected about a number of bodies at Cambria which had been washed up and began rifling the trunks. After they had secured all the contents they turned their attention ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... the rifling hand fiercely away. "To touch it would be the vilest theft," he said. "His own it is. With his life he has ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... down the slip, ignominious though it was, had put fire into my heart. I entered eagerly into the captain's scheme of hauling and rifling the Millport lobster-traps, in the convenient fog which, as if sent by heaven, hid us for a little space from the land. The blood of ancestral pirates and robbers bounded hilariously once more in my long-easeful, ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... clerk according to Willis' knowledge running from Tallahassee to Jacksonville, was Benjamin F. Cox. The first colored mail clerk in the Jacksonville Post Office was Camp Hughes. He was sent to prison for rifling the mail. Willis Myers succeeded Hughes and Willis Williams succeeded Myers. Willis received a telegram to come to Jacksonville to take Myers' place and when he came expected to stay three or four days, but, after getting here was retained permanently ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... position of rest by the impact of the bullet, the velocity of which was required. A modification of the ballistic pendulum was also employed by W.E. Metford (1824-1899) in his researches on different forms of rifling; the bob was made in the form of a long cylinder, weighing about 140 lb, suspended with its axis horizontal from four wires at each end, all moving points being provided with knife edges. The true length of suspension ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... a little click, with chickens clucking in a field near by, the big breech-block which held the shell fast, sending all the power of the explosion out of the muzzle, was swung back and one looked through the shining tube of steel, with its rifling which caught the driving band and gave the shell its rotation and accuracy in its long journey, which would close when, descending at the end of its parabola, its nose struck building, earth, or pavement and ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... are rifling the ivory cache. That fool Wiseman shall pay dearly for this. Bring him ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... first thought that he perceived a mob of people in the dusk. But as he got nearer, he saw that there were a man and two women. Wharton was on the ground, on his back, and the man was apparently kneeling on his neck and head while the women were rifling his pockets. Lopez, hardly knowing how he was acting, was upon them in a moment, flying in the first place at the man, who had jumped up to meet him as he came. He received at once a heavy blow on his head from some weapon, which, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... one passage is now opened, another has to be closed. The archaeologists may rebel, but the priests have their way. The ancient filling up was, however, productive of one good result; it preserved some of the graves from the rifling to which most were exposed during the period of the desertion of the catacombs. Most of the graves which are now found with their tiled or marble front complete, and with the inscription of name or date upon them unbroken, are those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... hand at rifling wolf dens. Occasionally a pup would dart from another exit, and the shotgun was an effective weapon with which to check his flight. But never had he seen such a mad outpouring of pups as this, and in all his long life in the hills a she-wolf had never rushed him, even in defense of her pups. ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... consent, he clasped her in his arms, and kissed her lips again and again, with the ardor of the honey-bee rifling the flowers of their sweets, till she ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... the party whom no threat of punishment, or sense of pity, could deter from taking advantage of their comrades, rifling stores, cheating on duty and even stealing arms in the hope of doing away with other survivors. When repeated offense showed that they were unreformable, they ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... to his mistress, including, among other things, "all kinds of hair." And as regards France, Burton's contemporary, Howell, wrote in 1627 in his Familiar Letters concerning the repulse of the English at Rhe: "A captain told me that when they were rifling the dead bodies of the French gentlemen after the first invasion they found that many of them had their mistresses' favors ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of more fatal consequences was this:—it being that time of the year when young lads are busie in rifling jackdaws nests to get their young, a scholar of the free-school, a son to a parliament officer, was got upon the top of the minster about this employment; who going along the cieling in the body of the church, and treading unwarily on some rotten boards, fell down ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... and order of the city, and though Pizarro on entering it had issued an order that the dwellings of the inhabitants were not to be plundered or injured, the soldiers soon stripped the palaces and temples of the valuables they contained, even taking the golden ornaments of the royal mummies and rifling the Peruvian graves, which often contained precious treasures. Believing that the natives had buried their wealth, they put some of them to the torture, to induce them to disclose their hiding-places, and by seeking ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... Instead it served to strengthen her resolve. There had been nothing in her valise to show who she really was, or why she was in Haskell, and consequently, if any vague suspicion had been aroused as to her presence in that community, the searchers had discovered no proof by this rifling of her bag. ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... smaller room, perhaps a third the size of the first, without doors, its windows boarded up with thick ax-hewn slabs. The floor of this room had been wrenched loose and torn away; there were big chests still sunken in the soil beneath, the boxes crumbling and evidently broken in their hasty rifling. ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... son of an honest farmer in that quarter, who married a tidy girl of a milkmaid that lived with him. My father had detected me in making some atrocious advances to my mother-in-law, and had turned me out of doors. I did not go off, however, without rifling his drawer of some hundreds of dollars, which he had laid up against a rainy day. I was noted for such pranks, and was hated by all the neighbours for my pride and laziness. It was easy, by comparison of circumstances, for Ellis to ascertain that Hadwin's servant Mervyn was the same ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... said was true. If so, our "Lady Anne" has made the great shot of the war. The authorities are inclined to believe the story. The new gun on Gun Hill is perhaps too vigorous for our old friend, and the rifling on his shells is too clean. Whatever the truth may be, he gave us a lively time morning and afternoon. I think he was trying to destroy the Star bakery, about one hundred yards below my cottage. The shells pitched on every side of it in succession. ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... of the battle, and the charge, and the tumultuous excitement of the conflict, but of the field after the battle—Russians, in their frenzy or their terror, shooting Englishmen who would have offered them water to quench their agony of thirst; Englishmen, in crowds, rifling the pockets of the men they had slain or wounded, taking their few shillings or roubles, and discovering among the plunder of the stiffening corpses images of the 'Virgin and the Child.' You have read this, and your imagination has followed the ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... space to enter upon a disquisition concerning these progressive changes; but suffice it to say that nearly all the peculiar styles of fire-arms were well known at an early period, and that the rifling, etc., of guns and cannon, with the other modifications now adopted, are merely the development and consummation of old ideas. For instance, the rifled arquebuse was known and used at the close of the fifteenth century, and, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... complete had been the rifling of my rooms by the devoted vandals in their efforts to make this lady cosy and comfortable that they did not overlook a silver-framed photograph of my dear mother! Her sweet face met my gaze as ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... restored their fallen fortunes. Forming in close order, they received the Vitellians' reckless and disordered charge, and at once flung them into confusion. Antonius pressed hard on the fugitives and cut down all who blocked his path. The others followed each his inclination, rifling the dead, capturing prisoners, seizing arms and horses. Meanwhile, summoned by their shouts of triumph, those who had just now been in full flight across the fields came hurrying back to share ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... have been hard on Master Woodley. I am only glad they are not melted. But how is it with all my old friends, Harry? Poor Sir George writ me that old clerk North died of grief of the rifling of the church; and that John Kenton had been killed by some stragglers. What ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... distress. Blifil therefore looked on this human ortolan with greater desire than when he viewed her last; nor was his desire at all lessened by the aversion which he discovered in her to himself. On the contrary, this served rather to heighten the pleasure he proposed in rifling her charms, as it added triumph to lust; nay, he had some further views, from obtaining the absolute possession of her person, which we detest too much even to mention; and revenge itself was not without its share in the gratifications which he promised himself. The rivalling poor Jones, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... guns, and, after a couple of minutes' suspense, a loud report showed that our object had been accomplished. Captain Fowke hastened to examine the debris, and found that the 6-inch gun had two gaping holes in its muzzle, which was badly bulged, and that the breech and rifling had been destroyed beyond all chance of repair. The howitzer was in an even worse plight, the explosion having wrecked the carriage as ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... from making their own dicker with the King of the Belgians or with the Congo government, and rifling the hoard on a fifty-fifty or ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... desperate father, her paternal uncle, from bankruptcy; and the prodigious effect of Robson's appalled descent, from an upper floor, his literal headlong tumble and rattle of dismay down a steep staircase occupying the centre of the stage, on his discovery of the rifling of his chest. Long was I to have in my ears the repeated shriek of his alarm, followed by a panting babble of wonder and rage as his impetus hurled him, a prostrate scrap of despair (he was a tiny figure, yet "so held ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... at Brent Rock, Paul Balcom was rifling his father's papers in the apartment where Balcom had lived. He had unceremoniously thrown letters and documents all over the floor in his mad search for something. Finally he found what he was looking for, ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey |
