"Scaffold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sleep alike destroy it, and yet it returns when the drunkard becomes sober or the sleeper is awakened. Terror sometimes produces the same effect. I knew at Paris a criminal condemned to die by the halter, who suffered the sentence accordingly, showing no particular degree of timidity upon the scaffold, and behaving and expressing himself as men in the same condition are wont to do. Accident did for him what a little ingenious practice hath done for our amiable friend from whom we but now parted. He was cut down and given to his friends ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... demeanor in his last moments? Would he speak out? Would he contradict himself? How would the bets be decided? Who would go to see him executed, and who would not go, and how could it be done? The position of the localities, which in Limoges spares a criminal the anguish of a long distance to the scaffold, lessens the number of spectators. The law courts which adjoin the prison stand at the corner of the rue du Palais and the rue du Pont-Herisson. The rue du Palais is continued in a straight line by the short rue de Monte-a-Regret, which leads to the place ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... shouting boy who had led the games and the war-dance that night in the circle of the blaze. Tired out, we went to sleep with the ring of the axes in our ears, and in the morning there were more games while the squad crossed the river to the drowned neck, built a rough scaffold there, and notched a trail across it; to the scaffold the baggage was ferried, and the next morning, bit by bit, the regiment. Even now the pains shoot through my body when I think of how man after ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... disfranchised, expelled from all offices, civil and military, driven by glittering bayonets from the bench and the jury box, tried and convicted by judges and jurors sworn to condemn, attainted as traitors, torn from the last embraces of wives and children, consigned to the scaffold or the block, or immured within the walls of a dungeon, where the light of heaven or liberty should never visit them, with no consolation but their patriotism, and no companions but their chains? And, gracious Heaven, for what? Oh! Liberty, when was thy sacred temple ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... executed, forgiving his judges. And not only had he constantly protested his innocence, but at the moment the verdict was given Couriol had cried out, in firm tones, 'Lesurques is innocent!' He repeated this statement both on the fatal hurdle and on the scaffold. All the other prisoners, while admitting their own guilt, also declared the innocence of Lesurques. It was only in the year IX. that Dubosq, his double, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... a Point of Religion, and is respected as a Martyr by that Side for which he suffer'd. The innocent Mirth which had been so conspicuous in his Life, did not forsake him to the last: He maintain'd the same Chearfulness of Heart upon the Scaffold, which he used to shew at his Table; and upon laying his Head on the Block, gave Instances of that Good-Humour with which he had always entertained his Friends in the most ordinary Occurrences. His Death was of a piece with his Life. There was nothing in it new, forced, or affected. He did not look ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... was brought to trial, that warlike leader sat in the judgment-hall. Many judges were present, besides himself; but he alone had the power to save King Charles, or to doom him to the scaffold. After sentence was pronounced, this victorious general was entreated by his own children, on their knees, to rescue his ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of it; earth no longer understands you; you no longer understand each other. Men who attain a knowledge of these things, who lisp a few syllables of the Word, often have not where to lay their head; hunted like beasts they perish on the scaffold, to the joy of assembled peoples, while Angels open to them the gates of heaven. Therefore, your destiny is a secret between yourself and God, just as love is a secret between two hearts. You may be the buried treasure, ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... describing it, yet the result is achieved so naturally that until we compare it with others, especially with modern ones, we hardly do justice to the subtle beauty that gives it a right to the supremacy it has won. The timber framework erected as a scaffold during the progress of the building still remains inside the spire and helps to impart strength to it; those curious in such matters will find a mass of information and many plans and drawings of its internal construction in Francis Price's "Antiquities of Salisbury, 1774." ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... advice was sought on all questions of importance. Yet at this time he undertook a service to the state, more invidious, and perhaps more perilous, than any in which his politics ever involved him. On the very day of the king's execution, and even below the scaffold, had been sold the earliest copies of a work admirably fitted to shake the new government, and for the sensation which it produced at the time, and the lasting controversy which it has engendered, one of the most remarkable known in literary history. This was the "Eikon Basilike, or Royal ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... see me safe up, but for my coming down I can shift for myself," were the last words of Sir Thomas More when ascending the scaffold. ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... been thrust; as though my feet had been crushed in iron boots; as though I had been chained in the cell of the Inquisition and listened with dying ears for the coming footsteps of release; as though I had stood upon the scaffold and had seen the glittering axe fall upon me; as though I had been upon the rack and had seen, bending above me, the white faces of hypocrite priests; as though I had been taken from my fireside, from my wife and children, taken to the public square, chained; ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... the zenith of his guillotinacious glory, the bonnes would sit around the scaffold, minding children and knitting stockings, to see the head of a marquis or of a shoemaker fall. We leave it to every reader, whether there would not be more historic unity and poetic completeness in the tableau, were we to read that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... Sir W. Pen did it like a base raskall, and so I shall remember Slight answer, at which I did give him two boxes on the ears They were not occupiers, but occupied (women) Trumpets were brought under the scaffold that he not be heard Up and took physique, but such as to go abroad with Will put Madam Castlemaine's nose out of joynt With my whip did whip him till I ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... obtaining employment and procuring an honest livelihood, would be almost insuperable. It has been accordingly found that these unfortunate persons have generally renewed their ancient habits, and ended their career either by falling sacrifices on the scaffold to the often violated laws of their country, or by imposing on the government a necessity for the second, and in many instances for the third time of re-transporting them to this colony, where, if sufficient encouragement ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... Riccio. Further, many have admitted, many more are now ready to admit, that some portion of the letters is forged. In that case, how can we accept evidence which the forgers have supplied? How can we send Mary to the scaffold on the testimony of perjured witnesses? Either we must say that the proofs are genuine throughout, and that Morton did not suffer them to be tampered with, or we must absolve Mary. Nobody, I think, at the present day, will deny that the letters, as we have them, were tampered ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... procured." After three years of toil the memorial was still far from completion, and Mr. Scott thought it advisable to give a dinner to the workmen, "as a substantial recognition of his appreciation of their skill and energy." "Two long tables," we are told, "constructed of scaffold planks, were arranged in the workshops, and covered with newspapers, for want of table-cloths. Upwards of eighty men sat down. Beef and mutton, plum pudding and cheese were supplied in abundance, and each man who desired it had ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... straight history. Apocrypha, all the rest: you shall pick your own sequel. As for instance, some say Geoffrey bled to the death, whereby stepped Master Joffers to the scaffold, and Angelica (the Vandeleur too, like as not) to a nunnery. Others have it he lived, thanks to nurse Angelica, who, thereon wed, suckled him twin Dizzards in due season. Joffers, they say, had wife already, else would have wed the Vandeleur, ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... short her prayer, and, with tongue protruding from her mouth, she presented such a picture of a strangling woman that a sudden clear conception of what it all meant came to me. "She's impersonating a woman on the scaffold," I explained. "She has shown us a murder, and now she is depicting an execution. Is it Mrs. R., ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... platform placed over the head of the lower mast, from which it projects like a scaffold. The principal intention of the top is to extend the topmast-shrouds, so as to form a greater angle with the mast, and thereby give it additional support. It is sustained by certain timbers bolted fore-and-aft on the bibbs or shoulders of the mast, and called the trestle-trees; ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... all this for him was the news that his wife, that woman of heroic character, of marvelous spiritual charm, and of liberal and philanthropic mind, had been imprisoned and was in danger of perishing on the scaffold. This word—and nothing more! The darkness of life behind walls seven feet thick was not lightened for many a long month by any further news in regard to Adrienne. The thoughts of Lafayette in his prison were as sad ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... frail and sick, the Wild Margrave charged his official travelling companion with neglect, and had the unhappy Hofrath Meyer hanged without process for this crime. One of the gentlemen of his realm, for a pasquinade on the Margrave, was brought to the scaffold; he had, at various times, twenty-two of his soldiers shot with arrows and bullets or hanged for desertion, besides many whose penalties his clemency commuted to the loss of an ear or a nose; a Hungarian ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... vigils, processions, preaching, pilgrimages, and marriages. And the jolly parish-clerk of the "Miller's Tale," we are informed, at times, in order to show his lightness and his skill, played "Herod on a scaffold high"—thus, by the bye, emulating the parish clerks of London, who are known to have been among the performers of miracles in the Middle Ages. The allusion to Pilate's voice in the "Miller's Prologue," and that in ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... sharply, must have spent dark hours in gloomy prisons, from midnight to dawn, beside pale-faced men who were not to see the sun go down again; and in the morning, he must have stood upon the very scaffold with the others, and seen the bright axe smite out the poor life. But neither he nor any others of the brethren spoke of these things except among themselves, and they alone knew who had been of the band, when they bore the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... you frankly that I shall kill the man. He is not fit to live, and he must not be permitted to continue his career of villainy. Whatever may be my fate, do not, I entreat you, by unhappy on my account. When I have shed the heart's blood of Livingston, I shall be willing to die upon the scaffold. To the very last moment of my life, I shall cherish for you a sentiment of the most affectionate gratitude; you sacrificed all your own plans in order to accompany me here, and, throughout the entire long journey, you have treated ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... "Eureka!" and the presumption is that he was right. He afterward explained himself by saying that he cared not who made the laws of a people, so long as he furnished their ballots. Columbus was cruelly put to death by order of Richard III. of England, and as he walked to the scaffold he exclaimed to the throng that stood around him, "The world moves." The drums struck up to drown his words. Smiling at this little by-play, he adjusted his crimson mantle about him and laid his head upon the block. He then drank off the cup of hemlock with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... apply to David, and the Christians to their Christ: Manus ejus contra omnes. In our day, the robber—the warrior of the ancients—is pursued with the utmost vigor. His profession, in the language of the code, entails ignominious and corporal penalties, from imprisonment to the scaffold. A sad change in opinions ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... I was mistaken for some one else. Fortunately the carriage-lamps were unlit, the windows still blurred with rain, and the night intensely dark; so, feeling like a wretch reprieved on the scaffold, I shrank farther and farther into the corner, glad to favor a mistake which promised some ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... accumulate, because if you did you would once again be tumbling into the grotesque; and you would, further, be leaving to your successors a legacy of evil which no man is justified in leaving to his successors. No! Your case is in practice irremediable. Like the murderer on the scaffold, you are the victim of circumstances. And not one human being in a million will pity you. You are a living tragedy ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... occasionally throw on extra logs. Only round the two new pyres not yet quite finished was anything approaching a crowd assembled, and there a priest was officiously directing the laying of the logs. It was the manner of their laying and the careful building of a scaffold on each side of either pyre that held Rosemary McClean's attention—called all the rebellious womanhood within her ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... Daedalus pondered over 10 this matter, and soon his heart was filled with hatred towards young Perdix. One morning when the two were putting up an ornament on the outer wall of Athena's temple, Daedalus bade his nephew go out on a narrow scaffold which hung high over the edge of the rocky cliff 15 whereon the temple stood. Then when the lad obeyed, it was easy enough, with a blow of a hammer, to knock the scaffold from ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... the goal. 140 Ye spirits by whose providential art Succeeding motives turn the changeful heart, Keep, keep the best in view to Curio's mind, And watch his fancy, and his passions bind! Ye shades immortal, who by Freedom led, Or in the field or on the scaffold bled, Bend from your radiant seats a joyful eye, And view the crown of all your labours nigh. See Freedom mounting her eternal throne! The sword submitted, and the laws her own: 150 See! public Power chastised beneath her ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... hico mio! Take care of yourself, my son," hiccoughed the priest as he crossed himself. The captain gave a light laugh, sipped his coffee, and went on as if a dungeon, scaffold, and noose were the last things he ever ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... with Brilliant, whither this seaman will conduct thee, whom I have hired to set us on some shore of safety; bring what news you can learn of Cesario; I would not have him die poorly after all his mighty hopes, nor be conducted to a scaffold with shouts of joys, by that uncertain beast the rabble, who used to stop his chariot-wheels with fickle adorations whenever he looked abroad—by heaven, I pity him; but Sylvia's presence will chase away all thoughts, but those ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... to believe me the monster of ingratitude, the treacherous coward which appearances pronounce me. No!" he continued, raising his right hand as high as his fetters would permit, and speaking in a tone which fell with the eloquence of truth, on every heart—"No: here, as on the scaffold—now, as with my dying breath, I will proclaim aloud my innocence; I call on the Almighty Judge himself, as on every Saint in heaven, to attest it—ay, and I believe it WILL be attested, when nought but my memory ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... scaffold erected, at the charge of the City, for the execution of noble offenders imprisoned in the Tower (after ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... on the scaffold. She was saved from that doom by unquestionable proofs of insanity. Her sad story was learned afterwards from various sources, and corroborated, in the most important particulars, by Captain Lassalle, who was arrested for a criminal offence shortly ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... placed this slab, made a topographical error. James Wright, in his Compendious View of the late Tumults and Troubles in this Kingdom (1683), says: "The Lord Russel ... was on the day following, viz. Saturday the 21st of July, Beheaded in Lincoln's Inn Fields. For which purpose a Scaffold was erected that Morning on that side of the Fields next to the Arch going into Duke Street, in the middle between the said Arch and the corner ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... leash and pawed the air to get at him; past ancient warders, their halberds leant against the wall, dozing over a pasty and a flagon of brown ale; on and on, past the rack-chamber and the thumbscrew-room, past the turning that led to the private scaffold, till they reached the door of the grimmest dungeon that lay in the heart of the innermost keep. There at last they paused, where an ancient gaoler sat fingering ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... judges thought proper to terminate his misery by a death shocking to imagination, and shameful to humanity. On the twenty-eighth day of March he was conducted, amidst a vast concourse of the populace, to the Greve, the common place of execution, stripped naked, and fastened to the scaffold by iron gyves. One of his hands was then burnt in liquid flaming sulphur; his thighs, legs, and arms, were torn with red hot pincers; boiling oil, melted lead, resin, and sulphur, were poured into the wounds; tight ligatures tied round his limbs to prepare him ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... tearing him from his home, forcing him to don a ridiculous uniform and carry weapons, by brutalizing him in a slavery in every respect like that from which he had compassionately freed the negro, and all to enable him to slaughter his neighbor without risking the scaffold like ordinary murderers who operate single-handed, without uniforms and with weapons that are less ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... shut, that no one might pass out. The government officials did not transact any business. People were cited as witnesses, without previous notice. I saw two or three taken to the palace in a state of agitation which could scarcely have been greater had they been going to the scaffold. About three in the afternoon the prince passed sentence upon those who had been convicted. Some had their eyes put out, some the tongue split. Some had the ears, nose, and lips cut off; others were deprived of their hands, fingers, or toes. I ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... There was an immense crowd there, nearly the whole Court being present; and it was reported here and there afterwards that the King himself was there in a group of five horsemen, who came in the accoutrements of Borderers, vizored and armed, and took up their position close to the scaffold. There fell a terrible silence as the monks were dragged up on the hurdles, in their habits, all three together behind one horse. They were cut down almost at once, and the butchery was performed on them while they were ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... dried fish per day, and taking home a couple of half-rouble pieces in his purse, and sewing the notes into his breeches, or stuffing them into his boots! In what manner came you by your end, Probka Stepan? Did you, for good wages, mount a scaffold around the cupola of the village church, and, climbing thence to the cross above, miss your footing on a beam, and fall headlong with none at hand but Uncle Michai—the good uncle who, scratching the back of his neck, and muttering, 'Ah, Vania, for once you have been too ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Miranda is indeed a powerful study. Always guilty, she is always excused, or if punished but sparingly and little, whilst the friar languishes in a foul dungeon, the page-boy is hanged, her husband stands upon the public scaffold. And then in the end, 'very penitent for her life past', she is received with open arms by Tarquin's old father, who looks upon her as a very angel, and retiring to the tranquility of a country-house she passes her days in 'as perfect a state of happiness as this ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Renucci[11], and, more simply, by Marmocchi.[12] During the occupation of Capo Corso by the French, in 1751, some of the villagers were sentenced to be broken on the wheel for a conspiracy to seize the place, which was garrisoned by the French; their bodies were exposed on the scaffold, and their friends prohibited, under severe penalties, from giving them Christian burial. But a young woman, giovinetta scelta e robusta, as she must have been to perform the exploit assigned to her in the tale, eluded the sentries, and, taking the body of her lover, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... evidence that he was in the habit of walking in his somnambulic fits through crowded thoroughfares. He was a plasterer by trade, and it was stated in court that it was not an uncommon thing for him to fall asleep while at work on the scaffold, yet he never met with any accident, and would answer questions put to him as if he were awake. In like manner, we are informed that Dr. Haycock, the Professor of Medicine at Oxford, would, in a fit of somnambulism, preach an eloquent ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... his father's death. When they told him of it, he turned pale, and laid his hand on his breast. Ayscough said, "I am afraid, Sir, you are not well!"-he replied, "I feel something here, just as I did when I saw the two workmen fall from the scaffold at Kew." Prince Edward is a very plain boy, with strange loose eyes, but was much the favourite. He is a sayer of things! Two men were heard lamenting the death in Leicester-fields: one said, "He has left a great ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... will was absolute, their authority supreme. Where the councillors of the Departments or the municipal officers were good Jacobins, the Commissioners availed themselves of local machinery; where they suspected their principles, they sent them to the scaffold, and enforced their own orders by whatever means were readiest. They censured and dismissed the generals; one of them even directed the movements of a fleet at sea. What was lost by waste and confusion and by the interference of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the last twilight? In consonance with our own natures, we interpret it the one way or the other—he is beyond our questioning. For the same reason it is that men take interest in executions—from Charles I. on the scaffold at Whitehall, to Porteous in the Grassmarket execrated by the mob. These men are not dulled by disease, they are not delirious with fever; they look death in the face, and what in these circumstances they say and do has the strangest fascination ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... degradation and the shame—as if I had been a monster on show. Oh! you knew! Then you know, too, how I was really condemned before I was tried; and what a farce my trial was. That terrible judge with his insults to those he was sorry he could not send to the scaffold. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... as one maliciously disposed to speak 'anger-exciting or factions truths'. Poor Cromwell and Anne Boleyn were obliged to talk of love and duty toward their brutal murderer, Henry VIII, and tell 'peace-making lies' on the scaffold to save their poor children from his resentment. European gentlemen in India often, by their violence surround themselves with circles of the same kind, in which the 'point of honour' demands that every member shall be prepared ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... that, being raised so high, his fall would be so bitter, his disgrace so deeply felt, and the stigma so doubly severe! "No, no," thought Joey, "were I to impeach my father now—to accuse him of a deed which would bring him to the scaffold—I should not only be considered his murderer, but it would be said I had done it to inherit his possessions; I should be considered one who had sacrificed his father to obtain his property. I should be scouted, shunned, and deservedly despised; the disgrace of my ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... alternative. In these days, man risks little and gains little. In heroic periods of human activity, man risked all and gained all. The good and the wicked, or at least those who believe themselves and are believed to be such, form opposite armies. The apotheosis is reached by the scaffold; characters have distinctive features, which engrave them as eternal types in the memory of men. Except in the French Revolution, no historical centre was as suitable as that in which Jesus was formed, to develop those ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... very well, that the Church hath been often censured for keeping holy this day of humiliation, in memory of that excellent king and blessed martyr, Charles I., who rather chose to die on a scaffold, than betray the religion and liberties of his people, wherewith God and the laws had entrusted him. But, at the same time, it is manifest that those who make such censures are either people without any religion at all, or who derive their principles, and perhaps their birth, from ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... assistance of Algernon Sidney, a sturdy republican, who soon after perished on the scaffold for his views on personal liberty, Penn drew up a code of laws for the government of the colony, that were wise, liberal and benevolent, and next year sent them to the settlers in ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... Adelantado was at the head of a strong force when summoned to San Domingo, he returned unattended, and was treated as his brother had been. Columbus had expected to have suffered on the scaffold, and was greatly relieved when he found himself conducted on board a caravel commanded by a worthy captain—Alonzo de Villejo—who told him that he had orders to ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... this continent, whether the Occidental or the Oriental theory of society is to mould our future, whether we are to recede from principles which eighteen Christian centuries have been slowly establishing at the cost of so many saintly lives at the stake and so many heroic ones on the scaffold and the battle-field, in favor of some fancied assimilation to the household arrangements of Abraham, of which all that can be said with certainty is that they did not add to his ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the wrist. A curious chance, or rather the instinct of self-preservation, led me to hide the fragment of the blade in a corner of my cell, as if it might still be of use. They tended me; none of my wounds were serious. At two-and-twenty one can recover from anything. I was to lose my head on the scaffold. I shammed illness to gain time. It seemed to me that the canal lay just outside my cell. I thought to make my escape by boring a hole through the wall and swimming for my life. I based my hopes ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... Dionysius, nor Thebes in the hand of the bloody tyrant Eteocles, even though all those wretches were villains by whose orders every day, without fault, without even charge, men were sent by dozens to the scaffold or ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... affixed to the death-warrant of this royal criminal. A number of the signers afterwards paid the penalty of that day's work on the scaffold. We are concerned here only with two of them, Generals Whalley and Goffe, who, after the death of Cromwell and the return of Charles II., fled for safety to New England, knowing well what would be their ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that hath dar'd On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O, pardon! since a crooked figure may ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... not because it is forced to weaken them by the obstinate facts of life, but because it has learned to strengthen them by the understanding of what is harm and what is good; what is gain and what is loss. Peter shall be delivered out of prison by the skin of his teeth when they are hammering at the scaffold on the other side of the wall, and the dawn is just beginning to show itself in the sky; whilst James shall have his head cut off. Was that because God loved Peter better than James? Was one harmed and the other not? Ah! Peter's turn came all in good time. Peter and his brother Paul ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Unitarian divine, a personal friend of John Brown, on hearing, in Rome, of his failure, trial, and sentence to the scaffold, in a letter to Francis Jackson of Boston, November 24, 1859, gave vent to what was then regarded as fanatical prophecy, but now ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... for his convenience in working. So he went within doors, and there Dario gave orders to our gardener, who was a handy sort of Jack-of-all-trades, what pieces of furniture should be removed, how the walls and floor should be protected, and how a scaffold should be set up for him to work on. And the gardener promising to carry out all these instructions in the course of the day, Dario took his leave of us in a very polished style, saying he would begin his business the ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... pierce the veil which the native dropped between his own private thoughts and the curious foreigner. Even native criminals were baffled in their interpretation of Ling Chu's views, and many a man had gone to the scaffold puzzling the head, which was soon to be snicked from his body, over the method by which Ling Chu had ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... laughing than of making purchases. The various packets were opened and arranged in front of the platform, I standing on one side of Melchior, Timothy on the other, and Num with his trumpet, holding on by one of the scaffold poles at ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... Witness said it was quite feasible that if he had had night binoculars he would have seen the iceberg earlier. / We ourselves believe that this is the most feasible explanation of the tradition. / This would appear to offer a feasible explanation of the scaffold puzzle.' ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... Philip, permitted the whole princely race to be thus bewitched to death, he would have to answer for it at the day of judgment. He prayed him, therefore, for the love of God, to send for the hag instantly, and drag her to the scaffold." ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... staked life and fortunes in the deadly game engaged in by the fierce spirits of that generation, and losing, paid the forfeit with his head, as calmly as became a brave and noble gentleman, leaving an example, which his son—already twice rescued from the scaffold, once by a daughter of the ever-gallant house of Lindsay, again a prisoner, and a rebel, because four years too soon to be a patriot—as nobly imitated;— how, at last, the clouds of misfortune cleared away, and honours clustered ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... different—it was craggy, hollow-cheeked, with an oblique menacing gaze, and the jaws of a pike. Oh, yes, this little Lieutenant Buonaparte from the Military School of Brienne was a singular figure. "There is a man," said I, when I saw him, "who will sit upon a throne or kneel upon a scaffold." And ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... les tricoteuses were represented by comely, albeit plump maidens, who seemed more inclined to dance round a Maypole than haunt a scaffold. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... suppose it can't kill me!" groaned the bride, stepping out of the car as if from tumbril to scaffold. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Mrs. West bowed, with a sweet, sad look first at Mr. Somerled, then finishing up with me—just the reproachful, yet resigned martyr-look a queen ought to give a crowd of rebellious subjects on her way to the scaffold where ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... would have embraced the Duchess as a deliverer. Vanquished and disarmed, she abandoned her. As she had protested in terms of horror against the conspiracy that had failed, her two young, imprudent, and ill-starred accomplices, Cinq Mars and De Thou, mounted the scaffold without breathing her name. Finding also both the King and Richelieu violently exasperated against Mdme. de Chevreuse, and firmly resolved to reject the renewed entreaties of her family to obtain her recall, Anne of Austria, far from ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... it: I'll take my oath. Mind you, it isn't like a church made up of different scraps of memory. It's just that particular church, and I know it by heart, down to a scaffold-hole, partly hidden with grass, close under the lowest string-course of the tower, facing ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... half, and take out the stones. It is best not to pare them; as dried peaches are much richer with the skin on, and it dissolves and becomes imperceptible when they are cooked. Spread them out in a sunny balcony or on a scaffold, and let them dry gradually till they become somewhat like leather; always bringing them in at sunset, and not putting them out if the weather is damp or cloudy. They may also be dried in ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... to have more carefully abstained from all those exertions of power which had afforded so plausible a pretence to the rebels. The clemency of this victory is also remarkable: no blood was shed on the scaffold: no attainders, except of the Montfort family, were carried into execution: and though a Parliament, assembled at Winchester, attainted all those who had borne arms against the king, easy compositions were made ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... formally advanced, and before the youthful loyalty of feeling which guided Louis XIV., Colbert's favor would disappear at once; the latter trembled, therefore, lest so daring a blow might overthrow his whole scaffold; in point of fact, the opportunity was so admirably suited to be taken advantage of, that a skillful, practiced player like Aramis would not have let it slip. "Sire," said Fouquet, with an easy, unconcerned air, "since you have had the kindness to forgive me, I am perfectly indifferent about my ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the executioner. Her two sons were in hourly peril of the same fate. Her eldest son and her daughter were in exile, wandering in poverty, she knew not where. She herself was a captive, cruelly separated from all her family, exposed to many insults, and liable, at any hour, to suffer upon the scaffold the same fate which her queen, Maria Antoinette, and many others of the noblest ladies ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... before her and prove, whether virtue and Venoni can counterbalance at once the allurements of present pleasure, and the apprehension of future pain. You have heard my will; obey it! should Josepha escape, I swear, that my vengeance shall drag you to the scaffold, even though I ascend it with you myself, (to the friar) ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... faintly weary look about his eyes that struck us when we first saw him, at Manhasset, three weeks ago. It was the look of a man who has had more put upon him than he can rightly bear. But with what a grace and aplomb he stood upon that scaffold! Dempsey, on the other hand, was sullen and sombre; when they spoke together he seemed embarrassed and kept his face averted. As the hands were bandaged and gloves put on, he sat with lowered head, his dark poll brooding over his fists, not unlike Rodin's Thinker. Carpentier, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... that woman, the oppressed, woman, the hater of wars, the faithful, quiet drudge of the centuries, watching while others slept, working while others plundered and murdered; woman, who has died in prison and on the scaffold for liberty, should here and now have her audience and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... good diet, and good general treatment. If they had refused or neglected to do so, the prisoner's life would have been sacrificed. Whatever may have been the truth in his case, he felt and believed that his days were being shortened, and he was one of those who would rather have died on the scaffold than submit to a lingering death in prison. A short time ago he was found dead in his cell. It was asserted that he had taken some medicine internally which was intended for external application, and that he had thus poisoned himself; it was alleged that his object was to make himself ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... (Prynne ruthlessly busy in getting up the evidence) in the long prosecution of Laud. It was all over on the 10th of January, 1644-5. On that day Laud, aged 72, laid his head upon the block on a scaffold in Tower Hill. Hanging had been commuted, with some difficulty, to beheading. He died brave, raspy, and High-Church to the last. [Footnote: Rushworth's main account of the trial and last days of Laud is in Vol. V. pp, 763-786. The "History of the Troubles and Tryal of William Laud," edited ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... say it of some things in "Charles I."—of the way he gave up his sword to Cromwell, of the way he came into the room in the last act and shut the door behind him. It was not a man coming on to a stage to meet some one. It was a king going to the scaffold, quietly, unobtrusively, and courageously. However often I played that scene with him, I knew that when he first came on he was not aware of my presence nor of any earthly presence: he seemed to ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... his vote for death, and all the accused, with the one exception of an old gardener, were sent to the scaffold. ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... plains, and from their tracks, must have been going very rapidly. All hopes of recovering them were now abandoned. Nor were the Indians the only plunderers around our camp; for in the night the wolves or dogs stole the greater part of the dried meat from the scaffold. The wolves, which constantly attend the buffalo, were here in great numbers, as this seemed to be the commencement of the buffalo country. ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... abroad, & when successe tempted him to Pride, the Bitternes in his bozome-comforts was a Cooler & a Bridle to him." Truly the whirligig of time brings about strange revenges. Peter had been driven from England by the persecutions of Laud; a few years later he "stood armed on the scaffold" when that prelate was beheaded, and now we find him installed in the archiepiscopal lodgings. Dr. Palfrey, it appears to me, gives altogether too favorable an opinion both of Peter's character and abilities. I conceive him to have been a vain ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Laurence; "and we may read them better in Mr. Upham's biography of Vane. And what a beautiful death he died, long afterwards! beautiful, though it was on a scaffold." ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... account of the blood that had been shed upon it. Among the sufferers here was Hastings, executed by order of King Richard: Anne Boleyn: Katharine Howard: and Lady Jane Grey. A stone marks the spot on which the scaffold was ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... things now to think about than isolated cases of conscience. He forgot all about Juliette, probably. He was busy consoling a monarch for the loss of his throne, and preparing himself and his royal patron for the scaffold. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... remanded him for trial. This, however, did not satisfy the crowd, who clamored for instant punishment, and finally succeeded in forcing the doors of the jail and overcoming the officers. The prisoner was hurried forth, amid the shouts and execrations of the multitude, a scaffold was erected, and at nine o'clock the same evening he was hung, with the ceremonies usually observed. An attempt at lynching was made in San Francisco about the same time. Two ruffians, having attempted to rob and murder a merchant of that city, the people ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... his cell hardened by crime. Sentence has been passed; the day of execution comes. The sheriff enters the prison, reads the death warrant, pinions his hands, and the slow and steady death march begins. The scaffold is reached, steps ascended, and the prisoner takes his place on the center of the death trap; the black cap is securely tied over his face, and the rope around his neck, and as the trapdoor is sprung, the unfortunate man leaps into darkness. This criminal was ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... stated that the favourite lap-dog of Mary, Queen of Scots, that accompanied her to the scaffold, continued to caress the body after the head was cut off, and refused to relinquish his post till forcibly withdrawn, and afterwards died with grief in the course ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... There was no fear of consequences to deter him from smiting his bondman, even unto death. If he had killed him, though the gentle-hearted might have frowned or trembled in his presence, there was no law that could reach him. There was no dread of prison and scaffold to stay his arm, and what his untamed fury prompted him to do, he might have done with impunity. Even the statute made for the protection of the slave from his cruel master, would have been of no avail, for the want of a white ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... do not pity Joan of Arc: that heroic woman only paid the price which all must pay for celebrity in some shape or other: the sword or the faggot, the scaffold or the field, public hatred or private heart-break; what matter? The noble Bedford could not rise above the age in which he lived: but that was the age of gallantry and chivalry, as well as superstition: and could Charles, the lover of Agnes Sorel, with all the knights ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... regarded as a composition of hardbake and sticking-plaster. Here, in a corner my indentures were duly signed and attested, and I was "bound"; Mr. Pumblechook holding me all the while as if we had looked in on our way to the scaffold, to have ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... of such rebels as these, and have prepared for them. Outside there has been already set up an automatically-locked scaffold—" ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... and composed, and knows no discouragement. The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat ... the enemy triumphs ... the prison, the handcuffs, the iron necklace and anklet, the scaffold, garrote and leadballs do their work ... the cause is asleep ... the strong throats are choked with their own blood ... the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass each other ... and is liberty ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... sent to arrest him, and imprison him at Grenoble. He lay in prison fifteen months, and was then brought to Paris, and tried for his life. He made a noble defence; but it was of no avail. He was beheaded on the 29th of October, 1793. When on the scaffold, he seemed suddenly struck with the infamy of the treatment he had met with on every side. He stamped with his foot, and exclaimed, "This, then, is the reward of all that I have done for liberty!" He was ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... bed, thinking that her unusual size was a serious malady, she did penance for it as a venial sin, as she had no pleasure in this wicked business, according to the statement of the wicked man, who said upon the scaffold where he was executed, that the ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... unsuccessful attempt to blow out his brains, and he, too, was guillotined at Bordeaux. Buzot and Petion stabbed themselves in a field between St. Emilion and Castillon, where their bodies were found half eaten by wolves. The seventh, Valady, was brought to the scaffold at Perigueux. Monsieur and Madame Bouquey met the same fate. And it is with this page of modern history that the quiet little garden of the Brothers' school, its well and hidden cavern, are ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... conversation worth noting, perhaps, save in so far as it is typical of the trite utterances of people striving to recover from some tremendous ordeal. Epigrams delivered at the foot of the scaffold have always been carefully ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... being clearly convicted of unmilitary conduct, and having failed in the end which would have justified the means in the eyes of the voluptuous tyrant, was ruthlessly abandoned to his fate, and actually died on the scaffold with a gag in his mouth, as did the gallant Lally a few years afterward, to prevent his revelation of the orders which he had received, and for obeying which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... the scaffold was reared at Tyburn, where so many other malefactors had looked their last on the world; and at nine o'clock in the morning Lord Ferrers started on his last journey—the most splendid and most tragic of his chequered life. He was ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... punishment, had, after much difficulty, been successful. The Regent had promised solemnly to send a letter of commutation to the attorney-general on Holy Monday, the 25th of March, at five o'clock in the morning. According to the same promise, a scaffold would be arranged in the cloister of the Conciergerie, or prison, where the Count would be beheaded on the same morning, immediately after having received absolution. This mitigation of the form of punishment gave but little consolation to the great body of petitioners, who had ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... space to speak of later dramatic incidents in Exeter—the trial and execution of Mr Penruddocke and Mr Grove, leaders of a Royalist rising of Wiltshire gentlemen, whose speeches on the scaffold are given at length by Izacke; nor of the joy that greeted the Restoration, when 'Tar-barrels and Bonefires capered aloft'; nor of Charles II's visit, nor the entrance of the Duke of Monmouth in 1680 with five thousand horsemen, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... did not then understand the full meaning of the wise old jester's words, but he did live to learn their full intent. For when, in after years, his people sought to curb his tyrannies with a revolt that ended only with his death upon the scaffold, outside this very banqueting house at Whitehall, Charles Stuart learned all too late that a "mettlesome horse" needed sometimes to be "reined," and heard, too late as well, the stern declaration of the Commons of England that "no chief officer might presume for the future to contrive the enslaving ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... him coming toward the house. She furtively watched him, admiring his walk without quite knowing why. You may perhaps know the walk that was Victor's—a steady forward advance of the whole body held firmly, almost rigidly—the walk of a man leading another to the scaffold, or of a man being led there in conscious innocence, or of a man ready to go wherever his purposes may order—ready to go without any heroics or fuss of any kind, but simply in the course of the day's business. When a man walks like that, he is worth observing—and it is well to think twice before ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... their present short-lived joy. He remembered that he was about to lose happiness, just as he had tasted it for the first time, and rebelled against his fate. He did not remember that he had sought that conspiracy which now bound him, and which forced him to pursue a path leading to exile or the scaffold, while he had in sight another path which would lead ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... for the murther of Prince Khudadad, and that the Princes be brought out from their dungeons and be done to death. The tidings were bruited about the city, and preparations were made for executing the assassins and crowds of folk collected to gaze upon the scaffold, when suddenly came a report that an enemy whom the King had routed in bygone times was marching upon the city with a conquering army. Hereat the Sultan was sore troubled and perplexed and the ministers of state ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... gathered round the helpless girl in her prison, bringing the stake in all its horror before the eyes of the judges as before her own. No other thing could have been suggested by that piteous prayer. The stake, the scaffold, the fire—and the shrinking figure all maidenly, helpless, exposed to every evil gaze, must have showed themselves at least for a moment against that dark background of prison wall. It was enough that it should ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... the discharge became watery, and in it were found small pieces of true brain-substance. In five weeks the man returned to duty complaining only of giddiness and of a "stuffed-up" head. In 1846 there is a record of a man of forty who fell from a scaffold, erected at a height of 20 feet, striking on his head. He was at first stunned, but on admission to the hospital recovered consciousness. A small wound was found over the right eyebrow, protruding from which was a portion of brain-substance. There was slight ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... guess at a probable explanation of the ghost of the Dilston Groves. It may be added that at Dilston, Lady Derwentwater was long said to revisit the pale glimpses of the moon to expiate the restless ambition which impelled her to drive Lord Derwentwater to the scaffold. ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... and limitations, but she had the grand common sense of a clean heart and a clear mind. She could tell a lie with a good conscience in a good cause, but to hide even a small fault of her own, the threat of death on the scaffold would not have made ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... the earliest houses in England built as a country home rather than a castle. Sir Richard Weston, the founder, was one of the ablest servants and greatest friends of Henry VIII, the more astonishing a friendship in that it was never broken. Henry VIII sent his friend's son to the scaffold, accused as a lover of Anne Boleyn; he went to the block protesting his innocence, and there was nothing to prove him guilty; his last words were a defence of the queen. His son, a baby when his boyish ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... the Parliamentary victory at Naseby. Charles was tried and condemned as a "tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy." On the 30th of January, 1649, he was executed in front of Whitehall Palace, walking to the scaffold with the same kingly dignity which he had shown throughout his life. "I go," said he, "from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can take place." His body was laid among others of England's royal ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... if large, is split down the middle, and cut off two or three inches below the extremity of the split; it is then turned directly bottom upwards, for the sun to kill it more speedily, to enable the laborers to carry it out of the field, else the leaves would break off in transporting it to the scaffold. The plants are cut only as they become ripe, for a field never ripens altogether. There is generally a second cutting likewise, for the stalk vegetates and shoots forth again, and in good land, with favorable seasons, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... Equality, Fraternity, are dogmas of peace and harmony. Why give them an aspect of alarm? What do we seek? To win nations to the universal public. Then why inspire fright? Of what avail is intimidation? It is wrong to do ill in order to do good. You do not pull down the throne to leave the scaffold standing. Let us hurl away crowns, let us spare heads. The revolution is concord, not affright. Mild ideas are ill-served by men who do not know pity. Amnesty is for me the noblest word in human speech. I will shed no blood save at ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... should perhaps be cautious in our censures. It is possible to hold an opinion quite honestly, and yet to hesitate about dying for it. We consider ourselves, at the present day, persuaded honestly of many things; yet which of them should we refuse to relinquish if the scaffold were the alternative, or at least seem to ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... revolutionary rage had penetrated even to that quiet and distant place. The hideous "Fete of the Supreme Being" had been celebrated at Paris; the practice of our ancient religion was forbidden; its professors were most of them in concealment, or in exile, or had expiated on the scaffold their crime of Christianity. In our poor village my uncle's church was closed, and he, himself, an inmate in my brother's house, only owing his safety to his great popularity among his former flock, and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The ugliness of some docks is appalling. Wild horses would not drag from me the name of a certain river in the north whose narrow estuary is inhospitable and dangerous, and whose docks are like a nightmare of dreariness and misery. Their dismal shores are studded thickly with scaffold-like, enormous timber structures, whose lofty heads are veiled periodically by the infernal gritty night of a cloud of coal-dust. The most important ingredient for getting the world's work along is distributed there under the circumstances of the greatest cruelty meted out to ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... furs and as many traps as the ten men could carry, and travelled about ten miles, keeping close to the timber. When darkness came on they crept into a very dense growth of underbrush, where they passed the greater part of the night in erecting a scaffold upon which they cached their furs, traps, and other things which ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... situation or my own with relation to the government; that I cared not what writings should be charged upon me; that I should admit none till fairly proved, which, if any such should ever appear, I would justify, if necessary, on the scaffold. He now summed up the objects of his mission, whatever produced it, with abuse of Burr, Tyler, and Smith, acknowledging that he had been served gratis by Burr in the most handsome manner; that the others were more concerned against the government than I ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... and brass, and some had no monuments at all, for the Puritans had ruthlessly destroyed them. But they were nearly all there, nearly twenty generations of the bearers of an ancient name, for even those of them who perished on the scaffold had been borne here for burial. The place was eloquent of the dead and of the mournful lesson of mortality. From century to century the bearers of that name had walked in these fields, and lived in yonder Castle, and looked upon the familiar swell of yonder ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... Moses mounted the scaffold, and a sword, sharp beyond compare, was set upon his neck ten times, but it always slipped away, because his neck was as hard as ivory. And a still greater miracle came to pass. God sent down the angel Michael, in the guise of a hangman, and the human hangman ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill. The Butter exchange band. Few years' time half of them magistrates and civil servants. War comes on: into the army helterskelter: same fellows used to. Whether on the scaffold high. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... pretty Hetty Sorrel. Hetty is seduced by the young squire, murders her baby, and is condemned to die for the crime. Dinah visits the doomed girl in prison, wins her to a confession and repentance, and accompanies her in the gallows-cart. They are at the scaffold when a reprieve arrives.—George Eliot, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Anti-Trinitarian John Biddle in their custody. Since 1644, when he was a schoolmaster in Gloucester, this mild man had been in prison again and again for his opinions, and the wonder was that the Presbyterians had not succeeded in bringing him to the scaffold in 1648 under their tremendous Ordinance of that year. His Socinian books were then known over England and even on the Continent, and he would certainly have been the first capital victim under the Ordinance if the Presbyterians had ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Bernard Dumay, born at Vannes, started as a soldier for the army of Italy in 1799. His father, president of the revolutionary tribunal of that town, had displayed so much energy in his office that the place had become too hot to hold the son when the parent, a pettifogging lawyer, perished on the scaffold after the ninth Thermidor. On the death of his mother, who died of the grief this catastrophe occasioned, Jean sold all that he possessed and rushed to Italy at the age of twenty-two, at the very moment ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... seems the great avenger; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word; Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... that it is a pleasure to turn to France, where the works of JEAN GOUJON show that he had the true idea of sculpture in relief. From 1555 to 1562 this sculptor was employed on the works at the Louvre, and during the massacre of St. Bartholomew he was shot while on a scaffold quietly working at a bas-relief ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... sent like criminals into exile, because they hold diverse opinions which they cannot disguise? (55) What, I say, can be more hurtful than that men who have committed no crime or wickedness should, simply because they are enlightened, be treated as enemies and put to death, and that the scaffold, the terror of evil-doers, should become the arena where the highest examples of tolerance and virtue are displayed to the people with all the marks of ignominy that ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... in a cart, under an escort of gen-d'armes, attended by an elderly and respectable ecclesiastic; who, having been previously occupied in administering the consolations of religion to the condemned person in prison, now appeared incessantly employed in tranquillizing him on his way to the scaffold. Arrived near the fatal machine, the unhappy man stepped out of the vehicle, knelt at the feet of his confessor, received the priestly benediction, kissed some individuals who accompanied him, and was hurried by the officers of justice up ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... no one could surely say where the real authority, or the real law, lay. Science lid not know. Truths a priori held their own against truths surely relative. According to Lowell, Right was forever on the scaffold, Wrong was forever on the Throne; and most people still thought they believed it. Adams was not the only relic of the eighteenth century, and he could still depend on a certain number of listeners — mostly respectable, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... then to Sheffield Manor House, where she spent fourteen years. It was for the alleged intention of moving her hence that Thomas Duke of Norfolk, an ancestor of the ducal family, still closely connected with Sheffield, suffered on the scaffold. The grandson of this Duke of Norfolk, at whose trial the Earl of Shrewsbury presided as High Steward, afterwards married the granddaughter of the Earl, and thereby became possessed of this castle and estate." And now, in 1851, another son of Norfolk is about to acquire ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... of mine own commodity, as even for a very love of Thee." The unfortunate Anne Boleyn, who during her imprisonment had repented and received the last sacraments from the hands of Father Thirlwall, begs on the scaffold that the people may pray for her. In her address to her ladies before leaving the Tower, she concludes it by begging them to forget her not after death. "In your prayers to the Lord Jesus forget not to pray for my soul." In the account of the ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... that besides all these pleasant and talkative persons the Faubourg Saint-Germain itself threw open its great swinging doors to the relations of the Abbe Edgeworth who risked his life to stand by his master upon the scaffold and to speak those noble warm-hearted words, the last that Louis ever heard. One can picture the family party as it must have appeared with its pleasant British looks—the agreeable 'ruddy-faced' father, the gentle Mrs. Edgeworth, who is somewhere described by her stepdaughter ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... Ah! if it should be the messenger! What could I do? I was prepared to kill him—yes, even to kill him—rather than at this last moment allow our work to be undone. Thousands die to make a glorious war. Why should not one die to make a glorious peace? What though they hurried me to the scaffold? I should have sacrificed myself for my country. I had a little curved Turkish knife strapped to my waist. My hand was on the hilt of it when the carriage which had alarmed me ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and the idol of his parents, conceived a plot against my house, whose treason was equal to parricide. I learned his designs; and with my own eyes and my own ears, I verified his guilt. He was an archtraitor; he had deserved to die on the scaffold. But I had pity on his family, and spared them the disgrace of a public execution. I took his life secretly, and his parents are spared the shame of knowing how he died. Shall I tell you the name of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... brotherhood, also in dark garments, with cowls on their heads and their faces masked. A party of officials on horseback, magistrates, and others, with another body of troops, brought up the rear. Slowly the procession wound its way into the Square, on one side of which was now seen a scaffold with a pulpit raised above it, and a booth or stand, covered with cloth, with seats arranged within. At one end were two lofty gibbets; while below, in the open space, two stout posts appeared fixed in the ground, with iron chains ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... their little streetward sitting-room With shelf and corner for the goods and stores. So all day long till Enoch's last at home, Shaking their pretty cabin, hammer and axe, Auger and saw, while Annie seem'd to hear Her own death-scaffold raising, shrill'd and rang, Till this was ended, and his careful hand,— The space was narrow,—having order'd all Almost as neat and close as Nature packs Her blossom or her seedling, paused; and he, Who needs would work for Annie to the last, Ascending tired, ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... not a perfect gallowes, because there are only two pillars without a transverse beame, which beame (they say) is to be erected when there is any execution, not else. Betwixt this gallowes malefactors and condemned men (that are to goe to be executed upon a scaffold betwixt the two famous pillars before mentioned at the South end of S. Mark's street, neare the Adriaticque Sea) are wont to say their prayers, to the Image of the Virgin Mary, standing on a part of S. Mark's Church ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Surveyor, with some company that he was leading in. [Created at the Restoration K.B., and Surveyor- General of all the King's buildings; better know as the author of "Cooper's Hill." Ob. 1668.] And with much ado, by the favour of Mr. Cooper, his man, did get up into a great scaffold across the North end of the Abbey, where with a great deal of patience I sat from past four till eleven before the King come in. And a great pleasure it was to see the Abbey raised in the middle, all covered with red, and a throne (that is a chaire) and foot-stoole ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys |
