"Executioner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seem that a password was requisite for admittance, for no sooner does a stranger-bee endeavor to get in, than it is known. If without necessary credentials, there is evidence enough against it. Each bee is a qualified jurist, judge, and executioner. There is no delay; no waiting for witnesses for defence. The more a bee attempts to escape, the more likely it will be to receive a sting, unless it succeeds. How strange bees are known, would be nothing ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... said he, "would be to leave you to the executioner who awaits you; but I remember that I have the misfortune to be your father. Sit down; write and sign a confession of your crime. You will then find fire-arms in this drawer. May heaven ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... scaffold, where he was placed on the chair, and the fatal collar put round his neck. One of the priests then in a loud voice commenced saying the Belief, and the culprit repeated the words after him. On a sudden, the executioner, who stood behind, commenced turning the screw, which was of prodigious force, and the wretched man—was almost instantly a corpse; but, as the screw went round, the priest began to shout, "pax et misericordia et tranquillitas," and still as he shouted, his voice ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... inferior degree, will be found on consideration to confine rather than destroy the rule. Let us for a moment stoop to the arbitration of popular breath, and usurping and uniting in our own persons the incompatible characters of accuser, witness, judge, and executioner, let us decide without trial, testimony, or form, that certain motives of those who are 'there sitting where we dare not soar', are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... years he continued a tenant of a dungeon, and in this gloomy scene of death in life survived all the sons and grandsons of his father, every one of whom perished by poison, the sword, or the axe of the executioner. It is this dread story of the fate of the Hohenstauffen imperial house which we ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... accept the power of reading hearts? Why not leave things to human justice or divine justice? We may escape one but we cannot escape the other. Do you think the privilege of a judge of the court of assizes so much to be envied? You have almost done the work of an executioner." ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... the Magistrate, putting on the black cap and a solemn look; "as the accused makes no defence, and is undoubtedly guilty, I sentence her to be eaten by the public executioner; and as that position happens to be vacant, I appoint you to ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... has not perished. We destroyed the Mahdi's body to nullify such a belief, or to prevent worship at his tomb. In the same way, at Rouen, 'when the Maid was dead, as the English feared that she might be said to have escaped, they bade the executioner rake back the fire somewhat that the bystanders might see her dead.'* An account of a similar precaution, the fire drawn back after the Maid's robes were burned away, is given in brutal detail by the contemporary diarist ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... against; he was seized in his bed at five in the morning; at seven he was taken to the Conciergerie; at nine he received information of the charge against him; at ten he went into the dock; by two in the afternoon he was condemned; by four his head lay in the executioner's basket. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... slaves by whom the late government had been served, and the Jacobites as the vilest of the traitors by whom it had been overthrown. Had he remained in England, he would probably have died by the hand of the executioner, if indeed the executioner had not been anticipated by the populace. But in Holland a political refugee, favoured by the Stadtholder, might hope to live unmolested. To Holland Sunderland fled, disguised, it is said, as a woman; and his wife accompanied him. At Rotterdam, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with him to his home where, when the two went in, they found the three at the foulest play. The Wali arrested them one and all and carried them with elbows pinioned to his office. Here he made the youth over to the Linkman who struck his neck, and as for the two women he bade the executioner delay till nightfall and then take them and strangle them and hide their corpses underground. And lastly he commanded the public Crier go about all the city and cry;— "This be the award of high treason." And men ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... prudent Prince never existed: you will read that "the mission of Napoleon" was to be the "testamentary executor of the revolution;" and the Prince should have added the legatee; or, more justly still, as well as the EXECUTOR, he should be called the EXECUTIONER, and then his title would be complete. In Vendemiaire, the military Tartuffe, he threw aside the Revolution's natural heirs, and made her, as it were, ALTER HER WILL; on the 18th of Brumaire he strangled her, and on the 19th seized on her property, and kept it until force deprived him of it. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... adherents of Lancaster rallied round a line of bastards, and the adherents of York set up a succession of impostors. When, at length, many aspiring nobles had perished on the field of battle or by the hands of the executioner, when many illustrious houses had disappeared forever from history, when those great families which remained had been exhausted and sobered by calamities, it was universally acknowledged that the claims ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... able to give us some useful information." Then, in a still more dignified voice, he went on: "I will discharge my duty, gentlemen. I have sworn to save the town from anarchy, and I will save it, even should I have to be the executioner ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... to the great Raleigh on the 29th of October, 1618, standing by the block, addressing the executioner and the multitude, when handling the shining axe: "This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases!" Lying down and fitting himself to the block, the executioner asked him to alter the position of his head, when he replied: "It ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... him. The arrests were often made with such secrecy and rapidity that his nearest relations knew not what had become of him, but he was cut off from the outer world, for the rest of his life, as completely as if he had at once been handed over to the executioner.[15] ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... of the Muses. In the conversation that followed, my new friend made some extraordinary confessions. "Do you not see," he said, "the penalty of learning, and that each of these scholars whom you have met at S., though he were to be the last man, would, like the executioner in Hood's poem, guillotine the last but one?" He added many lively remarks, but his evident earnestness engaged my attention, and, in the weeks that followed, we became better acquainted. He had great abilities, a genial temper, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... should recognize Simpson anywhere, even at a masked ball. Besides, who but Simpson would go to a fancy-dress dance as a short-sighted executioner, and wear his spectacles outside his mask? But it was a surprise to me to see ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... held their breath. They saw Sir Mador look towards Sir Gaheris, as if to ask him why he delayed giving the signal for the executioner to go forward to do ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... are vices, and vices can be conquered only by virtues. The Christ who said if they strike you on one cheek turn the other, has called us to the spiritual task of instructing men in the truth, and that work can never be put into the hands of an executioner! "I address you, O king," he concludes, "not as a prophet sent from God, but as a man of the people who abhors quarrels and hatred, and who wishes to see religion spread by love rather than by fierce controversy, by purity of ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... and a second later found himself lying helpless with his neck in the socket of a mock guillotine. Above him was suspended a huge gleaming knife that seemed to tremble, as if about to fall. At his side was a fellow dressed in the somber garments of an executioner. ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... and, finding that the oath of fidelity had still a considerable influence among the troops, acted merely as regent for his son; but, in action, he never hesitated to assume the full power of the prince. Soon after, having shown the letter to Damodar, he delivered him and his son to the public executioner. As leading to the place, the young man proposed resistance, and a sudden attempt might have put them in possession of arms, which, with their known courage, and the veneration for their character, where no higher authority ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... a great theory as to the happiness of children; and though he was not disposed altogether to throw over the precepts of Solomon—always bargaining that he should, under no circumstances, be himself the executioner—he argued that the principal duty which a parent owed to a child was to make him happy. Not only was the man to be made happy—the future man, if that might be possible—but the existing boy was to be treated with equal favour; ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... 'that the instruments of vice may sometimes loathe the work they do. The fearful executioner may, behind his mask, hide the traces of grief and pity. I do not blame you for your suspicions. I once had aspirations, perhaps as high, and purity of soul nearly as great as your own. But what are we? The creatures ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... like your cold justice; out of the eye of your judges there always glanceth the executioner ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... reluctance. Neither the royal hosts nor any of the noble guests recognized him, but a moment later two officials of the Court advanced and to the astonishment and indignation of the company declared that the stranger was no other than the executioner of Bergen! The King's wrath knew no bounds. He commanded that the knave should be seized and put to death immediately. To think that he had allowed the Queen to dance with a common executioner! ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... up, as at an executioner. The lean, cruel face of that beautiful girl's husband was not far from his own; the fiery eyes were burning into his. The Iron Count sat upon ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... see why you should trouble yourself to turn States' executioner. When we get to Santa Fe our prisoners can be tried by court-martial. No doubt ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the ear, and it powerfully recalled to Edwin the legends of the Spanish Inquisition. He speculated whether he would ever be able to touch beef again. Above the tortured and insulted corpse the air quivered in large waves. Mr Doy, the leading butcher of Bursley, and now chief executioner, regarded with anxiety the operation which had been entrusted to him, and occasionally gave instructions to a myrmidon. Round about stood a few privileged persons, whom pride helped to bear the double heat; and farther off on the pavements, a thin scattered crowd. The sublime ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... o'clock, committed the crime of murder and highway robbery upon the person of Baruch Koweski, with malice prepense, we condemn him to be hanged by the neck till death shall ensue. And may Heaven have mercy on his soul! Usher, let the executioner appear and take charge of the ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... population living in hovels, and buildings called picturesquely by the familiar term of "blind houses." From the earliest ages this has no doubt been an accursed quarter, the haunt of evil-doers; in fact one thoroughfare is named "the street of the Executioner." For more than five centuries it has been customary for the executioner to have a red door at the entrance of his house. The assistant of the executioner of Chateauroux still lives there,—if we are to believe public rumor, for the townspeople never see him: the vine-dressers alone ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... to perform the last act in the drama. It was a weird and dreadful moment. The fire-light cast its flickering glow upon the doomed chief, his captors and the executioner. The form of Magua was seen to quiver, as though life was indeed not ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... them of the penalty incurred by those who stir up resistance against me by their insults and sneers. I will silence these libellers once for all, and destroy their contemptible free press by the executioner's axe. The punishment inflicted upon Palm seemed not sufficient—let M. Lange, then, be another warning to them. Let him die as ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... lifetime of a single generation. It is idle to think of subduing a people who make so many sacrifices, and who are undaunted still; it is vain to think of crushing a spirit which survives so much persecution. The executioner and the gaoler, the gibbet, the block, and the dungeon, have done their work in the crusade against Irish Nationality, and we know what the result is to-day. The words of the last political convict whose name appears in these pages are as ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... criminal on condition of his hanging the others. Our guides related to us that, a short time before our arrival on the coast of Cumana, a Zambo, known for the great ferocity of his manners, determined to screen himself from punishment by turning executioner. The preparations for the execution however, shook his resolution; he felt a horror of himself, and preferring death to the disgrace of thus saving his life, he called again for his irons which had been struck off. He did not long remain in prison, and he underwent his sentence through the baseness ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... XIV. and Louis XV., with the mysteries of the Grand and Petit Trianon and of the Parc aux Cerfs, with Madame de Maintenon and Madame de Montespan, with Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, that beautiful courtesan who on the scaffold so pathetically asked the executioner: "Mr. Hangman, I beseech you, do spare me." We are all familiar through Thackeray's "History of the Georges" with the chronique scandaleuse of the Hanoverian dynasty. No doubt the Hohenzollern also have had their chronique scandaleuse and have also ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... discoveries in an affair of high concern, but all was ineffectual, and he suffered on the 20th of February, 1729-30, with less apprehension than might have been expected from a man under his unhappy circumstances. The executioner, to put the prisoner sooner out of his pain, jumped upon his shoulders, and thereby broke the rope, but he was soon tied up again, and there remained until the ...
— 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
... tell you the whole thing, but this will be enough. The Council have decreed the death of a certain person, and I am appointed his executioner." ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... The man and the audience had melted away in a thin little stream. Matravers stood on the kerbstone hesitating. He had not meant to go behind to-night. He had a feeling that she must be regarding him at that moment as the executioner of her ambitions. Besides, she was going on to a reception; she would only be in a hurry. Nevertheless, he made his way round to the stage door. He would at least have a glimpse of her. But as he turned ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the paper you have sent me, but a confirmation of Richard's innocence of the death of Clarence. As the Duke of Buckingham was appointed to superintend the execution, it is incredible that he should have been drowned in a butt of malmsey, and that Richard should have been the executioner. When a seneschal of England, or as we call it, a lord high steward, is appointed for a trial, at least for execution, with all his officers, it looks very much as if, even in that age, proceedings were carried on with a little more formality than ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... executioner say to the victim he was torturing—Be composed. But surely, when I tell you that that picture is the likeness of my youngest child, now no more, you will not take it from us. To lose that, would break his mother's heart. Take ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... the most dreaded of all men who have swayed the destinies of England, found himself in a moment as utterly helpless as the feeblest of his victims had been. He was flung into the Tower; his stormy protests were unheeded by the King; on July 28th, his head fell beneath the executioner's axe. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... use of animal life, will run the gamut, from the biggest elephant, employed as a public executioner in India, to the invisible microbe, doing a work ten thousand times more important all ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... usual dockful of sheep-stealers, Whiteboys, shop-lifters, and cattle-houghers, who, to the amount of seven or eight at a time, were invariably 'turned off' within four-and-twenty hours after their sentences at each assizes. No executioner being at hand, time pressing, and the sheriff and his deputy being men of refinement, education, humanity, and sensibility, who could not be expected to fulfil the office which they had undertaken—and for which one of them, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... alone. But he stood on such a ghastly pyramid of the dead that he could not hope to maintain his dangerous elevation. The voice of vengeance, long choked by terror, at length began to rise against this wholesale executioner. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... between two gentlemen, and many inscriptions to this effect "Erodiana Regina," "Omnia praetereunt," etc. A dirty, one-eyed fellow keeps the place. In my presence he swept the frescos over with a scratchy broom, flaying their upper surface in profound unconsciousness of mischief. The armor of the executioner has had its steel colors almost rubbed off by this infernal process. Damp and cobwebs ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... unhappy man was tried and condemned, dying in jail before the time set for his execution. Just about this time was the State murder of Overbury, and the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, one of England's noblest sons, brave and chivalric, who, at the executioner's block, took the axe in his hand, kissed the blade, and said to the sheriff: "'Tis a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases." These and kindred acts serve to illustrate the history of a king whose personal and selfish interests overruled ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... ranks of humble citizens, for it was part of Calvin's creed that men ought to suffer martyrdom for their faith without offering resistance. Judges were known to die, stricken by remorse, and marvelling at their victims' fortitude. At Dijon, the executioner himself proclaimed at the foot of the scaffold that ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... FILLED WITH HOT EMBERS!! All this time the prisoner instead of bewailing his fate, seemed to surpass his tormentors in expressions of joy. At length when exhausted with loss of blood and unable to stand, his executioner closed the tragic scene by beating out his brains with a tomahawk."—Indian ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... to our farces; maid and lover are privileged impostors. But to have counted the sands in thine hour-glass, to have sat by thy side, marvelling when the worms should have thee, and looked smiling on thy face for the signs of the death-writ—Die quick, old man; the executioner ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... long struggle with the landlords. Under such circumstances, the assassin goes free although everybody in the district knows who he is and what he has done. They do not betray him, partly because they justify him exactly as the regular Government justifies its official executioner, and partly because they would themselves be assassinated if they betrayed him: another method learnt from the official government. Given a tribunal, employing a slayer who has no personal quarrel with the slain; and there is clearly no moral difference ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... standing at the foot of the hillock. He was brandishing his executioner's sword, with its curved blade surmounted by a metal bird, whose weight rendered the cut ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... the serious offences laid to his charge, and express his forgiveness of those even who had betrayed him under the mask of friendship. After delivering this address, and spending some time in prayer, he laid his head on the block, and breathing a short private prayer, gave the signal to the executioner. Not being immediately obeyed, he partially raised his head, and said, "What dost thou fear? Strike, man!" and underwent the fatal blow without shrinking or alteration of position. He died in his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... Gavroche,[55] who loves puns and is very fond of slang, gave this nickname to a set of huge stones which stood before the prison of La Roquette, and on which the guillotine used to be erected on the mornings when a capital punishment was to take place. The executioner was the Abbe de Cinq-Pierres, for Gavroche is as logical as he is ingenious. Well! the abbey exists no longer, swept clean away from the front of the Roquette prison. This is splendid! and as for the guillotine itself, you know what has been done ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... us at dawn like an executioner, One sorrow is persecuting us ceaselessly, One sorrow is swelling our breast the whole night long: Is ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... was found that Pope clandestinely printed an unauthorised pamphlet called the "Patriot King," Bolingbroke in a fit of useless fury resolved to blast his memory, and employed Mallet (1749) as the executioner of his vengeance. Mallet had not virtue, or had not spirit, to refuse the office; and was rewarded, not long after, with the legacy of Lord ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... could be done to ruin a monarchy was done. I was standing beside the royal group, when a deputation from the National Assembly made its appearance. At its head was a meagre villain, whom one might have taken for the public executioner. He came up, cringing and bowing, to the unfortunate king; but with a look which visibly said—We have you in our power. I could have plunged my sword in the triumphant villain's heart. I had even instinctively half drawn it, when I felt the gentle pressure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... of Isaac was a description of the truth. My brother, knowing well that if apprehended his death were certain, had in the outset resolved, if attacked, rather to provoke his death, and insure it in the violence of a conflict, than be reserved for the axe of the Roman executioner. But in the short moment in which he fell headlong into the river, it flashed across his mind—'The darkness favors my escape—I can reach the shore;' so swimming a short distance below the surface, falling down with the stream ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... that need be made in regard to the man who is proud of representing Comstockery is, that if he had not done so, some other lost soul would. In that sad stage of our social growth when death was the penalty for most infractions of the law, an executioner could always be found who took pride in his work and who seemed to be beyond the reach of the scorn, the abhorrence and the contempt ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... of honor as keen as any razor blade. If he allowed himself wide latitude in some matters it was because he had lived his life in an atmosphere where the wide latitude was the thing. The prairie had been his bed, the sky his roof, himself his own policeman, judge, and executioner since boyhood. When responsibility is so centralized wide latitudes must be allowed. But the uttermost borders of that latitude were fixed with iron rigidity, and when he had thrown a vile epithet at a decent woman he ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... an underground chamber, and Gibson learned the reason for his executioner's assurance when the latter chained him to one of the pneumatic acceleration seats. The chain was fragile in appearance, but he knew he would not be free to move until ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe
... The vision which had troubled him all night, of a broadside notoriety in all the city papers, rose before his mind, clothed with fresh horror. The dull sound of sharpening those pencils was like the whetting of the executioner's knife. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... encountered the previous day. Then a very curious operation took place. One of us was told off to ascertain their sex, and nothing can depict our joy when we discovered what we were seeking among them, the female executioner who had tortured ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... never beaten; if they dared to turn their back upon an enemy, however numerous, they were killed when the battle was done, so that soon they learned to choose death with honour before the foe in preference to death with shame at the hands of the executioner. Where Chaka's armies went they conquered, till the country was swept of people for hundreds of miles in every direction. At length, after he had killed or been the cause of the violent death of more than a million human beings, in the year 1828 Chaka's own hour came; ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... had taken the place of his dead father. His eyes softened, and their fire died out. But there was no rescinding of his desperate decision. He was thinking of what it would mean, the thought of this white-haired man in the hands of the executioner. He was thinking of the kindly heart beating within that stalwart bosom. He was thinking of the wonderful, thoughtful kindness for others which was always the motive of his life. And a deep-throated curse rose to his ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... God and Kaiser, therefore who can and will first slaughter such a man does right well, since upon such a common rebel every man is alike the judge and executioner. Therefore, who can shall openly or secretly smite, slaughter and stab, and hold that there is nothing more poisonous, more harmful, more devilish than ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... wisdom was that decision in the case of the two women, one of whom, in her sleep, lying upon her babe, had smothered it, and claimed the living child of the other, who lodged with her. He knew when he sent for the executioner, and told him to cut in two parts the live babe, giving to each a half, that the mother would be seen in the effect of the command to slay. And so it was. The faithless woman said let it be so; the loving, yearning mother exclaimed no, rather let the other have the child. Solomon wisely ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... wholly bent upon Revenge. He determin'd to poison Astarte on a certain Night, and to have Zadig strangled by Break of Day. Orders for that Purpose were expressly given to a merciless, inhuman Eunuch, the ready Executioner of his Vengeance. At that critical Conjuncture, there happen'd to be a Dwarf, who was dumb, but not deaf, in the King's Apartment. Nobody regarded him: He was an Eye and Ear-witness of all that pass'd, and yet no more suspected ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... once without any start; it was the voice she expected, and she was meeting the expected eyes. Her face was as grave as if she had been looking at her executioner, while his was adjusted to the intention of soothing and propitiating her. Once a handsome face, with bright color, it was now sallow and deep-lined, and had that peculiar impress of impudent suavity which comes from courting favor while accepting ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... and his assistants had partaken of the holy communion, the Danes burst into the church. The abbot was slain upon the holy altar by the hand of the Danish king Oskytal, and the other priests and monks were beheaded by the executioner. ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... life, any more than did Socrates when summoned before his judges. Desponding, uncertain, pursued, he met his fate with the heroism of an ancient philosopher. He surrendered his wearied and exhausted body to the hand of the executioner, and his lofty soul to the keeping of that personal and supreme God in whom he believed as firmly as any man, perhaps, of Pagan antiquity. And surely of him, more than of any other Roman, could it be said,—as Sir Walter ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... The executioner was in great disorder, trembling all over; so he gave him two or three strokes without being able to finish the matter and then flung the axe out of his hand. But the sheriff forced him to take it up; and at three or four more strokes he severed his head from his body ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... executioner," Ned replied. "They doubtless deserve to be put to death, but I'm not the one ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... vain; so my opinion of the action itself began to alter, and I began, with cooler and calmer thoughts, to consider what it was I was going to engage in; what authority or call I had to pretend to be judge and executioner upon these men as criminals, whom Heaven had thought fit for so many ages to suffer, unpunished, to go on, and to be, as it were, the executioners of his judgments upon one another; also, how far these people were offenders against me, and what right I had to engage in the quarrel of that ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... his power, the use which he makes of the deposed king to grace his triumphal progress through the streets of London, and the final intimation of his wish for his death, which immediately finds a servile executioner, is marked throughout with complete effect and without the slightest appearance of effort. The steps by which Bolingbroke mounts the throne are those by which Richard sinks into the grave. We feel neither respect nor love for the deposed monarch; ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... executioner of Madrid!" repeated he. "I have never committed crime in my life, though my blade has been reddened with the blood of my fellow-creatures. Yet no man takes my hand,—no man breaks bread or drinks wine with me. I, the dread minister of justice, a necessity of society, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... Ogre.) You need not be pushing yourself forward. (To Guardian.) There is a stranger of an Executioner chanced to be passing the road, just as I sent out, and he looking for work. He said he would do the job for a four-penny bit and his dinner, that he ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... of that," she said in a choking whisper. "God gave women pity to keep men from becoming demons. You can pity the executioner when, killing you, ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... moment, some silent-footed beast of prey might catch my scent where it laired in some contiguous passage, and might creep stealthily upon me. I craned my neck about, and stared through the inky darkness for the twin spots of blazing hate which I knew would herald the coming of my executioner. So real were the imaginings of my overwrought brain that I broke into a cold sweat in absolute conviction that some beast was close before me; yet the hours dragged, and no sound broke the grave-like ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... our execrations, and what mischief Hell can but hatch in a distracted brain, I'll be the executioner, though it look So horrid it can fright even ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... the morning in all the aches and flushes of a feverish cold, her sprain severely painful, her eyes swollen, her throat so sore, that in alarm Cilly besought her to send for advice; but Rashe regarded a murderous allopathist as near akin to an executioner, and only bewailed the want of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... appeal from the judgments of the Standrecht; and so quickly are they carried out, that if a person is ordered to be hanged, and the regular executioner is busy, the judge can call on the soldiers to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 59, December 23, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... His executioner was hidden in the edge of the timber, not directly opposite him, but nearly a hundred yards down stream. Twenty times he had wondered why the fiend with the rifle did not creep up through that timber and take a good, open pot-shot at him from the vantage ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... is a beam stretched across the hidden wells and marked with the fret of a rope. Many a beautiful woman has swung from that beam by neck, or feet, or wrists, and her body dropped through the well into the Holy Jumna without the knowledge of any save her master and her executioner." ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... to trial—Oh, After a revelation such as this, The Last Day shall have little left to show Of righted wrong and villainy requited! Nay, Judgment now beginning upon earth, Myself, methinks, in sight of all my wrongs, Appointed heaven's avenging minister, Accuser, judge, and executioner Sword in hand, cite the guilty—First, as worst, The usurper of his son's inheritance; Him and his old accomplice, time and crime Inveterate, and unable to repay The golden years of life they stole away. What, does he yet maintain ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... before the horse; to mention the last part of a story first. To be flogged at the cart's a-se or tail; persons guilty of petty larceny are frequently sentenced to be tied to the tail of a cart, and whipped by the common executioner, for a certain distance: the degree of severity in the execution is left to the discretion of the executioner, who, it is said, has cats of nine tails ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... she, pointing to Lepretre. The four accused, who were included in a common alibi, fell by this one admission under the executioner's axe. They rose and bowed to her ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... not only cooks, but sellers of sheepsheads, and are therefore called raa"s, or in the Egyptian dialect rewwas." The proverb is in the present case evidently meant as a play upon the literal meaning ("headsman," hence by implication "executioner") of the word rewwas, although I cannot find an instance of the word being employed in this sense. It is, however, abundantly evident from the general context that this is the author's intention in the passage in question, Alaeddin's head being metaphorically ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... Francois: "Burghers, said he, I have been always your faithful countryman: believe not that I die for treason; but for maintaining the Rights and Liberties of my Country." After this Speech the executioner struck off his head at one blow. It is affirmed that the Prince of Orange, to feast himself with the cruel pleasure of seeing his enemy perish, beheld the execution with a glass. The people looked on it with other eyes: for many came to gather the sand wet with his blood, to keep it carefully ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... 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 charged by Pharaoh with the execution was changed into the form of Moses. This spurious Moses the angel killed with the very sword with which the executioner had purposed to slay the intended victim. Meantime Moses took to flight. Pharaoh ordered his pursuit, but it was in vain. The king's troops were partly stricken with blindness partly with dumbness. The dumb could give no information about the abiding-place ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... non-appearance, and her consequent dread of her husband's anger, and as, according to one of the savage country superstitions, the cries of a cat, in the agonies of being boiled or roasted alive, compelled (as it were) the powers of darkness to fulfil the wishes of the executioner, resort had been had to the charm. The poor woman evidently believed in its efficacy; her only feeling was indignation that her cat had been chosen out from all others for a sacrifice. Margaret listened in horror; ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... in a ship without my permission, by showing you your two children, your two jewels, killed by their own father. And I have punished the King for the caprice he took into his head, by making him first the judge of his brother, and afterwards the executioner of his children. But as I have wished only to shear and not to flay you, I desire now that all the poison may turn into sweetmeats for you. Therefore, go, take again your children and my grandchildren, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... accusations and added the names of others of the citizens. The Thirty acquitted him, as they did Agoratus, as he seemed to tell the truth, but you long afterwards brought him into court as a murderer and, justly voting death for him, gave him over to the executioner, and he was beaten to death. 57. If he was put to death then Agoratus should justly be killed, as he was responsible for the death of Menestratus having accused him, and who is more to blame for those killed ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... scaffold, as his tribute of abhorrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow—suddenly to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood? What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his share in the tragedy? And, if all this were insufficient, then I cite the closing act of her life as valid on her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... of Madame Elisabeth gave to all she said and did a noble character, descriptive of that of her soul. On the day on which this worthy descendant of Saint Louis was sacrificed, the executioner, in tying her hands behind her, raised up one of the ends of her handkerchief. Madame Elisabeth, with calmness, and in a voice which seemed not to belong to earth, said to him, "In the name of modesty, cover my bosom." I ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... suspecting that his protege had become his accuser and was preparing to become his executioner, received him with more tenderness than ever, and lodged him, as heretofore, in his palace. Under the shadow of this hospitable roof, Ali skilfully prepared the consummation of the crime which was for ever to draw him out of obscurity. He went every morning to pay his court to the pacha, whose ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... rhetoriqueur poetry), at the beginning, and the last sight (except in letters) of Gargantua at the end, with the curious coda on the "herb Pantagruelion" (the ancestor of Joseph de Maistre's famous eulogy of the Executioner), give, as it were, handle and top to it in unique fashion. But the body of it is the thing. The preliminary outrunning of the constable—had there been constables in Salmigondin, but they probably knew the story of the Seigneur of Basche ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... to London; or that a leading company of players in the metropolis, one of whom, and a chief one, was his own townsman, should cheerfully adopt into their society, as an honored partner, a young man yet flagrant from the lash of the executioner or the beadle? ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... poor relief of tears. They make my eyes red, and I must not make, my eyes red, if it would save my life. But nothing will save me. The lambs that used to be led to the altar are not more helpless than I. The rope is round my neck; and I must trot on beside the executioner, and find what comfort I can in the garland of roses ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... is pathetic to the highest degree. The older boy was beheaded, and when the younger saw the streaming blood and the red stains on his brother's clothes, he said with childish innocence to the executioner: "Dear man, don't stain my shirt like my brother's, for then ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... marquise, "after what you tell me, now that I know the executioner's hand was necessary to my salvation, what should I have become had I died at Liege? Where should I have been now? And even if I had not been taken, and had lived another twenty years away from France, what would my death have been, since it needed the scaffold ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... delivered over to the civil power for martyrdom. When surrounded by blazing fagots, he cried out, "O Lord God, have mercy upon me!" and a little afterwards, "Thou knowest how I have loved thy truth." With cheerful countenance he met his fate; and, observing the executioner about to set fire to the wood behind his back, he cried out, "Bring thy torch hither: perform thy office before my face. Had I feared death, I might have avoided it." As the wood began to blaze, he sang a hymn, which the violence of ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... been your executioner fer twenty years," complained a voice, which Samson at once recognized as that of Aaron Hollis, the most trusted of Purvy's personal guards. "I hain't never laid down on ye yet. Me an' Jim Asberry killed old Henry South. We laid fer his boy, an' would 'a' got him ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... not prevent the citizens from unjustly rebelling against him in 1540, after the suppression of which revolt Charles is said to have ascended the cathedral tower, while the executioner was putting to death the ringleaders in the rebellion, in order to choose with his brother Ferdinand the site for the citadel he intended to erect, to overawe the freedom loving city. He chose the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... Magistrate sat within, unconscious of the hideous tragedy that was being enacted in his name. When he discovered the infamy by which he had been made the executioner of an innocent woman, he made his first demand that Edwin M. Stanton resign from his cabinet as Secretary of War. And for the first time in the history of America, a cabinet officer waived the question of ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... anything like an idea in his head. Hence every crack must disturb a hundred people applying their minds to some activity, however trivial it may be; while it disjoints and renders painful the meditations of the thinker; just like the executioner's axe when it severs the head from the body. No sound cuts so sharply into the brain as this cursed cracking of whips; one feels the prick of the whip-cord in one's brain, which is affected in the same way as the mimosa pudica is by touch, and which lasts the same length of time. ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... charger the head of John the Baptist. 26. And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath's sake, and for their sakes which sat with him, he would not reject her. 27. And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, 28. And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Obviously the madness of physical desire is a thing that can hardly be tempered down to the quiet stanzas of Gray's Elegy. But it is not in itself a wicked thing; or the world would never have consecrated it in the great Love-Legends. One may admit that the entrance of the Nubian Executioner changes the situation; but, after all, the frenzy of the girl's request—the terror of that Head upon the silver charger—were implicit in her passion from the beginning; and are, God knows! never very far from ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... Ireland, and the Highlands of Scotland; and which, notwithstanding the authorities to the contrary, he firmly believed was introduced first into his country by William the Conqueror. Indeed, he insisted that he had twice debated this point with the learned critic, Easley, (whom he styled the New York executioner of literature,) and beat him with ease; for though Easley was a man of profound knowledge and erudition, he was not a match for ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... duty to intone to Thee songs of praise." Moses had no part in the song of praise to the well, for the well had given occasion to his death in the desert, and no man can be expected to sing about his executioner. As Moses wanted have nothing to do with this song, God demanded that His own name also be not mentioned in it, acting in this instances like the king who was invited to a prince's table, but refused the invitation when he learned that his friend ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... out the horror of my soul, "you have a monstrous black sin upon your conscience! For your sake that unfortunate man fell by the ax of the executioner!" ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... centre of Chinese learning, and in other parts of the country, there were, indeed, thinkers whose philosophy did not always tally with what was taught by the orthodox,[11] but as a rule even when these men escaped the ban of the censor, or the sword of the executioner, they were but us voices crying in the wilderness. The great mass of the gentry was orthodox, according to the standards of the Seido College, while the common people remained faithful to Buddhism. In the conduct of daily life they followed ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... monster spewed him forth unharmed. He was found by compassionate passers-by, and grew up ignorant of his descent. The government appointed him to the office of hangman. As luck would have it, he had to execute his own father. By the law of the land the wife of the dead man fell to the share of his executioner, and Joshua was on the point of adding to parricide another crime equally heinous. He was saved by a miraculous sign. When he approached his mother, milk flowed from her breasts. His suspicions were aroused, and through the inquiries he set a ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... of Lesurques's innocence to the foot of the scaffold; and, after a final appeal, he, too, delivered himself to the executioner. The drop fell on a guilty neck, having before been stained with the blood of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... fought under great disadvantages, so that their fleet was destroyed in the Syracusan harbor. Their retreating forces on land were cut to pieces or captured. Nicias and Demosthenes died either at the hands of the executioner or by a ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... from sixty to eighty pounds weight, which will make six or eight tureens of fine soup. Kill the turtle the evening before; tie a cord to the hind fins, and hang it up with the head downwards. Tie the fore fins by way of pinioning them, otherwise it would beat itself, and be troublesome to the executioner. Hold the head in the left hand, and with a sharp knife cut off the neck as near the head as possible. Lay the turtle on a block on the back shell, slip the knife between the breast and the edge of the back shell; and when ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... fire, nor all the brimstone and tortures they endure, which murders them alive. No, no; it is the domestical cause of all these mischiefs that racks their consciences and is their crudest executioner. This, this is the greatest of their evils; for a soul that has shaken off the fetters of flesh and blood, and is full of the love of God, no more disordered with unruly passions, nor blinded with the night of ignorance, sees clearly the vast injury she has done to herself to have offended ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... mean season he was delivered to the hands of the executioner. But there arose a sage and ancient Physitian, a man of a good conscience and credit throughout all the City, that stopped the mouth of the pot wherein the stones were cast, saying: I am right glad ye reverend judges, that I am a man of name and estimation amongst you, whereby I ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... of three years: his two sermons were ordered to be burnt by the hands of the common hangman, in presence of the lord mayor and the two sheriffs of London and Middlesex. The lords likewise voted that the executioner should commit to the same fire the famous decree passed in the convocation of the university of Oxford, asserting the absolute authority and indefeasible right of princes. A like sentence was denounced by the commons upon a book intituled, "Collections ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Soviet Republic of Russia, I am told, no one can lay claim to the title of worker unless his hands are hardened and roughened by toil, and LENIN and TROTSKY have to take their turns at the rack, like the commonest executioner. In England we are not nearly so particular about the manual test, and, besides feeling quite kindly disposed towards professional footballers, tea-tasters and the men who stand on Cornish cliffs and shout when they see the pilchard shoals come in, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... Captain Merrithew stood on the bridge with his hands on the wheel spokes. No longer was he young in the eyes of Virginia Howland. No, he was old, old as the avenging ages and as cruel, as cold as the march of time. Straight he made for the pretty white side of the gun-boat, as some grim executioner might measure for the blow of the sword which was to sever the white neck of some captive maid, some Joan of Arc. And the girl caught his spirit and became cruel too. She laughed at the gun-boat, as she fired again; ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... "The executioner would cause his death—and the law. I should be but the humble instrument of heaven ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Freiheit; "extirpate the wretches! Thus runs the refrain of a revolutionary song of the working classes, and this will be the exclamation of the executive of a victorious proletariat army when the battle has been won. For at the critical moment the executioner's block must ever be before the eyes of the revolutionist. Either he is cutting off the heads of his enemies or his own is being cut off. Science gives us means which make it possible to accomplish the wholesale destruction of these ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... as learned a judge, does the business much better. The Dissenters here were the chief promoters of this matter, but, when I asked one of them 'What if a violent Church of England jury should present Mr. Baxter's books as pernicious, and condemn them to the flames by the common executioner,' he was sensible of the error, and said he wished it had never been done." Mr. Locke, in his reply, coincides with his friend, and says, "The Dissenters had best consider; but they are a sort of men which will always ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... to be judge and jury and executioner all in one, and for a private and personal wrong—to ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... of the Earl of Stair an account of his having been sent for to visit a mysterious person of extreme old age, who stated that he was the earl's ancestor (grandfather or great-grandfather, but whether paternal or not I do not remember), and that he had been the executioner of Charles I. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... treated. When Marc Antony, after the battle of Actium, defied him to single combat, his answer to the messenger who brought it was, "Tell Marc Antony, if he be weary of life, there are other ways to end it; I shall not take the trouble of becoming his executioner." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... make me languish still! 'Tis cruelty in thee to th' height, Thus, thus to wound, not kill outright; Yet there's a way found, if thou please, By sudden death, to give me ease; And thus devised,—do thou but this, —Bequeath to me one parting kiss! So sup'rabundant joy shall be The executioner of me. ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... see, the trouble was to keep her from bouncing up higher than the top of the tower. She was light weight, anyway, because she was a witch; and after the first bounce they had to have two executioners to keep throwing her down—a day executioner and a night executioner; and she went so fast up and down that she was just like a solid column of enchantress. She enjoyed it first-rate, but it kept her ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... in his palace for the return of the Magi; and his secret executioner was at hand, ready to set out for Bethlehem at any moment. And when he found that they had discovered his hypocrisy and wicked intentions, and that his infamous design was thwarted, his rage knew no bounds; and he vowed to ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... scene of action, and, with a flush of rage, tears in his eyes, and a voice trembling between terror and indignation, asked very humbly if N—— would be pleased to tell him how many stripes he meant to inflict? 'Why,' returned the executioner, 'you little rascal, what is that to you?' 'Because, if you please,' said Byron, holding out his arm, 'I would take half.' There is a mixture of simplicity and magnanimity in this little trait which ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... who, when an old woman upwards of seventy, was beheaded by the order of Henry VIII, and caused the headman much trouble by refusing to place her head upon the block; an illustration by Cruickshank depicts the executioner chasing the ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... Artabanus the uncle disappears finally from view at the time when Xerxes dismissed him to return to Susa at the first crossing of the Hellespont. This second Artabanus was the captain of the king's body-guard and, consequently, the common executioner of the despot's decrees. Being thus established in his palace, surrounded by his family, and protected by Artabanus and his guard, the monarch felt that all his toils and dangers were over, and that there was nothing now before him ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the Lord High Executioner himself. My father has adopted a youth—and I have a big brother. He has consented to dwell in our house and to spend our savings because he believes that by so doing he is in some way helping me. I don't in the least want his help, but ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... by birth a New Yorker, according to a family tradition is a descendant on his mother's side of John Huss, the Bohemian reformer and martyr, and on his father's of the executioner of Charles I of England. His writings include Maracca, a Biblical one-act play, ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... Bryant's, and rejoin us at Mrs. Whitehead's,) as we approached the house we discovered Mr. Richard Whitehead standing in the cotton patch, near the lane fence; we called him over into the lane, and Will, the executioner, was near at hand, with his fatal axe, to send him to an untimely grave. As we pushed on to the house, I discovered some one run round the garden, and thinking it was some of the white family, I pursued ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... hundred deaths than abandon the faith of the pure gospel. The next day he was led to the place of execution. We were compelled to be present. The faggots were piled round him. Some of the people, moved with pity, cried out that he should be strangled first, and the executioner himself seemed unwilling to light the pile; when one of the priests, seizing the torch, set fire to the faggots, which quickly blazed up, and our good minister's soul went to that happy home prepared ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... with rough familiarity). A word first. Tell your executioner that if Pothinus had been properly killed—IN THE THROAT—he would not have called out. Your ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... said he. "I thought that somebody, if not Henri Cousin, the executioner, was at my heels. Why do you stare so, lass? Have you anything to eat? ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... life in it, who has died at an age which gives final proofs of its tendency, and whose history is thoroughly known. We all know what Cromwell did to an honest parliament. Marlborough ended in being a miser and the tool of his wife. Even good-natured, heroic Nelson condescended to become an executioner at Naples. Frederick did much for Prussia, as a power; but what became of her as a people, or power either, before the popular power of France? Even Washington seemed not to comprehend those who thought that negro-slaves ought to ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... author entering cheerfully into the most abstruse points of the controversy concerning the Nature of Christ, without apparently one wavering thought as to the Deity of the Son of Mary. There, in the 'Consolation,' a book written in prison and in disgrace, with death at the executioner's hands impending over him—a book in which above all others we should have expected a man possessing the Christian faith to dwell upon the promises of Christianity—the name of Christ is never once mentioned, the tone, though religious and reverential, is that of a Theist only; and from ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Story, who, upon June 1st, "was drawn upon a hurdle from the Tower of London unto Tyburn, where was prepared for him a new pair of gallows made in triangular manner". There is rather a gruesome tale of how, when in pursuance of the sentence the executioner had cut him down and was "rifling among his bowels", the doctor arose and dealt him a shrewd blow on the head. Doctor Story was followed by a long line of priests, monks, laymen and others who died for their faith to the number of some three thousand. And ...
— 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
... minute to live. Then she broke silence, and said, in a low firm voice which no one heard but this executioner, for all other living creatures had retired and left her to her fate, "If I had a dagger within these fingers and he was within my reach, I would strike him dead before me, even now!" The man asked "Who?" She said, "The ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... was quite nice about this. I will say that for him. He said he knew Mr. Levy pretty well, and would see what could be done. But he spoke like an executioner who was going to see what could be done with the condemned man! And all the time I was wondering what had been done already at Carlsbad—what exactly that horrid creature meant when he was talking at Mr. Raffles before us all. Well, of course, I knew what he meant ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... the executioner, who brought down his lash with great force upon the bare back of the prisoner. A terrible cry broke from Koshkin. Two more blows were given, and then the executioner moved to the other side and delivered another three blows. In this way the lashes crossed each other ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... a guinea to the man who presented it. On the scaffold not a muscle moved as he surveyed the black crowd of onlookers with a calm and amused eye. To the chaplain he confessed his belief in God; and he exchanged a few pleasant words with the executioner as he placed a gold ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... voluminous skirts her second son, a chocolate-brown infant who rejoiced in the name of Gustavus Adolphus and was generally called "Doff." At that moment he was sobbing noisily and eyeing Val as if the boy were the Grand High Executioner of Tartary. "Yo'all tell Mistuh Val whats yo' bin a-doin'!" commanded his mother, emphasizing her ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... chief, turning to the rest of the conspirators, "you shall draw lots to determine the executioner." ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... shiver went through Dacre. His hands clenched. He was as a man in the presence of his executioner. The paralysing spell was upon him again, constricting as a rope about his neck. But sacrifice was no part of his nature. With despair at his heart, he yet made ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... defrotajxo. Excrement ekskremento. Excrescence elkreskajxo. Excruciate turmentegi. Exculpate senkulpigi. Excursion ekskurso. Excusable pardonebla. Excuse pardoni, senkulpigi. Execrable abomena. Execrate malbenegi. Execute (to do) fari. Execute ekzekuti. Executioner ekzekutisto. Executive regantaro. Exemplar ekzemplero. Exemplary ekzempla. Exemplify ekzempligi. Exempt liberigi. Exempt libera. Exercise ekzerci. Exercise ekzerco. Exercise-book kajero. Exhale odori. Exhaust konsumi. Exhaustion konsumiteco. Exhibit ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... a dense crowd round the scaffold. Sophie heeded them not; she ran girlishly up the steps to where the executioner was leaning on his axe. "Where do I put my head?" she asked simply. The executioner pointed to the block. "There!" said he. "Where did you think you put it?" Sophie reproved him with a look and knelt down. Then she gazed sweetly at the gaoler, ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward |
