"Gun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... letter from Alfred, uncle," said Emma Percival, entering the room. "He has just arrived at Portsmouth, and says the ship is ordered to be paid off immediately, and his captain is appointed to a fifty-gun ship, and intends to take him with him. He says he will be here in a ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... started. We frequently saw them feeding at a very short distance from people at work in the fields. In some neighborhoods they seem almost as numerous as fowls in a poultry-yard. A settler goes out with his gun, and in a quarter of an hour brings in half a dozen birds which in the New York market would cost two dollars a pair. At one place where we stopped to dine, they gave us a kind of pie which seemed to ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... Boyd took a lubricant gun from his pocket and fired three silent shots of special oil into the lock. Then he shot the hinges, and the cracks ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... eyed him suspiciously. "Keep your hands stric'ly away from your pockets for a minute." He slapped them in quick succession. "No gun," said he, "and that's lucky for both of us, maybe. Business is business, partner, but I hate to set an old-timer afoot complete. Keep out about ten ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... long as the eyes and fingers have complete command of the material, (as a glass-blower has, for instance, in doing fine ornamental work,)—the law is not violated; but all our great engine and furnace work, in gun-making and the like, is degrading to the intellect; and no nation can long persist in it without losing many of its human faculties. Nay, even the use of machinery other than the common rope and pulley, for the lifting of weights, is degrading to architecture; the invention of expedients for the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... comes tripping from the lips of unthinking men, and even women." So writes a famous war-correspondent, a man in the midst of war and telling of war as it really is. Now hear a woman war-correspondent, writing about this same war: "I was so proud to see the first gun fired on Wednesday. ... I liked to hear the shells swishing. ... To women keen on this war it seems almost too good to be true." That is not an extract from one of the poignant satires of Janson. This woman, who writes of war as a girl might write of her first long frock, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... length. Alan Seeger had barely passed his twenty-eighth birthday, when, charging up to the German trenches on the field of Belloy-en-Santerre, his "escouade" of the Foreign Legion was caught in a deadly flurry of machine-gun fire, and he fell, with most of his comrades, on the blood-stained but reconquered soil. To his friends the loss was grievous, to literature it was—we shall never know how great, but assuredly not small. Yet this ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... For the swift gun sometimes falters, sparing the foe afar, And the hid mine wastes destruction on the drag's decoying spar, But I am the wrath of the Furies' path—of the war ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... table, a single board set up on sticks; and a bench or two, together with a wooden chest of some size, completed the furniture. Tools were suspended from the walls, it is true; and no less than three rifles, in addition to a very neat double- barrelled "shot-gun," or fowling-piece, were standing in a corner. These were arms collected by our hero in his different trips, and retained quite as much from affection as from necessity, or caution. Of ammunition, there was no very great ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... ain't much bigger'n the old twenty-two I used to have, Holly. I'll eat all the big game your dad ever shoots with that gun!" ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... He was a wonderful hypnotist, and he hypnotized the bandit, and just as the other one, who wasn't hypnotized, was searching his pockets McGuire said to the hypnotized bandit, 'You're a policeman, shoot this highwayman.' And the hypnotized one was the bandit who had the gun, and he turned around, as Alderman McGuire said, and shot the other, unhypnotized bandit and killed him. But when he reported the entire incident to the station—I was on duty that night—the captain wouldn't believe it, and tried ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... came not. Stately clippers swept into the Gate, and merchantmen went by with colors flying, and the welcoming gun of the steamer often reverberated among the hills. Then the patient face, with the old resigned expression, but a brighter, wistful look in the eye, was regularly met on the crowded decks of the steamer as she disembarked her ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... lame, failed to increase the territory of the Penguins. Bolo, the son of Chum, was assassinated by the palace guards at the age of nine, just as he was ascending the throne. His brother Gun succeeded him. He was only seven years old and allowed himself to be governed ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... the fool, whom my companion called the wizard, came in, muttering between his teeth, "Damn book-peddlers,—all the time talking about books. Better do something. Damn 'em, I'll shoot 'em. Got a doctor down here. Damn him, I'll get a gun and shoot him"; never once holding up his head. Whereat the old man stood up and said in a loud voice, as if he were accustomed to command, and this was not the first time he had been obliged to exert his authority there,—"John, go sit down, mind your business,—we've ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... every point of view. There were certain natural features that made such an attempt exceedingly improbable. Nevertheless infantry and artillery kept hard at it, strengthening our means of defence. One day I did a tour with the machine-gun commander in order to know the exact whereabouts of the machine-gun posts. They were superlatively well hidden, and the major-general himself had to laugh when one battalion commander, saying, "There's one just about here, sir," was startled by ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... narratives of derring-do that she whispered temptation into his ear, with the result that they bided their opportunity, and, when the one groom on duty was asleep, repaired to the stables armed with a loaded shot-gun. After herculean efforts they succeeded in harnessing Lord Durwent's famous hunter with the saddle back to front, the curb-bit choking the horse's throat, the brow-band tightly strapped around the poor beast's nostrils, the surcingle trailing in ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... A metal shell is pulling the power turned on, and the shell leaps out at a speed of about ten miles per second—since it has been super-heated—and is very accurately aimed, as there is no terrific shock of recoil to be taken up by the gun. ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... to spare the Liegoise," he angrily exclaimed. "What danger is there in this assault? There are no walls; they cannot put a single gun in position; I certainly will not give up the assault. If the king is afraid, let him ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... Park, Reading. Lyon Tresor Treasure Lower School of J. Lyon. Mac Deek I. Wild One Wells House. Manor Colonel Colonel Manor House. Mount Vesoi One Eye Mount, York. Mundella Bulli Bullet Mundella Secondary. Oakfield Ruggiola Sabaka 'Gun Dog' (Hound) Oakfield School, Rugby. Oldham Vaida Christian name Hulme Grammar School, Oldham. Perse Vaska Lady's name Perse Grammar. Poacher Malchick Black Old Man Grammar School, Lincoln. Chorney Stareek Price ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Mattison, the murderer of Colonel Gaylord was not a chance nigger. There was no chance about it. Colonel Gaylord killed himself. He committed suicide—as truly as if he had blown out his brains with a gun. He did it with his uncontrollable temper. The man was an egoist. He has always looked upon his own desires and feelings as of supreme importance. He has tried to crush the life and spirit and independence from everyone about ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... reckless disorder which showed itself everywhere; but, apart from his evident distaste for dirt and griminess, the captain of the Revenge seemed to be very well satisfied with everything he saw. When he passed a small gun pointed across the deck, and with a nightcap hung upon a capstan bar thrust into its muzzle, there was such a great laugh that Bonnet looked around to see what the ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... fire-arms appears to have become general in Ireland about this period (1487), as the Annals mention that an O'Rourke was slain by an O'Donnell, "with a ball from a gun;" and the following year the Earl of Kildare destroyed the Castle of Balrath, in Westmeath, with ordnance. The early guns were termed hand-cannons and hand-guns, to distinguish them from the original fire-arms, which were not portable, though there were ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... suddenly came out into an open rolling country, and Sam pulled up his horse, dismounted, and hiding behind some underbrush, took a look at the situation. There was a Gatling-gun, worked by a young officer and five men, a few hundred yards to the right at the edge of the woods. Beyond to the front he could see a line of troops firing at the enemy from behind a wall. Of the Cubapinos he could see nothing but the smoke of ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... examining the prize, when I heard a crackling among the low bushes near me; and on looking up, perceived, about twenty paces distant, a short, thick-set man, whose fustian jacket and leathern gaiters at once pronounced him the gamekeeper; he stood leaning upon his gun, quietly awaiting, as it seemed, for any movement on my part, before he interfered. With one glance I detected how matters stood, and immediately adopting my usual policy of "taking the bull by the horns," called out, in a tone of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... line of soldiers, each man with his arms reversed, walked the official mourners, while from the fortifications there boomed the minute gun. ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... brigade formed up and was played by the village band to the market place where they were drawn up into a square with some gun carriages in the centre. When all was ready I mounted a gun carriage and gave my talk with all the earnestness I could muster, while the villagers congregated at one side, stood and gaped, and wondered what it was ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... threw his head in the air; his eyelids quivered; next moment he fell insensible below the table. Northmour and I had each run to the armoury and seized a gun. Clara was on her feet with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who can see good work around a corner, they mustn't be allowed to forget that there's no private burying-ground on the premises for mistakes. When a Western town loses one of its prominent citizens through some careless young fellow's letting his gun go off sudden, if the sheriff buys a little rope and sends out invitations to an inquest, it's apt to make the boys more reserved about exchanging repartee; and if you pull up your men sharp when you find them shooting off their mouths to customers and getting ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... of seeing analogies and doing things in indirect ways. With the club, knife, and sword he struck more effectively than with the fist; with hooks, traps, nets, and pitfalls he understood how to seize game more surely than with the hands; in the bow and arrow, spear, blow-gun, and spring-trap he devised motion swifter than that of his own body; he protected himself with armor imitated from the hides and scales of animals, and turned their venom back on themselves. That the savage should have originated the inventive process and carried it on systematically is, indeed, ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... get me right, Commander," Tolson pleaded. "I went up to one of the boys to show him how to hold his gun and he banged me ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... influence, Science his views enlarges, art refines, And swelling commerce opens all her ports— Bless'd be the man divine, who gives us thee! Who bids the trumpet hush its horrid clang, Nor blow the giddy nations into rage; Who sheathes the murd'rous blade; the deadly gun Into the well-pil'd armory returns; And, ev'ry vigour from the work of death To grateful industry converting, makes The country flourish, and the city smile! Unviolated, him the virgin sings; And him, the smiling mother, to her train. Of him, the Shepherd, in the peaceful dale, Chaunts; ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... Pickwick in his turn, seeing that his companion was armed with a gun, and that another lay ready on the grass; 'what's ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... boy is born the father's younger brother or one of his friends lets off a gun and beats a brass plate to proclaim the event The women often announce the birth of a boy by saying that it is a one-eyed girl. This is in case any enemy should hear the mention of the boy's birth, and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... wavin' no wand an' floatin' horizontal in the air, see. I'm handin' it to you straight up an' down. Stiles is there an' we gotta get him away from those guys. As f'r any jokin'——" He drew out his police automatic and patted it significantly. "This gun cracks ten jokes without stoppin', see, if there's any funny work ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... was nothing very much. We camped up in the hills. We drank a reasonably good bourbon. We hunted—if that's the word for it. Me, I'd done my hitch in the Army. I know what a gun is—and respect it. Uncle John provided our hunting excitement by turning out to be one of the trigger-happy types. His score was two cows, a goat, a couple of other hunters, one possible deer—and ...
— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart
... as he stretched his manly form on the wolf-skin spread out under him, and gazed calmly on the party drawing near. While their horses stopped to drink at the stream, they observed him narrowly—he receiving this attention with stoic indifference. A long gun lay on the ground beside him, and his garments, made chiefly of the dressed skins of animals, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... institutions, and once it seemed likely that its teachings would be left for our grandchildren to act on. But the plowshare of war has turned up the tough sod of custom, and now every sound new idea has a chance. Rooted prejudices have been leveled like the forests of Picardy under gun fire. The fear of racial decline provides the eugenist with a far stronger leverage than did the hope of accelerating racial progress. It may be, then, that owing to the War eugenic policies will gain as much ground by the middle of this century as without it they would have ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... Chirrup, Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus; with a voice so astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as compared with the kettle; (size! you couldn't see it!) that, if it had then and there burst itself like an overcharged gun, if it had fallen a victim on the spot, and chirruped its little body into fifty pieces, it would have seemed a natural and inevitable consequence, for which ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... a boy, I knew quite well who the French were, and what their visitations portended. Even at that age one has recollections. I could recall my father, peaceful man of God though he was, taking down his gun some years before at the rumor of a French approach, and my mother clinging to his coat as he stood in the doorway, successfully pleading with him not to go forth. I had more than once seen Mrs. Markell of Minden, with her black knit cap worn to conceal the absence of her scalp, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... "or I'll stick my bowie knife or gun or something into you! Yes, I've always advised you to marry—if you found the right kind ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... I went to bed and went to sleep. The next morning I was awakened by firing, and the report came to me that there was going to be trouble, for the troops were coming. Almost at once everybody who could ride a horse or hold a gun mounted his horse and rode away to meet the troops. The Cheyenne scouts led the way. It was not very long until I heard the report of rifles, over in the gully. After the report of the guns we heard ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... Quest. Suddenly the latter sprang up, seized him by the leg and sent him sprawling. The gun fell from his hand. Quest picked it up and held it firmly out, covering both men. Gallagher was on his knees, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... straight up the mountainside until he should arrive at some commanding clearing whence he could recover his lost bearings and establish some landmarks for a fresh start downward. With his square jaw set in a decisive manner, the man picked up his gun, threw back his heavy shoulders, and began to climb, driving his muscular ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... difficult.... Lissa is the keystone of the Adriatic. This island, the importance of which in former times was never denied, commands the straits which lead from the southern to the northern half of the Adriatic.... The naval force at Lissa ought to be a local one, consisting of light fast gun-boats to cruise in the narrow waters, to which might be added some plated ships to keep open communications, on the one hand, between Lissa and the mainland, and on the other hand acting with the gun-boats to bar the ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... in—there. It comes in later. You know that every shot-gun has a number on it, and so can be identified. Now, if these thieves are people who are pretending to be gentlemen—how do you put it? There's a word you use for that, but ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... of Carolina and Georgia by the Spaniards sailed from Havana, consisting of a great fleet, among which were two half galleys, carrying one hundred and twenty men each and an eighteen-pound gun. A part of the fleet, on June 20th, was seen off the harbor of St. Simons, and the next day in Cumberland Sound. Oglethorpe dispatched two companies in three boats to the relief of Fort William, on Cumberland island, which were forced to fight their way through the fire ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... been a tramp as a movie lover, but take it from me, as the real thing he was no slouch! I hadda stand there and watch it, because I couldn't get past till they got away and if they'd ever seen me, I guess Joe would have bought a gun. Finally, they break, Gladys pushin' Joe away and ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... made for our ship, but I was ready for them with the little cannon we had on board; it had been reloaded with grape after the first discharge. With a roar the gun belched forth a second deadly hail against the advancing savages, and the effect was to demoralise them completely. One of the canoes was shattered to pieces, and nearly all the men in it more or less seriously wounded; whilst the occupants of ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... supported by Captain Pring, in the Linnet, of 16 guns; Lieutenant M'Ghee, in the Chub, of 11 guns; and Lieutenant Hix, in the Finch, of 11 guns. Lieutenant Raynham and Lieutenant Dual had the command of twelve gun-boats. The American squadron was commanded by Commodore M'Donough, in the Saratoga, of 26 guns; Captain Harley, in the Eagle, of 22 guns; and Captain——, in the Ticonderoga, of 18 guns, with 1 sloop, and 10 ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... 4. Le Vaillant (pro. leh va yon'). Nat'u-ral-ist, one who is acquainted with objects of nature. Spec'i-men, a sample. 5. Baf 'fled, defeated, escaped from. Fa-tigue', weariness. 7. Con-jec'tured, guessed. 8. Car'bine, a short gun. Ro-mance', a ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the fox is said to take up his abode in their hollows, when detached and bleaching, on the barren mountains of Tibet. Though very wild, I am sure I could easily have killed a couple had I had my gun, but I had found it necessary to reduce my party so uncompromisingly, that I could not afford a man both for my gun and instruments, and had sent the former back to Dorjiling, with Mr. Hodgson's bird-stuffers, who had broken one of theirs. Travelling ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the best part of the fun comes in. And how lucky it is you've got a gun, Maurice, for there will be lots of chances while we travel down stream to pick up a mess of ducks, some snipe, and perhaps a big goose or two. Bob Fletcher told me he had shot 'em off the bars down ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... feet below us, for example, were the artillery craft, which darted backward and forward across the lines as from their height of vantage they ranged and registered for the guns. On push days these same buses were to be seen lower still, well within range of machine-gun bullets from the ground, as they crawled and nosed over the line of advance and kept intelligent contact between far-ahead attacking infantry and the rear. Above the tangled network of enemy defences roved the line photography machines, which provided the Staff with accurate ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... time then Private Cowan was so engrossed with the routine of his present loose trade that the name of Whipple seemed to have no room in his mind. For four hours he had held a cold rifle and thought. Now the gun was hot, its bayonet wet, and he thought not at all. When it was over he was one of fifty-two men left of his company that had numbered two hundred and fifty-one. But his own uniform would still ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Captain Corcoran, K.C.B., I'll teach you how we rule the sea, And terrify the simple Gauls; And how the Saxon and the Celt Their Europe-shaking blows have dealt With Maxim gun and Nordenfelt (Or will when the occasion calls). If sailor-like you'd play your cards, Unbend your sails and lower your yards, Unstep your masts—you'll never want 'em more. Though we're no longer hearts of oak, Yet we can steer and we can stoke, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... Capitaine Fracasse—true "flowers of the yew." It becomes grim humour in Victor Hugo's combat of Gilliatt with the devil-fish, or the incident, with all its ghastly comedy drawn [254] out at length, of the great gun detached from its fastenings on shipboard, in Quatre-Vingt-Trieze (perhaps the most terrible of all the accidents that can happen by sea) and in the entire episode, in that book, of the Convention. Not less surely does it reach a genuine ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... a jerk and a feeling that I was flying up again. I was astonished by a tremendous popping—fabric, wires, everything seemed going pop, pop, pop, like a machine-gun, and then came a flash of intense pain as my arm crumpled up. It was quite impersonal pain. As impersonal as seeing intense colour. SPLINTERS! I remember the word came into my head instantly. I remember that ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... changing seasons brought her strange varieties of flowers, and she and her friend took industriously to botany, and puzzled out their problems unaided save by books. Very soon rowing, fishing, and, at last, shooting were added to her resources. Before August came she could walk for miles with a light gun, and could stand for hours in wait for a deer. Then she learned to swim, and found also refined pleasure in what I call word-sketching, as to which I shall by and by speak. Photography was a further gain, taken up at my ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... against him any of that ordinary artillery with which youthful feminine batteries are charged, he would have been ready to rush to the combat. But this girl, about whom his son had gone mad, sat there as passively as though she were conscious of the possession of no artillery. There was not a single gun fired from beneath her eyelids. He knew not why, but he respected his son now more than he had respected him for the last two months;—more, perhaps, than he had ever respected him before. He was an eager ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... a gun because I was a passenger ship. Unarmed, carrying women, torpedoed without warning.... I'll spit in the face of every German I meet ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... which, you may be sure, I was very glad to hear, having sat watching upon the shore for it till near two o'clock in the morning. Having thus heard the signal plainly, I laid me down; and, it having been a day of great fatigue to me, I slept sound, till I was surprised with the noise of a gun; and presently starting up, I heard a man call me by the name of "Governor! Governor!" and presently I knew the captain's voice; when, climbing up to the top of the hill, there he stood, and, pointing to the ship, he embraced me ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... bearing her along—she being unconscious—to that supper where she was not to eat but to be eaten, the young Kern of Querin, who happened to be out duck- shooting, met the party, and emptied his gun at it. The vampires fled, and the Kern carried the fair lady, still in a state of insensibility, to his house. 'And by the same token, Mr. Keningale,' observed the doctor, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, 'ye're after passing that very house on your way here. The one ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... liberty. They have their ponies to ride, and there is a lake up above us that is a fine place for them to bathe and boat in; the three boys are there now, having their morning swim. The eldest is sixteen and he is allowed to have a gun, and there is some good wild fowl shooting to be had in the reed beds at the further end of the lake. I think that part of the joy of his shooting expeditions lies in the fact that many of the duck and plover that he comes across belong to the same species that ...
— When William Came • Saki
... is of course of little more than antiquarian interest, but the bulk of it in the opinion of those best able to judge should be found of living value. All systems of tactics must rest ultimately on the dominant weapon in use, and throughout the sailing period the dominant weapon was, as now, the gun. In face of so fundamental a resemblance no tactician can afford to ignore the sailing system merely because the method of propulsion and the nature of the material have changed. It is not the principles of tactics that such changes affect, ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... Beecher, and a score of others filtered through him as he sat by our humble fire, turning his telescope this way and that as a sportsman turns his gun, while the very clock ticked slow to listen. My wife became quite confused, probably sun-struck, for she has since affirmed that the Major claimed to have been present at the birth of every one of ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... is too bad!' said the younger boy. 'I don't think poor birds ought to be blown from the gun like that. It's ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... nature. A wild scene it was—a heavy sea and rocky shore, with mountains in the background, above which the moon was peering. Not far from the shore, upon the water, was a boat with two figures in it, one of which stood at the bow, pointing with what I knew to be a gun at a dreadful shape in the water; fire was flashing from the muzzle of the gun, and the monster appeared to be transfixed. I almost thought I heard its cry. I remained motionless, gazing upon the picture, scarcely daring to draw my breath, lest ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... but even subversive of Imperial dominion, when it is allowed to run riot. Livingstone said that in five hundred years the only thing the natives of Africa had learnt from the Portuguese was to distil bad spirits with the help of an old gun barrel. This is, without doubt, an extreme case—so extreme, indeed, that even the hardened conscience of diplomatic Europe was eventually shamed into taking some half-hearted action in the direction of preventing a whole continent from being demoralised in order that the distillers ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... down the path; he carried a gun on his shoulder. The boys had only just seen him and, on every side, they came scrambling out of the tree-tops, slid down the trunks and darted into the underwood. Breathless, bewildered and scared to death, Lowietje came to his ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... ha' been fightin' England," said he, "an' I got un [the gun] t' fight, sir. Dear eyes! if th' Boers ha' come handy t' us, I thinks I could ha' kept un off, sir. I knows I could wi' them guns. I'd sure ha' shot through their schooners, sir, if un was big as th' mail boat an' steamers like th' mail boat. I'd ha' shot through un, sir, an' th' mail boat's ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... Armada is remarkable not only for inaugurating the modern period of naval war, the era of the sail and the gun, but also because, though it ended in disaster for one side and success for the other, there was from first to last in the long series of engagements in the narrow seas no battle "fought to a finish." In all the fighting the English showed that they had grasped the essential ideas of the new ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... about and did what he chose in it. The maids complained of his drunken habits and his vile language. The dad raised their wages all round to recompense them for the annoyance. The fellow would take the boat and my father's best gun and treat himself to little shooting parties. And all this with such a sneering, leering, insolent face, that I would have knocked him down twenty times over if he had been a man of my own age. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... secret treatment,—some devastating drug administered for months before the examination,—but the effects were not pronounced enough, and he was passed. For the first few weeks his company was stationed in Polotzk. I saw my cousin drill on the square, carrying a gun, on a Sabbath. I felt unholy, as if I had sinned the sin in my own person. It was easy to understand why mothers of conscript sons fasted and wept and prayed and worried themselves ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... conception of these ships was to reduce the number of gun-decks from two and three to a single deck, and, consequently, the space in which shells could be lodged. This is a consideration which must, it is believed, sooner or later govern in naval construction; although France and England, long ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... again from our friend Andrew, we could truly say, "Ah, it's a brave kirk, nane o' yere whig-malceries, and curliewurlies, and opensteek hems about it—a' solid, weel-jointed mason wark, that will stand as lang as the warld, keep hands and gun-powther aff it." ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... eighteen-pounders slept in the embrasures of the wooden batteries, seemingly gathering fresh strength to fight the battles of their country on the next fourth of July; the solitary drum on Governor's Island forgot to call the garrison to the shovels; the evening gun had not yet sounded its signal for all the regular well-meaning poultry throughout the country to go to roost; and the fleet of canoes at anchor between Gibbet Island and Communipaw slumbered on their rakes, and suffered the innocent oysters to lie for a while unmolested ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... special last back-end. Chose 'em for the job. Bowery toughs; scrubs from Colorado; old man o' the mountains; cattle-lifters from Mexico; miners from the west; Arizona sharps. Don't matter who, only so long as they'll draw a gun on you soon as smile. Come across the ocean to see fair play for the mare. They're campin' round her—rigiments of 'em. If a sparrer goes too near her, they lays it out. No blanky hanky-panky this time—that's ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... That would be a nuisance when we are finding our way about in a new country and trying to reconcile all sorts of opposites in a whole new country with new people, whom at first we shan't understand, and who certainly won't understand us; where every man carries a gun with as little thought of it as he has of buttons! Good-bye for ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... effect was the swallowing of a red-hot sword.[1] Another thriller consisted in fastening a long sword to the stock of a musket; when he had swallowed about half the length of the blade, he discharged the gun and the recoil drove the sword suddenly down his throat to the very hilt. Although Look always appeared in a Chinese make-up, Dean Kellar told me that he thought his right name was Dave Gueter, and that he ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... speed of my flight Thro' the dawn redly breaking! Gray lay the still sea; Naked hillside and lea; And gray with night frost The wide garden I crossed! But the hyacinth beds were a-bloom. I stooped and plucked one— In an instant 'twas done,— And I heard, not far off, a gun boom! In my bosom I thrust the crushed blossom; And turned, and looked back Where She stood at her pane Waving sadly farewell once again; Then down the dim track Fled amain, With the flower in my bosom. Oh, the scent of the ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... all times was very careful in his dealings with the Indians. At an early date he might have killed one of them, but his gun missed fire, a circumstance for which he later repeatedly praised the Lord. Probably his greatest influence came through his absolute fearlessness. He was firmly convinced that he was in the Lord's keeping and that his time would not come ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... suddenly and think hard. You are passing, a dozen of you together instead of the usual two or three, through those green fields by those green hedgerows when there is a sharp whiz and a crash, and a shrapnel shell from a German seventy-seven (their field gun) bursts ten yards behind you. You are standing at a corner studying a map, and you notice that a working party is passing the corner frequently on some duty or another. You were barely aware that there was a house ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... long gun forward—try with the rammer whether the shot has started from the cartridge, and then fire across the bows of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... were plainly traceable, faint though they were, to the edge of the low cliff, there a gentle slope of some twelve or fifteen feet in height; I traced them up its incline. But from the very edge of the cliff the land was covered by a thick wire-like turf; you could have run a heavy gun over it without leaving any impression. Yet it was clear that two men had come across it to that point, had then descended the cliff to the sand, walked a few yards along the beach, and then—one had murdered ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... Office yesterday on another patent case, a gun—Baron Heurteloup, the famous lithotritic doctor and inventor—which was clicked off for the information of their Lordships. Since this Patent Bill, we have got very noisy between percussion guns and pianofortes. I walked away with Lyndhurst to hear what he had to say. He said ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... consummation of the event, and all the people, in fact, joined, more or less, in commemorating the marriage of their queen. There is in the Castle of Edinburgh, on a lofty platform which overlooks a broad valley, a monstrous gun, several centuries old, which was formed of bars of iron secured by great iron hoops. The balls which this gun carried are more than a foot in diameter. The name of this enormous piece of ordnance is Mons Meg. It ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... most traveled—lay through the lower counties of Maryland: the narrow peninsula on which Leonardstown is situated forming the starting point, whence the blockade-runner took to cross the Lower Potomac—there, from four to eight miles wide. It was necessary to run the gauntlet of several gun-boats and smaller craft; but traffic at that particular time was carried on with tolerable regularity, and captures, though not unfrequent, were, so far, exceptions to a rule. On the land route, before reaching the point of embarkation, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... how a cat does? She sits still, thinkin' 'I'm goin' to move fast in a minute—I sure am goin' to move fast in a minute,' until she gets such a head of steam on, she's off before she knows it. That's just what I done, exactly. I was all over that Injun, kicked his gun out of reach and heaved him over the steepest side before ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... a-goin' to get yore dad. Maybe he'll ride out of town and after a while the hawss will come galloping back with an empty saddle. A man can be mighty unpopular and die of old age, but not if he keeps bustin' up the plans of rampageous two-gun men, not if he shoots them up when they're full of the devil and bad whiskey. It ain't on the cyards for me to beat them to the draw every time, let alone that they'll see to it all the breaks are with them. No, sir. I reckon ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... an orphan, is sent to sea with his Uncle Rolf, the captain of the Erl King, but in the course of certain adventures off the English coast, in which Rolf shows both skill and courage, the boy is left behind at Portsmouth. He escapes from an English gun-brig to a Norwegian vessel, the Thor, which is driven from her course in a voyage to Hammerfest, and wrecked on a desolate shore. The survivors experience the miseries of a long sojourn in the Arctic circle, with inadequate means of supporting life, but ultimately, with the aid of some friendly ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... mounted, looked apprehensively out over the moonlit stream, expecting and dreading the coming of the other boat which was to fire the opening gun of another senseless and vicious conflict between the peppery republics. The situation, however, was too dangerous for them to wait more than a few minutes, and one of the soldiers, doffing his sombrero, spoke with ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... ages," Littimer exclaimed. "By Jove, I'm just in the mood to carry this business a stage or two farther before I go to bed. Bell, there are two or three cycle lamps in the gun-room. You used to be a pretty fearless climber. What do you say to a hunt round for an hour or two ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... man sprang down to his level, flourishing the gun in a way that would have been dangerous indeed had Hiram believed it to be loaded. And as it was, the young ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... we, in this land, leave too little free action to individual judgment. No man, we say, must take law in his own hands; yet how often do we break this rule—how often are we compelled to break it. If you, with a gun in your hand, saw a man at fifty or sixty paces about to murder a child or a woman, without any means of stopping the blow except by using your weapon, what would ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... seen men go out shooting, but had never accompanied any killers. I do not quite understand how, as in my story, he came even to imitate using a gun. There was nothing in him that belonged to killing; and that is more than I could say for myself, or any other man I ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... out after snipe. You know how I enjoy shooting, and I generally go alone, for I am not clever enough yet with my gun to be trusted to shoot in company with others. One is ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... race on the eighteenth of June, in Bath Bay waters. The course to be from Youngster's Wharf around Leander's Rock, and return. Stakes to be—the championship of Bath Bay. The oarsmen of the Pupil would respectfully propose three p.m. as the hour for the race, and the firing of a gun the signal for the start. The oldest inhabitant, Clump, offers his services as umpire, referee, ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... pop of a gun, made them look at the doorway where Sako was staring at them as if he could not believe ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... old gray, brittle-shanked regiment, the Confederate Guards, were having their daily dress parade in Coliseum place, and only they and the Foreign Legion remained; when sister Jane made lint, and flour was high, and the sounds of commerce were quite hushed, and in the custom-house gun-carriages were a-making, and in the foundries big guns were being cast, and the cotton gun-boats and the rams were building, and at the rotting wharves the masts of a few empty ships stood like dead trees in a blasted wilderness, and poor soldiers' wives crowded around ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... red-hot iron; luff, luff a little—a little more steady—so." At the last word there was a puff and a roar, and an iron messenger flew towards the schooner. The gun had been fired more as a reply of defiance to the pirate than with the hope of doing him any damage; but the shot had been well aimed—it cut the schooner's main-sail-yard in two and brought it rattling down on deck. Instantly the pirate ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... muster; these amounted to two rifles, two shot guns, and five revolvers. I watched with great keenness the motion of their arms that gives the propulsion to their spears, and the instant I observed that, I ordered a discharge of the two rifles and one gun, as it was no use waiting to be speared first. I delayed almost a second too long, for at the instant I gave the word several spears had left the enemy's hands, and it was with great good fortune we avoided ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... occasional milk wagon rattled down the street. There is a sort of hush that comes at that hour, even in New York. The early traffic is out of the way. The day's work is not yet begun. There comes a pause before the opening gun is fired in ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... the grand review in Washington," he said, "that mighty pageant that fittingly closed the drama of the war, I was a spectator, crippled then by a gun-shot wound, and unable to march. From an upper window I saw that host file by, about to record its greatest triumph by melting quietly into the general citizenship,—a mighty, resistless army about to fade and leave no trace, except here and there a one-armed man, or a blue flannel jacket ...
— The New Minister's Great Opportunity - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... of Liberty (Frontispiece) Taking the Census in Old Kentucky Kentucky Mountaineer Family Moonshining Bill Wilsh's Home in the Gully Bill Wilsh in the School Alligator-Catching The Census Building Making Gun-sights True "A Bull's-eye Every Time!" Young Boys from the Pit "I 'ain't Seen Daylight for Two Years" Eight Years Old and "Tired of Working" The Biggest Liner in the World Coming in Immigration Station, Ellis Island Where the Workers Come from On a Peanut ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... understand that she would not listen to him. Why should he play the spendthrift and the wanton with his love? Why give her, for nothing, the sterile satisfaction of rejecting him, for her to prize, as he knew girls did, as merely one more notch upon her gun? ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Ellsworth printed on the outside of them, and such superb capital D's and G's inside. The little ones did not know how he could make such splendid letters, sitting in a tent, with the paper on his knee, ready to drop it at a moment's warning, and flash fire and shot out of his gun, at the enemy. They were quite sure he would be a General in a very short time, and Johnny had serious thoughts of writing to the good President Lincoln, and asking him to make George one without waiting any longer. Indeed, he did write: ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... though cheerful, was not lacking in wartime features: A row of life-boats hung invitingly ready; a gun, highly dramatic in appearance, was mounted astern, with every air of meaning business should the kaiser meddle with us en route. Down below, the Italians, talking, gesticulating, showing their white teeth in flashing, boyish smiles, were being herded docilely on board, while at intervals ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Spithead; and it was announced that the king and queen and the royal family were going to Portsmouth, to thank and to congratulate Lord Howe and those brave officers who had survived the dreadful slaughter of the engagement. As the Prince of Wales, a ninety-six gun ship of war, was to be launched upon the occasion, a great number of persons from the part of the world where I lived, which was about fifty miles from Portsmouth, were going there to see the launch, and to witness the effect of this bloody battle. I was very anxious to make one of the party, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... a slouching, dogged gait. The gray shooting-jacket was on my back, and from the end of my brother's rifle hung a small bundle of my clothes. My fingers worked moodily at the stock and trigger, and I thought that this indeed was the way to begin life, with a gun in your hand! ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... of their high boots. There was a good deal of rough horse-play, and, as with any other gathering of men or boys of high animal spirits, the horse-play sometimes became very rough indeed; and as the men usually carried revolvers, and as there were occasionally one or two noted gun-fighters among them, there was now and then a shooting affray. A man who was a coward or who shirked his work had a bad time, of course; a man could not afford to let himself be bullied or treated as a butt; and, on the other hand, if he was "looking for a fight," he was certain to find ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... signals generally used to guide mariners, especially during fogs, are, with certain modifications, sirens, trumpets, steam-whistles, bell-boats, bell-buoys, whistling buoys, bells struck by machinery, cannons fired by powder or gun cotton, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... the trillionaire sent Sylvia six feet of flowers in a gun-metal motor-car studded with sapphires, but Sir James, also, had received a respectful request (practically a species of royal command) for consent to his addresses. Ridokanaki stated that he had not as yet, of course, said anything to Sylvia, but proposed, unless her father objected, to try to ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... you to come down, Dotty. There's the very place I'm going to myself. We'll carry up the needle-gun; it's the nicest thing to play with. Come, let's hurry up stairs the back way, little sister, for they'll be out ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May
... on, at length, to tell me how he watched for the fox, and how he loaded the old "United-States-piece" musket for it, and how he finally fired and shot the fox, but that the gun nearly broke his collar-bone, he had loaded it so heavily. He was nigh half an hour telling me all about it, and in spite of myself, I grew ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... of artillery, it will be sufficient to state that the peculiar distinguishing excellence of modern improvements in cannon is the attainment of superior efficiency, accuracy, and mobility, with a decrease in weight of metal. A gun of any given size is now many times superior to one of the same size in use fifty or a hundred years ago. It is not so much in big guns that we excel our predecessors—for there are many specimens of old cannon of great dimensions; but by our advance ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... silent swift movement he glided into the room, and without a sound rushed at the boy. Once, twice around the table they circled, Kalman having the advantage in quickness of foot. Suddenly, with a grunt of satisfaction, Mackenzie's eye fell upon a gun hanging upon the wall. In a moment he had it in his hand. As he reached for it, however, Kalman, with a loud cry, plunged headlong through the open window and fled again toward the bluffs. Mackenzie followed swiftly through the door, gun in hand. He ran a few short steps after the ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... or since attempted to resist an officer of the law; but when that sheriff put in an appearance and we realized what his coming meant, there wasn't a man in our party that did not run to the nearby camp for his gun. It is needless to add that we did not need to use the guns. As if by magic a hundred other guns came in sight. The sheriff withdrew, and the crossing went on peaceably till all our wagons were ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... skins of beasts are made into leather; shoe, saddle, harness, gunpowder, and dynamite factories, and workshops for repairing arms and reloading gun-cartridges. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 46, September 23, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... unlike Trencher—to whine over spilt milk and seek to shift the blame for the failure of their plot to any pair of shoulders rather than his own thin pair. And to the very life it was like Sonntag that at the climax of the quarrel he should have made a gun play. As Trencher now realised, it had been his mistake in the first place that he took Sonntag on for a partner in the thwarted operation; but it had been Sonntag's great, fatal mistake that he had drawn a weapon ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... cut from the ground for the purpose of making a dry seat for Nuna. Seizing this, Ippegoo hurled it at the head of the drunken Eskimo. Never before did the feeble youth make such a good shot. Full on the flat face of the drunkard it went, like the wad of a siege-gun, scattering earth and debris all round—and down went the Eskimo. Unable to check himself, down also went Rooney on the ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... die. I know this is true because I remember my own youth and besides, why else would young people so glibly ride motorcycles or, after only a few months of brainwashing, charge up a hill into the barrel of a machine gun. Or have unsafe sex in this age of multiple venereal diseases. Until they get a little sense, vitamin supplements help to counteract their inevitable and unpreventable use of recreational foods. Vitamins ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... moment's hesitation, his master, with his free hand, caught Jinks by the throat and called for help. Luckily, two servants were close by, and came immediately, and Jinks' master gave orders to fetch a gun and shoot him ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... nest and swooped downward, alighting on the ground beside the owl's quivering body. A big dog came bounding toward her. The man was reloading his gun, ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... wisest little creature you ever saw, I wish I could talk Gaelic, just to make him feel at home the first few days." Then she turned to her companions. "Who began this round—Mr. Lestrange? Very well, when it comes to Sybil, I propose we let you gentlemen go off to your cigars in the gun-room; for poor Mr. Moore, I know, hasn't been allowed to smoke all day; and I am sure he must be far too tired to think of playing poker. How ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... heard? They've arrested Lafe Grandoken. The shooting occurred in his cobbling shop, and the gun was found as proof of his crime. Of course, like all Jews, he's trying to invent a story in his own favor.... ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... Carolina, the Confederate commander at Charleston, General Beauregard (bo-ruh-gar'), demanded the surrender of the fort. Major Anderson stoutly refused to comply with the demand, and at dawn on the morning of April 12, 1861, the Confederates fired the first gun at Sumter. During the next thirty-four hours, nineteen batteries poured shot and shell into the fort, which steadily returned the fire. Then both food and powder were nearly exhausted, and part of the fort ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... did, and warm and hearty was the reception he met with in the gun-room, to which Rawson was also invited, while the other midshipmen were taken care of ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the Callahan. Before it had gone the rounds of the camp Lieutenant Boggs had spied a fat heifer browsing on the edge of the woods and ordered her surrounded and driven down. Without another word, when she was close enough, he raised his gun and would have shot her dead in her tracks had he not been arrested by a yell of command and horror from ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... I saw, what Mr. Wells could not see, the hurt look in his old eyes, and, leaning to his ear, I shouted, "You'd have all the girls running after you, Joe! You're too handsome for a Guy. They'd run you off to church and marry you as sure as a gun." ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... been done the defenses by the German artillery, for although I had not that serene faith in the effectiveness of their guns held by German artillerists generally, yet I thought their terrific cannonade must have left marked results. All I could perceive, however, was a disabled gun, a broken mitrailleuse, and two ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... his American friend. "But I told you that you did not know anything about our navy, and you do not. You speak of the 'Baltic fleet.' Now what will you say when I tell you that at one point on the Mississippi we have a line of gun-boats that would knock not only your Baltic fleet but all the rest of your fleets into smithereens, without even firing ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... bounded to his feet as if he had been shot from a gun, snatched up his fokos, looked out of the window, and perceiving the brilliant array of serving-men, who lit up the whole house with their torches, instantly guessed with whom he had to do. He now grasped the fact that they wanted to make him fly into a rage for their especial amusement, and ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... shattered fragments of that poor clay image of a parrot, which was once always saying, without knowing why, or what it meant, that knowledge was a dangerous thing. I should as soon think of piecing together the mutilated remains of any wretched Hindoo who has been blown from an English gun. Both, creatures of the past, have been—as my friend Mr. Carlyle vigorously has it—"blasted into space;" and there, as to this world, is ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... good-natured man, seated between two bailiffs, and trying to converse with his heart's idol as if nothing had happened; Mr. Hardcastle, foiled for the five-hundredth time in the tale of Old Grouse in the Gun Room; each is an example of Goldsmith's method and of Goldsmith's manner. If Goldsmith did not enjoy while he lived all the admiration, all the rewards that belonged of right to his genius, the generations that ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... could not stop to argue, but he forced her forward, and one of the men above, feeling himself in safety, caught her by the arm to drag her up. But at that instant the spar, cut nearly through, broke with a sharp crack like the sound of a gun. The end fell, and with it the wretched woman was carried down. She shrieked as she went, the water cutting short her cry of mortal anguish. Fenton saw her face an instant, and then in the fog and the darkness the lapping ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... Kent's anchor not holding fast, and her driving down into the Salisbury's station, threw this last ship out of action, to the great mortification of the captain, officers, and crew, for she never had it in her power to fire a gun, unless it was now and then, when she could sheer on the tide. The French, during the whole time of the Kent and Tyger's approach towards the Fort, kept up a terrible cannonade upon them, without any resistance on their ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... is a powerful corrective when used against a silent person, who then sees himself as others see him. It is a defence, used against the indiscreet, and in the hands of wise men it is a suit of armor. Silence is never dangerous, unless, like a gun, in the hands of a fool. How, then, can women complain of silent men, unless they mean fools, and if they do, why not say so, and fortify their drawing-rooms with music-boxes ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... went to his brothers and begged them to take him in, and keep him until war broke out again. The brothers, however, were hard-hearted and said, "What can we do with thee? thou art of no use to us; go and make a living for thyself." The soldier had nothing left but his gun; he took that on his shoulder, and went forth into the world. He came to a wide heath, on which nothing was to be seen but a circle of trees; under these he sat sorrowfully down, and began to think over his fate. "I have no money," thought he, "I have learnt no trade but that ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... the gang in a narrow, deserted street, just as they brought Grell down with a sandbag. It was no business of mine and ordinarily I should have walked away, but that I'd had a little difference with one of the gang earlier in the day, so I sailed in with a gun, broke 'em up, and helped Grell to his hotel. He came round before I left him, and I told him my name, and he gave me five hundred dollars, telling me to look to him if ever I was ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... moment of leaving the Council Chamber, the Minister of War said to him, in a jocose, brusque way: "Well! my dear colleague, Warcolier's election does not seem to have pleased you? Bah! if he has changed shoulders with his gun, that only proves that he knows ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... his dog and gun; but if she guessed his errand, she did not dare remonstrate. He walked off rapidly,—the dog in advance, now and then baying as though ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... to the window, I expecting to see Kennedy injured, Spencer expecting to see his costly museum a mass of smoking ruins. Instead we saw nothing of the sort. On the window-ledge was a peculiar little instrument that looked like a miniature field- gun with an elaborate system of springs and levers to ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... with an unfaltering voice. The growing darkness added solemnity to the scene. Suddenly the irregular firing ceased, and the solemn voice of a single cannon, at measured intervals, boomed along the valley, and awakened the responses of the hills. It was a minute gun fired by the Americans in honour of the gallant dead. The moment the information was given that the gathering at the redoubt was a funeral company, fulfilling, at imminent peril, the last-breathed wishes of the noble Fraser, orders ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... machine, both now at a very great height, and both evidently firing at each other, when suddenly our machine dived down at a tremendous speed. We of course thought the airman or his plane had been disabled. We heard in the evening that his gun jammed, and being helpless he wisely ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... Vittoria. Defeat of the Enemy. Confusion among their Followers. Plunder. Colonel Cameron. Pursuit, and the Capture of their Last Gun. Arrive near Pampeluna. At Villalba. An Irish method of making ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... and we went out of the house like projectiles fired from a very loud gun. We cussed each other all the way home—we three athletes. We would have cussed Driggs, but he sneaked the other ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... rag to cover them. One, the gallant wife of a private of the 32nd, Bridget Widdowson, stood, sword in hand, over a number of prisoners tied together by a rope. Not one of their movements passed unnoticed by her; her gun was instantly levelled at the hand which was trying to untie the rope, and not a man of them escaped while in her charge. By-and-by she was relieved by a soldier, and in his care ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... lady. And turning, she rushed into the house. Before either of the men could recover from their surprise at her sudden action, she reappeared upon the porch, carrying a double-barreled gun. Taking her position on the top of the flight of steps, with a quick movement of her thumb she cocked both barrels. Then, drawing herself up and resting firmly on her right leg, with the left advanced, ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... that at the outbreak of the war with Japan, the army contractors bought a lot of old rifles in Germany, which had long before been discarded as worthless by the German army, paying two ounces of silver for each gun, and thriftily charging the Government nine ounces. Then they bought a cargo of cartridges that did not fit the guns and that had been lying in damp cellars for twenty years, and put the whole equipment into the hands of raw recruits ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... animal was so adjusted that the bottom was uppermost; on the top of the bucket sat a little fox-terrier, his eyes fixed steadfastly on his master. I paused a moment, possessed with a strong desire to take a snap shot of this remarkable equipment, but the man with the gun gave me a glance that settled the matter. His was not a bad face—far from it—but the features were stern and set, the cheeks furrowed with deep lines that bespoke hardship and fatigue in the struggle with Nature and the elements. That glance out of the tail of his ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... gallery of historical characters, whom she kept as beacons to warn our stormy passions of their fate. The hot-tempered boy who killed his brother when they were at school; the hot-tempered farmer who took his gun to frighten a trespasser, and ended by shooting him; the young lady who destroyed the priceless porcelain in a pet; the hasty young gentleman who kicked his favourite dog and broke its ribs;—they were all warnings: so was old Mr. Rampant, so was my ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing |
