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Set on fire   /sɛt ɑn fˈaɪər/   Listen
Set on fire

verb
1.
Set fire to; cause to start burning.  Synonyms: set ablaze, set afire, set aflame.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Set on fire" Quotes from Famous Books



... Now the wood must be grown,—trees attended to with care and at great cost. Years pass before they are either fit for beauty or use, yet, during the time of their growth, the smaller branches that are lopped off form just what is required to set on fire the coal and coke to produce the heat which is necessary for smelting and blast furnaces, for our own domestic fires, and various other uses. A faggot of these lopped branches can be bought for a penny. Having thus found out, as a beginning, one thing which can be obtained for a penny, let us go ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... commiseration was yours, that exhortation was yours. It was you—you, I say—who hurled those firebrands, both those with which your friend himself was nearly burnt, and those by which the house of Lucius Bellienus was set on fire and destroyed. It was you who let loose those attacks of abandoned men, slaves for the most part, which we repelled by violence and our own personal exertions; it was you who set them on to attack our houses. And yet you, as if you had wiped off all the ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... our traveller was the sight of the frequent burning forests. These are set on fire in order to clear the ground for cultivation. In most cases she viewed the tremendous spectacle from a distance; but one day she realized it in all its details, as her road lay between a wood in flames on the one hand, and the brushwood, crackling and seething, on the other. The space between ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... supplied with cassava bread and fruit in abundance. Two officials superintended every purchase of provisions to avoid the possibility of any dispute, for in the event of even a momentary hostility the thatched-roof structures on the ships could easily have been set on fire, and the position of the Spaniards, without shelter amid a hostile population, would have been a desperate one. This disaster, however, was avoided; but the Admiral soon began to be anxious about the supply of provisions ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... villages plundered and burnt, and the wretched inhabitants fled to the caves and forests; but not even there could they find an asylum; by the orders, and in the presence of Richard, the woods were set on fire, and hundreds either perished in the flames, or ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... ridiculous answers, together with some contradictory statements he made, inclined many persons, amongst whom was the chief justice, to doubt his confession. Later on in his examinations, he was asked if he knew where the house had stood which he set on fire, to which he replied in the affirmative, and on being taken into the city, pointed ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... fire and backed up the steps to tell the rest. Constable Rogers then ordered the men to surround the house and sent word to Inspector Duffus, who came and called on Cashel to surrender. But he would not answer and the building, a mere shack, was set on fire. When the smoke started, Cashel agreed to come out and was arrested. This was the close of an arduous hunt, a great many of the Police having been almost continuously in the saddle day and night in cold weather for weeks. They were determined ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... of the navy yard at Norfolk was more complete and irreparable. The dry dock was little damaged, but the destruction of stores and property was enormous. All ships in the harbor were set on fire and scuttled. ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... hole they called his window, and saw a little piece of blue sky no bigger than a Bible, he held his hand up to that blue sky, he fixed his dilating eye on that blue sky, and with one long raging yell of horrible words hurled from a heart set on fire by wrongs and despair and tempting fiends, he cursed the successor of the apostles before ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... Erie, and the Johnson brothers were defeating Proctor and slaying Tecumseh, the discontent which that redoubtable chief had stirred up in the South was beginning to have its effect among the Creeks. On August 30, 1813, they attacked Fort Mimms, which they set on fire and captured, massacring all but twenty out of four hundred men, women and children. The British agent at Pensacola, it is said, had offered five dollars each for scalps, and many of the savages carried the scalps of women and children there to ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... his heart who shall kiss them a snake to corrode it and cleave. So glimmers the gloom into glory, the glory recoils into gloom, That the eye of the sun could not kindle, the lip not of Love could relume. So darkens reverted the cup that the kiss of her mouth set on fire: So blackens a brand in his eyeshot asmoulder awhile from the pyre. For the beam from beneath and without it refrangent again from the wave Strikes up through the portal a ghostly reverse on the dome of the cave, On the depth of the dome ever darkling and dim to the crown of its arc: ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... her; but the cable broke, and it became evident that the falling tide in the bay had fixed her firmly on the ground. With incredible exertions her long brass guns were all saved, and she was then set on fire. Mr Phalangas, a Greek officer, the first lieutenant of the Karteria, was also wounded in setting fire to a brig anchored at some distance from the rest. The boats then concluded the day by driving the Turks from the Austrian merchantmen, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... avenge the taking of two men out of the Trent?" How ignominious the pretended humanity of England looked in the light of these questions! And even while Mr. Beecher was speaking, a lurid glow was crimsoning the waters of the Pacific from the flames of a great burning city, set on fire by British ships to avenge a crime committed by some remote inhabitant of the same country,—an act of wholesale barbarity unapproached by any deed which can be laid to the charge of the American Union in the course of this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... criminals and monsters do. The fires of Smithfield and of the Inquisition were lighted by earnestly pious people, who were kind and good as kindness and goodness go. And when a negro is dipped in kerosene and set on fire in America at the present time, he is not a good man lynched by ruffians: he is a criminal lynched by crowds of respectable, charitable, virtuously indignant, high-minded citizens, who, though they act outside the law, are at least more merciful than the American ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... covered with iron and with several large hooks, like a gigantic artificial minnow, and like it fastened to a long rope, so that the prey which it had grappled might be pulled up to the owner. Walled cities usually stopped them, but every farm or villa outside was stripped of its valuables, set on fire, the cattle driven off, and the more healthy ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... medicine man; and to determine whether or not the chosen name be propitious, the strip of rattan which has been used on the fire-saw to obtain the sacred fire, is bent into a loop until its ends just meet; it is then set on fire in the middle and allowed to burn through. If the two pieces thus made are of uneven length the name is good; if they are both the same length another name must be selected. The ashes from this burning are made into a paste and smeared ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness

... army reached Wiasma, a city of 8 thousand or 9 thousand inhabitants which had been set on fire upon the approach of the French. All the inhabitants had left. The soldiers fought the flames and saved some houses into which they brought those of their wounded and sick who could not drag themselves any farther. Cases of typhus were numerous. ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... of winning the people, he ordered that no houses should be set on fire and no massacres should be committed. The seditious, however, slew everyone who spoke of peace, and furiously assailed the Romans. Some fought from the walls, others from the houses, and such confusion prevailed that the Romans retired; ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... then half covered with wood, except in the neighbourhood of Old Leighlin, and a few other places where villages had grown up around the castles, raths, and monasteries of earlier days. On reaching the border of the forest, King Richard ordered all the habitations in sight to be set on fire; and then "two thousand five hundred of the well affected people," or, as others say, prisoners, "began to hew a ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... that they are globes of earth set on fire. Empedocles, that they are fiery bodies arising from that fire which the aether embraced within itself, and did shatter in pieces when the elements were first separated one from another. Anaxagoras, that the circumambient aether is of a fiery substance, which, by a vehement force in its whirling ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... forced to destroy. Something had gone wrong, something that at other times could easily have been mended. But with the French in pursuit there was no time to pause, nor could cars of such value be left to the enemy. So they had been set on fire or blown up, or allowed to drive head-on into a stone wall or over an embankment. From the road above we could see them in the field below, lying like giant turtles on their backs. In one place in the forest of Villers was a line of fifteen trucks, each capable of carrying ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... and hand-to-hand fighting spread in a flash all through the business part of the city. The rest of the surprise detachment of the Cacos made a rush for the center of the city. One block was set on fire and burned. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... shalt thou bring forth children." The more fruitful, the more afflicted is the church in this world; because the rage of hell, and the enmity of the world, are by her righteousness set on fire so much the more. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... he restored his borrowed accoutrements to cousin Betty, and, calling for a pen and ink, wrote a petition in the character of a poor unfortunate soap-boiler, whose house was set on fire by the carelessness of an apprentice, in the parish of Monksilver, not forgetting to sign it with the names of several neighbouring gentlemen. With this fictitious petition he went to Justice Taylor's, at Dembury, where he was handsomely relieved: thence he went to Justice Neil's, and ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... /vineae were wooden sheds, open in front and rear, used to protect men who were working to take a fortification. They were about eight feet high, of like width, and double that length, covered with raw hides to protect them from being set on fire, and moved ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge

... Karl's left wing gaining garlands just at this moment. Shock Third is awakening;—and will be decisive on Prince Karl. Chotusitz, set on fire an hour since (about 9 A.M.), still burns; cutting him in two, as it were, or disjoining his left wing from his right: and it is on his right wing that Prince Karl is depending for victory, at present; his left wing, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... and burning the town, took up a position upon a hill opposite to the citadel, and there he had engines constructed to throw enormous arrows, on which tow that had been dipped in pitch was wound. This combustible envelopment of the arrows was set on fire before the weapon was discharged, and a shower of the burning missiles thus formed was directed toward the palisade. The wooden walls were soon set on fire by them, and totally consumed. The access to the Acropolis was, however, still difficult, ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... inches wide, for the use whereof they [also] caused to be made certain hollow shot of cast iron, to be stuffed with fire-work or wildfire; whereof the bigger sort for the same had screws of iron to receive a match to carry fire kindled, that the firework might be set on fire for to break in pieces the same hollow shot, whereof the smallest piece hitting any man would kill or spoil him."—Stow, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... thicknesses of paste-board, to which a match was placed. The image was to be conveyed into her room, and placed, in the dark, before her bed;—while in that position, the ball was to be rubbed over with phosphorus, the match set on fire, and rolled across her chamber, and when it burst, the image was to vanish, by being suddenly conveyed out of the private door, which was to close the scene for that night. But as Melissa had now arisen and lighted candles, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... insurrection of the Commune broke out in Paris; the city was for many weeks in complete possession of the mob; Thiers and the army retired on Versailles, and recommenced the siege of Paris by French troops. The Archbishop and other hostages were murdered, and at last the city was set on fire. Nothing even in the First Revolution equalled the madness of this period. What a curious contrast to the even tenour of London life! I find in my diaries no trace of these ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... reconnoitring expedition, which consisted of a part of the Vermont Regiment, and proceeded under the command of Colonel Phelps over the dike and bridge towards Hampton. They were anticipated, and when in sight of the second bridge saw that it had been set on fire, and, hastening forward, extinguished the flames. The detachment then marched into the village. A parley was held with a Secession officer, who represented that the men in arms in Hampton were only a domestic police. Meanwhile the white inhabitants, particularly the women, had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... The house was set on fire in the spring of 1860, when Miss Miner was asleep in the second story, alone, in the night-time, but the smell of the smoke awakened her in time to save the building and herself from the flames, which were extinguished. The school-girls, also, were constantly at the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... battle the French were without artillery, but they took eight cannon from the enemy. The Prussians, however, being speedily reinforced, recovered their advantage and gained a complete victory. Wissembourg, a small town in Alsace, was bombarded and set on fire. There seemed no officer among the defeated French to restore order. They had never anticipated such a rout, and were, especially the cavalry, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... Ring heard this he fell into such a rage that he ordered the house to be set on fire, and it was burnt to the ground, with the witch and her ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... Feb., 1690. Similar statements are made by Leisler. See Doc. Hist. N. Y., I. 307, 310.] There was little resistance, except at the block-house, where Talmage and his men made a stubborn fight; but the doors were at length forced open, the defenders killed or taken, and the building set on fire. Adam Vrooman, one of the villagers, saw his wife shot and his child brained against the door-post; but he fought so desperately that the assailants promised him his life. Orders had been given to spare Peter Tassemaker, the domine or minister, from whom it was thought ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... woman, discended of great parentage (called Stratonica) whom he tooke to wife, and made her Queene, and by her had one sonne. Antiochus seing his mother in lawe, to be (besides her great beautie) a curteous and gentle Lady, began to be very amerous of her, whose hart war so set on fire (without apparent shew) that incredible it is to expresse the loue that he bare her. And yet he thought that loue to be vnnaturall because she was his father's wife, and therefore durst not discouer it to any man. And the more secrete he kept it the more the ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... Brigade, but we were not required. The 6th H.L.I. occupied El Haram, a prominent white mosque near the shore, without difficulty. The 5th A. & S.H. passed through Jelil, a native village which had been set on fire in the morning, without opposition. The 7th H.L.I. prolonged the line inland, and joined up with the 156th Brigade ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... securing buildings from fire. This plan consisted in thin sheets of iron and of copper being laid between floor and ceiling to prevent the ascent of heated air from the lower to the upper rooms. The lower part of this house was repeatedly set on fire in the presence, among others, of the King and Queen, the members of Parliament, the Lord Mayor, and the Aldermen. The House of Commons granted Hartley L2,500 in aid of the expenses incurred, and the Corporation erected in the grounds an obelisk—which can be plainly seen from ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... the houses and become widely scattered; and that, if the enemy should see them thus scattered, they would return and attack them when unable to reunite. That he might avoid this danger he ordered the village to be set on fire, and the soldiers to collect upon the promontory, which order was obeyed. In this manner, as related, it befell the master-of-camp, and the victory was obtained over those of Manilla. The artillery which they possessed, and which I have mentioned above—namely, ten or twelve ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair

... improvement, his sensible question was listened to with approbation. He was told, that the chimney's being on fire, was an inaccurate common expression; that it was the soot in the chimney, not the chimney, that burned; that the soot was sometimes set on fire by sparks of fire, sometimes by flame, which might have been accidentally drawn up the chimney. Some of the soot which had been set on fire, was shown to him; the nature of burning in general, the manner in which the chimney draws, the ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... her house, placed his image leaning against the outside wall, that he might be able to see and direct the elements. The tempest raged, and as though to show the saint's utter helplessness, the end of the house was struck by lightning and set on fire. Little damage was done, but I smiled when the indignant woman, after the storm ceased, soundly thrashed the image for not ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... five hundred slaves that the caravan counted, there were few grown men. That is because, the "Razzia" being finished and the village set on fire, every native above forty is unmercifully massacred and hung to a neighboring tree. Only the young adults of both sexes and the children are intended to furnish the markets. After these men-hunts, hardly a tenth of the vanquished ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... explain the other ancient legends regarding the Dead Sea. One of the most recent of these is that the cities of the plain, having been built with blocks of bituminous rock, were set on fire by lightning, a contemporary earthquake helping on the work. Still another is that accumulations of petroleum and inflammable gas escaped through a fissure, took fire, and so produced ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... plodding, laborious progress, above all in paying heed to the order constantly passing back to 'keep low,' but they were still able to note with a sort of professional interest the damage done to the countryside. A 'small-holding' cottage between the trenches had been shelled and set on fire, and was gutted to the four bare, blackened walls. The ground about it still showed in the little squares and oblongs that had divided the different cultivations, but the difference now was merely of various weeds and rank growths, ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... Testament has said, "If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man." It is very often a test of victory in Christian life. Our triumph in this often depends on what we say, or what we do not say. It is said by James of the tongue, "It is set on fire of hell." The true Christian, therefore, is righteous in his ways and upright in his words. His deeds appeal to men; but in speech he is looking up, for God is listening. His words are sent upward and recorded for the judgment. I believe that this is an actual fact, and I ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... commenting on Ps. 79:17, "Things set on fire and dug down," says that "every sin is due either to fear inducing false humility, or to love enkindling us to undue ardor." For it is written (1 John 2:16) that "all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, or [Vulg.: 'and'] the concupiscence ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... even caused a number of living men and women to be wrapped in cloths soaked in pitch, tied to the top of long poles, and then set on fire. This horrible deed was carried out in Nero's own beautiful gardens, which were thus all lighted up with ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff

... that on that very evening, before the premises had been set on fire, Mary Mahon, by O'Donnel's order, had entered the house, and under, as it were, the protection of the military, gathered up as much of Reilly's clothes and linen as she could conveniently carry to her cottage, which was in the immediate vicinity of Whitecraft's residence—it ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... enabled to spend a week at home. Returning to the port in which they had been instructed to join the Colodia the evening before she again was to sail, the four chums were held up by a burning railroad bridge, which had been set on fire ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... to warm their faces, from a distance, with tow that could easily be set on fire and extinguished again, fixed on the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... assisted by a companion and a servant. While we were on our way, we rested in the house of a hospitable person, and placing the bones at my head, I went to sleep. And while I was asleep, the house was suddenly set on fire by the Saracens, that I might be burnt therein. My companion and servant made their escape, leaving me and the bones in the burning house. Seeing the fire above and all around me, I took up the bones, and withdrew, with them into one of the angles of the house; whence I saw all the other three corners ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... the proconsul arrived at Smyrna, he caused Pionius to be hung on the rack, and his body to be torn with iron hooks, and afterwards condemned him to be burned alive; he was accordingly nailed to a trunk or post, and a pile heaped round him and set on fire. Metrodorus, a Marcionite priest, underwent the same punishment with him. His acts were written by eye-witnesses, quoted by Eusebius, l. 4, c. 15, and are extant genuine in Ruinart, p. 12. See Tillemont t. 3, p. 397; Bollandus, Feb. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... discretion. Some of the unhappy persons in the fort were carried away alive; but the barbarous conquerors, to save the trouble of murder in detail, shut up the rest promiscuously in the houses and barracks, which they set on fire, enjoying the savage pleasure of beholding the whole consumed in one ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... Sea of Galilee. Heightening the Walls of Jotapata under Shelter of Ox Hides. John Incites his Countrymen to Harass the Romans. The Roman Camp Surprised and Set on Fire. Mary and the Hebrew Women in the Hands of the Romans. Titus Brings Josephus to See John. John and his Band in Sight of Jerusalem. Misery in Jerusalem During the Siege by Titus. 'Lesbia,' the Roman said, 'I have brought ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty

... Dionigio di Naldo the latter held out, and, as the duke's army made its entrance into Imola, the castellan signified his resentment by turning his cannon upon the town itself, with such resolute purpose that many houses were set on fire and demolished. This Naldo was one of the best reputed captains of foot of his day, and he had seen much service under the Sforza; but his experience could avail him ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... Terrific indeed it was—a wide, dense pall of smoke, which there was little wind to carry off; through the haze the huge reeling shapes of the fighting vessels, looming indistinctly, vomiting flame like so many angry dragons, and several of them burning in addition, having been set on fire by shells; and above all the appalling concussion of the great guns, like the bursting ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... demolishing the tower, probably soon after the time of the dissolution of the monastery, for the hole contained timber shores which were sufficient to support the tower while the workmen were enlarging the hole, but which were probably intended to be set on fire and burnt away, thus allowing the workmen to escape before the tower fell. This wood was found partially decayed, and probably to its state the settlement of the tower was partially due. The hole was, by ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... Kent, took the lead, followed by several other nobles, in the siege of Rochester. Their first obstacle was the fortified gate-house at the Strood end of Rochester Bridge, and for some time their efforts were in vain, till at length, by means of small ships filled with inflammable matter, set on fire and driven towards the centre of the wooden bridge, causing "actual or expected ignition of the timbers," the King's soldiers were dismayed and retreated. The Earl of Gloucester simultaneously reached the south end of the city, and the Barons took possession thereof, sacking the town, monastery, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... exists. Burning the patient alive, which used often to be resorted to, is even now looked upon as the only true remedy. Cases have been known where the patient, having been stupefied with opium, has been locked in a house, which has then been set on fire, and its inmate cremated ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... sloop, the Alarm and Spitfire, galleys, were stationed; and it being no longer possible to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy, their stores, guns, and crews were landed, and the vessels set on fire. ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross

... He was killed in a night attack by the Indians, set on by the British. He was in a hut with some other officers, and the sentry must have slept at his post, they supposed. They were surrounded, the house set on fire, and the officers all killed. One private escaped to tell the dreadful story, and he told of the gallant fight they made, and how Giles Hetherington fought for the life that was so dear to others. He defended the door while two of his comrades forced the window open, ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards

... threshold, to order the mutineers who followed her to destroy and steal whatever came in their way. The bridge-builder went to the market-place, and in pillaging the wealthy merchants' houses began with Archias's. Meanwhile it was set on fire and, with the large warehouses adjoining it, was burned to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... renewed the battle with double fury. They were unable to stand the deck; but the fury of their cannon, especially the lower battery, which was entirely formed of eighteen-pounders, was incessant. Both ships were set on fire in various places, and the scene was dreadful beyond the reach of language. To account for the timidity of my three under officers (I mean the gunner, the carpenter, and the master-at-arms), I must observe that the two first were slightly wounded; and as the ship had received various ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... feasted on the flesh; and when these ceremonies were concluded, the couches, the goblets, the utensils of every kind, the dresses—every thing, in short, which had been used on the occasion, were heaped up into one great sacrificial pile, and set on fire. Every thing that was combustible was consumed, while the gold was melted, and ran into plates of great size, which were afterward taken out from the ashes. Thus it was the workmanship only of these articles which was destroyed and ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... Arkansas was to have co-operated with the enemy's troops, and she left Vicksburg on the 3d for that purpose; but her machinery broke down, and while lying helpless against the river bank the Essex came in sight. Resistance in her then plight was hopeless. She was set on fire by her commander, the crew escaping to the shore. Farragut himself reached Baton Rouge shortly after this happened. He had with much difficulty succeeded in getting the heavier ships to New Orleans on the 28th of July; and there he had lingered, unwilling to leave the river, though desirous ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... having lost but thirty or forty men, and these people of little consequence, being emigrants recently arrived from the States. During the day, the stench became so intolerable, that General Smith caused the prairie to be set on fire, and crossing the river, returned home by slow marches, knowing it would be quite useless to pursue the Comanches in the wild and broken prairies of the north. Only one Texan of note had perished during the conflict—the brave and unfortunate Captain Hunt; so ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... and when 600 troops which arrived from Philadelphia attempted to restore order and killed about twenty rioters, they were besieged in a roundhouse by a furious mob. In the battle the railway yards were set on fire. Damages amounting to about $5,000,000 were caused. The besieged militia men finally gained egress and retreated fighting rear-guard actions. At last order was restored by patrols of citizens. The strike spread ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... eighteen pounders and ten-inch mortars, damaged the unfinished works on the left of the town, silenced the guns mounted on them and occasioned a considerable loss of men. Some of the shot and shells from the batteries passed over the town, reached the shipping in the harbor, and set on fire the Charon of forty-four guns and three large transports, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... me that the European Government had discovered an ingenious mode of diminishing the number of burnings of widows. It seems the Shaster positively enjoins that the pile shall be so constructed that, if the victim should repent even at the moment when it is set on fire, she may still have the means of saving herself. The Brahmins soon found it was necessary to assist the resolution of the sufferers, by means of a little pit into which they contrive to let the poor widow sink, so as to prevent her reaping any benefit from ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... was set on fire anew with the circus fever. Andy's rope-walking feat and double somersault act from desk to desk that morning had resulted, getting him into the trouble of his life. It furthermore had interrupted other performances on the programme listed for later ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... this was a bad man because he hated his wife. It was at the East End, and Job was the subject. Job is good for an East-End meeting, because patience is the sort of thing you must preach there nowadays if you wish to keep your houses from being set on fire; and he heard of all the troubles of Job, and how he was cursed—and how his children and cattle and goods had been taken from him—and only his wife left! That struck him—about the wife! 'Hang it! That was a big curse!' said he. 'Fancy leaving the wife!' And the ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... took us to Passy, but advised us not to remain at the place where we had been staying; and fortunate enough it was for us that we did not, for the house was set on fire and plundered by a ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... wild glee, the British set on fire Yon Capital, beholding in its flames, America, robed in her deeds and fames, In death throes at the stake of England's ire? Though that was long ago and, then no pyre, The stake still stands; 'tis Anglo-Saxon claims, And Arnolds, bearing ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... the sparrowes being suffered to go out of hand, flue into the towne to lodge themselues within their neasts which they had made in stacks of corne, and eues of houses, so that the towne was thereby set on fire, and then the Britains issuing foorth, fought with their enimies, and were ouercome ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed

... large quantities; this sap is called "balsam," and is used by the natives of the countries where it is found as a cure for wounds. But its most important property, in their eyes, is the ease with which it can be set on fire, even when green and growing, as above described—a matter of no slight consequence in regions that are deluged with rain five days out of every six. In the Falkland Islands, where there are no trees, ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... finally ceded to Louis le Gros by Geoffry Plantagenet, was retaken by the English in consequence of the treachery of the Knights-Templars, was contested by Philippe-Augustus and Richard the Lionhearted, was set on fire by Edward III of England, who could not take the castle, was again taken by the English in 1419, restored later to Charles VIII by Richard de Marbury, was taken by the Duke of Calabria occupied by the League, inhabited by Henry IV, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... midnight that, by the light of a dozen trees, which had been set on fire, and served for gigantic torches, the Carlist leader formed up five companies in a thick wood, and after communicating to them his project, directed them how to proceed. The post of honour was assigned to a student of the name of Amezqueta, who, by his feats of courage, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... once, Mr Vandean," said the captain. "You understand. Get the schooner off if possible. If not, bring the slaves on board, and the vessel is to be set on fire. Well, Mr Howlett, why are you ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... pile, which is always of highly inflammable materials, takes fire. The result is that many accidents occur, besides a great deal of heart-burning and loss of life; for sometimes at whole quarter of the town is set on fire and much property destroyed in ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... were not well to pass life thus. But let me often to these solitudes Retire, and in thy presence reassure My feeble virtue. Here its enemies, The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink And tremble and are still. Oh, God! when thou Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill, With all the waters of the firmament, The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods And drowns the villages; when, at thy call, Uprises the great deep ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... one. At last the town was in ruins, and was on fire in a score of places. Its streets and lanes were heaped with dead, and it was no longer tenable. Munro therefore gave orders that the houses should everywhere be set on fire, and the troops ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... each into the other's eyes. The color fled from her face, the blood poured into his—wave upon wave, until he was like a man who has been set on fire by the furious heat of long years of equatorial sun. He muttered, wheeled about and strode away—in resolute and relentless flight. She dropped down where he had been sitting and hid her face in her ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... destruction of the Caroline (an American vessel engaged in carrying arms to the Canadian rebels), in 1837, and in the death of Mr Durfee, an American. The vessel had been boarded by Canadian loyalists when lying in American waters, set on fire and sent over Niagara Falls, and in the affray Durfee was killed. M'Leod was apprehended on American territory, and hence arose the friction between the two countries. M'Leod was ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... Carthaginians was prostrated by the terrible malady, which swept away one hundred and fifty thousand persons in the camp. When thus weakened and demoralized, the Carthaginians were attacked by the Syracusans, and were completely routed. The fleet was also defeated and set on fire, and the conflagration reached the camp, which was thus attacked by pestilence, fire, and sword. The disaster was fatal to the Carthaginians, and retreat was necessary. Imilco dispatched a secret ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... laid, that God is infinitely prone to love, and that true love spares nothing for the sake of what it loves—"O miraculous and eternal Godhead suffering on a Cross for me!"[38] "That Cross is a tree set on fire with invisible flame which illuminateth all the world. The flame is love: the love in His bosom ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... insensible that at this extraordinary time of the devil coming down in great wrath upon us, there are too many tongues and hearts thereby set on fire ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... man came riding through the place on the way to Richmond. His horse showed that he had been riding hard. He asked the nearest way to "Ground-Squirrel Bridge." The Yankees, he said, were coming. It was a raid. He had ridden ahead of them, and had left them about Greenbay depot, which they had set on fire. He was in too great a hurry to stop and get something to eat, and he rode off, leaving much excitement behind him; for Greenbay was only eight miles away, and Oakland lay right between two roads to Richmond, down one or the ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page

... siege to the town of Louisbourgh, while the French men of war were blocked up in the harbour by the fleet, the batteries at the same time playing upon them from the land. This they did with such effect, that one day I saw some of the ships set on fire by the shells from the batteries, and I believe two or three of them were quite burnt. At another time, about fifty boats belonging to the English men of war, commanded by Captain George Balfour of ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano

... heaps of lightwood were set on fire, and the little boy, who was waiting impatiently for Uncle Remus to come for him, could hear the negroes singing, dancing, and laughing. He was just ready to cry when he heard the voice of his ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... the inanimate can lead I saw in a criminal case in which a big isolated hay-stack was set on fire. A traveler was going across the country and sought shelter against oncoming bad weather. The very last minute before a heavy shower he reached a hay-stack with a solid straw cover, crept into it, made himself comfortable in the hay and enjoyed his good fortune. Then he fell ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... the darkness with the flash of their firing. The fleet replied and until half past one, the roar of one hundred and fifty guns was incessant. To add terror to the awful scene, the U.S. Frigate Mississippi, which had grounded, was set on fire to save her from capture. She was soon wrapped in flames and lighted up the sky for miles around. This good old gunboat which had been in so many battles went up with a terrific explosion. This desperate ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell

... the glare, and he tried to find out the exact nature of the conflict by enquiries in clumsy Russian. He was told that the Jews had insulted a religious procession, that a Jew had spat at an ikon, that the shop of a cheating Jew trader had been set on fire, and that the blaze had spread to the adjacent group of houses. He gathered that the Jews were running out of the burning block on the other side "like rats." The crowd was mostly composed of town roughs with a sprinkling of peasants. They were mischievous but undecided. ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... the ship, all his men rowing as hard as they could; and Esteybar attacked it at the stern. The Spaniards then were going to board the ship with a rush, when a ball fired from the vessel of Esteybar set on fire the Santa Barbara [i.e., powder-magazine] of the Dutch ship, thus blowing it into pieces. Only twenty-four of its crew survived, and these were drawn out of the sea and made prisoners. Esteybar continued his voyage to Simuay, the bar of which was fortified ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

... it is somewhat more artificially managed than it appears to be among the New Zealanders, inasmuch as their practice is first to make a hole in the wood with the tooth of the acouti, and then to insert in this an instrument resembling a wimble, by the rapid revolution of which the wood is set on fire. ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... confounded, as if the town were already taken, began to look about for a way to make his escape. Pythagoras, while in other respects he displayed the spirit and conduct of a general, was now the sole means of saving the city from being taken. For he ordered the buildings nearest to the wall to be set on fire; and these being instantly in a blaze, those who, on another occasion, would have brought help to extinguish the fire, now helping to increase it, the roofs tumbled on the Romans; and not only fragments of the tiles, but also the half-burned timber, reached the soldiers: the flames ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... Melidoni. In 1822, when Hussein Bey marched against the neighbouring village, the inhabitants, to the number of three hundred, fled to the cave, taking their valuables with them. Hussein ordered a quantity of combustibles to be piled at the entrance and set on fire. The poor wretches within were all smothered. The Turks waited a few days, and then entered and rifled the bodies. A week later, three natives of the village crept into the cavern to see what had become of their relatives. It is said that they were so overcome by the horror of what ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... Artemis at Ephesus (cf page 140) was set on fire and reduced to ruins by an incendiary in 356 B.C., on the very night, it is said, in which Alexander the Great was born. The Ephesians rebuilt the temple on a much more magnificent scale, making of it the most extensive ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... mast-head; and that on the least resistance, he should be freed from all humanity dictated by his orders or his inclination. Upon being inquired of by three gentlemen who went on board his ship for that purpose respecting the reason of this extraordinary summons, he replied that he had orders to set on fire all the seaport towns from Boston to Halifax, and that he supposed New York was already in ashes. He could dispense with his orders, he said, on no terms but the compliance of the inhabitants to deliver up their arms and ammunition, and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... accrue to his Majesty. Father Antonio Marta was also of that opinion, in whom Governor Gomez Perez placed so great faith. Brother Gaspar Gomez to these so full reports and information added such details that he quite set on fire the mind ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... important position covering the right beyond the turnpike. As Greene's division came up, he ordered him to form beyond Gordon's left, and when deployed to move on the Dunker Church through the East Wood, guiding his left by the cloud of smoke from the Mumma house, which had been set on fire by D. H. Hill's men. [Footnote: Id., pp. 475, 1033.] At Doubleday's request, he detached Goodrich's brigade from Greene, and sent it to Patrick on the right with orders to advance into the West Wood from its northern extremity. Patrick ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... laid waste all the villages of the castellany with fire and sword. Threatened once again with a disaster with which they were only too well acquainted, the folk of Domremy and Greux already beheld their cattle captured, their barns set on fire, their wives and daughters ravished. Having experienced before that the Castle on the Island was not secure enough, they determined to flee and seek refuge in their market town of Neufchateau, only five miles away from Domremy. Thus they set out towards the middle of July. Abandoning ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... powerful police. In October 1842, twenty policemen, who had some prisoners in charge for combination offences, were assaulted by a furious mob of two thousand persons on the streets of Airdrie, in the centre of the mining district of the county, the house in which they had taken refuge set on fire, and the prisoners by main force rescued from the hands of the law.[5] These facts were known to the whole county, and the terror which, in consequence, pervaded the agricultural inhabitants of the mining districts was so great, that in a petition to government praying for protection, they stated—that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... and stood at that side of the platform in agonies. We all three calculated that there would be just time to finish and save it; when the gas was turned out the instant I had done, the whole thing was at its very last and utmost extremity. Whom it would have tumbled on, or what might have been set on fire, it is ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... another party crept through the small holes, serving the purpose of gates, and penetrated to the centre of the town, where, assembling around the great council-tree, they gave three cheers. The houses were then set on fire, and, within fifteen minutes, presented one mass of conflagration. The palisades likewise caught the flames, and were consumed, leaving an open space of blackened and smoking ruins, where, half an hour before, the sun had ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... Cypres. But Mars called the God of battaile, loued Uenus, beyng nothyng loued of Uenus: but Mars loued Uenus as feruently, as Uenus lo- ued Adonis. Mars beyng a God, loued Uenus a goddes, but Uenus onely was inflamed with the loue of Adonis, a mor- tall man. Their loue was feruent, and exremely set on fire in bothe, but their kinde and nature were contrary, wherev- pon Mars beyng in gelousie, sought meanes to destroie, faire amiable, and beautifull Adonis, thinkyng by his death, the loue of Uenus to be slaked: Adonis and Mars fell to fighting Uenus as a ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde

... length. The barbarian in a rage slew him, and all the others also were slain where they sat. The nobles having thus perished, all others that were found in the city were slaughtered in like manner, the houses were plundered, and being emptied of their goods were set on fire. ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church

... was filled with stifling smoke; the smoke which straw makes when it is set on fire, a peculiarly nauseous choking, whitish-blue smoke. This smoke was so dense that only after some moments could I make out, with bleeding eyes and wounded lungs, anything whatever. What I saw was this: five or six plantons ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... not only with sword and musket, but with every implement which the burghers' hands could find. Heavy stones, boiling oil, live coals, were hurled upon the heads of the soldiers; hoops, smeared with pitch and set on fire, were dexterously thrown upon their necks. Even Spanish courage and Spanish ferocity were obliged to shrink before the steady determination of a whole population animated by a single spirit. Romero lost an eye in the conflict, many officers ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... already been in an error a long time; upon which words a fire came on a sudden from heaven in the sight of the multitude, and fell upon the altar, and consumed the sacrifice, till the very water was set on fire, and the ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... the interior court an accident occurred which, though not serious in itself, threw consternation into our ranks, as well as among those who were pressing against the grating of the Carrousel. We saw flames issuing from the chimney of the King's apartments, which had been accidentally set on fire by a quantity of papers which had just been burned therein. This accident gave rise to most sinister conjectures, and soon the rumor spread that the Tuileries had been undermined ready for an explosion before the departure of Louis XVIII. A patrol was immediately formed of fifteen ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... These boats were set on fire and floated against the Roman vessels, which also were soon on fire. The flames quickly spread, and in a very short time a great part of the Roman fleet was destroyed. Basilicus fled with as many ships as he could save, and ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren

... other Christians who went to the place to encourage the martyrs, were present. But the servants of the Lord showed such remarkable strength that they really encouraged the spectators. When the wood was finally set on fire, the majority of these fortunate martyrs turned their eyes toward heaven, and, without moving them in the least, remained in this posture after death. During the first few days a strict watch was kept over the blessed bodies to prevent the Christians ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair

... King and Queen and all the court came out and watched while the big heap was set on fire. The people came out to watch too in their thousands, and a very fine sight it was to see the enormous flames shooting up into the air and to hear the crackle and hiss of the burning wood that sounded like the ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans

... field-pieces to bear on us. Our rigging was soon shot away and our sails cut into ribbons. At length away went the lower masts a little above the deck, while about two hundred men were pegging away at us with muskets. To make our happiness supreme, the sloop of war which had been set on fire and abandoned, blew up, and set us partially in a blaze, and while we were endeavouring to extinguish it the enemy took the cowardly advantage of wounding the purser, gunner, and two seamen, as well as myself, though only slightly. ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... tomahawks and hatchets, and scorching them with red-hot irons, bound them at last to the stake and mercifully allowed the swift-mounting flames to end their sufferings. Whole families were bound in their houses before the town was set on fire, and their wild cries mingled with the wilder laughter of their inhuman captors. The few who escaped were so wounded and mutilated that before they could reach a place of safety numbers of them died frozen in ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... after a sharp fight, captured the stockade, driving the Malays, who were headed by the Rajah Gantang himself, to take refuge in another stockade, in a ravine some three miles inland, and then the river fort was set on fire. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... he set on fire that poor sheeps fur and that was the best he cood do for her, but mother throwed that pale of water half on the sheep and 3 fourths on her daughter and Cele sed Sam you dam big lout just what in ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute

... Whatsoever is fiery, doth not only by reason of the elementary fire tend upwards; but here also is so ready to join, and to burn together, that whatsoever doth want sufficient moisture to make resistance, is easily set on fire. Whatsoever therefore is partaker of that reasonable common nature, naturally doth as much and more long after his own kind. For by how much in its own nature it excels all other things, by so much ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... Glory, there came out of one corner of the square (which, like so many such squares, was at once crowded and quiet) a sudden and silent line of horsemen. Their dress was of a dull blue, plain and prosaic enough, but the sun set on fire the brass and steel of their helmets; and their helmets were carved like the helmets of the Romans. I had seen them by twos and threes often enough before. I had seen plenty of them in pictures toiling through the snows of Friedland or roaring round ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... spot. Those captured were tortured in the most horrible way to extort confessions of misdeeds which their enemies had fabricated. One Bernard Conte, who had thrown away a crucifix forced into his hands, was daubed with pitch, and then set on fire. Their sufferings are too many and revolting to recount. Let it suffice to add that the bodies of the victims were so numerous as to line the roads for a distance of thirty-six miles, being placed on stakes for that purpose from Montalto to Chateau-Vilar. ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold

... in the Hand of Glory as in a candlestick, it rendered motionless all persons to whom it was presented; they could not stir a finger any more than if they were dead. Sometimes the dead man's hand is itself the candle, or rather bunch of candles, all its withered fingers being set on fire; but should any member of the household be awake, one of the fingers will not kindle. Such nefarious lights can only be extinguished with milk. Often it is prescribed that the thief's candle should be made of the finger of a new-born or, still better, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... One of them was found with legs cut off to the knees; the other was minus his arms and legs. A workman had been pierced with bayonets, afterward while he was still living the Germans soaked him with petroleum and locked him in a house which they set on fire. An old man and his son had been killed by sabre cuts; a cyclist had been killed by bullets; a woman coming out of her house had been stricken ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... in various places: some were intended to reach to the foundations of the walls, which were to be propped up with wood, ready to be set on fire; others were to pass under the walls, and remain ready to be broken open so as to give entrance to the besiegers. At these mines the army worked day and night, and during these secret preparations ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... posts near the city were secured and fortified, and the Americans strongly entrenched on them; the city of New York fortified with batteries next to the water, and all the principal streets with barriers across them, and, at the same time, the houses filled with combustibles ready to be set on fire, should the city be found tenable. The two men-of-war, which had passed up the river above the city, were returned terribly damaged by attacking a battery. This, in a word, was the state of affairs in New York on the 20th of August, from which important news may be ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... main body of troops along the inner edge of the small canal extending from a levee to a tangled swamp. The legendary cotton bales had been blown up or set on fire during the artillery bombardment and protection was furnished only by a raw, unfinished parapet of earth and a double row of log breastworks with red clay tamped between them. It was a motley army that Jackson led. Next to the levee were posted a small regiment of ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... about you a blanket, a shawl, a piece of carpet, or any other woolen cloth, to serve as protection. Never read in bed, lest you fall asleep, and the bed be set on fire. If your clothes get on fire, never run, but lie down, and roll about till you can reach a bed or carpet to wrap yourself in, and thus put out the fire. Keep young children in woolen dresses, to save them ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the house-building practices of the tribe, and has done much to prevent the erection of permanent abodes. This is the idea of the tc[)i]'ndi hogan. When a person dies within a house the rafters are pulled down over the remains and the place is usually set on fire. After that nothing would induce a Navaho to touch a piece of the wood or even approach the immediate vicinity of the place; even years afterward such places are recognized and avoided. The place and all about it are the especial locale of the tc[)i]'ndi, the shade ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... heat conductivity, conductivity. [effects of heat 2] thermal expansion; coefficient of expansion. V. heat, warm, chafe, stive^, foment; make hot &c 382; sun oneself, sunbathe. go up in flames, burn to the ground (flame) 382. fire; set fire to, set on fire; kindle, enkindle, light, ignite, strike a light; apply the match to, apply the torch to; rekindle, relume^; fan the flame, add fuel to the flame; poke the fire, stir the fire, blow the fire; make a bonfire of. melt, thaw, fuse; liquefy &c 335. burn, inflame, roast, toast, fry, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... rebellion, His Grace of Badminton was in Bristol, where he commanded several regiments of militia against the insurgents; and on that occasion "the backward stables of the White Lion, in Brode Street, were set on fire, and therein were burnt to death two of the Duke of Beaufort's best saddle horses. It was supposed to have been done by the malice and envy of the fanaticks, of whom a great many were sent prisoners from Bristol to Gloucester, and there secured ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs

... were told there was no difference in days in times of war. The railroad was a good one and well built on a roadbed of gravel and chips of granite, with solid heart pine or chestnut ties, laid with "T" rails. The cross-ties were piled in heaps, on these were laid the rails, and all set on fire; then for miles and miles up and down the road the crackling flames, the black smoke twining around the trees and curling upward, shrouded the whole earth with a canopy of black and blue, and told of the destruction that ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... from the sun, carry a blazing tail ten hundred thousand and fourteen miles long, through which, if the earth should pass at the distance of one hundred thousand miles from the nucleus, or main body of the comet, it must in its passage be set on fire, and reduced to ashes: that the sun, daily spending its rays without any nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed and annihilated; which must be attended with the destruction of this earth, and of all the planets that receive ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... son. Eyvind was a sorcerer, and particularly knowing in witchcraft. The king let all these men be seated in one room, which was well adorned, and made a great feast for them, and gave them strong drink in plenty. Now when they were all very drunk, he ordered the house be set on fire, and it and all the people within it were consumed, all but Eyvind Kelda, who contrived to escape by the smoke-hole in the roof. And when he had got a long way off, he met some people on the road going to the king, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... Cook, they had not removed their effects back into the country with the rest of the inhabitants, but had put every thing that was valuable of their own, as well as what they had collected from us, into a house close to the morai, where they had the mortification to see it all set on fire by ourselves.[4] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... ships on fire which were in the port. Though the natives defended themselves with much bravery, and discharged prodigious flights of arrows, by one of which Almeyda was wounded, both the town and ships were set on fire; and as the wind blew the smoke in the faces of the Portuguese they were much incommoded for a time; but Don Lorenzo by taking a compass got away from the smoke, and fell in with a body of 1500 of the enemy, whom he immediately attacked. In this engagement Lorenzo ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... of thorns are collected before the temple, among which the devotees roll themselves without any covering. These thorns are then set on fire, when they briskly ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder

... the hour when the moon, the sacred orb of Gaul shall rise, let all the countryside, from Vannes to the Loire, be set on fire. Let Caesar and his army find in their passage neither men nor houses, nor provisions, nor forage, but everywhere, everywhere ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... the Hours yoke the horses, "filled with the juice of ambrosia," the father anoints the face of his son with a hallowed drug that he may the better endure the great heat; the reins are handed him, and the fatal race begins. Phœbus has advised him not to drive too high, or "thou wilt set on fire the signs of the heavens"—the constellations;—nor too low, or he will ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... high thy glory towers When the rich blood of kings is set on fire! O, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel; The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs; And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men, In undetermin'd differences of kings.— Why stand these royal fronts amazed thus? Cry, havoc, ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... miles off Le Mans, on the 11th of June they encamped under its walls. The next day they broke through the handful of troops who desperately held the bridge. A wealthy suburb which could no longer be defended was set on fire, so that it should not give shelter to the enemy, the wind swept the flames into the city, and Henry saw himself shut in between the burning town and the advancing Frenchmen. Then for the first time in his life he turned his ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green

... ere thou quite enrage me, and appear Foolish as thou art old. Talk not to me Of Gods who have taken thought for this dead man! Say, was it for his benefits to them They hid his corse, and honoured him so highly, Who came to set on fire their pillared shrines, With all the riches of their offerings, And to make nothing of their land and laws? Or, hast thou seen them honouring villany? That cannot be. Long time the cause of this Hath come to me in secret murmurings From malcontents of Thebes, who under ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... army, so that their movements should be concealed from the sight of the French. One of these, composed of archers, was to take post in the wood on the left hand of the French, the other was to move on through the wood, to come down in their rear, and to set on fire some barns and houses there, and so create a panic. He waited until noon, by which time he thought that both detachments would have reached the posts assigned to them, and then gave the orders for the advance. The archers were delighted ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... prevented from leaping overboard, like the few other survivors, by a severe wound in the leg. There, on the fore-deck of the prau, old Lingard found her under a heap of dead and dying pirates, and had her carried on the poop of the Flash before the Malay craft was set on fire and sent adrift. She was conscious, and in the great peace and stillness of the tropical evening succeeding the turmoil of the battle, she watched all she held dear on earth after her own savage manner, drift away into the gloom in a great roar of flame and smoke. She lay there ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... the burning of Chillicothe and helped it along. The soldiers, with the cannon in the center, were drawn up just on the outside of the town, and, under order of the officers, many of them seized torches and lighted tepee and wigwam. The dry corn in the fields and everything else that would burn was set on fire. What would not burn was trampled to a pulp beneath the feet of men ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... it meant, or what should be done with it. Various opinions were given. Some thought it was a peace offering, and one chief proposed that it should be dragged within the walls and placed in the citadel. Others advised that it should be cast into the sea, or set on fire, or at least that they ought to burst it open to find whether anything were concealed within. While they were thus discussing the matter, some urging one course, some another, the priest La-oc'o-on rushed out from the city followed ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke

... as they runne along the earth, doe leave behind them on the grasse and leaves a gray slimy substance, which being set on fire, hath the right savour of common brimstone. They are much haunted with Pigeons, an argument of much salt in them; of which in the evaporation of the water by fire, wee found a good quantity remaining in the bottome of ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane

... access to the fort, the whites would retire, fighting, to this building, and when all were in, the ladder would be drawn in after them. From the port-holes of the block-house a fierce fire could be delivered, and as the square timbers were not easily set on fire, a body of Indians must be very determined indeed, if they succeeded in taking or destroying a block-house. At Fort Mims, however, they had done so, burning the house over the ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston



Words linked to "Set on fire" :   set ablaze, set aflame, ignite, set afire, light, burn, combust



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