"Shrift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clear-eyed boys, white enough to "pass." He brought them to America and put Alexander in the celebrated Cheshire School, in Connecticut. Here he often visited him, but one last time, fell dead. He left no will, and his relations made short shrift of these sons. They gathered in the property, apprenticed grandfather to a shoemaker; then ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... hyed him to Litle John, He thought to loose him belive; The sheriffe and all his companye Fast after him did drive. Stand abacke, stand abacke, sayd Robin; Why draw you mee soe neere? Itt was never the use in our countrye, Ones shrift another ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... Bird! make a short shrift— Here's a hair-shirted Palmer hard by; And here's Lawyer Earwig to draw up your will, And we'll witness it, Death-Moth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... was in a terrible taking, for Stuart had a gredge agin me for somepin I'd done. I'll tell ye about that another day. 'T warn't me was to blame. But if he onct caught sight of me, it would be short shrift at the ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... .But, ere I make my shrift, You must be once again that brother-friend With whom I used to play by the ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... drifted over to the royalists. The Convention now found itself attacked in the very city which had been the chosen abode of Liberty and Equality. Some thirty thousand of the Parisian National Guards were determined to give short shrift to this Assembly that clung so indecently to life; and as the armies were far away, the Parisian malcontents seemed masters of the situation. Without doubt they would have been but for their own precipitation and the energy ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... content the church should know My conscience owns the debt I owe, Unto de Argentine and Lorn The name of traitor I return, Bid them defiance, stern and high, And give them in their throats the lie! These brief words spoke, I speak no more, Do as thou wilt; my shrift is o'er." ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... power." A great deal has happened since Cromwell's time, and the mass is no longer the symbol of intolerance, if only because the Church of Rome has no power to persecute. Cromwell would have had a short shrift if he had fallen into the hands of mass-goers. To tolerate intolerance is a Christian duty, and therefore possible for an individual. Whether it was possible for the Lord General in 1650 is a question hardly suited for popular treatment on a public platform. All that he did was right in Froude's ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... Short shrift! sharp fate! dark doom to dree! Hard struggle, though quickly ending! At home or abroad, by land or sea, In peace or war, sore trials must be, And worse may happen to you or to me, For none are secure, and none can flee ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... ourselves to account. What infirmity have I mastered to-day? what passion opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired?" and then he follows with the profound truth that "our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift." If you cannot at first control your anger, learn to control your tongue, which, like fire, is a good servant, but ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... have their spate (For both of the twain are one) And lust and greed devour the seed That else had growth begun. Fiercely the flow of death shall go And short the good man's shrift! All hell's awake full toll to take, And passions ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... hearing ladies' confessions." The nuns petitioned the visitors, on the exposure of the seduction of a sister, that he and his companion might come to them no more; and the friar was told that his abominable conduct might be the occasion that "shrift should be ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... minutes later I heard outside the command "Halt!" to a squad of soldiers. The doors opened and Javert reappeared, this time in the full uniform of an officer. For the moment I thought he had come with a firing squad and they were going to make short shrift of me. The grim humor of disposing of my case thus "directly" came home to me. But merely flicking the ashes from his cigarette, he glanced round the room without offering the slightest recognition, and then ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... devilish habits; reject all garments as plunder, and take only weapons: though if valuables offer themselves, ducats or silver, they are useful in any case. I tell you this beforehand, gentles, if any one gets drunk on the expedition, he will have a short shrift: I will have him dragged by the neck like a dog behind the baggage waggons, no matter who he may be, even were he the most heroic Cossack in the whole army; he shall be shot on the spot like a dog, and flung out, without ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the necks of the three men, who at the end of the allotted time were given short shrift and were soon hanging between heaven and earth. While their bodies were swaying in the breeze, Slade's wife suddenly appeared mounted on a fine horse, with a cocked pistol in each hand, determined to attempt a rescue. On observing that ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... sentiment makes most forcible appeal deem it a man's part to refuse a manifest personal call of natural duty. The conscientious objector to combatant service may in certain rare cases deserve considerate treatment, but very short shrift should await the able-bodied men who, from love of ease or fear of danger, simulate conscientious objection in order to evade a ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... venture no closer," he explained. "At such times their deviltry knows no bounds. They would make short shrift of anyone who would venture among them ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... and body were so bitterly at odds. At every step we lifted him he thought to wend. But now, methinks, it is the soul that suffereth. Ever for the priest he crieth, and Sir Oliver, I wot not why, still cometh not. 'Twill be a long shrift; but poor Appleyard and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... habits they are usually called "snipers." But, unlike snipers, they are not entitled to be treated as prisoners of war (their habits partake too much of espionage), and when captured they receive a short shrift from an impassive man with a hot ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... the fugitive at Ziklag in striking and characteristic fashion. He first flames out in fierce wrath upon the lying Amalekite, who had hurried with the tidings and sought favour by falsely representing that he had killed the king on the field. A short shrift and a bloody end were his. And then the wrath melts into mourning. Forgetting the mad hatred and wild struggles of that poor soul, and his own wrongs, remembering only the friendship and nobleness of his earlier days, he ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... to have been used by a band of pirates as the first national sand bank, and, as these rascals were caught and swung off with short shrift, they do say that the plunder is still to be had—by the man who finds it. But the hotel-keepers and three-card-monte men are not waiting for ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... The bairn's grave by the sea! O Keith o' Craigentolly, The graves of maidens three! And a bluidy shift, And a sainless shrift, For Keith ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... frequented the miners' camps. More sinned against than sinning, was his humane judgment of these unhappy outcasts, and when he could, he helped them. Many a besotted creature had him to thank when the end came and short shrift little better then that accorded a dead dog awaited her—that at least she got a decent burial. The boys knew his attitude on the woman question, and it was a tribute to the regard in which they held him that, in his hearing at least, they ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... were omitted or given short shrift that anyone would like to talk about now? Is there a "group" here? What should the group do next, if anything? What should the Library of Congress do next, if anything? Moderator: Prosser Gifford, Director for Scholarly Programs, ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... days were apprenticed, all learned their business. One of the latter day hall room performers would have received short shrift in a company of those days, when every performer was an all-round athlete; in fact, in individual superiority, the circus actor of that day outclassed those of the present. The riders were very much superior as they ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... had used it as the text for that paraphrase of the Revelation of which we spoke a moment ago. And he knew its notes—well he knew them— knew that they were from republican Geneva, and that kingly pretensions had short shrift with them. James told the conference that these notes were "very partial, untrue, seditious, savoring too much of traitorous and dangerous conceits," supporting his opinion by two instances which seemed disrespectful to royalty. One of ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... Asmunsen. Both were eligible for the militia, and both were drafted to serve in the punitive expedition that was despatched from California against the farmers of Missouri. Mr. Kowalt and Mr. Asmunsen refused to serve. They were given short shrift. Drumhead court martial was their portion, and military execution their end. They were shot with their ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... and the matter might have waxed even warmer had not Rachel reentered the room for a pencil she had dropped. The head prefect pricked up her ears at the sound of the disturbance, whereupon Mabel and Bertha, who knew they would receive short shrift if she demanded an explanation, made a hasty exit, merely murmuring to Jess and Peachy as they ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... gem in my bonnet. Say to her its brightness was dimmer than the remembrance of her eyes; and its price meaner than the dewdrop on her lip. Bring her to see me where I lie; and compose my face to greet her. Tell me, my Dutchman, doth a cannon ball give short shrift, or were it easier to ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... signed Dec. 26, 1831, by "Wilson Lumpkin, Governor." The whole South was in a state of terror. In its insane fright it would have made short shrift of the editor of the Liberator, had he by accident, force, or fraud have fallen into the clutches of its laws. The Georgia reward of five thousand dollars was as Mr. Garrison put it, "a bribe to kidnappers." The Southern method of dealing with the agitation within the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... and "devilling"; and there is the again already mentioned complaint that he is a mere "pastimer"; that he has no literary quality; that he deserves at best to take his chance with the novelists from Sue to Gaboriau who have been or will be dismissed with rather short shrift elsewhere. Let us, as best seems to suit history, treat these in order, though with very unequal degrees ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... wonderful to watch Polly making short shrift of the remains of his own awkward preparations, to see her skillful manipulation of the gas burners and her marvelous dexterity with the egg beater. And this slim, eager, shy Polly, with her crinkled brown hair and ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... lay they lance in rest, They make their shrift, are sained and blessed; They hear the Mass, the Host receive, Great gifts to church and cloister leave. They stand before the Emperor's face; The spurs upon their feet they lace; Gird on their corselets, strong and light; Close on their heads the helmets bright. The golden hilts at ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... are determined to make an enemy of me, Darrin, I shall do my best to see to it that you have short shrift ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... this gift, And if thou come unto my shrift, I'll make thee call those fellows fools That on ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... spurs in; and the gaunt, raw-boned countrybred under him sprang forward. But just as it had all but reached the quarry, the latter jinked again and Wargrave was borne on, tugging vainly at the horse's iron jaws. But the boar had short shrift. With a rush Ross closed on it and before it could swerve off sent his spear deep into its side and, galloping on, turned his hand over, drawing out the lance. The pig was staggered by the shock but started to run on. Before ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... had luck on his wide, or doubled marvelously well on his pursuers, for I am told that not a trace of him nor of his confederate, the little fiddler, did our men find. It's well for them, as Sir Henry was much enraged and their shrift would have been short, I ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... training in the newest ways and methods, in part the outcome of her own ideas and fancies. Reforms in the kitchen region, if those deaf old ears could have been induced to give them even a hearing, would have met with short shrift and scornful rejection, and the kitchen region spread over the zone of dairy and market business and half the work of the household. Emma, with the latest science of dead-poultry dressing at her finger-tips, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... hither to the Oberland, To what an entertainment ye do not understand: Hei! 't were better for shrift to call, For in the mountain-fields ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is on my heels. They've raised the whole of Penrith over the affair, and if I'm taken, soul of my body, 'twill be a short shrift they'll give me. The King will serve me as poor Wrycraft was served two days ago at Kendal. Mother of Mercy!" he broke off, as his ear caught the clatter of feet and the murmur of voices from without. "Have you a hole ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... theatre was only an introductory farce to the grim tragedy which followed. When Monmouth's hopes of sovereignty were rudely shattered by the melee at Sedgemoor the town was handed over for pacification to the tender mercies of Kirke and the brutal justice of Jeffreys. The rebels got short shrift from both. Kirke, without preliminary inquiry, swung the culprits from the sign-board of his lodgings, and Jeffreys' law was notorious for its despatch. So numerous were the executions that Bishop ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... brother, which is saying a great deal, and because he was younger, more reckless, less prudent, than he of riper years, he had incautiously put himself in the power of Morgan and had been hanged with short shrift. Benjamin, standing upon the outskirts of the crowd jesting and roaring around the foot of the gibbet, with a grief and rage in his heart at his impotency, presently found himself hating his old captain with a fierceness ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... water-carriers had grown lazy; thirst racked the prisoners one and all. They had been shut in for the better part of two weeks, and wondered why they had not been brought to trial. They had expected a short shrift and a speedy execution. Usually these expectations would have been realized, but the governor would not be bothered with any extra work whilst the heat spell lasted, and he had been warned that the "Holy Office" ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... not to demand grace of mortal man," said the Scot; "it is in your Grace's pleasure to give or refuse me time for Christian shrift—if man denies it, may God grant me the absolution which I would otherwise ask of His church! But whether I die on the instant, or half an hour hence, I equally beseech your Grace for one moment's opportunity to speak that to your royal ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... some Dervish pedlar or merchant trading with the tribes of the Soudan, who slips into Wadi Halfa or Assouan or Suakin and undertakes the work. Of course his risk is great. He would have short shrift in Omdurman if his business were detected. So it is not to be wondered at that he shirks the danger at the last moment. As often as not, too, he is a rogue. You make your arrangements with him in Egypt, and hand him over ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... remaining and being master. But it was not there the difficulty lay. If he had not made a will before he came, a will that doubtless set the property of the family for ever beyond James's reach, the thing had been simple and Colonel John's shrift had been short. But now, to rid the earth of him was to place the power in the hands of an unknown person, a stranger, an alien, for whom the ties of family and honour would have no stringency. True, the law was weak in Kerry. A writ was one thing, and possession another. Whatever right ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... were yet miles away, down to the west'ard—near Whitehead and with the cruel stretch of rocks under her lee quarter. Even with plenty of sea-room she could not have lasted long, and here with these ledges to catch her she looked to be in for a short shrift. We had a good chance to get a look at her as we bore down. Everything was gone from her deck, even the house and rail. There was not as much loose wood on deck as would make a tooth-pick. Afterwards we learned that two seas hove her down so that they had to cut the spars away to right ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... as were then perpetrated could possibly continue for a week under existing conditions. A Press which makes us familiar with all sorts of grievances, and an inquiring Parliamentarian or two, would provide a short shrift and a long rope for the perpetrator of any such bare-faced robbery as I suffered under when I first joined the Fourth Royal Irish Dragoon Guards. The motive of my enlistment had no remotest connection with the bounty ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... whose books and writings tell What certain path to heavenly bliss us leads; And hermits good, and ancresses that dwell Mewed up in walls, and mumble on their beads, And virgin nuns in close and private cell, Where, but shrift fathers, never mankind treads: On these they called, and on all the rout Of angels, martyrs, and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... short speeches, short questions, short answers, short pity and short shrift, are the order of the day. Far and far have we been tossed from the dreamy purlieus of his "great good place," with its long sunny hours under misty trees, and its interminable conversations upon smooth-cut lawns! The sweet psychology of terrace-walks is scattered, and the noise of the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... ashes, Now, and the weepers go. Lone on the ghat they leave me, lone, With but the River's flow. Kali, I ask not jewels Nor justice, beauty nor shrift, But for the lowest woman's right, A child—tho ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... the wave, And, as she stooped his brow to lave - "Is it the hand of Clare," he said, "Or injured Constance, bathes my head?" Then, as remembrance rose - "Speak not to me of shrift or prayer! I must redress her woes. Short space, few words, are mine to spare; Forgive and listen, gentle Clare!" "Alas!" she said, "the while, Oh, think of your immortal weal! In vain for Constance is your zeal; She—died at Holy Isle." Lord Marmion started ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... against discipline and restraint, and it appears to have degenerated into a band not unlike those Southern 'bush-whackers' in the American war to whom the Federals showed little mercy. They had given short shrift to the Boer prisoners who had fallen into their hands, the excuse offered for their barbarous conduct being that an officer who had served in the corps had himself been murdered by the Boers. Such a reason, even if it were true, could of course offer no justification for indiscriminate ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this heartless fashion! Surely they might have somehow made shift to carry off their injured comrades with them, for they must be fully aware that if the unfortunate wretches fall into the hands of the authorities they will meet with short shrift. Well, we seem to have punished them rather more severely than I had thought; I should not be very greatly surprised if I find a few more poor beggars in the same plight before I have ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... about heaven; it was wonderful to hear her; with her eyes burning, and such a voice; and then she spoke low and deep and told us about hell, and the devil and his torments; and I could hardly bear to listen; and she told us about shrift, and what it did for the soul; and the blessed sacrament. The Carthusian put a question or two to her, and she answered them: and all the while she was speaking her voice seemed to come from her body, ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... the fate of their comrades,—but I was very careful to prevent the dying dogs crying out, for the noise of fighting would probably have been followed by the rest attacking the down dog, and that was too close to me to be pleasant. A short shrift seemed to me better than a long one, and I envied the dead dogs whose troubles were over so quickly. Indeed, I came to balance in my mind whether, if once I passed into the open sea, it would not be better by far to use my faithful knife on ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... strained one another's hand; which Ganymede espying, thinking he had had his mistress long enough at shrift, said: ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... white hair and bland manners and a gold watch, I shall hear three crows cawing in my heart, as I heard them this morning: I vote for old age and eighty years of retrospect. Yet, after all, I dare say, a short shrift and a nice green grave are ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Jackson, in a war properly waged only against Indians, ran a wild and lawless, but very vigorous and effective, career in Spanish possessions. He hung a couple of British subjects with as scant trial and meagre shrift as if he had been a mediaeval free-lance; he marched upon Spanish towns and peremptorily forced the blue-blooded commanders to capitulate in the most humiliating manner; afterwards, when the Spanish territory ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... you and Father Fothergill, and the rest of you, mean yesterday by burying that drowned man so close to me? He died in mortal sin, Emmanuel; no shrift, no unction, no absolution: why he might as well have been excommunicated. He plagues me with his grinning, and I can't have any peace in my shrine. You must ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... there be Who know and speak not, lo, I make decree That, while in Thebes I bear the diadem, No man shall greet, no man shall shelter them, Nor give them water in their thirst, nor share In sacrifice nor shrift nor dying prayer, But thrust them from our doors, the thing they hide Being this land's curse. Thus hath the God replied This day to me from Delphi, and my sword I draw thus for the dead and for ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... jollity ceased when Archbishop Sudbury, who had been active in preventing the king from landing from the Thames, and the ministers who were concerned in the levy of the poll-tax, fell into their hands. Short shrift was given these detested officials. They were dragged to Tower Hill, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Leave the tsarevich with me. (All withdraw.) I am dying; Let us embrace. Farewell, my son; this hour Thou wilt begin to reign.—O God, my God! This hour I shall appear before Thy presence— And have no time to purge my soul with shrift. But yet, my son, I feel thou art dearer to me Than is my soul's salvation—be it so! A subject was I born; it seemed ordained That I should die a subject in obscurity. Yet I attained to sovereignty; but how? Ask not. Enough that thou art innocent. In justice now thou'lt reign; and I alone ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... "Blast the devil—short shrift he got—given straight into my hand! I swore to kill him when I heard it; an' I have—pitched him over the bridge and broken his blasted neck. I'd burn in ragin' hell through ten lifetimes to do it again. But that's done once for all. And you can tell your whore of a daughter ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... it came to serious work, he was there even ahead of Jerry. On account of foot-and-mouth disease and of hog-cholera, strange dogs were taboo on the Kennan ranch. It did not take Michael long to learn this, and stray dogs got short shrift from him. With never a warning bark nor growl, in deadly silence, he rushed them, slashed and bit them, rolled them over and over in the dust, and drove them from the place. It was like nigger-chasing, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... have them labelled and ready to pack to go anywhere, to do anything at any time, or to know why we refuse to do it, if it is something we will not do. Ethelred the Unready died helpless a thousand years ago. The unready are still with us, but the strenuous century will grant them but short shrift. ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... not there, On the wings of shrift and prayer, Pure as winds that winnow snow, Her soul had risen twelve hours ago. The burdened steed at the barred gate stood, No whit the nearer to his goal. Now God's great grace assoil the soul That went out ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... he, "if they got hands on me, it would be a short shrift and a lang tow for Alan! But I have the King of France's commission in my pocket, which would ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spots of vices unclean, That on me no sin may be seen; I come with Knowledge for my redemption, Redempt with heart and full contrition, For I am commanded a pilgrimage to take, And great accounts before God to make. Now I pray you, Shrift, mother of salvation, Help hither my good deeds ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... pair of runaways who better deserve to be hung than I do. In with you both into this fishing-cobble of mine, and I will cover you with nets while I go for a mast and sail, and mind you lie as still as logs. The town is already full of soldiers looking for you, and it will be short shrift for us all ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... awake, I'll not sleep again until I know if a lie hath waked me. For if it be not the truth, it is a lie, and a lie shall have short shrift with me!" ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... out of the sons of dead and damned Ritterdom. I got my share of honor and good service, too, in going to different courts and bringing back all that Prince Karl needed. To exercise myself in the art of war, I hunted the border thieves and gave them short enough shrift. In a year I had made such an assault as that of the inn at Erdberg an impossibility all along the marches ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... strange to witness the agitation that seized and shook that portion of the city. Men shed tears in public; bosses of lodging-houses, long inured to brutality,—and above all, brutality to sailors—shook their fists at heaven. If hands could have been laid on the captain of the Gleaner, his shrift would have been short. That night (so gossip reports) he was headed up in a barrel and smuggled across the bay. In two ships already he had braved the penitentiary and the gallows; and yet, by last accounts, he now commands ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... English, French and German makes, were found in various parts of the field, partly buried in the soil. When the guns were discovered the farmer threw up his hands, wildly gesticulating and vehemently protesting that he knew nothing whatever as to how they came there. His was a short shrift. He was tried on the spot, tied to the pump of his own ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... court martial was immediately held. The hapless pilot at first denied all knowledge of the letter, but at length compelled to confess his guilt, with a short shrift he was next morning ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... that fellow Daireh; he would have had a short shrift if we had caught him! It was unlucky, though, that he was found out before you came; he could not have done us much more harm, and the finding him here would have done you a great deal of good. By George! You are a nasty fellow to have for an enemy, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... that my work was about done, and that it was time to draw the net. My salary was enormous, and already amounted to a competence, and I knew that if I remained in Russia, sooner or later somebody would find me out; and then there would be short shrift for me, between the nihilists on one hand, and the jealous nobility on the other, for the latter saw in me nothing but an interloper who had stolen ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman |
