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noun
Coffer  n.  
1.
A casket, chest, or trunk; especially, one used for keeping money or other valuables. "In ivory coffers I have stuffed my crowns."
2.
Fig.: Treasure or funds; usually in the plural. "He would discharge it without any burden to the queen's coffers, for honor sake." "Hold, here is half my coffer."
3.
(Arch.) A panel deeply recessed in the ceiling of a vault, dome, or portico; a caisson.
4.
(Fort.) A trench dug in the bottom of a dry moat, and extending across it, to enable the besieged to defend it by a raking fire.
5.
The chamber of a canal lock; also, a caisson or a cofferdam.
Coffer dam. (Engin.) See Cofferdam, in the Vocabulary.
Coffer fish. (Zool.) See Cowfish.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Coffer" Quotes from Famous Books



... slave, who boasted that he possessed the secret of evoking demons, and forcing them to discover the most hidden secrets, they led him into an old castle, where it was thought that treasures were concealed. The slave performed his evocations, and at last the demon opened a rock whence issued a coffer. The slave would have taken hold of it, but the coffer went back into the rock. This occurred more than once; and the slave, after vain efforts, came and told the knights what had happened to him; but he was so much exhausted that he had need of some restorative; ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... spadeful of earth was carefully examined, and the probe thrust down anxiously and with great caution. About a yard in depth had been taken away when the spade struck upon something hard. The strokes were redoubled, and a narrow flag appeared. Raising this obstacle they beheld a wooden coffer. Dee sung out a Latin prayer as usual; for he failed not to pour out his thanks with great fervour for any selfish indulgence that fell in his way, or, as he imagined, was granted to him by ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... Rome that some Lombard workmen had discovered a Roman sarcophagus while digging on the Appian Way. It was a marble tomb, engraved with the inscription "Julia, Daughter of Claudius," and inside the coffer lay the body of a most beautiful girl of fifteen years, preserved by precious unguents from corruption and the injury of time. The bloom of youth was still upon her cheeks and lips; her eyes and mouth were half open; her long hair floated round her shoulders. She was instantly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... and delays by this method of constructing the foundations were much less, and the cost also, than if an ordinary coffer dam had been used. Also the total weight of the piers is much less, as that portion below a point about two feet below the water ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... Gnomon dooth euer beholde the north starre, whether it be closed and shutte uppe in a coffer of golde, siluer, or woode, neuer loosing his nature: So a faithfull Christian man, whether hee abound in wealth, or bee pinched with pouertie, whether hee bee of high or lowe degree in this worlde, ought continually to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various

... silver and brass, small and practically worthless. There was also the foot of some small animal set in a battered silver holder. On a deal table stood a smoking oil lamp of mean design and cheap material. Underneath it was a large wooden chest or coffer, studded with huge brass nails, clamped with brass, and painted a brilliant green. Near it, touching the canvas wall, was a mattress covered with gaudy rugs that served as ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... writing whatsoeuer you shall learne from day to day, lest you should forget, or lest God should call you to his mercy: and by ech returne I wish you to send in writing whatsoeuer you haue learned, or at the least keepe the same safe in your coffer, that come death or life your countrey may ioyne the thing that you goe for, and not lose the charge, and trauell ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... by the evening gales, Blithely the painted galley sails; On its swift course, how richly stored! Chest, coffer, sack, are heaped aboard. A splendid galley, richly and brilliantly laden with the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... he carries the key to that coffer, and the key, too, of the private cipher in which the ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... my lady, a choice coffer, the best thou hast, and thyself place therein a fresh robe and a doublet, and heat for our guest a cauldron on the fire, and warm water, that after the bath the stranger may see all the gifts duly arrayed which the noble Phaeacians ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... riveted, and forming a kind of open trelliswork over the whole. On each side of the chest, near the top, were three rings of iron—six in all—by means of which a firm hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united endeavors served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed. We at once saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight. Luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding bolts. These we drew back, trembling and panting with anxiety. In an instant a treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... Mr. Gerzson rang the gate-bell; he entered the drawing-room very boisterously like one resolved to wake up the whole house. A little coffer hung upon his stunted arm, in the other hand he carried a double-barrelled gun, and from a pouch, fastened by straps to his shoulder, peeped ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... trophy of the love of God for his creatures has been surrounded. This cradle, this sacred monument, reposes in a shrine of crystal, mounted on a stand of silver enamelled with gold and precious stones, the splendid offering of Philip IV., King of Spain. This shrine is preserved in a brazen coffer, and is only exposed for veneration—on the grand altar, once ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... each one gave him money for an extra half sorokoust, all four gave him requiem money. "We'll have prayers in church for our father though we sell our last sheep to pay for them," cried they. Then, when all was over, they hastened as fast as they could to the money. The coffer was brought forth. They shook it. There was a fine rattling inside it. Every one of them felt and handled the coffer. That was something like a treasure! Then they unsealed it and opened it and scattered the contents—and it was full of nothing but glass! They wouldn't believe their ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous

... each must be noted on the treaty ticket, with a corresponding adjustment of the number of dollar-bills to be drawn from the coffer. If a man between treaty-paying and treaty-paying marries a widow with a family, he draws five dollars each for the new people he has annexed. If there is an exchange of wives (a not-infrequent thing), the babies have to be newly parcelled out. Through all ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... for the thickness of the ark, but the roll of the Law was put on the side, as is said, "And put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD."(637) And so with the Philistines, he said, "And put the jewels of gold, which ye return for a trespass-offering, in a coffer by the side thereof."(638) R. Judah, the son of Lachish, said, "there were two arks, one which abode in the encampment, and one which went forth with them to war, and in it were the broken tables," as is said, "And the ark of the covenant of the Lord went."(639) ...
— Hebrew Literature

... having secured those jewels which they had left behind in the iron coffer as his share of the spoil of the ship. Taking note of him as he showed and fondled them, Castell added up the man, and concluded that he was very avaricious; one who hated the poverty in which he had been reared, and would do much for money. Indeed, when he spoke bitterly of the thieves ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... useless, sire. Whenever the name of any lady who runs the risk of being compromised is concerned, my memory is like a coffer of brass, the key of which I ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... depend very largely, not only the welfare of your scholars and the amount of good you will achieve, but your own happiness and satisfaction in your work. The artist, who produces some great work of genius, has his reward not merely in the dollars which it may bring to his coffer, but in the inward satisfaction which successful achievement produces. The true artist is always struggling towards some unattainable ideal, and his joy is proportioned to the nearness of his approach to the imagined perfection. So in proportion as we approach in skill the great Teacher, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... number of things to be provided at the charges of the parish, which may be included under this head, such as Communion Table, Pulpit, Reading-desk, Font, Alms-chest, Alms-basin, Vessels for Holy Communion, Bible, Common Prayer Book, Book of Homilies, Parchment Register Book and Coffer. It would not be easy to make a complete list of things authorised by this ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson

... practicality about the notion of taking refuge from floods and storms in a ship provided with a steersman; but, surely, no one who had ever seen more water than he could wade through would dream of facing even a moderate breeze, in a huge three-storied coffer, or box, three hundred cubits long, fifty wide and thirty high, left to drift without rudder or pilot. [8] Not content with giving the exact year of Noah's age in which the flood began, the Pentateuchal story adds the month and the day of the month. It is the Deity himself who "shuts in" ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... treasured up in the housekeeper's room. Indeed the old housekeeper has the reputation among the servants and the villagers of being passing rich; and there is a japanned chest of drawers and a large iron-bound coffer in her room, which are supposed by the housemaids to hold treasures ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... distinguished man, Sir Thomas Browne, Knight, Doctor of Medicine, aged 77 years, who died on the 19th of October, in the year of our Lord 1682, sleeping in this coffin of lead, by the dust of his alchemic body, transmutes it into a coffer ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... whether this remedy is effective, but I remember to have read in Pliny that cedria was used by the ancients to render their manuscripts imperishable. When Cneius Terentius went digging in his estate in the Janiculum he came upon a coffer which contained not only the remains of Numa, the old Roman king, but also the manuscripts of the famous laws which Numa compiled. The king was in some such condition as you might suppose him to be after having been buried several centuries, but the manuscripts were ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... own, when she took him from his bed that night after all the family were asleep, and put on his shoes and led him to the hole she had secretly dug in below the window. They had put his embroidered leather bag of gold in a little wrought-iron coffer that Sebastian had given him, and the nurse had tightly fastened the join of lid and box with wax and resin. The box was wrapped in a silk scarf, and the whole packet put into a big earthenware jar with a lid, and the join of lid and jar was smeared with resin ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit

... Another shaft, near the end of the tunnel, was sunk to a depth of twenty-eight feet, when the water burst into this also, and it had to be abandoned. A third shaft, twenty feet in diameter, and held by a strong coffer dam, was sunk southeast of the former. When the rock was reached two streams were found issuing from a fissure; one of them was tubed, and water rose to ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn

... unfoldeth In phantom forms that coffer holdeth. True, unseen; for 'tis enchanted— What is that but kept till wanted? Do you hear that voice of singing? 'Tis the enchantress that is flinging Spells around her baby's riot, Music's oil the waves to quiet: She at once can disenchant them, To a ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... However, he was taken away a prisoner, Captain Gray mounting him on his own horse, though, as Turner naively remarks, 'there was good reason for it, for he mounted himself on a farre better one of mine.' A large coffer containing his clothes and money, together with all his papers, were taken away by the rebels. They robbed Master Chalmers, the Episcopalian minister of Dumfries, of his horse, drank the King's health at the market cross, and then ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the dingle, and without saying anything about Mrs. Chikno's observations, communicated to Isopel the messages of Mr. and Mrs. Petulengro; Isopel made no other reply than by replacing in her coffer two additional cups and saucers, which, in expectation of company, she had placed upon the board. The kettle was by this time boiling. We sat down, and as we breakfasted, I gave Isopel Berners another ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... Loove or Hatrid.' {106b} Chapman in 1595, in a series of sonnets entitled 'A Coronet for his mistress Philosophy,' appealed to his literary comrades to abandon 'the painted cabinet' of the love-sonnet for a coffer of genuine worth. But the most resolute of the censors of the sonnetteering vogue was the poet and lawyer, Sir John Davies. In a sonnet addressed about 1596 to his friend, Sir Anthony Cooke (the patron of Drayton's 'Idea'), ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... course, that she likes him very much). The country people about the Chateau in dispute, suppose him to be really the Devil, because of his strange knowledge, and his strange comings and goings; and he, being with this girl in one of its old rooms, in the beginning of the 3rd act, shews her a little coffer on the table with a bell in it. 'They suppose,' he tells her, 'that whenever this bell is rung, I appear and obey the summons. Very ignorant, isn't it? But, if you ever want me particularly—very particularly—ring the little bell and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... the excavated basins made and the bank of the river, to prevent the water of the river from bursting in upon the workmen while they were digging. In such a case as this they make what is called a coffer dam, which is a sort of dam, or dike, made by driving piles close together into the ground, in two rows, at a little distance apart, and then filling up the space between them with earth and gravel. By this means the water ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott

... Wrangel off. Forget thou thy old hopes, cast far away All thy past life; determine to commence A new one. Virtue hath her heroes too, As well as fame and fortune.—To Vienna Hence—to the Emperor—kneel before the throne Take a full coffer with thee—say aloud, Thou didst but wish to prove thy fealty; Thy whole intention but to dupe ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... but your courage will enable you to accomplish it successfully. I will tell you how to kill Kostey, for without that you can do nothing. Now, in the very midst of the ocean lies the Island of Eternal Life. Upon this island is an oak tree, and at the foot of it, hidden in the earth, a coffer bound with iron. A hare is shut up in this coffer, and under her sits a grey duck whose body contains an egg. Within this egg is Kostey's life—if it be broken he dies. Good-bye, Prince Junak, start without loss of time. Your horse will carry you ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko

... An unopened coffer of things to be said in defence of—no, on behalf of—no, in honour of the Profession of Schoolmaster, perhaps to the convincing of Aminta, Lady Ormont, was glanced at; a sentence or two leapt out and stepped forward, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... did ever warm Your hearts, high knightly service to perform— A woman's breast or coffer of a man The only citadel you dare ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... make a new cart, and take two milch kine, on which there hath come no yoke, and tie the kine to the cart, and bring their calves home from them: and take the ark of the Lord, and lay it upon the cart; and put the jewels of gold, which ye return him for a trespass offering, in a coffer by the side thereof; and send it away, that it may go. And see, if it goeth up by the way of his own coast to Beth-shemesh, then he hath done us this great evil: but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that smote us; it was a chance ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous

... wad ye leave your coffer, And a' your silk kirtles sae braw, And gang wi' a bare-hough'd puir laddie, And leave father, ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various

... to corporeal pain, and which he described to himself as agony. Why should this rich, debauched, disreputable lord have the power of taking the cup from his lip, the one morsel of bread which he coveted from his mouth, his one ingot of treasure out of his coffer? Fight him! No, he knew he could not fight Lord Ongar. The world was against such an arrangement. And in truth Harry Clavering had so much contempt for Lord Ongar, that he had no wish to fight so poor a creature. The man had had delirium tremens, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... to go into the water," Norton agreed. "That would have meant a coffer dam, and the Company ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... coffer brings, Which held the alternate brass and silver rings. Full in the portal the chaste queen appears, And with her veil conceals the coming tears: On either side awaits a virgin fair; While thus the matron, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... was brought into the apartment. It had the appearance of containing some magnificent present, sent in at that time by some friend in honor of the occasion. The curiosity of the queen was excited to know what the mysterious coffer might contain. She ordered it to be opened; and the guests gathered around, each eager to obtain the first glimpse of the contents. The lid was removed, and a cloth beneath it was raised, when, to the unutterable horror of all ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... blood, is most aptly typified by reviving and inspiring wine, it was not wonderful that renewed strength, generation, and birth should gather around the incarnation of the vine, and that the cup should become the holiest of symbols. Like the ark, the chest or coffer, the egg, and a thousand other receptive or containing objects, the cup appeared to the ancient Initiated as a womb, or as the earth, taking in and giving forth life. It was in this spirit that NONNUS, in the fifth century, wrote The Dyonisiacs, a vast poem on Bacchus, in forty-eight ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... her memories, her thoughts, of all her soul, "love is not what they say it is. I, too, was stirred with anguish. How I had to conceal it, dissimulating every sign of my happiness, locking it hastily away within the coffer of my heart. At first I was afraid to go to sleep for fear of saying your name in a dream, and often, fighting against the stealthy invasion of sleep, I have leaned on my elbow, and remained with wide-open eyes, ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse

... Harding," continued the captain, "yourself and companions will leave the Nautilus, for all the treasures it contains must perish with me. One token alone will remain with you of Prince Dakkar, with whose history you are now acquainted. That coffer yonder contains diamonds of the value of many millions, most of them mementoes of the time when, husband and father, I thought happiness possible for me, and a collection of pearls gathered by my friends ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... time will not admit of my giving any description of the modes of "cut and cover" which have been proposed for the performance of subaqueous works; sometimes the proposition has been to do this by means of coffer-dams, and with the work therefore open to the day-light during execution, and sometimes by movable pneumatic appliances. Consideration of subaqueous works necessarily leads the mind to appliances for diving, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... charming, And the third year eat thou cream-cakes, That you may become more lovely. Seek the storehouse on the mountain, There the finest chamber open. There are coffers piled on coffers, Chests in heaps on chests are loaded, 130 Open then the finest coffer, Raise the painted lid with clangour, There you'll find six golden girdles, Seven blue robes of finest texture, Woven by the Moon's own daughter, By ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... the accustomed masterpiece of mothers; it is more often than otherwise an animal fruit, a coffer full of germs, containing eggs in ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... though it is now nearly three hours since dinner, and the house-floor is perfectly clean again; as clean as everything else in that wonderful house-place, where the only chance of collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer, and put your finger on the high mantel-shelf on which the glittering brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... bowing world, And, kinder than they did desire, Polish'd mankind with sword and fire; With much, too tedious to relate, Of ancient and of modern date, But ending still, how Billy Pitt (Unlucky boy!) with wicked wit, Has gagg'd old Britain, drain'd her coffer, As butchers ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... the wily bridegroom, Weel waled were his wordies I ween:— "I'm rich, though my coffer be toom, Wi' the blinks o' your bonny blue e'en. I'm prouder o' thee by my side, Though thy ruffles or ribbons be few, Than if Kate o' the Croft were my bride, Wi' purfles and pearlins enow. Dear and dearest of ony! Ye're woo'd and buiket and a'! And do ye think scorn o' your Johnny, And grieve ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... nothing further? Such a way Lies still before thee. Send this Wrangel off. Forget thou thy old hopes, cast far away All thy past life; determine to commence A new one. Virtue hath her heroes too, As well as fame and fortune. To Vienna Hence—to the emperor—kneel before the throne; Take a full coffer with thee—say aloud, Thou didst but wish to prove thy fealty; Thy whole intention ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... was a plain stone coffer with its lid removed and set on end against it. In the coffer lay a tall man's skeleton, with the chin still bound in linen browned with age. There were other fragments of linen here and there, but the skeleton's bones had been ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... sheep on the mountain, nor boat on the lake, Nor coin in my coffer to keep me awake, Nor corn in my garner, nor fruit on my tree— Yet the maid of Llanwellyn smiles ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... of the fig-trees in a garden three Moors sat at tea. A carpet was spread, and I caught a glimpse of the copper kettle, the squat charcoal brazier tended by a slave, the quaint little coffer filled no doubt with fine green tea, the porcelain dish of cakes. It was a quite pleasing picture, at which, had courtesy permitted, I would have enjoyed ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... him as dispensing to the old wise men the spiritual blessings of love, meekness, and perfect faith, in return for their gifts and their homage. It appears to me bad taste, verging on profanity, to represent him plunging his little hand into the coffer of gold, or eagerly grasping one of the gold pieces. Neither should he be wrapped up in swaddling clothes, nor in any way a subordinate figure in the group; for it is the Epiphany, the Manifestation ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... when I went into the bedchamber of the Queen my mother, I placed myself on a coffer, next my sister Lorraine, who, I could not but remark, appeared greatly cast down. The Queen my mother was in conversation with some one, but, as soon as she espied me, she bade me go to bed. As I was taking leave, my sister ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... club who could leave his shop was there by eight o'clock. The low-ceilinged but handsome parlour was all bright and tidy, and the plates stood on a sideboard ready for supper. Two noble punch-bowls graced the table, and a number of long "churchwarden" pipes supported the large brass coffer filled with tobacco, which opened only by some cunning mechanism, set in motion by dropping a halfpenny in a slit at the top. Mr. Binks was in the chair; Clodd, the butcher, sat opposite; a great fragrance of spice and lemon-peel pervaded the place. ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... his will Has no existence till that I believe; And there is nothing for my faith to rest on, No object for belief. How can I trust In that which is not? Send the salad, Cosmo. Besides, 'twould be a plenary indulgence; To all intents save one, most plenary— And that the Church's coffer. 'Tis absurd. ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... Paris knows where my affections are set. Very likely there may be some young girl in Havre full of enthusiasm for my verses,—of which they are not worthy; that would not surprise me at all; nothing is more common. See! look at that lovely coffer of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and edged with that iron-work as fine as lace. That coffer belonged to Pope Leo X., and was given to me by the Duchesse de Chaulieu, who received it from the king of Spain. I use it to hold the letters I receive from ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... this lack of coffer, Which you can supply, Fabullus, Accept good welcome—and I offer, For company, your friend Catullus. Yet, though so hard my purse's case is, With such rare unguents I'll present you, Compounded by the Loves and Graces For my dear girl, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... rest.' Mazzille withdrew, and left orders that all should leave the king except three, viz., La Tour, St. Pris, and his nurse, whom his majesty greatly loved, although she was a Huguenot. As she had just seated herself on a coffer, and began to doze, she heard the king groan bitterly, weeping and sighing; she then approached the bed softly, and drawing away his custode, the king said to her, giving vent to a heavy sigh, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... poor cuckoldly knave! I know him not: —yet I wrong him to call him poor; they say the jealous wittolly knave hath masses of money; for the which his wife seems to me well-favoured. I will use her as the key of the 245 cuckoldly rogue's coffer; ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... his hands, seized the spade, applied his foot, and turned up the earth, a second, a third, a fourth time. . . . There was something hard: the spade clinked, and would go no farther. Then his eyes began to distinguish a small, iron-bound coffer. He tried to seize it; but the chest began to sink into the earth, deeper, farther, and deeper still: and behind him he heard a laugh, more like a serpent's hiss. "No, you shall not see the gold until you procure human blood," said the witch, and led up to him a child of six, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various

... peasant's mind every effort of religion consisted in loosening the purses, in emptying the pockets of men in order to fill the heavenly coffer. It was a kind of huge commercial establishment, of which the cures were the clerks, sly, crafty clerks, sharp as anyone must be who does business for the good God at the expense of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... looked at her cousin to see if it were possible that he meant to make use of it. The manners of the young man, his gestures, the way in which he took up his eye-glass, his affected superciliousness, his contemptuous glance at the coffer which had just given so much pleasure to the rich heiress, and which he evidently regarded as without value, or even as ridiculous,—all these things, which shocked the Cruchots and the des Grassins, pleased Eugenie so ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... certain day it stood completed, and beneath the small tomb in the sanctuary, veiled with screens of wrought marble so fine that they might lift in the breeze,—the veils of a Queen,—slept the Lady Arjemand; and above her a narrow coffer of white marble, enriched in a great script with the Ninety-Nine Wondrous Names of God. And the Shah-in-Shah, now grey and worn, entered and, standing by her, cried in a loud voice,—"I ascribe to the Unity, the only ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... full of emeralds and pearls and coral also from ground to ceiling; the third of jacinths and rubies and turquoises and the fourth of diamonds and all manner other preciousest stones. At the upper end of the place stood a coffer of clearest crystal, full of union-gems each the size of a walnut, and upon the coffer lay a casket of gold, the bigness of a lemon. When he saw this, he marvelled and rejoiced with joy exceeding and said to himself, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... designation, on the occasion of the ark's first becoming the leader of the march. Hitherto it had been carried in the centre; now it was moved to the van, and took the place of the pillar, which blazed no more. But the guidance was no less divine. The simple coffer which Bezaleel had made was as august and reliable a symbol of God's presence as the pillar; and the tables of the law, shut in it, were henceforth to be the best directors ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... was placed in the holy of holies, first of the tabernacle, and then of the temple. Such is its masonic and scriptural history. The idea of this ark was evidently borrowed from the Egyptians, in whose religious rites a similar chest or coffer is to be found. Herodotus mentions several instances. Speaking of the festival of Papremis, he says (ii. 63) that the image of the god was kept in a small wooden shrine covered with plates of gold, which shrine was conveyed in a procession ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... cymbals and other musical instruments. The cortege passed through the noble city with rich vestments, with leg trimmings and uncovered heads. Behind these followed a horse, gorgeously caparisoned and girthed, upon whose back the President placed the coffer containing the Royal Seal. The streets were beautifully adorned with exquisite drapery. The High Bailiff, magnificently robed, took the reins in hand to lead the horse under a purple velvet pall, bordered with gold. The magistrates walked on either side; the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... details is instructive to note. In the Jacobean chest, while the drooping loops of the handles are small and simple, the keyholes are elaborately adorned with beautiful brass scroll-work, the hereditary vestige of mediaeval days when the chest was a coffer, and the key, insistently demanded for security, was far more important than handles, which then indeed had no existence. In the unsatisfactory transitional stage of the later Jacobean chest the keyhole ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... a strong coffer in Cacama's room, and bidding Roger take a torch from the wall, the queen led the way to the royal treasury. A massive door was first unlocked, and in a large room were seen ranged vessels of gold and silver; ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... AVENUES. It may at first sight appear strange to include tumuli amongst stone monuments, but they almost always enclose a dolmen, a cist, or a crypt communicating with the outside by a covered passage. The excavation of more than four hundred tumuli in England has brought to light now, a stone coffer made of a number of stones set edgeways and called a KISTVAEN: now of a, tomb hollowed out beneath the surface of the ground, and enclosed by huge blocks of stone.[136] Mounds are as numerous in Portugal as tumuli in England, and the fact that they are of low height ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... were discontented by reason of the favour shown to the rest of the army. I promised to do what I could, and went into the room where my jewels are kept, to see if I had anything left that might satisfy them. Kneeling before a coffer, I heard my son shriek without, but when I ran to see what ailed him, certain of my women—daughters of shame, whose end is even as they deserved—pushed me back into the room, and held the door against me. I heard my son fleeing and calling to me for succour, ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... his bandaged head and stretched out a long thin hand; he could stir nothing else, for his right thigh was in splints beneath a coffer-like erection designed to keep the pressure of the ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... tight spaces, most of which are not more than about 500 cubic feet capacity. The spaces next to the ship's side are principally coal bunkers, and may, therefore, exclude largely any water that should enter. The first line of defense is formed inside these coal bunkers by a complete girdle of coffer dams, which can be worked from the main deck. These it is intended to fill with water and cellulose material, and as they are also minutely subdivided, the effects of damage by shot and consequent flooding may be localized ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... her boudoir to sit in, or even a chair of ordinary comfort, but an uncomfortable, high, narrow-backed, oak framed and seated chair, which was allowed to remain in the room only on the ground of being a companion in artistic quaintness to an old coffer beside it, and was never used except to stand in to reach for a book from the highest row of shelves. But she had sat erect in this chair for more than an hour, for the reason that she was utterly unconscious of what her actions and bodily feelings were. The chair ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... piers in the ordinary manner behind coffer-dams, and in such an exposed location, was to involve expenditure far beyond that which the owner cared to incur. The writer's attention had shortly before been called to the successful use of reinforced concrete caissons on the Great Lakes ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - Reinforced Concrete Pier Construction • Eugene Klapp

... crippled or epileptic, endeavoring to touch the sacred casket; in vain would the attempt be made to keep him at a distance; he redoubled his efforts, and scarcely had he succeeded in gluing his lips to the sacred coffer when immediately the cripple threw away his crutch, the epileptic ceased to foam at the mouth, and ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... books. The landlady had the courage to go but no sooner had she crossed the threshold than the Evil Spirit blew the light out; she got a light again, but this also was blown out. Instead of returning for another light, she went straight to the coffer in the dark, and brought the books to the house, and that without ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... equal distance one from the other, along the curving wall, stood a hundred statues of armed men, holding ever-burning lights. A hundred coffers of green stone lay on the floor, one at the base of each statue, each coffer piled high ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston

... by help of two Suckets, which were pulled up or let down in the Bodies of the Pump. The Suckets pushed the Air with violence into a Funnel reversed in a Copper Coffer half full of VVater, and pressed the Water, and constrained it to ascend round about within the Coffer, which made that its weight in making it re-enter into the Funnel, pushed the Air into the Pipes, and made them Play, producing the same ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius

... caisse, the variant form "cassoon" being adapted from the Ital. casone), a chest or case. When employed as a military term, it denotes an ammunition wagon or chest; in architecture it is the term used for a sunk panel or coffer in a ceiling, or in the soffit of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... poorest of you all," said Supriya, "that is my strength. I have my coffer and my store ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore

... him, he crossed to the open coffin and began to fumble amongst the putrefying mass of bones and webbing which lay therein. Out from this he presently drew an iron coffer. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... her cherished property, could bear it no longer, and left Newtake with her own little daughter and little Timothy. The Rev. Shorto-Champernowne himself called, stung Will into sheer madness, which he happily restrained, then purchased an old oak coffer for two ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... he rejoined. "I admit my imprudence, and blame myself severely for it. But I could not part with a line I had received from you. I inclosed the letters in a little coffer, which I deposited in a secret drawer of that cabinet, as in a place of perfect safety. The coffer and its contents mysteriously disappeared. How it was purloined ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... material, whether wood or stone. They are used on a journey in a heretical or heathen country, or in private chapels. In the inventory of the field apparel of Henry, earl of Northumberland, A.D. 1513, is included "A coffer wyth ij liddes to serue for an Awter and ned ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... he spoke, and going to another part of the studio, opened a black oak coffer, and took out of it a long object wrapped up in a piece of faded yellow silk. He handed it to me, and when I had unwrapped it, there appeared a thing that might once have been a banjo, but had little resemblance to one now. It bore every sign of extreme age. The wood of the handle ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... man having three times successively closed the nest of a Hoopoe, and having remarked the herb with which the bird, as often, opened it, applied the same herb, and with the same success, to charm the locks off the strongest coffer.—Naturalists' Magazine (about 1805). ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... the palace, Alcestis prepared herself for death. And first she washed her body with pure water from the river, and then she took from her coffer of cedar her fairest apparel, and adorned herself therewith. Then, being so arranged, she stood before the hearth and prayed, saying, "O Queen Here, behold! I depart this day. Do thou therefore keep my children, giving to this one a noble husband ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church

... kept, the one in the Church of St. Agueda at Burgos, where it is placed over the principal door, in the inside, and the other is in the Monastery of St. Pedro de Cardena, where it is hung up by two chains on the left of the dome; on the right, and opposite to this coffer, is the banner of the Cid, but the colour thereof cannot now be known, for length of time and the dampness of the Church have clean consumed it. In the middle is his shield hanging against the wall, covered with skin, but now so changed that no blazonry ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... the man had left off, and the ploughshare strikes against something hard in the ground, which turns out to be an iron ring in a marble slab. He pulls at the ring, and Maruf discovers a small room covered with gold, emeralds, rubies, and other precious stones. He also discovers a coffer of crystal, having a little box, containing a diamond in its entirety. Desirous of knowing what the box further contains, he finds a plain gold ring, with strange talismanic characters engraved thereon. Placing the ring on his finger, he is suddenly confronted by the Genii of ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... fashion, with which he decorated a corner of his studio, where the light danced upon the bas-reliefs and gave full lustre to a masterpiece of the sixteenth century artisans. He saw the necessity for a hiding-place, and in this coffer he had begun to accumulate a little store of money. With an artist's carelessness, he was in the habit of putting the sum he allowed for his monthly expenses in a skull, which stood on one of the compartments of the ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... case, coffer, carton, caddy, bandbox, casket, caisson; ciborium, pyx; binnacle; slap, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... death, but will forbid All violence; for he is not unwise Nor heedless, no—nor wilful to offend, But will his suppliant with much grace receive. 240 So spake the swift ambassadress, and went. Then, calling to his sons, he bade them bring His litter forth, and bind the coffer on, While to his fragrant chamber he repair'd Himself, with cedar lined and lofty-roof'd, 245 A treasury of wonders into which The Queen he summon'd, whom he thus bespake. Hecuba! the ambassadress of Jove Hath come, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... man-slaying, on the day when I slew Amphidamas' son, not willing it, in childish wrath over the dice. Then took me the knight Peleus into his house and reared me kindly and named me thy squire: so therefore let one coffer hide our bones [a golden coffer, two handled, thy ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... 324). And the Arabs tell of a soul put in the crop of a sparrow, and the sparrow in a little box, and this in another small box, and this put into seven other boxes, and these in seven chests, and the chest in a coffer of marble ("Golden 10 Bough," ii. 318). The notion, therefore, of a series of boxes, one enclosing another, and the whole guarded by dangerous animals, is well known as an element in tales. The late date is here shown by the largest and least precious of the boxes being of iron, which was rarely, ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... took from the coffer a written document, which he handed to his son, saying, "Herein you will learn how ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... this fair ladie took suspition that the King of Scotland should be in the companie, wherefore she passed to her coffer and took out his picture, which she had gotten out of Scotland by ane secret moyane, and as soon as she looked to the picture it made her know the King of Scotland incontinent where he stood among the rest of his companie, and past peartlie ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... the said abbot then came to the chamber of the said Richard Gyles, and put out thence all his friends and kinsfolk that kept him in his sickness; and then the said abbot set his brother and other of his servants to keep the sick man; and the night next coming after the said Richard Gyles's coffer was broken, and thence taken all that was in the same, to the value of forty marks; and long after the said abbot confessed, before the executors of the said Richard Gyles, that ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... plates and bars, and some other small wares of little value. They captured twelve pieces of artillery—eight heavy and excellent pieces of cast iron, and four small ones. Among other things captured, was found a small iron coffer which was kept in the after-cabin, and in which the admiral carried the papers and commissions which the prince of Orange had given him when he appointed him captain of that ship. One was in his own tongue and the other in ours, which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various

... small sums, neither in the keeping of account of such; but he that buyeth counteth up, and doubtless when the day of reckoning arrives, each cometh and casteth the money he oweth into the merchant's coffer, ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... is compelled to share. Against them her helpless anger breaks out in flashes of eloquent scorn. Homer was apparently acquainted with the myth of Helen's capture by Theseus, a myth illustrated in the decorations of the coffer of Cypselus. But we first see Helen, the cause of the war, when Menelaus and Paris are about to fight their duel for her sake, in the tenth year of the Leaguer (Iliad, iii. 121). Iris is sent to summon Helen to the walls. ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... Willie's ta'en the key of his coffer, And gi'en it to his man: 'Gae hame, and tell my mother dear My horse he has me slain; Bid her be kind to my young son, For ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick

... cunning artificer. Her curiosity in some measure getting the better of her fears, she ventured to touch one of these tempting heaps—not being sure but that her night visions were answerable for the illusion. She laid her hand on a hoard of bright nobles. Another and another succeeded, yet each coffer held some fresh denomination of coin. There were moneys of various nations, even to the Spanish pistole and Turkish bezant. Such exhaustless wealth it had never yet entered into her imagination to conceive—the very idea was too boundless even for fancy to present. "Surely," thought she, "I am in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... we applied the principle of the coffer-dam to the replacement of the copper around our delivery or blow-pipe, some three feet below water. The operation proved quite simple and easy of accomplishment. Getting ready for sea. The news of our "whereabouts" ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... the magic coffer stocked With convoluted runes Wherein thy very voice was locked And linked ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling

... great-grandfather put unbounded confidence in Yuditch. In those days landowners used to have money, but did not put it into the keeping of banks, they kept it themselves in chests, under their floors, and so on. Ivan Andreevitch kept all his money in a great wrought-iron coffer, which stood under the head of his bed. The key of this coffer was intrusted to Yuditch. Every evening as he went to bed Ivan Andreevitch used to bid him open the coffer in his presence, used to tap in turn each of the tightly filled bags ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... Loc made a sign to his treasurer who, raising heavy tapestries, disclosed an enormous iron-bound coffer covered with plates of open ironwork. This coffer being opened out poured thousands of rays of different and lovely tints, and each ray seemed to leap out of a precious stone most artistically cut. King Loc dipped in his hands and there flowed in glittering ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France

... and worshipped as a deity. But his brother Set (whom the Greeks called Typhon) with seventy-two others plotted against him. Having taken the measure of his good brother's body by stealth, the bad brother Typhon fashioned and highly decorated a coffer of the same size, and once when they were all drinking and making merry he brought in the coffer and jestingly promised to give it to the one whom it should fit exactly. Well, they all tried one after the other, but it fitted none ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... this armour, my son? Truly it is a goodly suit. My coffer is so low that I know not how I shall make ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... the coral banks also make an item in the blacks' bill of fare; while the frantic little fish hustled towards the shore are captured by the million in coffer-dams made of loosely twisted grass ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... the dead was well supplied, for coffins of every form stood up against the walls, from the simplest chest to the richly gilt and painted coffer, in form resembling a mummy. On wooden shelves lay endless rolls of coarse and fine linen, in which the limbs of the mummies were enveloped, and which were manufactured by the people of the embalming establishment under ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... JOHN, The truth, tell thou me! If there be no more but ten shillings, Not one penny that I see!" Little JOHN spread down his mantle Full fair upon the ground; And there he found, in the Knight's coffer, But even half a pound. Little JOHN let it lie full still, And went to his master full low. "What tidings, JOHN?" said ROBIN. "Sir, the Knight is true enow!" "Fill of the best wine!" said ROBIN, "The Knight shall begin! Much wonder thinketh me Thy clothing is so thin! Tell ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... were known and in the days when journeys were few, the leather-covered coffer contained the whole travelling outfit of perhaps some noble lord and his household. There were also large coffers covered with leather used as permanent receptacles of clothing, covered with ornamental embossed ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... coarse brown habit. The candles were on a kind of altar, and above it were two delectable figures, such as you would see at any English fair, representing the Holy Virgin, and Saint Joseph, as I suppose, bending in devotion over a wooden box, or coffer; ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... rich ornaments, besides as much, gold coin as might load an hundred mules, as was reported by the Bramins, to whom these things are best known. This treasure is said to have been hoarded up by twelve kings, his predecessors. In this treasury there is said to be a coffer three spans long and two broad, entirely full of precious stones ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... slowly and hesitatingly. "We might build a crib across the space still to be filled in, and make it serve the purposes of a coffer dam in some degree. By doing that, we can keep the work going, even if the overflow from the rivers comes upon us. But the building of the crib will take time, and we've no time to ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... behind me," He'll sing, nor hear her moan, "The tears they come to blind me As I sit here alone." What else had you to offer, Poor spendthrift of the town? Lay out your unlockt coffer— The ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... burglars made their way into the vestry of the chapel, where they found a large chest, strengthened with iron bands and closed with four locks. One of these locks they picked, and then, by levering up the corner, forced the other three. Inside was a small coffer, of walnut wood, also barred with iron, but fastened with only three locks, which were all comfortably picked by way of the keyhole. In the walnut coffer - a joyous sight by our thieves' lantern - were five hundred ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... died, and the whole city was afraid and knew not what to do, till while they were in counsel a voice came to them and bade them choose the youngest of the three strange Knights for their King. And they did so. After Galahad was proclaimed King, he ordered that a coffer of gold and precious stones should be made to encompass the table of silver, and every day he and the two Knights would kneel before it and ...
— The Book of Romance • Various

... are buried, according to the rank of the person, either within or without a morai: If the deceased was an earee, or chief, his skull is not buried with the rest of the bones, but is wrapped up in fine cloth, and put in a kind of box made for that purpose, which is also placed in the morai. This coffer is called ewharre no te orometua, the house of a teacher or master. After this the mourning ceases, except some of the women continue to be really afflicted for the loss, and in that case they will ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... serious injury, attempts were made to destroy them by fire-vessels or catamarans—which was the name given to a species of nautical infernal machine—though without much success. The catamaran consisted of a coffer of about 21 feet long and 3 and a half broad, somewhat in shape like a log of mahogany, wedge-shaped at each end. It was covered with thick planking, and lined with lead, thoroughly caulked and tarred, while over all was a coat of canvas, payed over with hot ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston

... gave gifts to Odysseus, and the gifts were brought to the palace and left by the side of the Queen. And Arete herself gave Odysseus a beautiful coffer with raiment and gold in it, and Alcinous, the King, gave him a beautiful ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum

... some six paces to the right, and tilted her gaze up at the coffer as though she would ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... preserved in it many venerable relics, which can be seen from without through two gratings that are in the front part; and among others there is the head of S. Donatus, Bishop and Protector of that city, and in a coffer of variegated marble, three braccia long, which I have had restored, are the bones of four Saints. And the predella of the altar, which surrounds it all right round in due proportion, has in front of it the tabernacle, or rather ciborium, of the Sacrament, made of carved wood ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari

... the boxes on board they again retired, and one of the men of the submarine, who seemed to be in command, and wore a mask, coolly weighed the glittering metal on the deck, returning each package, after weighing and inspection, to its coffer. The process was long and tedious; at ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... Cuckoldly knaue) I know him not: yet I wrong him to call him poore: They say the iealous wittolly-knaue hath masses of money, for the which his wife seemes to me well-fauourd: I will vse her as the key of the Cuckoldly-rogues Coffer, & ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... should be ransomed at the public charge, others, that the state should be put to no expense, but that they should not be prevented redeeming themselves at their own cost; and that those who had not the money at present should receive a loan from the public coffer, and security given to the people by their sureties and properties; Titus Manlius Torquatus, a man of primitive, and, as some considered, over-rigorous severity, being asked his opinion, is reported thus to have spoken: "Had the deputies confined themselves to making a request, in ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... pleased. Wherefore she willed me privily to prepare my selfe to see the same. And when midnight came she led me softly into a high chamber, and bid me look thorow the chink of a doore: where first I saw how shee put off all her garments, and took out of a certain coffer sundry kindes of Boxes, of the which she opened one, and tempered the ointment therein with her fingers, and then rubbed her body therewith from the sole of the foot to the crowne of the head, and when she had spoken privily with her selfe, having the candle ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... proprietors with the same liberality with which they treated all other men, allowed many of them to borrow upon this cash-account what they paid in upon all their subsequent instalments. Such payments, therefore, only put into one coffer what had the moment before been taken out of another. But had the coffers of this bank been filled ever so well, its excessive circulation must have emptied them faster than they could have been replenished by any other expedient but the ruinous one of drawing ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... Rallywood's interview with Selpdorf, three men lounged over their lunch. Any one of them, had he cared to take the regimental rolls from their brass-bound coffer in the ante-room, could have read his own name repeating itself down the columns as generation after generation lived through its identical life in the same surroundings, and died, most of them going to the devil with a fine inherited pride and ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... had embroidered all the flowers and berries in their seasons, from the first small violets blue and white to the last spindle-berries with their orange hearts splitting their rosy rinds. And there was nothing else under each roof but a round beech-stump for a stool, and a coffer of carved oak with metal locks, and a low mattress stuffed with lamb's-fleece picked from the thorns, and pillows filled with thistledown; and each couch had a green covering worked with waterlily leaves and white and golden lilies. ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... will not do, for my money is there," returned the marquise, pointing out the coffer to the superintendent, and showing him, as she opened it, the bundles of notes and heaps of gold. Fouquet, who had risen from his seat at the same moment as Madame de Belliere, remained for a moment plunged ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... * A coffer of great richness In a pillar's heart they found, Within it lay new banners, With figures ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... discovered his treasure. After this he forgets it; for four whole acts there is not a word about it, and the spectator drops, as it were, from the clouds when the servant all at once brings in the stolen coffer; for we have no information as to the way in which he fell upon the treasure which had been so carefully concealed. Now this is really to begin again, not truly to work out. But Plautus has here shown a great deal of ingenuity: the excessive anxiety of the old man for his pot of gold, and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... large, irregular entrance hall with a sweep of stairs facing her. On the left was a high Gothic chimney-piece of grey stone, the fireplace banked with azaleas, flame-coloured and rose. There were a few tall Stuart chairs and a carved oak coffer. The long windows were curtained with old needlework. She followed the butler up the carpeted stairs and from a broad upper hall along a passage towards the back of the house, meeting no one on the ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... of the Cordeliers that this miracle occurred. The crowd rushed there. It was much that the Virgin should weep; but a rumor spread at the same time that brought the excitement to a climax. A large coffer, tightly sealed, had been carried through the city; this chest had excited the curiosity of all Avignon. What did it contain? Two hours later it was no longer a coffer; but eighteen trunks had been seen going toward the Rhone. As for their contents, a porter had revealed that; ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... of 58 feet and two of 55 feet span each. The Severn at that point is deep and narrow, and its bed and banks are of alluvial earth. It was necessary to make the foundations very secure, as the river is subject to high floods; and this was effectuality accomplished by means of coffer-dams. The building was substantially executed in red sandstone, and proved a very serviceable bridge, forming part of the great high road from Shrewsbury into Wales. It was finished ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... name applied also to a leather-covered case or small coffer. Cotgrave translates bougette "a little coffer or trunk ... covered with leather." It became a common word for a despatch box in which official papers were kept. The chancellor of the exchequer thus was said to "open his budget" when he made ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... A breathless silence greeted this act. Every whisper was hushed, every straining glance was fixed upon that mysterious coffer. He seated himself before it, and Professor Barth whispered, "Now he is about to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... procession sing her endlesse prayse. A statelyer Pyramis to her Ile reare, Then Rhodophe's or Memphis euer was. In memorie of her, when she is dead, Her Ashes, in an Vrne more precious Then the rich-iewel'd Coffer of Darius, Transported, shall be at high Festiuals Before the Kings and Queenes of France. No longer on Saint Dennis will we cry, But Ioane de Puzel shall be France's Saint. Come in, and let vs Banquet Royally, After ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... expression was greedy self-confidence. One of His Excellency's Peacekeepers presided over the exchange. Coldly he extracted a fiftyweight from the pile and folded it into the signed and completed wager-contract. For his own coffer he extracted a fiveweight and slipped it ...
— History Repeats • George Oliver Smith

... the hanging chain, which did not come closer to the ground than some eight or ten feet, was a huge tomb in the shape of a rectangular coffer or sarcophagus. It was open, save for a huge sheet of thick glass which rested above it on two thick balks of dark oak, cut to exceeding smoothness, which lay across it, one at either end. On the far side from where I stood each of these was joined to another oak ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... bright from always being carried about with him, and contrasting oddly with the rusty lock into which he thrust it. It turned with difficulty in his nervous fingers, and he raised the heavy lid. The coffer was full of packages wrapped in brown paper. He removed one after another till he came to a wooden case which filled the whole length and breadth of the safe. He lifted it out carefully and laid it on the end of the bench. The cover was fastened down by screws, ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... they could look in the cargo holds of the ship that had brought it across five hundred light-years of space. Ingots of gold and platinum and gadolinium. Furs and biochemicals and brandy. Perfumes that defied synthetic imitation; hardwoods no plastic could copy. Spices. And the steel coffer full of sunstones. Almost all luxury goods, the only really dependable commodities in ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... thee, lady, together with water cool, sweet-perfumed essences, unguents and other nice, lady-like toys. Moreover, there be mirrors two of Venice and in pretty coffer—" But Yolande ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... inheritance. Bethinking him of the avarice of his father, he had made up his mind to routing out no end of wealth; for as to the old man's continual complaints and grumblings, he had always looked upon them as so much flummery. To his great astonishment and dismay, however, he found every chest and coffer empty. Money-bags there were in plenty; but torn and moneyless, and the very little ready cash that remained in the house was by no means sufficient to satisfy the disappointed lawyers, whose bills, drawn out respectively to the loss which they had suffered through the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... exceedingly and climbed to the top of the tree, which was a lofty; whence they gazed to see what might be the matter. And behold, it was a Jinni,[FN12] huge of height and burly of breast and bulk, broad of brow and black of blee, bearing on his head a coffer of crystal. He strode to land, wading through the deep, and coming to the tree whereupon were the two Kings, seated himself beneath it. He then set down the coffer on its bottom and out it drew a casket, with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... he would have seen the danger, but, all he realised was that the table came along more and more easily, and then in the black darkness there was a loud crash, the coffer placed upon the table had, consequent upon its being inclined, glided slowly over the polished surface, till it was right beyond the edge, and then it was but a matter of moments before it overbalanced ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... preparation of the mine which had blown up Darnley, and whom Bothwell had, met on entering the garden at Kirk of Field. Not only did Balfour deliver Edinburgh Castle into the hands of the Confederates, but he also gave them a little silver coffer of which the cipher, an "F" crowned, showed that it had belonged to Francis II; and in fact it was a gift from her first husband, which the queen had presented to Bothwell. Balfour stated that this coffer contained precious papers, which in the present circumstances might be of great use to Mary's ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... and low And with timid step I go— For with load of love o'er laden I enquire of every maiden, "Will you wed me, little lady? Will you share my cottage shady?" Little lady answers "No! Thank you for your kindly proffer— Good your heart, and full your coffer; Yet I must decline your offer— I'm engaged to So-and-so!" So-and-so! So-and-so! (flageolet solo) She's engaged to So-and-so! What a rogue young hearts to pillage; What a worker on Love's tillage! Every maiden in the village Is engage ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... bandboxes she has had most of her life." Then she added, half taking pity on my real thought, "Those things were THERE." And she pointed to a small, low trunk which stood under a sofa where there was just room for it. It appeared to be a queer, superannuated coffer, of painted wood, with elaborate handles and shriveled straps and with the color (it had last been endued with a coat of light green) much rubbed off. It evidently had traveled with Juliana in the olden time—in the days of her adventures, which it had shared. It ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James

... socket, bag, sac, sack, saccule, wallet, cardcase, scrip, poke, knit, knapsack, haversack, sachel, satchel, reticule, budget, net; ditty bag, ditty box; housewife, hussif; saddlebags; portfolio; quiver &c (magazine) 636. chest, box, coffer, caddy, case, casket, pyx, pix, caisson, desk, bureau, reliquary; trunk, portmanteau, band-box, valise; grip, grip sack [U.S.]; skippet, vasculum; boot, imperial; vache; cage, manger, rack. vessel, vase, bushel, barrel; canister, jar; pottle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... and Prometheus. In consequence of this quarrel Hephaestus fashioned a woman out of earth and water, and gave her to Epimetheus, the brother of the Titan. Prometheus had forbidden his brother to accept any gift from the gods, but the bride was welcomed nevertheless. She brought her tabooed coffer: this was opened; and men—who, according to Hesiod, had hitherto lived exempt from 'maladies that bring down Fate'—were overwhelmed with the 'diseases that stalk abroad by night and day.' Now, in Hesiod (Works and Days, 70-100) there is nothing said ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... take one Man turned Tailor To keep a Cat in Tails, until she die? [CHEAT-THE-DEVIL looks subdued; the children whirl about. But here's no game for Jan.—Stay! Something else.— [He runs to a wooden coffer, rear, and takes out a long crystal on the end of a string, with a glance at the shaft of sunlight from the roof. The ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody

... women to their rooms—ordering a variety of disinfecting measures in which Martial science excelled while they were needed there—I opened the door of the death chamber to those who carried in a coffer hollowed out of a dark, exceedingly dense natural stone, and half-filled with a liquid of enormous destructive power. Then I lifted tenderly the lifeless form, laid it on cushions arranged therein, kissed the lips, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... its master all his pleasure and his life, too. For many a man is slain for his riches. And some keep their riches as a thing pleasant and commodious for their life, take none other pleasure of it in all their life than as though they bore the key of another man's coffer. For they are content to live miserably in neediness all their days, rather than to find it in their heart to diminish their hoard, they have such a fancy to look thereon. Yea, and some men, for fear lest thieves should steal it from them, are their own thieves and steal it from themselves. ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... him a tapestry on the walls with a gray ground sprinkled with violets, a little coffer of ebony, an antique mirror, an immense and very old arm chair also in ebony and covered with tapestry, a table with twisted legs, a pretty carpet on the floor, near the table a single chair; and that was all. On the table, however, were flowers and embroidery; ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Coffer" :   lacuna, caisson, panel, chest



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