"Coffin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the turnkey's daughter begged him to write his name in her album, where a many gentlemen had written it on like occasions! "Bother your album!" says Bulbo. The Undertaker came and measured him for the handsomest coffin which money could buy: even this didn't console Bulbo. The Cook brought him dishes which he once used to like; but he wouldn't touch them: he sat down and began writing an adieu to Angelica, as the clock kept ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... day of the funeral I was summoned to Guttorm's tent to help to put him into his coffin, which had been made for him after the pattern of the coffins used in that part of the country. When I entered I found the nephew standing by the side of the coffin, and the old Sea-king himself sitting ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... rather meaningless without a learned companion. But the perfect little sepulchral chambers of the Pancratii, disinterred beneath the church, tell their own tale— in their hardly dimmed frescoes, their beautiful sculptured coffin and great sepulchral slab. Better still the tomb of the Valerii adjoining it—a single chamber with an arched roof, covered with stucco mouldings perfectly intact, exquisite figures and arabesques as sharp ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Crucifix followed the seven condemned; and, as the greatest criminal, Amine walked the last. But the procession did not close here. Behind Amine were five effigies, raised high on poles, clothed in the same dresses, painted with flames and demons. Behind each effigy was borne a coffin, containing a skeleton; the effigies were of those who had died in their dungeon, or expired under the torture, and who had been tried and condemned after their death, and sentenced to be burnt. These ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... an invalid mother. I knew the man well, and he was always scheming what to do for his family when he got back: but this is the end of it!" That dead soldier was merely a private. Not one of his own particular comrades was present, but only the necessary fatigue party. No flag was flung over his coffin, no bugle sounded "the last post." No tear was shed. It was only a commonplace "casualty," one among thousands. But it was a tragedy all the same. These tragedies in humble life seldom find a trumpeter; but they are none the less terrible on that account; and if half the truth were known and realised ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... about his coffin was a far more eloquent eulogy than any that man could utter. There were the rich men whom he had served faithfully for years; the poor old women whom he cherished with his little store, in memory of his mother; ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... uninjured; nothing was found but a table and one stove; all gone. Books, papers, clothes, everything; but there in the blackened ruin lay distinctly the charred frame of little Robbie. Mr. Thorn went for Dr. Holden and a coffin, and the remains were brought to Mr. Elliott. Dear little fellow, he was the most prepared of any of the little ones to go. This is such a comfort ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... after this Lumawig decided to go back to the sky to live, but before he went he took care that his wife should have a home. He made a coffin of wood [103] and placed her in it with a dog at her feet and a cock at her head. And as he set it floating on the water, [104] he told it not to stop until it reached Tinglayen. Then, if the foot end struck first, the dog should bark; and if the head end was the first to strike, the cock should ...
— Philippine Folk Tales • Mabel Cook Cole
... could consider as being at all up to date was the clock. Not its face—that was old-timey enough with its sun, moon and stars in blue and gold, and the name of the Liverpool maker engraved on its enamel; nor its hands, fiddle-shaped and stiff, nor its case, which always reminded me of a coffin set up on end awaiting burial—but its strike. Whatever divergences the Exeter allowed itself in its youth, or whatever latitude or longitude it had given its depositors, and that, we may be sure, was precious little so long as that Board of Directors was alive, there ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... pyramid of Khufu, a Pharaoh of the fourth dynasty, I chanced upon a sarcophagus of red granite in a forgotten chamber. My joy was great, for I thought that I had found a royal mummy, but what was my disappointment on opening the coffin, at the cost of infinite labor, to find nothing more than this box, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... of his burial is again marked by miracles. Rich men vied with each other in making funeral offerings. One gave him a magnificent stone coffin, but this man had been a usurer. Usury was a sin abhorred by Saint Bernard, and the people found that no force or persuasion could place his body within this coffin. So another tomb, less pretentious, but more worthy, was found. At the end Bernard's remains were divided ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... by a crash and a multitudinous splintering of glass. The living form dropped on to one of the settees, rebounding like a football from its powerful springs. There was a hole as big as a coffin in the window. The living form collected itself, and then jumped wildly through that hole into ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... defend me;—if such be the duties and the tests of a husband,—oh! then indeed I have never had one! Widowed did you say? That means something holy,—sanctified by the shadow of death, and the yearning sympathy and pity of the world; a widow has the right to hug a coffin and a grave all the weary days of her lonely life, and people look tenderly on her sacred weeds. To me, widowhood would be indeed a blessing, Sir, I thought I had learned composure, self-control, but the sight of this room,—of your countenance,—even the strong ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... desk strewn with papers in some confusion; for Professor Anstice was fond of bringing his writing from the study on the upper floor to Winifred's domain. The piano occupied the opposite side of the room, the coffin-like gloom of its polished rosewood enlivened by a tall vase brilliant now with the chrysanthemums which autumn had brought. A shaded lamp glowed on a table loaded with books and drawn cosily to the side of a deep couch, and on the other side of the fire, which shot out little ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... how I knew it was my dear, dear mother's coffin that they went to look at. I had never heard one making; I had never seen one that I know of.—but it came into my mind what the noise was, while it was going on; and when the young man entered, I am sure I knew what he ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... it? There are times it seems a dream, An evil dream sent by an evil god, And then I see the dead face in the coffin And know it is no dream, but that my hand Is red with blood, and that my desperate soul Striving to find some haven for its love From the wild tempest of this raging world, Has wrecked its bark upon the rocks of sin. What was ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... way lay past Monsieur Revel's door; and it happened to be at the very time that the funeral (an affair of hurry in that climate) was about to take place. At the sight, L'Ouverture stopped, opposite the door. When the coffin was brought out, he took off his hat, and remained uncovered till it moved on, when he turned his horse, and followed the train to the corner of the street. There were many present who saw his face, and by whom its expression of deep ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... dismal enough time for the inmates. Richard did all a brave boy can do to comfort his mother and sisters, but he himself needed consolation fully as much as any of them. He had thought much of his father, and the cold form lying in the draped coffin in the parlor sent a chill through his heart that would have an ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... with the desperate energy of brutes. They fought with each other to have a shot at him, filed off in front of the corpse, and kept on firing at him, as people at a funeral keep sprinkling holy water in front of a coffin. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... journals of the last forty years we run across such entries as these:—"Wyllie at the forge," "Wyllie making nails," "Wyllie straightening the fowling-pieces," "Wyllie making sled-runners," "This day Wyllie made a coffin for an Indian." We step into the old man's smithy, and he turns to greet us with an outstretched hand and a "Good mornin'," in richest Doric. The date 1863 cut into the wooden foundation of his forge marks the year when Wyllie came to Chipewyan. He was ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... they lamented him as severely as if every man had lost his own father; and the concourse of strangers to Rome, to pay the last tribute of respect to his remains, was exceedingly great. Numa had forbidden the Romans to burn his body; they therefore put it into a stone coffin, and, according to his own orders, buried the greatest part of the books he had written, in the same sepulchre with himself. He had made a law, forbidding that any dead body should be buried within the city, and had, himself, ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... tried fresh ground, having exhausted the former field. Again he found the Dendrobiums, of better quality and in greater number than before. But they were growing among bones and skeletons, in the graveyard of the natives. Those people lay their dead in a slight coffin, which they place upon the rocks just above high tide, a situation which the Dendrobes love. Mr. Micholitz required all his tact and all his most attractive presents before he could persuade the Papuans ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... first thing that will be done for him after he gets what he's entitled to," Jim replied, "will be the sending of his measure to a coffin maker." ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... their owner, be restored to their former state in the new world. Sometimes they are put in upright boxes like sentry-boxes—sometimes in small enclosures—but usually kept neat, and those of the chiefs frequently painted. Mount Coffin, at the mouth of the Cowelitz, seems to have been appropriated to the burial of persons of importance; it is about seven hundred feet high, and quite isolated: on it were to be seen the canoe-coffins of the natives in every stage of decay; they were hung between the trees ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... Life is short, opportunities of knowledge rare; our senses are fallacious, our reasonings uncertain, mankind therefore struggles with perpetual error from the cradle to the coffin. He is necessitated to correct experiment by analogy, and analogy by experiment; and not always to rest satisfied in the belief of facts even with this two-fold testimony, till future opportunities, or the observations of others, concur in ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... bequests, proportioned to the length of their services. For his body, he desired it to be buried in the vault of his ancestors without pomp, but without a pretence to a humility which he had not manifested in life; and he requested that a small miniature in his writing-desk should be placed in his coffin. That last injunction was more than a sentiment,—it bespoke the moral conviction of the happiness the original might have conferred on his life. Of that happiness his pride had deprived him; nor did he repent, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to be noted that he said not one word of contrition nor of regret for the man whose funeral services were then going on, nor for the heartbroken wife who knelt at that coffin. His words found no echo against that grim wall of steel. Again ensued a wait, apparently inexplicable. Across the intervening housetops the sound of the oration ceased. At the door of the church a slight commotion was visible. The coffin was being carried out. It was placed in the hearse. Every ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... to make himself known as the author of "Waverley." Closely upon this followed the death of his wife, his thirty years' companion. "I have been to her room," he wrote in May, 1826; "there was no voice in it—no stirring; the pressure of the coffin was visible on the bed, but it had been removed elsewhere; all was neat as she loved it, but all was calm—calm as death. I remembered the last sight of her: she raised herself in bed, and tried to turn her eyes after me, and said with a sort of smile, 'You have all such melancholy faces.' ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... hurtfuller than this, My brother having brought unto a grave That murder'd body whom he call'd his wife, And spent so many tears upon her hearse, As would have made a tyrant to relent; Then, kneeling at her coffin, this he vow'd From thence he never ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Lee,—a distant connection of the Lightfoots,—not the Hampshire Lightfoots, but the Fauquier Lightfoots,—who had distinctly appeared to the old gentleman for several nights, robed in black, and carrying a coffin under his arm. Since I had mentioned his name, he recalled the circumstance, and hoped that Jeems Lightfoot had not disgraced his ancestry. Nevertheless, the deaf gentleman was not to be understood as expressing ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... stanch old Walter Hamilton, and the ever-ready Fraser Tytler; and the "boy Harry" to whom the campaign had brought the gain of fame and the loss of a father; and the devoted Harwood with "his heart in the coffin there with Caesar;" and the heroic William Peel; and that "colossal red Celt," the noble, ill-fated Adrian Hope, sacrificed afterwards to incompetent obstinacy. Behind stood in a wide circle the soldiers of the Ross-shire Buffs and the "Blue Caps" who had served the dead chief so ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... point which runs with dreadful shoals far into the sea, from the mouth of Clarendon river in North Carolina. Sullivan's Island and the Coffin land are the marks of the entry into Charlestown harbor. Hilton head, upon French's island, shows the entry into Port Royal; and the point of Tybee island makes the entry of the Savannah river. Upon ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... respect to the essential points of religion, they are quite careless and ignorant; if they believe in a future state they dread it not, and if they manifest when dying any anxiety, it is not for the soul, but the body: a handsome coffin, and a grave in a quiet country churchyard, are invariably the objects of their last thoughts; and it is probable that, in their observance of the rite of baptism, they are principally influenced by a desire ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... neared the ruins of what had once been a little town-hall or meeting-place, a procession turned the corner—a procession of a peasant with a tall lighted candle, another peasant with a tattered banner, a priest in soiled silk, a coffin of white wood on a haycart, and four or five white-faced and apathetic women. A doleful singing came from the miserable party. They did not look at us ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... partly because her mind is poisoned by false insinuations, sends, after transports of maternal and other rage, a message to Cyrus to the effect that if he does not put himself unreservedly in her hands, she will send him back Mandane dead, in the coffin of Spargapises. And so the last double-volume but one ends with a suitable "fourth act" curtain, as we may ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... out of the house, and did not see Valmai again until on Monday he met the funeral in the churchyard. Valmai, to the horror of Nance and her friends, wore her usual white dress. She had a bunch of white jessamine in her hand, and, as the little coffin disappeared from sight, she showered the flowers upon it. Nance was too infirm to accompany her, so that she stood alone beside the grave, although surrounded by the fisher folk of the island. She sobbed bitterly as she heard the heavy clods fall ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... man vigorous in his octogenarianism, a power, though out of power, a figure to be a monument in personal history, a great man. But a few years ago the whole world stood with bowed head while into the soil he loved was lowered the coffin of one who has bound the nations together in sympathy for Les Miserables of the earth. In a home on the continent broods watchfully a bald-headed giant in cavalry boots, one who has dictated arbitrarily, as premier, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... coveted cart had been prepared for the purpose; that the time of departure could be arranged so that he should reach London Bridge at dusk, and proceed through the City after the day had closed in; that people would be ready at his journey's end to place the coffin in a vault without a minute's delay; that officious inquirers in the streets would be easily repelled by the tale that he was carrying for interment the corpse of one who had died of the plague; and in short showed him every reason why he should succeed, and none why he should fail. After ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... more than take care of his sheep. One day, when my little girl was playing in the street, he said to me, 'Have a care of Maruschka, smith!' and three days later the child was dead. The evening before Red Betty was murdered he saw her in a vision lying in a coffin in front of her door. He told it to the sexton, whom he met in the fields; and next morning they found Betty dead. And there are many more things that I could tell you, but what's the use; when a man won't believe it's only lost talk to try to make him. ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... edged her way along, until she came to the steps leading to the side gallery, which she ascended, and happily obtained a place where she had a full view of all that was passing below. On a plain catafalque, covered with black velvet, in front of the sanctuary and altar, rested a coffin. It was made of pine, and painted white. A few white lilies and evergreens were scattered among the lights which burned around it; and May knew that some young virgin had gone to her espousals in the kingdom of ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... graves in Cracow was personally not uninteresting, indeed a fine study, and his rigmaroles brought up infallibly upon three words which I could not fail to notice: these were "silberner Sarg vergoldet" (silver coffin, gilded). It had an odd fascination for me this phrase, as I stood always waiting for it; why, I wondered, should anybody want to gild a good solid ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... service, very appropriate and very impressive, while the whole of the First division was being formed in two parallel lines facing each other, and about eighty paces apart. The service over, a regiment of heavy artillery came to act as escort. The remains, inclosed in a rude coffin, wrapped in the flag under which he had so often fought, were placed in an ambulance, and the funeral cortege began its slow march through the long lines of sunbrowned veterans who stood on either side. First in the procession was the escort, the muskets of the men reversed, preceded by a band ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... over-exerted himself in the relief of the suffering poor, and fell a victim—one of the last—to the pestilence which had carried off so many. Two days later he lay in his coffin. ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... guardedly to his parents, "There is ample cause to beware." "Look you, my young friend," he added to Rameau, "mere brain-work seldom kills a man once accustomed to it like you; but heart-work, and stomach-work, and nerve-work, added to brain-work, may soon consign to the coffin a frame ten times more robust than yours. Write as much as you will—that is your vocation; but it is not your vocation to drink absinthe—to preside at orgies in the Maison Doree. Regulate yourself, and not ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the parsonage were closed, there was crape on the door. Betty turned the knob and entered. A number of people were in a room on the right of the hall. At the head of the room, barely out-lined in the heavy shadows, was a coffin on its trestle. ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... so blamed funny after all," he said quietly. "A Chinese coffin-ship from 'Frisco would be hilarious compared with this trip," rapped a sarcastic voice from behind ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... really believes that supernatural agencies were brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin. For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain that Dr. Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations. But reason it out for yourself and see if we arrive at any common center. Don't work so much upon the datum of the green mist, but keep ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Deever, they are marchin' of 'im round, They 'ave 'alted Danny Deever by 'is coffin on the ground; An' 'e'll swing in 'arf a minute for a sneakin' shootin' hound— O they're hangin' Danny ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... was on the floor hard by, and both were hugging a greasy stove. The little girl was with her mother in the bed, both almost out of sight under a heap of quilts. The baby was in a cradle, with its face uncovered, whether dead or asleep Grayson could not tell. A pine coffin was behind the door. It would not have been possible to add to the disorder of the room, and the atmosphere made Grayson gasp. He came out looking white. The first man to arrive thereafter took away the eldest boy, ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... which gradually crept into her intercourse with him. London rang with them. At one time he pretended to a strange passion for death; prayed to a skull which grinned in a shrine raised for it in his dressing-room; lay down each day in a coffin, and asked Winifred to close it and scatter earth upon the lid, that he might realize the end towards which we journey. He talked of silence, long and loudly—an irony which Winifred duly noted—sneered at the fleeting phantoms in the show of existence, called the sobbing of women, the laughter ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... sun glanced from its lubricated scales; while it rose and fell in wavy undulations as it moved. It moved slowly—by vertical sinuosities, almost in a direct line, with its head slightly raised from the grass. At intervals, it stopped—elevated its neck— lowered its flat coffin-shaped head, like a feeding swan—gently oscillated it in a horizontal direction—touched the crisp leaves with its red tongue, as though it was feeling for a trail—and then moved on again. In its frequent pauses, as it lay stretched ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... her lamp, and by the light of it Tua saw that they were in a great cave painted with figures of the gods which had on either side of it recesses. In each of these was set a coffin with a gilded face, and behind it an alabaster statue of her who lay therein, and in front of it a table of offerings. At the head of the crypt stood a small altar of black stone, for the ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... were come to the house, Adolphus slipped from his aunt, and rushed into the room where his father lay in his coffin, surrounded by his weeping neighbours: he threw himself on the breathless body of his dear papa. After lying some little time in that state, without being able to speak, he at last raised his little head, and cried out, "See how ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... France,' said Rachel, in a cold strange tone, 'and make chaplets of them to lay upon the coffin-lids ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... "gentlemen both. I ain't askin' for your help, and, as far as I can see, neither is Peachey. I mean it. Gentlemen, a mule is a most onsafe critter. Even when you go to his funeral, you'll do well to sit at the head of the coffin." ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... that she held. Subject to apoplexy, Sommers judged; but his thoughts passed over her as well as Miss M'Gann, who stood with downcast eyes ostentatiously close to Mrs. Preston, and the grave old dentist standing at the foot of the coffin, and the clergyman whose young voice had not lost its thrill of awe in the presence of death. He had no eyes for aught but the woman, who was bound to him by firmer ties than those whose dissolution the clergyman was recording. She stood serene, with head raised above theirs, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... originally volunteered, had quit our army and joined that of the Yankees, and was captured with Prentiss' Yankee brigade at Shiloh. He was being hauled to the place of execution in a wagon, sitting on an old gun box, which was to be his coffin. When they got to the grave, which had been dug the day before, the water had risen in it, and a soldier was baling it out. Rowland spoke up and said, "Please hand me a drink of that water, as I want to drink out of my own grave so the boys will talk about it when I am dead, and remember ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... had happened when Dick was a child at Dublin, not quite five years of age. "That was the first sensation of grief," Dick said, "I ever knew. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping beside it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin, and calling Papa; on which my mother caught me in her arms, and told me in a flood of tears Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again. And this," said Dick kindly, "has ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... found an interesting item on page two hundred seventy-six of the Senate Report of the Forty-fifth Congress. Mr. Coffin, statistician, was testifying as an expert on the value of patents to the people. Mr. Coffin says, "My estimate is that for a single year, if all of the farmers in the United States had used the Oliver Chilled Plows, instead of the regular steel or iron plow, the saving ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... the sight of a rude pine coffin directly before him; but recovering himself instantly, stooped to read a label affixed to ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... increase of spider-tables, that interferes with rectilinear progression. An harp mounted on a sounding-board, which is a stumbling-block to the feet of the short-sighted, is, I concede, an absolute necessity; and a piano-forte, like a coffin, should occupy the centre even of the smallest given drawing-room—"the court awards it, and the law doth give it,"—but why multiply footstools, till there is no taking a single step in safety? An Indian cabinet also, or a buhl armoire, are, either, or both of them, very fit and becoming; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... worshipper in the church—was being borne within its walls, preceded by the surpliced choir, chanting the service, in tones which still echo in the ears of those who heard them. All rose silently, with moistened eyes, and beating hearts, as they beheld, slowly borne through the aisle, the coffin which contained the prematurely dead—him whose figure, erect and graceful in forensic robes, and dignified in gesture, had so recently stood among them, their cheerful and gifted associate in the anxious business of life—from whose lips, now closed for ever, had but lately issued that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... troop and the majority of the other Sioux there, asked that Sitting Bull be not buried in this cemetery. His medicine had been bad. Therefore this same morning he was buried, wrapped in canvas in a neat coffin, in the military cemetery near ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... not only in material wealth, but in culture and refinement as well. The latter church in particular was the object of veneration of the patrons of America's only Saint, the beneficent Pedro Claver, whose whitened bones now repose in a wonderful glass coffin bound with strips of gold beneath its magnificent marble altar. In the central plaza of the city still stands the building erected to house the Holy Inquisition, so well preserved that it yet serves as a dwelling. Adjacent to it, and lining the plaza, are spacious colonial edifices, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... a worm upon the ground, and told, in a whisper, that its touch was death. Presently a great green serpent, vivid as the grass in spring, wound rapidly across the path; and once again I paused and looked back at my companion with a horror in my eyes. "The coffin snake," said I, "the snake that dogs its victim ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hearse came, Eugene had the coffin carried into the house again, unscrewed the lid, and reverently laid on the old man's breast the token that recalled the days when Delphine and Anastasie were innocent little maidens, before they began "to think for themselves," as he had ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... i' thi shroud an thi coffin, Ligging alone in this poor wretched room; Just thi white hands crossed ower thi bosom, Waiting for t'angels to ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... four days, when, not finding any insects and very few new birds, I returned to Coupang to await the next mail steamer. On the way I had a narrow escape of being swamped. The deep coffin-like boat was filled up with my baggage, and with vegetables, cocoa-nut and other fruit for Coupang market, and when we had got some way across into a rather rough sea, we found that a quantity of water was coming in which we had no means of baling out. This caused us to sink deeper in the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... at once with the pestilence. Friends and relatives, when they met one another in the streets, would hurry onward without a grasp of the hand or scarcely a word of greeting, lest they should catch or communicate the contagion; and often a coffin was ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Laghman Valley, have made the traffic in arms their especial business. Their thieves are the most daring and their agents the most cunning. Some of their methods are highly ingenious. One story is worth repeating. A coffin was presented for railway transport. The relatives of the deceased accompanied it. The dead man, they said, had desired to be buried across the frontier. The smell proclaimed the corpse to be in an advanced state of decomposition. ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... symmetrical designs, lozenges, quadrilles, palm leaves, and lines of hieroglyphs. The cover was opened, and Rumphius, who was bending over the sarcophagus, uttered a cry of surprise when he discovered the contents of the coffin, having recognised the sex of the mummy by the absence of the Osiris beard and the shape of the cartonnage. The Greek himself appeared amazed. His long experience in excavations enabled him to understand the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... in his Journal, a plan to this effect, contrived by Heywood, Stewart, and himself, but observes, 'it was a foolish attempt, as, had we met with bad weather, our crazy boat would certainly have made us a coffin.' ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... Ulrich's coffin reverently, and the young men carried it into the village and laid it in the churchyard that it might always be among them. They reared above him what in their eyes was a grand ...
— The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl • Jerome K. Jerome
... by four young men, comrades whom Athanase had liked the best. A few friends of Madame Granson, women dressed in black, and veiled, were present; and half a dozen other young men who had been somewhat intimate with this lost genius. Four torches flickered on the coffin, which was covered with crape. The rector, assisted by one discreet choirboy, said the mortuary mass. Then the body of the suicide was noiselessly carried to a corner of the cemetery, where a black wooden cross, without inscription, was all that indicated its place hereafter to the ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... of the die-sinking trade, is that for making patterns in brass, mixed metal, and iron in curtain bands, pins, lamp pillars, cornices, coffin furniture, and all articles in which stamping has superseded the more ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... trifling occurrence of daily life. A pin on the ground which was not picked up at the very instant it was perceived, meant terrible ill-luck to Mrs. Twitt,—if a cat sneezed, it was a sign that there was going to be sickness in the village,—and she always carried in her pocket "a bit of coffin" to keep away the cramp. She also had a limitless faith in the power of cursing, and she believed most implicitly in the fiendish abilities of a certain person, (whether male or female, she did not explain) whose address she gave vaguely as, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... instructed them in various useful arts. Unfortunately, he had a wicked brother, called Set or Sutekh, who hated him for his goodness, and resolved to compass his death. This he effected after a while, and, having placed the body in a coffin, he threw it into the Nile, whence it floated down to the sea. Isis, the sister and widow of Osiris, together with her sister Nephthys, vainly sought for a long time her lord's remains, but at last found them on the Syrian shore at Byblus, where they had been cast up by the waves. ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... procession. First came many banners and symbols of the Greek Church, carried by church officials; then followed the casket borne by men, the casket open and the pale face of the dead exposed to the gaze of the onlookers; a man came next carrying the lid of the coffin filled with flowers; then priests in black robes, men and women in black, and girls in white holding wreaths and flowers. The people along the way removed their hats and crossed themselves, muttering prayers ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... that afternoon, assembled a medley of people, among whom the Quakers were most eminent for number; and within the house a controversy Was whether the ceremony of a hearse-cloth should be cast over his coffin; but, the major part, being Quakers, not assenting, the coffin was about five o'clock in the evening brought forth into the street. At its coming out, there stood a man on purpose to cast a velvet hearse-cloth ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Albany schoolmaster. Sturgeon magnanimously said: "Professor Henry has been enabled to produce a magnetic force which totally eclipses every other in the whole annals of magnetism; and no parallel is to be found since the miraculous suspension of the celebrated Oriental imposter in his iron coffin."* ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... mistress of the house, with an air of authority, carried away two of them, an act which her mother resented with tears. The penitent daughter, in a mood like that which prompted Johnson to stand in the Uttoxeter market-place, left in her will that the candles were to be preserved and lit about her coffin, round which, nearly thirty years later, they were found burning. Carlyle has recorded their last sight of his mother-in-law in a few of his many graphic touches. It was at Dumfries in 1841, where she had brought Jane down from Templand ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... a large aumbry, and a very perfect stone coffin which was dug up in the south ambulatory near the Trinity Chapel. The metallic sound given forth by the coffin when tapped seems to be of more interest than anything else to the ordinary visitor. Various interesting fragments of stonework are in the chapel, one ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... the poop of the Basilisk, and both the crew on the deck and the galley-slaves in the outriggers at either side lay dead in rows under the overwhelming shower from above. From stem to rudder every foot of her was furred with arrows. It was but a floating coffin piled with dead and dying men, which wallowed in the waves behind them as the Basilisk lurched onward and left ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... now-deserted 'boudoir' of the departed Marks, that we might 'lay the matter before the Lord'. We did so, kneeling side by side, with our backs to the window and our foreheads pressed upon the horsehair cover of the small, coffin-like sofa. My Father prayed aloud, with great fervour, that it might be revealed to me, by the voice of God, whether it was or was not the Lord's will that I should attend the Browns' party. My ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... the world. You have seen what the atonement, and regeneration, and sanctification, and providence, and grace, have done for it, and with what accumulated love the Father of Spirits, and Redeemer, and Sanctifier, must regard it. And now do we suppose that the shroud, and coffin, and the funeral, and the narrow house, and the darkness, and the solitude and corruption, and the whole dreary and terrible train of death and the grave, are symbols of its reception into heaven, the proper ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... when tranquillity was restored to the country, Pizarro's remains were placed in a sumptuous coffin and deposited under a monument in a conspicuous part of the cathedral. And in 1607, when time had thrown its friendly mantle over the past, and the memory of his errors and his crimes was merged in the consideration of the great services he had rendered to the Crown by the extension of her colonial ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... splinter-proofs. Having seen they were safe, I went on with my work, though it is not pleasant doing this sort of thing whilst shells are flying about! Anyhow, I started out afterwards to reconnoitre the road to a certain town, and passed two men of the Rifle Brigade making a coffin. I asked for whom it was intended, and found that this same shell had killed a very nice Major, called "Harman," of the Rifle Brigade, whilst another man was badly wounded, and a Captain also in the ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... he was held by friend and foe alike showed itself in the mourning over his death, which took place a few days ago. His wound, a short time before, had shown improvement, but the heart was no longer equal to the terrible strain. Those of his comrades who were not confined to bed rallied round his coffin yesterday, which had been put upon a bier in the hospital garden ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... College, an' that Sorr,"—here he pointed to the grand pile opposite the College—"that Sorr, is the grate buildin' in which the Irish Parliament is not going to meet!" At one of the music halls an old woman (Ireland) is represented as buying a coffin for a deceased son named "Home Rule" Bill, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... following week the funeral, this time in reality, arrived quite unexpectedly. The facts were that a boy, a native of Dull, had got gored by a bull at Dunkeld, and was so shockingly mangled that his remains were picked up and put into a coffin and taken without delay to Dull. A grave was dug as quickly as possible—the poor lad having no relatives—and the remains were interred. My grandfather and the young couple recognised several of the mourners as being among those whom ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... through the silent and deserted streets of Weimar, and lowered into a vault in the churchyard of St. James. There it remained until 1826, when the remains were exhumed and, after some curious vicissitudes, were placed in an oaken coffin and deposited in the ducal mausoleum, where they now rest near those of ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... some confusion of syntax, excusable in a person of his circumstances. Now, suppose they—or he—the man whose brains are out—goes about with his coffin under his arm, like my worthy uncle? and suppose he blandly, politely, relentlessly insists upon reading to you, out of that octavo sarcophagus, passages which in his opinion prove that he is not only not dead, but immortal? If such a man be a stranger, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... found in these houses was generally broken up and destroyed—beds ripped open and their contents scattered in the streets.... The number of houses assailed was not less than twenty. In one house there was a corpse, which was thrown from the coffin, and in another a dead infant was taken out of the bed, and cast on the floor, the mother being at the same time barbarously ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... coffins, each containing a Frenchman of the past; now and again the Frenchman wakes up and kicks against his English-made casing; but ambition stifles him, and he submits to be smothered. The coffin is ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... a wooden coffin, shaped to the human figure and painted white, the features picked out in black, and enamel eyes inserted in a mounting of bronze. The mummy is that of a thin elderly man, well preserved; the face was covered by a mask made of linen smeared with ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Innocent VIII feared lest the orthodox faith should suffer by this new cult of a heathen corpse. Julia was buried secretly and at night by his direction, and naught remained in the Capitol but her empty marble coffin. The tale, as told by Infessura, is repeated in Matarazzo and in Nantiporto with slight variations. One says that the girl's hair was yellow, another that it was of the glossiest black. What foundation for the legend may really have existed need not here be questioned. Let us rather ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... every house on Hallowe'en, and a ring, a coin, a sloe, and a chip of wood are put into it. Whoever gets the coin will be rich; whoever gets the ring will be married first; whoever gets the chip of wood, which stands for a coffin, will die first; and whoever gets the sloe will live longest, because the fairies blight the sloes in the hedges on Hallowe'en, so that the sloe in the cake will be the last of the year. Again, on the same mystic ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... think of the future, fearing he would go mad. Was he really to remain there to die of thirst and hunger? Was the hollow tree to prove his coffin? ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... very midst of these windy anticipations, this same granite grandpapa of mine, not yet very far ahead of sixty, being in fact three-score years and none, suddenly struck his flag, and found himself, in his privileged character of Armiger, needing those door (coffin-door) plates, which all reasonable people had supposed to be reserved for the manufacturing hands of some remote century. "Armiger, pack up your traps"— "Collige sarcinas"—"Squire, you're wanted:" these dreadful citations were inevitable; come they must; but surely, as everybody ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... thoughtful woman, too—ah, poor soul—that a' minded every little thing that wanted tending. 'Yes,' says she, 'when I'm gone, and my last breath's blowed, look in the top drawer o' the chest in the back room by the window, and you'll find all my coffin clothes, a piece of flannel—that's to put under me, and the little piece is to put under my head; and my new stockings for my feet—they are folded alongside, and all my other things. And there's four ounce pennies, the heaviest I ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... their naked children; entire populations which no longer go to church on Sunday, because they are naked; bodies kept a week before they are buried, because the deceased has left neither a shroud in which to lay him out nor the wherewithal to pay for the coffin and the undertaker (and the bishop enjoys an income of from four to five hundred thousand francs); families heaped up over sewers, living in rooms occupied by pigs, and beginning to rot while yet alive, or dwelling ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... This is the way it is, you see. When a poor creature comes to be buried—no matter who it is, a pauper, or a tenant, or any one—the people all go to the chapel; and every man he walks up and lays his offering for the priest on the coffin; and the others, they watch him. And, you see, if a man that thinks a good deal of himself walks up and puts down five shillings, why, another man that thinks less of him, and more of himself, he'll go up and make it a gold ten-shilling piece, or perhaps even ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... under cover of the night, and as Guy knew the railway officials would object to taking it on any train, there was no alternative except to bury it in town, and so before the morning broke there was brought up to the room a closely sealed coffin and box, and Daisy helped lay Julia in her last bed, and put a white flower in her hair and folded her hands upon her bosom, and then watched from the window the little procession which followed the body out to the cemetery, where, in the stillness of the coming day, they buried it, together ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... the shortcomings of the living face as compared with the ideal. The painted youth is still blooming on the canvas, but the fresh-cheecked, jaunty young author of the year 1830 has long faded out of human sight. I took the leaves which lie before me at this moment, as I write, from his coffin, as it lay just outside the door of Saint Paul's Church, on a sad, overclouded winter's day, in the year 1867. At that earlier time, Willis was by far the most prominent young American author. Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, had all ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... some words in a low voice, two or three dirty choristers, in soiled surplices, were charting the prayers for the dead, with an absent and sullen air, round a plain deal coffin, followed only by a sobbing old man and a child, miserably clad. The beadle and the sacristan, very much displeased at being disturbed for so wretched a funeral, had not deigned to put on their liveries, but, yawning with impatience, waited for the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of Lancashire are being driven down from day to day deeper into the pestilent sinks of life in these hard times. "This child of my daughter's," continued the old woman, in a low tone, "this child was born just as they were puttin' my husband into his coffin, an' wi' one thing an' another, we've had a deal o' trouble. But one half o'th world doesn't know how tother lives. My husban' lay ill i' bed three year; an' he suffered to that degree that he was ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... grew two fine old yew-trees, now long since decayed and gone, but then spreading their dark-green arms over the little turf-covered graves. Reared against the buttresses of the church was an old stone coffin, together with a fragment of a curious monumental effigy, likewise of stone; but the most striking objects in the place, and deservedly ranked amongst the wonders of Whalley, were three remarkable obelisk-shaped ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented road," I reflected. "And far better that crows and ravens—if any ravens there be in these regions—should pick my flesh from my bones, than that they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... So the archbishop's coffin was thrust forth of the castle-gate, and the monks from the abbey came and bore it away, and buried ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... the funeral obsequies of the first. Grace and I sobbed as if our hearts would break, the whole time we were in the church; and my poor, sensitive, nervous little sister actually shrieked as she heard the sound of the first clod that fell upon the coffin. Our mother was spared that trying scene, finding it impossible to support it. She remained at home, on her knees, most of the day on which ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... history of civilization. It was mainly responsible for prompting the earliest great maritime expeditions of which the history has been preserved.[13] For many centuries the quest of resins and balsams for embalming and for use in temple ritual, and wood for coffin-making, continued to provide the chief motives which induced the Egyptians to undertake sea-trafficking in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The knowledge and experience thus acquired ultimately made it possible for the Egyptians and their pupils to push their adventures further afield. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the funeral, but I do not remember anything that they said, though I recollected the coffin, and the sound of the hammer when they nailed her down in ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... turned the scale still further in favor of Bruce. Old King Edward, embittered because his cherished schemes regarding Scotland had failed, died, and with his last breath he asked his son, the Prince of Wales, to see his bones were carried in their coffin at the head of ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... of persons of Color. "The Massachusetts General Colored Association" organized in the early days of the agitation movement. It had among its leading men the most intelligent and public-spirited Colored citizens of Boston. James G. Barbadoes, Coffin Pitts, John E. Scarlett, the Eastons, Hosea and Joshua; Wm. C. Nell, Thomas Cole, Thomas Dalton, Frederick Brimley, Walker Lewis, and John T. Hilton were a few of "the faithful." In January, 1833, the following communication was sent to the white ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... good pillow. It was a descent from the luxury of last night; but a spy, I reflected philosophically, cannot expect a feather bed two nights running, and this one was at any rate airier and roomier than the coffin-like bunk of the Dulcibella, and not so ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... he had sympathy for her and said to her, "Do not weep." And he came and touched the coffin, and those who carried it stood still. Jesus said: "Young man, I say to you, arise." And he who had been dead sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him back to his mother. And all the people were filled ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... surrounded by men in long overcoats, and with fierce-looking faces, holding torches. In the gloom, and with the help of imagination, this vehicle appeared completely black. A door could be seen, but no other opening. It resembled a great coffin on wheels. "What is that? Is it a hearse?" "No, it is a police-van." "And those people, are they undertakers?" "No, they are jailers." "And ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... four great hulking Arabs, who had been beating, kicking and biting him in a furious struggle. The faces of all were bleeding and bruised, and blood was splashed over the white sort of overall that the natives wear. To the left of Sambo Claud saw an open tomb. Inside he could just see a kind of coffin arrangement, and on the ground, near at hand, the most varied collection of brass and other beautiful Eastern wares. This was the cause ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... and neighbours, came in a body to assist at the funeral. They dressed the corpse of the woman in her richest apparel, and all her jewels, as if it had been her wedding-day; then they placed her on an open coffin, and began their march to the place of burial. The husband walked at the head of the company, and followed the corpse. They proceeded to a high mountain, and when they had reached the place of their destination, they took up a large stone, which covered ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... amiable or credible, in the epitaph. This feeling is common to the poor as well as the rich; and we all know how many a poor family will nearly ruin themselves, to testify their respect for some member of it in his coffin, whom they never much cared for when he was out of it; and how often it happens that a poor old woman will starve herself to death, in order that ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... date at the VI Dynasty or about 3,000 B.C. Prof. Brugsch then gives an account of his own work at the request of Mariette upon a second pyramid opened by Mariette's men at Sakkarah, where the walls of the chamber were covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions. A granite coffin, also, was found adorned with hieroglyphics repeating in different places the name of the King. The inscriptions on the walls had been destroyed in a number of ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... are dead, and then bring their alabaster boxes of affection and break them. They keep silent about their love when words would mean so much, would give such cheer, encouragement, and hope, and then, when the friend lies in the coffin, their lips are unsealed, and speak out their glowing tribute on ears that ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... left alone in her comfortable chair, studying details of the room and making accounts in her own mind, until the actual funeral guests began to arrive. And then she had the satisfaction of sizing them up. Several arrived with wreaths. The coffin had been carried down and laid in the small sitting-room—Mrs. Houghton's sitting-room. It was covered with white wreaths and streamers of purple ribbon. There was a crush and ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... insult Our elder instincts, to which Reason Is nothing more nor less than treason. Your "muddy weather costume" moves us No more than satire, which reproves us Ad nauseam, and for whose rebuff We never care one pinch of snuff. No, Ladies HARBERTON and COFFIN. Your pleading, like the critics' "scoffin" Touches us not; have we not smiled, Mocking, at Mrs. OSCAR WILDE? And shall we welcome with delight Queer robes that make a girl "a fright?" Pooh-pooh! We're simply imperturbable, The Reign of Fashion's undisturbable. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... water. I watched it eat a thousand times its own weight and grow into the nastiest wretch that crawls. I saw it stop eating and spit its stomach out and shrivel up, and crawl out of its skin and pull its own head off, and bury itself alive in a coffin made out of itself, a coffin like a bit of rotting wood. Look at it! There it lies, stone-dead for all a ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... but little, that night, as two cats kept running in and out of my stateroom, and my berth was so narrow that I could only lie in one position—as straight as if already in my coffin. Under such circumstances I spent the night, thinking over everything that was painful in my whole life, and imagining all the different calamities that might befall my family in my absence. It was a night of severe introspection and intense dissatisfaction. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... to the roads where death would presently pass with dusky pomp and pageantry. Never again would a Queen reign so long, or people have a chance to see so much history buried for their money. A pity the war dragged on, and that the Wreath of Victory could not be laid upon her coffin! All else would be there to follow and commemorate—soldiers, sailors, foreign princes, half-masted bunting, tolling bells, and above all the surging, great, dark-coated crowd, with perhaps a simple sadness here and there deep in hearts beneath black clothes put on by regulation. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... extends over a considerable area. The houses are rectangular, with adobe walls, mostly whitewashed, and with steep, pitched roofs. We met a funeral procession in the road, with the usual band in front. The coffin open, so as to show the child, was carried on the shoulders of several men. The mother, in contortions of real or simulated grief, was supported by two women, and the mourners brought up the rear, wailing now and then. ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... put into the long-boat, into which the captain entered, with ten sailors, six musicians, and myself. We found horses and mules waiting for us on the shore, and we soon reached the house of death, before which a great many tar barrels were burning, and in the centre stood a bier, upon which the coffin was placed. A number of mourners, among whom were twelve or fifteen ladies, now greeted us. We returned their salutations and entered the brilliantly lighted saloon, hung with black, where sat the mother and daughter of the dead man, dressed in the deepest mourning. We expressed our sympathy ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... robed in the tiny shroud, and the dimpled hands crossed sweetly over the pulseless bosom. Gently he is placed in the coffin—it is a harder bed than he was wont to rest on, but he will feel it not. With unutterable anguish they follow him to the dark, cold grave; strange hands lower him into its gloomy depths, and the clods fall heavily upon the ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... and actually accompanied the corpse as chief mourner, having previously concerted with his own mother to be upon the spot. When the body was deposited in the vault, he took her by the hand, led her down the steps, and gave some directions to the bearers as to the situation of the coffin, while the other mourners, panic-struck at the extraordinary circumstances in which they found themselves, turned about and walked in mournful silence back, ruminating on the past with amazement, and full of conjecture for ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... readiness the Story Girl brought her pet through the orchard where he had so often frisked and prowled. No useless coffin enclosed his breast but he reposed in ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... The coffin was placed in a recess in the tomb. I knew it was hers, for it was new, and had been only ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... miles from Galena, and is so named on account of having been used as a dwelling by its former owner, who kept a coffin in which he intended to place himself before the final summons, but was overtaken by death in the forest and it was never used. He wrote sermons on the rocks in his cave and one ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... "last water" enough grub for about three months, and was to return to Bettles for Christmas and for fresh supplies. After a day or two's rest the Indian was sent back with instructions to bring the body to a native village we should visit, to whipsaw lumber for a coffin and dig a grave, and we engaged to ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... undertaker-blacksmith would notify the reader required, and funerals were carried out at any hour, day or night. The tank sinker's funeral was timed to leave the hospital about 12.30 a.m. For some reason the bank manager attended this funeral. The body was then in the coffin, and a start made for the cemetery. There were some of the dead man's mates present, and the bank manager heard them complaining that it was a d——d shame to bury a man naked. When the funeral reached the graveside, the idea struck ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... removed from the scene, and that his second would succeed to the command. He knew by experience the importance of that place—and he thought the sword of America might safely be confided to the hand which now lies cold in that coffin. Oh! my fellow citizens, remember this solemn testimonial that he was not ambitious. Yet he was charged with ambition, and, wounded by the imputation, when he laid down his command he declared in the proud independence of his soul, that he never would accept ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... I be thy ransomed—from the cark Of living, from the strain for breath, From tossing in my coffin strait and dark, At hourly strife ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... not a grand funeral by any means and I think it would have broken Helen's heart to see the plain unvarnished coffin which her poor father's remains were ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... dynasty sent two officials to Nikko to select a site for the mausoleum of his father. They chose a site near Nikko, on a hill called Hotoke-iwa, and in the spring of 1617 the tomb was completed and the coffin was deposited under it ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... aruspex might have read a lecture upon him without exenteration, his flesh being so consumed, that he might, in a manner, have discerned his bowels without opening of him; so that to be carried, sexta cervice to the grave, was but a civil unnecessity; and the complements of the coffin might ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne |
