"Rapier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soldier, With his blunderbuss on his shoulder, Cocks his pistol, draws his rapier; Pray give us something for his sake here. A stick and a stake, for our good king's sake: If ye won't give one, I'll take two, The better for me, and ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... settled Lowrie by striking his mighty heavy weapon from his hand; but this victory was of no account in the general action when Harry's rapier went spinning over his head, and he went down on his back before the vigorous fencing of Yaspard. He was on his feet, however, in time to witness the final roll over of Bill and Gibbie. They had reached the water's edge, and the incoming tide washed over them, ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... with my letters to Vanylos this Sunday morning. Nov. 3rd, Mr. John Cholmeley toward London by Market-Harborow. Nov. 7th, the fellows and the receyver agreed not with me in accounts. Paulo post nonam mane Arthur's left eye hurt at playing at fence with rapier and dagger of sticks, by a foyne of Edmond Arnold. Nov. 10th, Mr. Burch his letter from Mathew Palmer. Nov. 14th, the fellows wold not graunt me the 5. for my howse-rent, as the Archbishops had graunted: and our foundation commaundeth an howse. Nov. 17th, I sent Ed. Arnold to London on ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... not be a Journalist-at-Arms? Life for that paladin hath poignant charms. Whether in pretty quarrel he shall run Just half an inch of rapier—in pure fun— In his opponent's biceps, or shall flick His shoulders with a slender walking-stick. The "stern joy" of the man indeed must rise To raptures and heroic ecstacies. Oh, glorious climax ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... but had merely come with some one. The question was not flattering. His hand went up to his chin a little awkwardly. She noted how large yet how well-shaped it was, or, rather, she remembered afterwards. Then it dropped upon the hilt of the rapier he wore, and he answered with good self-possession, though a little hot spot showed on his cheek: "The governor must have other guests who are no men of mine; for he keeps an envoy from Count Frontenac ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... good deal better. I suppose Lost Valley agrees with you." She had swung down on the other side of the horse, and her glance at him across the saddle seat was like a rapier thrust. ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... sepulchre or an unspeakable scoundrel, and the same principle holds good when it comes to actual physical fighting. If a French gentleman were to call me out, I daresay I should go to the encounter twirling my moustache, bowing down to the ground, all smiles and compliments; and that I should select my rapier with a pleasant kind of feeling, like that experienced by the satirist about to write a brilliant article while picking out a pen with a suitable nib. On the other hand, if a murderous brute with truculent eyes and gnashing teeth attempts to disembowel me ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... manner peculiar to the French cadets and younger sons of noble families in North America at the time, an accentuation of the French at home, and to some extent a survival of the spirit which Richelieu partially checked. Even in the forest he wore a slender rapier at his belt, and his hand rested now upon ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... of the men had fastened—the fierce, black, eager ones of the Mexican and the steelly gray ones of the Anglo-Saxon. There was the rigor of battle in that gaze, the grinding of rapier on rapier. Gordon was a prisoner in the hands of his enemy. He lay exhausted from a terrible beating. That issues of life and death hung in the balance a child might have guessed. But victory lay with the white ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... unnecessary dialog. Harold Routledge overhears the Count de Carojac, a hardened roue and a duellist, speaking of Lilian in such terms as no honorable man should speak of a modest woman. Routledge, with a studio in Rome, and having been educated at a German university, is familiar with the use of the rapier. A duel is arranged. Lilian hears of it thru a female friend, and Strebelow, also, thru the American second of Mr. Routledge. The parties meet at the Chateau Chateaubriand, in the suburbs of Paris, at midnight, by the ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... back into the arms of those behind, and as he fell he dropped his rapier, which rolled almost to Crispin's feet. The knight stooped, and when again he stood erect, confronting the rebels in that narrow passage, he held ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... because that is the weapon your adversary will be certain to choose. You being the challenger, of course he has the choice; and he will insist upon it, for a reason that may perhaps amuse you. It is that we Mexican gentlemen believe you Americans somewhat gauche in the handling of the rapier, though we know you to be adepts in the use of the pistol. I take Captain Gil Uraga to be as thorough a poltroon as ever wore epaulettes, but he will have to meet you on my account; and he would perhaps have done so anyhow—trusting to the probability ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the sword is at the hip ready for innumerable adventures too terrible to be pictured. The Stanley Weyman hero has scarcely time to eat his supper except in the act of leaping from a window or whilst his other hand is employed in lunging with a rapier. In Scott's heroes, on the other hand, there is no characteristic so typical or so worthy of humour as their disposition to linger over their meals. The conviviality of the Clerk of Copmanhurst or of Mr. Pleydell, and the thoroughly solid things ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... cajoled into doing what the world calls foolish things, and constantly performing feats of unwisdom, which performances he was immoderately laughing at all the while in his books. No man has impaled snobbery with such a stinging rapier, but he always accused himself of being a snob, past all cure. This I make no doubt was one of his exaggerations, but there was a grain of truth in the remark, which so sharp an observer as himself could not fail to notice, even though ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... M. Leon Say in his preface. 'The taste of the public of our own day grows more and more keen for the romance of the cloak and rapier, when the heroes relate their own adventures. The authentic Memoirs of the d'Artagnans of our own century are now preferred even to the works of Alexandre Dumas, so dear to our youth.' Undoubtedly they must be preferred, for being more ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... poor in hope of spoil, and some of Dundee to consider what was done, passed up to the said Abbey of Scone; whereat the Bishop's servants offended began to threaten and speak proudly, and as it was constantly affirmed one of the Bishop's sons stogged through with a rapier one of Dundee because he was looking in at the girnel door. This bruit noised abroad, the town of Dundee was more enraged than before, who putting themselves in armour sent word to the inhabitants of St. Johnstone, 'That unless ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the rental-book. Weel, away he trots to the castle to tell his story, and there he is introduced to Sir John, sitting in his father's chair, in deep mourning, with weepers and hanging cravat, and a small walking-rapier by his side, instead of the auld broadsword that had a hunderweight of steel about it, what with blade, chape, and basket-hilt. I have heard their communings so often tauld ower that I almost think I was there mysell, though I couldna be born at the time. (In fact, Alan, my companion, mimicked, with ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... lands which he had leased to Sir Henry Glenham, Knight. {201a} He further leaves to her, as executrix, "10 pounds to be good and to my poor sister Margarette." To his brother Simon he bequeaths "the best apparrell of my bodie, with riding furniture, and my baie gelding, rapier, dagger, and pistol," and further bequests. The testator was son of Christopher Ayscough, of Bliborough, and married, apparently without issue, Margaret, daughter of Symon Battell, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... no finer opportunity for the display of tact than in the introduction of witty or humorous stories into a discourse. Wit is keen and like a rapier, piercing deeply, sometimes even to the heart. Humor is good-natured, and does not wound. Wit is founded upon the sudden discovery of an unsuspected relation existing between two ideas. Humor deals with things out of relation—with the incongruous. It ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the heavy, paneled old doors through which, once on a time, Prince Hubert had made his joyous exits into a world that had so early cast him out; on his swords, crossed over the fireplace; his light rapier, his heavy cavalry saber; on the bright head of his little son, around whom already so many plots ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... too sensible. In this room, for instance, members of this Club have, at the sword's point, disputed the proper scanning of one of Pope's couplets. Over so weighty a matter as spilled Burgundy on a gentleman's cuff, ten men fought across this table, each with his rapier in one hand and a candle in the other. All ten were wounded. The question of the spilled Burgundy concerned but two of them. The eight others engaged because they were men of 'spirit.' They were, indeed, the first gentlemen of the day. To-night, were ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... man shifted as they might for the time: and heaving their planks overboard, took them such poor weapons as they had: viz., a broken pointed rapier, one old visgee, and a rusty caliver: JOHN DRAKE took the rapier, and made a gauntlet of his pillow, RICHARD ALLEN the visgee, both standing at the head of the pinnace, called Eion. ROBERT took the caliver and so boarded. But they found the frigate armed ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... is a proverb, that the London policemen are never at hand. The stout fellows with their clubs look as if they might do service; but what a contrast they are to the Paris sergents de ville! The latter, with his dress-coat, cocked hat, long rapier, white gloves, neat, polite, attentive, alert,—always with the manner of a jesuit turned soldier,—you learn to trust very much, if not respect; and you feel perfectly secure that he will protect you, and give you your rights in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... hands trembling, not fully dead; His veins smok'd, his bowels all-to reeked, Ruthless were rent, and thrown about the place: All clottered lay the blood in lumps of gore, Sprent[80] on his corpse, and on his paled face; His trembling heart, yet leaping, out they tore, And cruelly upon a rapier They fix'd the same, and in this hateful wise Unto the king this heart they do present: A sight long'd for to feed his ireful eyes. The king perceiving each thing to be wrought As he had will'd, rejoicing to behold Upon the bloody sword the pierced ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... dashed forward, snatching as I did so a rapier from the wall, the only weapon handy. But before I reached the spot, a voice from the study doorway called: "Stop!" and the next moment the report of a pistol ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... witty, and the more brilliant in his thrusts. Both were equally experienced. The one appealed to justice and truth; the other to the prejudices of the House and the pride of a nation of classes. One was armed with a heavy dragoon sword; the other with a light rapier, which he used with extraordinary skill. Mr. G.W.E. Russell, in his recent "Life of Gladstone," quotes the following passage from a letter of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... strike; and suddenly, while he was laughing at their rage, he got a thrust in his forehead, and another in his neck, and a third under his sleeve, where a courageous little soldier had rushed in and resolutely driven in his rapier up to the hilt! Andy, who had no idea such little weapons could hurt so, was terrified, and began to scream with pain. And now, strange to see! the fairies were no longer fairies, but a nest of bumblebees; it was the queen-bee he held in his fingers; and two of them had left their ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... place but onely two resolute shot, who stood at his commaund, and some ten or twelue others that followed him, most of them his owne seruants; the rest, surprised with feare, fled, whom, neither with his perswasions, nor threatning with his rapier drawne, hee ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... Virginia Bohemians. Virginia: a History of the People. Maurice Mystery. Youth of Jefferson. Ellie. Henry St. John, Gentleman, sequel to Virginia Comedians. Wearing of the Gray. Fairfax, or Greenway Court. Hilt to Hilt. Hammer and Rapier [Grant and Lee]. Life of R. E. Lee. Her Majesty the Queen. Canolles. Mr. Grantley's Idea. Stories of the Old Dominion. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... for the Old Faith, furious against the new; he dreamed of wars and gallantry and splendour; you could see it even in his dress, in his furred doublet, the embroideries at his throat, his silver-hilted rapier, as well as in his port and countenance: and the burning heart of all his images, the mirror on earth of Mary in heaven, the emblem of his piety, the mistress of his dreams—she who embodied for him what the courtiers in London protested that ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the table all red and ruffled, and Gloriana's virgin ear catches the clash of swords at work behind a wall. The mothers of Sussex look round to count their chicks—I mean those young gamecocks that waited on her. Two dainty youths have stepped aside into Brickwall garden with rapier and dagger on a private point of honour. They are haled out through the gate, disarmed and glaring—the lively image of a brace of young Cupids transformed into pale, panting Cains. Ahem! Gloriana beckons awfully—thus! They come up for judgement. Their lives and estates ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... is knight, dubb'd with unhatch'd rapier and on carpet consideration; but he is a devil in private brawl: souls and bodies hath he divorc'd three; and his incensement at this moment is so implacable that satisfaction can be none but ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... things for aunt Lettice, petticoats and ribbons, a gilt stomacher and a China monster, and for my father, lace ruffles and bands, a pair of French laced boots, a periwig, a new scabbard for his rapier, and so on." ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... life, a man of religious reticence who was misunderstood because he did not make a noisy profession of his faith, an old countryman in a new land that he never could quite call 'home,' a controversialist skilled only in the use of the rapier and compelled at times to enter the lists with those who wielded the bludgeon, a subtle humourist who must 'carry on' with the prosaic and matter-of-fact, a lover of his own fireside who must of necessity be socially advertised with the vulgar, his ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... 'women,' lifted them into an atmosphere of awe and solemnity, and his tone in speaking of 'rape' and 'torture' gave them an ineffable loathsomeness. It seemed as if so much soul had never been put into a Saxon speech. Keen satire, rasping rebuke, an avalanche of indignation, rapier-like thrusts to the vital fibre of the situation, and withal the invincible cogency of argument against the Turkish Government, gave the oration a primary place amongst the master-pieces of ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... florists set out. Roumelia was the name Jack had given the rose-lands near the stream, in fanciful allusion to the Turkish province of flowers. Halting at the gardener's cottage, Vincent procured an immense pair of shears, like a double rapier in size, and, bidding the man follow to gather the blossoms, he ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Casalverde did not interpose his sword. A full two seconds after the cry to halt, Del Ferice lunged right forward. Giovanni thrust out his arm to save his body from the foul attempt—he had not time to raise his weapon. Del Ferice's sharp rapier entered his wrist and tore a long wound ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... sarcasm or innuendo, but scorned to stun him with blatant abuse—of those who would never have dreamt of listening to a woman with covered head, though they might be deaf as the nether millstone to her entreaties or her tears. It was with the Revolution that the rapier went out, and the ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... acquaintance, and say, dear Smith;—Dear Smith, I am delighted to have been at last introduced to a real member of the theatrical profession—a bona fide flesh and blood, silk-stocking'd and tinsel-rapier'd "pride of Astley's stage." If you unite in your own person the artist and the player; if you occasionally handle the painter's brush as well as the field-marshal's truncheon—for have I not seen you lead the British troops with heroic valour through the awful passes of Cabul, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... President of this Club, who was a man of many wanderings and many sufferings and had seen many cities and knew the hearts of men. I, gentlemen, have had my Odyssey, and I have been to Warsaw, and," with a rapier flash of a glance at the gentleman who had accused him of leading bears, "I know the miserable hearts of men." He rapped on the table with his hammer. "Asticot, come ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... intent at all costs upon cutting him down, convinced almost by instinct that were he felled the victory would easily be theirs. And in the end they succeeded. A Dutch pike broke some links of his mail and dealt him a flesh wound which went unheeded by him in his fury; a Dutch rapier found the breach thus made in his de-fences, and went through it to stretch him bleeding upon the deck. Yet he staggered up, knowing as full as did they that if he succumbed then all was lost. Armed now with a short axe which he had found under his ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... Merton took them as far as Belgium, and then Lieutenant West and I carried them to London. D'Artagnan's share was a bad rapier-wound." ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... way of the sword-thrusts; and are invulnerable all over, even in the heel, against logic. The martel or mace, the battle-axe, the great double-edged two-handed sword must deal with follies; the rapier is no better against them than a wand, unless it be the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... with points and knots. His shirt was of the same hue, with a short taffeta cloak over, bound at the neck by a monstrous ruff, out of which his face looked like a calf's head from a dish of trimmings. To crown all, a white plume waved in his hat, while the rapier at his waist was caught up jauntily behind him, so that the point and the hilt lay on a level at either hip. His face was both cheerful and weak; and, as he strutted up to where Ludar and I stood, his gait reminded me much of a chanticleer amidst ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... trunks, and hose of a slightly deeper hue, which vanished immediately into a pair of huge thighboots of untanned leather. A leather swordbelt, gold-embroidered at the edges, carried a long steel-halted rapier in a leather scabbard chaped with steel. The sleeves of his doublet which protruded from his leather casing were of the same colour and material as his trunks. In one hand he carried his broad black hat with its crimson feather, in the other a little roll of parchment; ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... to her heaving bosom, "mark me, somewhat else hath made entrance here, with drums and trumpets and high jubilee: Hate!—I hate you, Herdegen, as I hate death, pestilence, and hell; and I hate you twice as much since your skill with the rapier brought the combat with the Brandenburger, into which I entrapped you, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... shattered. You tell me, a man; I behold a tower, a mountain, Atlas crowned with clouds! Thousand thunders! what bulk! what sinews! and of my race! Amazing effect of—what? Climate? occupation? In France, this race shrinks, diminishes; a rapier, keen if you will, but slender like a thread; here, it swells, expands, towers aloft,—a club of Hercules. And with my father, who could sit in my pocket, and my grandfather, who could sit in his! Figure to yourself, Jacques, that I am called le ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... a dandified gentleman, Rapier at point, And a wrist which whirls round Like a circular joint. A spatter of blood, man! ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... easily bullied. If he encountered an insolent person, he gave full effect to his five feet eight inches, the look from his grey eyes was unwavering as though he tacitly accepted the challenge, there was an invisible rapier hanging from his left hip, a poise of the body which expressed ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... a silver rapier by my side, So like a gallant I did ride; The thing that I delighted on, It was ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... struck a sturdy caird, As weel as poor gut-scraper; He taks the fiddler by the beard, And draws a roosty rapier— He swoor by a' was swearing worth, To speet him like a pliver, Unless he wad from that time forth Relinquish ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of private men, daggers, krisses, and so forth, were invented. It is wonderful how we get about the streets without being wounded by these delicate and glancing weapons, a man can so nimbly whip out his rapier, or without being noticed carry it unsheathed. Yet it is rare that ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... was primal; the intensity of it was like a rapier- thrust, down through her fury to the quick of womanly consciousness; she shrank back. "Don't," she said, faintly; "don't—" For one instant she forgot that she hated David. Instantly he ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... down with us he attacked him with ferocious banter. He showed a skill I should never have credited him with in finding the places where the unhappy Dutchman was most sensitive. Strickland employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective. The attack was so unprovoked that Stroeve, taken unawares, was defenceless. He reminded you of a frightened sheep running aimlessly hither and thither. He was startled and amazed. At last the tears ran from his eyes. And ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... looked on his person with envy, and on his light rapier with mistrust. In sooth, he was a proper man for stealing a lady's heart, either in hall or bower. Many had been his victims;—many were then in the last extremities of love. But of him it was currently spoken that he had never yet been subjected to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... passed on amidst the plaudits of the mob. Then came another - a better courtier still - who wore a blade but two feet long, whereat the people laughed, much to the disparagement of his honour's dignity. Then came a third, a sturdy old officer of the army, girded with a rapier at least a foot and a half beyond her Majesty's pleasure; at him they raised a great shout, and most of the spectators (but especially those who were armourers or cutlers) laughed very heartily at the breakage which would ensue. But they were disappointed; for the old ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... a suit of mean and shabby armour, and, as soon as he has stepped in blood to the throne, marches through the streets in crown and George and Garter; the climax of The Tempest is reached when Prospero, throwing off his enchanter's robes, sends Ariel for his hat and rapier, and reveals himself as the great Italian Duke; the very Ghost in Hamlet changes his mystical apparel to produce different effects; and as for Juliet, a modern playwright would probably have laid her out in her shroud, and made the scene a scene ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... hitherto done, I perceived a change in his external appearance which somewhat startled and surprised me. Montreuil had always hitherto been remarkably plain in his dress; but he was now richly attired, and by his side hung a rapier, which had never adorned it before. Something in his aspect seemed to suit the alteration in his garb: and whether it was that long absence had effaced enough of the familiarity of his features to allow me to be more alive than formerly to the real impression they were calculated to produce, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eschewed the ruff as savouring of vanity, boots of black flexible leather, ascending to the hose, and armed with spurs with gigantic rowels, a round-crowned small-brimmed black hat, with an ostrich feather placed in the side and hanging over the top, a long rapier on his hip, and a dagger in his girdle. This buckram attire, it will be easily conceived, contributed no little to the natural stiffness of ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... bucketsful of mud; while slender-bodied, dainty, ebony wasps, after much fastidious picking of place, would detach a tiny bit of the whitest clay, place it in their snuff-box holder, clean their feet and antennae, run their rapier in and out ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... fellow, I wish I could drive the fact into this head of yours that rudeness is not synonymous with wit. I shall not have lived in vain if I teach you in time to realize that the rapier of irony is more effective an instrument than the bludgeon ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... sword, n. rapier, saber, scimiter, brand, curtana, claymore, smallsword, glaive, broadsword, cutlass, Damascus blade, spadroon, creese. Associated Words: scabbard, sheathe, unsheathe, forte, hilt, sheath, foible, foil, fence, fencer, gladiatorial, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Civic zeal has trimmed the mound into public "grounds," and the moat is lively with ornamental ducks; while a hundred yards farther rises the white statue of Castel Franco's greatest son, no other than Giorgione himself, a dashing cavalier-like gentleman with a brush instead of a rapier. If he were like this, one can believe the story of his early death—little more than thirty—which came about through excessive love of a lady, she having taken the plague and he ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... adorned it, floated down his back, for the dew was heavy on it. He was a handsome man, about forty years of age, well sunburned, with a keen dark eye, and close-clipped moustache, which indicated that he had served in foreign wars. He threw his hat and long jewelled rapier aside, and on removing his rocquelaure, discovered a white velvet coat more richly covered with lace than any that Spiggot had ever seen even in the palmiest days ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... "plain, dacent claes. As for the rapier, nae doubt it sits wi' your degree; but an I had been you, I would hae waired my siller better gates than that." And he proposed I should buy winter hosen from a wife in the Cowgate-back, that was a cousin of his own, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sarcasm, for dignity, for almost any speech beginning, 'What! Jealous of you. Why—' she was prepared. But this was incredible. It disabled her, as the wild thrust of an unskilled fencer will disable a master of the rapier. She searched in her mind and found that ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Messrs. Irving dei Franchi and M. Terriss de Chateau Renaud, until the latter collapses, and "subsequent proceedings interested him no more." As long as the strong right arm of the Corsican Brother can draw a good and shining rapier, he will draw as good and brilliant a house as he did on the first night of this revival. Why ought this piece to go well in the first theatre in Ireland? Why? because it's a great play for Doublin'. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... are well founded and justified by success; still we must require him to remember that he only travels on forbidden tracks, where the God of War may surprise him; that he ought always to keep his eye on the enemy, in order that he may not have to defend himself with a dress rapier if the enemy takes ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... charge of William Geake, Sr., of Fort Wayne, acting thrice potent master, and official head of the thirty-third degree in Indiana. The Scottish Rite delegation numbered more than 150. There were also in attendance fifty Knights Templars of Rapier Commandery, under the leadership of Eminent ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... reading-room wherein to learn all that passes in the world. They have a town council held now and then in an ancient wainscoted hall, with painted panels and coats of arms, carved oaken seats black with age, and narrow windows from which men once looked down into the street, wearing trunk hose and rapier. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... was afraid of being seen; he resolutely entered the church. The beadle, who was just then standing on the threshold in the middle of the left doorway, under the "Dancing Marianne," with feather cap, and rapier dangling against his calves, came in, more majestic than a cardinal, and as shining as a saint on ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... of his wrist he drew from the brown paper a long, thin, highly polished rapier, the highly burnished steel of which was dulled along half its length, as if it had been first dimmed and ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... Dios, raked her fore and aft, And took her bullion,—singing, light at heart, His first love's first kiss warm upon his lip. Straight onward came young Eustace to his death! For hidden behind the arras near the stair Stood Regnald, like the Demon in the play, Grasping his rapier part-way down the blade To strike the foul blow with its heavy hilt. Straight on came Eustace,—blithely ran the song, "Old England's darlings are her hearts of oak." The lights were out, and not a soul astir, Or else the dead man's scabbard, as it clashed Against the marble pavement when he fell, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... on his own {183} ground, meeting his rapier-like dexterity of neatness with heavy sword-strokes of sincerity and strength. But here, as in the prose, the true Johnsonian excellence is best seen when ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... trim-built, muscular. His doublet and trunks were of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged; the plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of the camp. The speech of this fantastic figure was received with an explosion of jeers and laughter. Some cried, "'Tis ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and commanding person, with whom he appeared to be in earnest discourse. The stranger was a large-boned, spare, and powerful man, of middle age, and attired in a black vest and pantaloons of woven silk, with a short cloak, of the same hue. The golden hilt of his rapier, and a gold chain and medallion round his neck, were his only ornaments. His features were large, regular, and grand, and the gaze of his full dark eyes serene, yet firm and potent; his complexion pale, and contrasting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... his anger, Brian forced the attack savagely; then a sharp thrust against his jack showed him that O'Donnell was armed with a rapier, and he fell to the point with some caution. With the first moment of play, he knew that he faced a master of fence; yet almost upon the thought his blade ripped into the Dark ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... fierce shape. Assuming again the form of the sword, the bow, the mace, the dart, the trident, the mallet, the arrow, the thick and short club, the battle-axe, the discus, the noose, the heavy bludgeon, the rapier, the lance, and in fact of every kind of weapon that exists on earth, Chastisement moves in the world. Indeed, Chastisement moves on earth, piercing and cutting and afflicting and lopping off and dividing and striking and slaying ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... than for crushing hard ones. In fine, the offensive weapons of the times of the Coal Measures seem very formidable, just as those personal weapons of the middle ages seem so that were borne at a time when every soldier took the field cased in armor of proof. The slim scimitar or slender rapier would have availed but little against massive iron helmets or mail coats of tempered steel. And so the warriors of the period armed themselves with ponderous maces, battle-axes as massive as hammers, and double-handed swords of ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... make. It was to tell her that he would bear her away forthwith as his own true bride. And they thus both being agreed, habited as a page in green sarcenet, her buskins of the smoothest kid-skin, and her rapier of Lydian steel, secured over her shoulder by an orange-coloured scarf, and mounted on a gentle palfrey, she quitted the land of Georgia; one of her maidens, habited also in page's guise, attending, whom Niccolo took under his especial care. ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... believe me? Well, that is because you are obsolete, too;—yes sir, as obsolete as your hat, or your boots, or your long rapier. Now, for instance, suppose I were to ask your advice in my own case? You know precisely how the matter stands at present, between Miss Anthea and myself. You also know Miss Anthea personally, since you have seen ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... merchant—Jasper Schetz. In a private room, the walls richly adorned with carving and tapestry, sat at a dark oak writing table a gentleman in a black velvet suit, having a black cap of the same material on his head. On a high-backed chair near him hung his cloak and rapier, while at his side he had a short dagger, with a jewelled hilt, ready for use. He was still young, but his features were grave, and his brow full of thought. His figure was tall and slight, though perhaps ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hamlet, led the quadrille with Carrie Shaw as a Greek girl. His sad and solemn 'reverence' contrasted charmingly with her sunny ease. He acted the Dane to the life, his bearing, the melancholy light in his eyes, his black-plumed head-cover, and his rapier glittering under his short black cloak, which fell apart in the dance, were all perfect. It was a picture long to be remembered, and as long as I could watch these two I had no desire to take part in the ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... successful. One day there was a quarrel, and next morning, upon the smooth, sandy shore of the river, they met and fought it out. Rodolph was fiery, quick, and fierce; Gordon cool and steady; until Rodolph, growing weary and desperate, tried a foul and dangerous stroke, to find his rapier flying through the air, to fall with ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... blue in metallic reflections, with scarlet cheek and eye pieces, if your uniform were of purple, brown, yellow, orange-red, green, and black, "either positive or reflected," with a long, rakish, dashing rapier-scabbard cocked jauntily out behind, wouldn't you feel proud? So did he; pride and the "grand air" were written all over him. True, though, the rapier-scabbard was not a rapier-scabbard exactly—only a tail; ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... an armchair by the fireplace and threw one leg carelessly over the arm. In his black velvet cloak and cap, and his black silk tights, he was very like a minor character, a court chamberlain for example, in some cloak and rapier drama. "I find this week-end dancing and kicking about wonderfully wholesome," he said. "That and our Sunday hockey. One starts the new week clear and bright about the mind. Friday is always ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... great school-girl because Anne Bellamy has two yellow silk dresses from Paris, as I saw Woffington blubber in this room, and would not be comforted; nor fume like Kitty Clive, because Woffington has a pair of breeches and a little boy's rapier to go a playing at acting with. When I was young, two giantesses fought for empire upon this very stage, where now dwarfs crack and bounce like parched peas. They played Roxana and Statira in the 'Rival Queens.' Rival queens of art themselves, they put out ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... desiring, not unreasonably, to take that place in the world which France now holds, will never challenge France; if she did, she would be too much in the wrong to find a second: Prussia knowing that she has to do with the vainest, the most conceited, the rashest antagonist that ever flourished a rapier in the face of a spadassin—Prussia will make ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cold and the syce[4] is a qualified fool, is he? H'm! I think it's high time you had a look in at little old England, my son, what? And who made you this elegant rapier? Ochterlonie Sahib or—who?" (Lieutenant Lord Ochterlonie was the Adjutant of the Queen's Greys, a friend of Colonel de Warrenne, an ex-admirer of his late wife, and a great pal of ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... his shrewd glance flashing over her, keen and elusive as a rapier. Daisy faced him quite fully and fearlessly. The possibility of a conflict in this quarter had occurred to her before. She would not shirk it, but she was determined that it should be as brief ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... for her sake that Paul married his Princess. It is indeed a romance gone wrong. Perhaps it is a more difficult thing plausibly and readily to sustain one's fancy in a modern setting, with modern folk, than in the fair realm of Tushery with rapier-wielding demigods. Yet I think that the dead HARLAND and the living HOPE (himself no mean Tusher) might have brought off their Paul. As a matter of fact, so I believe could Mr. LOCKE; that is just the pity of it. I merely record the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... a ghastly sight, up sprang Mr. Trippet, and drew his rapier. "Come on," says he; "never say die! What's the row? I'm ready for a dozen of you." And he made many blind and furious ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... days of the duello, when even to crack a nut too loud was enough to make your tavern neighbour draw his sword. John Turner, the master, jealous of his professional honour, challenged the tyro with dagger and rapier, and, determined to chastise his ungenerous assailant, parried all his most skilful passadoes and staccatoes, and in his turn pressed Sanquhar with his foil so hotly and boldly that he unfortunately ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... gigantic ships, resembled nothing so much as a confused and swaying forest of masts; the leeward division—six ships in a cluster, almost as confused—was parted by an interval of nearly three miles from the main body of the fleet, and into that fatal gap, as with the swift and deadly thrust of a rapier, Jervis drove his fleet in one unswerving line, the two columns melting into one, ship following hard on ship. The Spaniards strove furiously to close their line, the twenty-one huge ships bearing down from the windward, the smaller squadron clawing ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... in a crimson doublet and trunk-hose, A rapier at his side; and, as he paused, His long fantastic shadow swayed and swept Against ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... only at the thigh, which, my husband tells me, ought, for riding purposes, to be flat and not round. My experience of this kind of riding appears to have been borne out by another lady who tried it, for "Rapier," in the Sporting and Dramatic News, Nov. 26th, 1892, says: "A few weeks ago my correspondent 'Ion,' who is, I believe, an excellent horsewoman, told me how she made an essay at riding on a man's ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... behind me smartly. Then I find myself in a trap, in the presence of the brigand who has quietly gagged poor Andre and conducted the carriage thither. There is nothing for me to do, as a gallant French marquis, but to say, "Parbleu!" draw my rapier, and die valorously! I am found, a week or two after, outside a deserted cabaret near the barrier, with a hole through my ruffled linen, and my pockets stripped. No; on second thoughts, I am rescued,—rescued by the angel I have been dreaming of, who is the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... exercises, at Harvard College, dressed much in the fashion of half a century earlier; namely, coat and waistcoat with broad flaps, small-clothes, ruffles at his bosom and wrists, a cocked hat of the old style, and a steel-hilted rapier at his side. Ten years afterwards, one of the best governors the Commonwealth has ever had, Mr. Lincoln, who served the State in this capacity for nine several terms, wore also a distinguishing costume, but more conformable to modern ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... piteously for mercy; and at her flanks he saw two mastiffs, exceeding great and fierce, that ran hard upon her track, and not seldom came up with her and bit her cruelly; and in the rear he saw, riding a black horse, a knight sadly accoutred, and very wrathful of mien, carrying a rapier in his hand, and with despiteful, blood-curdling words threatening her with death. Whereat he was at once amazed and appalled, and then filled with compassion for the hapless lady, whereof was bred a desire to deliver her, if so he might, from ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... subject of his finances; and he was charitably supposed to have commenced his career by robbing a Dutch mail of a package of diamonds. Still he glittered, until involved in a duel with Mississippi Law; the latter financier, probably jealous of so eminent a rival, ran a rapier through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... nothing has quite replaced the Simple Discours, the Petition pour les Villageois, the Pamphlet des Pamphlets, in which the ease of the best sixteenth and seventeenth century prose is united with a deft rapier-play like that of Voltaire, and with the lucidity of the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden |
