"Tocsin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then I entered the room again and paced to and fro, or dropped into an arm-chair and dozed. But my slumber was agitated by feverish dreams. I dreamed that I could hear the murmur of angry crowds, and the report of distant firing; the tocsin was clanging from the church towers. I awoke. It was ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... Monsieur Chateaupers with you. You will cause the tocsin to be sounded. You will crush the populace. You will seize the witch. 'Tis said. And I mean the business of the execution to be done by you. You will render me an account of it. Come, Olivier, I shall not go to ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... all been dreading is upon us—France is Mobilizing. At five o'clock yesterday morning the tocsin sounded from the Mairie (village hall) and men, women, and children all flocked to hear the proclamation which the Mayor of the village read. It called upon all of military age—between twenty years and fifty years—to ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous
... the words a bowstring twanged to the fore and a young girl stumbled across Jack Battle's feet with a scream that rings, and rings, and rings in memory like the tocsin of a horrible dream. She was wounded in the shoulder. Getting to her knees she threw her arms round Jack with such a terrified look of helpless pleading in her great eyes ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... send away General Chabran, that he might join Marshal Moncey; and the insurgents took advantage of this division of our forces to throw themselves on General Schwartz's column, which had been ordered to search the convent of Montserrat. The tocsin was heard everywhere in the mountain villages; the bridges over the streams were broken down, and every little town had to be carried with the bayonet. By a sudden sally, General Duhesme dislodged the enemy from their post on the River Llobregat, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... by English troops, blood had been shed at Lexington and Concord, war was begun, a struggle for independence was at hand. Everywhere the colonists, fiery with indignation, were seizing their arms and preparing to fight for their rights. The tocsin had rung. It was time for all patriots to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... trusty warriors, few, but undismayed; Firm-paced and slow, a horrid front they form, Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm; Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly, Revenge, or death,—the watchword and reply; Then pealed the notes, omnipotent to charm, And the loud tocsin tolled their last alarm!— In vain, alas! in vain, ye gallant few! From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew:— O, bloodiest picture in the book of Time! Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime; Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... a visible aspect of soreness. A murmurous sound was thick about his head, wherefore it is to be surmised that he communed with his familiar, and one vehement, oft-repeated phrase beat like a tocsin of revolt upon ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... peculiar merit of not being a tocsin song, like the 'Marseillaise.' Indeed, there is not a restful, soothing, or even humane sentiment in all that stormy shout. It is the scream of oppressed humanity against its oppressor, presaging a more than quid pro quo; ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... did le Pere et la Mere Francois, and Madame Pele, and one of the Napoleonic prisoners (not M. le Major), and several other people we had known, including a servant of our own, Therese, the devoted Therese, to whom we were all devoted in return. That malodorous tocsin, which I have compared to the big bell of Notre Dame, had warned, and warned, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... and its flag was flung out, not only every professional soldier, but every guild and every male above fourteen, knew his appointed place at the wall, and took it. But every day, and all day, the Fischmarkt flung out its peaceful standards, or rallied men to this side or to that with the tocsin of its presses,—the old Amerbach printing-house "of the Settle" (zum Sessel), which was Johann Froben's home and ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... of these excited and alarmed exclamations came the solemn, portentous voice of the camel tolling out in the unnatural night the tocsin ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... released while you stay there); and the great bell of St. Mark's Cathedral tolling midnight. Next I put up for a minute at the restless Inns upon the Rhine, where your going to bed, no matter at what hour, appears to be the tocsin for everybody else's getting up; and where, in the table-d'hote room at the end of the long table (with several Towers of Babel on it at the other end, all made of white plates), one knot of stoutish men, entirely dressed in jewels and dirt, and having nothing ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... arrest the popular torrent. The church-bells were no longer rung for divine service; whenever their deep and prolonged sounds were heard in the fields, it was the tocsin, and all ran to arms. The people of the Black Forest had rallied round John Muller of Bulgenbach. With an imposing aspect, covered with a red cloak and wearing a red cap, this leader boldly advanced from village to village followed by the peasantry. Behind him, on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... houses of the Commonwealth, rearing their towers above the town for tocsin and for ward, owe immortality to their intrinsic beauty. These are the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena and the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. Few buildings in Europe are more picturesquely fascinating than the palace of Siena, with its outlook over hill and dale to cloud-capped Monte Amiata. Yet, in ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... of the poor savages? I refer to the odd custom still observed in the country, or at least in some of the villages (and which not so very long ago was put into practice also in towns) of trying to arrest a heavy thunder storm, by the tocsin, the deep noted ringing increasing the general alarm amongst the timid of the place. The women too, will go to the door and rattle together the shovel and tongs just as their Sakai sisters beat their bamboos, and ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... strings, And, for your ungodly gains, Life to bind with golden chains;— Man! you're mightily mistaken! From such dreams you'd best awaken To the sense of what is coming, When you hear the low, dull booming Of the far-off tocsin drums. —Such a day of vast upsettings, Dire outcastings and downsettings!— You have held the reins too long,— Have you time to ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... 10th of August the tocsin was heard to sound and the drums to beat to arms. All day there had been sinister rumours circulating, but the king had sent privately to his friends that the danger was not imminent and that he had no need of them; however, as soon as the ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... None of us know. We didn't even know Murray's whereabouts—thought he was in Kyak, until he sounded the tocsin from New York. The other boys have quit their jobs ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... again the solemn tocsin awoke the echoes of the inn; and ere they had died away, a light glimmered in the carriage entrance, and a powerful voice was heard upraised and ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Each call for needful rest repelled, With dying hand the rudder held, Till in his fall with fateful sway, The steerage of the realm gave way! Then, while on Britain's thousand plains One unpolluted church remains, Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around The bloody tocsin's maddening sound, But still, upon the hallowed day, Convoke the swains to praise and pray; While faith and civil peace are dear, Grace this cold marble with a tear,— He, who preserved ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... no doubt about it, that was the rattle of musketry at a distance! And now they heard also the loud booming of artillery, and the ringing of the tocsin at Brunecken and ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... separate payments for any articles that he wrote. The Song of the Shirt, which it would be futile to praise or even to characterize, came out, anonymously of course, in the Christmas number of Punch for 1843: it ran like wildfire, and rang like a tocsin, through the land. Immediately afterwards, in January 1844, Hood's connection with the New Monthly closed, and he started a publication of his own, Hood's Magazine, which was a considerable success: more than half ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... doctrinary eulogium made of it by Varus Vibiscus is to be credited: Contra Gracchos Tiberim habemus, Bibere Tiberim, id est seditionem oblivisci. Paris drinks a million litres of water a day, but that does not prevent it from occasionally beating the general alarm and ringing the tocsin. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... relay of saddle horses, and an arsenal of long-range firearms composed the outfit. Three of the five men on duty were Texans. Making ourselves perfectly at home, we had no trouble in locating the herds in question, they having already sounded the tocsin to clear the way, claiming government beef recognized no local quarantine. The herds were not over thirty miles to the south, and expectation ran high as to results when an attempt should be made to cross ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... his hammer, went to the door of his hut, where hung part of a suit of armour, that served at the same time as a sign of his profession and as a tocsin. He smote the hanging iron with his sledge until the clangorous reverberation sounded through the valley, and presently there came hurrying to him eight of his stalwart sons, who had been occupied in tilling ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... suicide, had been interpreted as signs of the coming destruction. The political banquets given in various important cities had been occasions for inflaming the public mind, and to the far-seeing, these banquets were interpreted as the sounds of the tocsin. Louis Philippe had become odious to France, and contemptible to Europe. Guizot and Duchatel, the ministers of that day, although backed by a parliamentary majority on which they blindly relied, were unpopular, and were regarded as ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... sights were witnessed from the city of the Shannon to the winding reaches of the Boyne. Everywhere there were strength, and numbers, and resolution; where were they now in the supreme hour of the country's agony? A thousand times it had been sworn by tens of thousands of Irishmen, that the tocsin of battle would find them clustered round the good old flag to conquer or die beneath its shadow. And now, the hour had come, the flag of insurrection so often invoked was raised; but the patriot that raised it was left defenceless: he at least kept his ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... outrage a notice was issued from one of the newspapers calling an open-air meeting in the Champ de Mars. Towards evening the excitement increased, and the fire-bells jangled a tocsin to call the people into the streets. The Champ de Mars soon filled with a tumultuous mob, roaring its approbation of wild speeches which denounced the 'tyranny' of the governor-general and the Reformers. A cry arose, 'To the Parliament House!' and the mob streamed westward, wrecking in its ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... enterprise were left to the Duke of Guise, and a more efficient and fitting agent could not have been found. He had ordered that the tocsin, the signal for the massacre, should be tolled at two o'clock in the morning. Catharine and Charles, in one of the apartments of the palace of the Louvre, were impatiently awaiting the lingering flight of the hours till the alarm-bell should toll forth the death-warrant ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Heads and limbs of slaughter'd men? Father Euxine! be thou joyful! I am running red once more— Not with heathen blood, as early, But with gallant Christian gore! For the old times are returning, And the Cross is broken down, And I hear the tocsin sounding In the village and the town; And the glare of burning cities Soon shall light me on my way— Ha! my heart is big and jocund With the draught I drank to-day. Ha! I feel my strength awakened, And my brethren shout to me; Each is leaping red and joyous To his own awaiting sea. Rhine and Elbe ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... steps of the altar. Raising his reverend hand, with a gesture he awed into silence All that clamorous throng; and thus he spake to his people; Deep were his tones and solemn; in accents measured and mournful Spake he, as, after the tocsin's alarum, distinctly the clock strikes. "What is this that ye do, my children? what madness has seized you? Forty years of my life have I labored among you, and taught you, Not in word alone, but ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... our trenches they'll try to gas our salient while the wind holds. But west winds are predicted after sunrise tomorrow. I'm going to get into the Nivelle belfry tonight with a sack of bombs. I'm going to try to explode their gas cylinders if I can. The tocsin is the signal for ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... often of fifty or sixty feet. During the war times they make use of these fires as signals from band to band, and each fire has a conventional meaning. Like the phares that flashed the alarm from hill-top to hill-top or the tocsin that sang from belfry to belfry in the Basse Bretagne, in the days of the rising of the Vendee, so those beacons would communicate as swiftly the tidings that one band or tribe had to convey to another. Again, speaking of the danger of fire-making, I will ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... the booksellers, sir, they are leviathans; they roll in seas of gold; they subsist upon authors as vampires upon little children. But at last endurance has reached its limit; the fiat has gone forth; the tocsin of liberty has resounded: authors have burst their fetters. And we have just inaugurated the institution of 'The Grand Anti-Publisher Confederate Authors' Society,' by which, Pisistratus, by which, mark you, every author is to be his own publisher; that is, every author who joins ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... summoned Cosimo to the Public Palace, which he had previously occupied with troops at his command. There he declared him a rebel to the State, and had him imprisoned in a little square room in the central tower. The tocsin was sounded; the people were assembled in parliament upon the piazza. The Albizzi held the main streets with armed men, and forced the Florentines to place plenipotentiary power for the administration of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... What would Dr. Whitaker have thought of the following explosion, in which Webster sounds the tocsin with a vehemence and vigour which no Macbriar or Kettledrumle of the period could have surpassed. The extract is from his Judgment Set and ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... from the chase, he pulled the silken string and rung the little bell; but ring as he would it was all lost time; he might sound the tocsin, and ring till he was tired, for the fairy gave no heed. So he went straight to the chamber, and not having patience to call the chamberlain and ask for the key, he gave the lock a kick, burst open the door, went in, opened ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... take place. Your information shall be forwarded to the court; where, however, I doubt whether it will be received with much credence. The Austrian declaration of war has put the flatterers of royalty into such spirits, that if the tocsin were sounding at this instant, they would not believe in the danger. We have been unfortunately forced to send the chief part of the garrison of Paris towards the frontier. But we have three battalions of the Swiss guard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... dull and distant grumble, vague, formless, like a long, unending roll of thunder down the horizon ... the swish and sough of waters breaking away from the flanks of the Autocratic ... and then, finally, like a tocsin, the sonorous, musical chiming of the ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... their cannon in its way. There is no gable now, nor wall That does not suffer, night and day, As shot and shell in crushing torrents fall, The stricken tocsin quivers through the tower; The triple nave, the apse, the lonely choir Are circled, hour by hour, With thundering bands of fire And Death is scattered ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... belfry tower. And underneath, in the scroll—a motto. It was a full minute before Jimmie Dale could decipher it, for the lettering was minute and the words, of course, reversed. It was in French: SONNEZ LE TOCSIN. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... their daily bread. He then prayed to them, besought them, and promised to pay as soon as he could, twofold, threefold, tenfold, a hundredfold, the debt which they had acquired. They excused themselves politely for being unable to postpone the little transaction. The Bishop threatened to sound the tocsin, to rouse against them the people who would kill them like dogs for profaning, violating, and stealing the miraculous images and holy relics. They smilingly pointed to the sheriff's officers, who ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... even for Marie's soaring spirit; but she scarcely had time to picture herself ranging the sky when Dumas was back again, sorrowfully confessing failure. Aeroplanes likewise had heard the tocsin; they had sterner business than wafting lovers through the sky; they were carrying explosives and messages in the service of France. Dumas looked almost as disappointed as the wilted little figure ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... of the future. Wisdom sought to devise plans for averting war, but Folly shook her locks tauntingly, and said mockingly, "Ha! ha! War is pleasant pastime." So the culmination was reached, and a misguided people, clamorous for war, sounded the tocsin that caused rivers of blood to flow from brothers' hearts, and enshrouded a grand and happy people in ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... the office of the committee of public safety. But by this time all was in alarm amongst the commune of Paris, where Fleuriot the mayor, and Payan the successor of Hebert, convoked the civic body, despatched municipal officers to raise the city and the Fauxbourgs in their name, and caused the tocsin to be rung. Payan speedily assembled a force sufficient to liberate Henriot, Robespierre, and the other arrested deputies, and to carry them to the Hotel de Ville, where about two thousand men were congregated, consisting chiefly of artillerymen, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... was in the state in which of late the end of the day's work found him—overwhelmingly fatigued. He had not an ounce of superfluous energy to answer his wife's tocsin, while she was almost crying with nervous exhaustion. That Lydia's course ran smooth through a thousand complications was not accomplished without an incalculable expenditure of nervous force on her mother's part. Dr. Melton had several times of late predicted that he would have his old patient ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... comedy, pathetic pastoral, fantastic adventure, slum idyll and medieval romance, it was all one to Rankin. An infallible instinct told him which genre should be chosen at any given moment; a secret tocsin sounded far-off the hour of his success. And still the spirit of Rankin held itself aloof; and underneath his many disguises he remained a junior journalist. But latterly (since his marriage with a rich City merchant's daughter) an insidious seriousness had overtaken him; he began first ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... urgent step; since to secure the Tertasse and the other inner gates would be of little avail, if the main body of the enemy were once in possession of the ramparts. The course that at first sight seemed the most obvious—to enter the town, give the alarm at the town hall, and set the tocsin ringing—he rejected; for while the town was arming, the three hundred who had entered might seize the Porte Neuve, and so secure the entrance of the ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... answered importantly. "But have no fear, the tocsin will sound. The King and our good man M. de Guise have all in hand. A white sleeve, a white cross, and a sharp knife shall rid Paris of the vermin! Gentlemen of the quarter, the word of the night is 'Kill, and no quarter! ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... battlement. On the 31st of December, the last day of 1572, the great assault was made. "The attack was unexpected, but the forty or fifty sentinels defended the walls while they sounded the alarm. The tocsin bells tolled, and the citizens, whose sleep was not apt to be heavy during that perilous winter, soon manned the ramparts again. The daylight came upon them while the fierce struggle was still at its height. The besieged, as before, ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... departed on the morrow with the bitter words, "Adieu, O city, where everything is permitted but to be a good man!" Ten years later he burnt the Bull of the Pope in the public square of Wittemberg, and all Europe rang with the tocsin of the Reformation. I never passed that venerable monastery without thinking of the austere German monk and his glorious work; and the old well-known motto of the Reformation which had been his battle-cry in many a good fight ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the people had repaired to the Hotel de Ville, and requested that the tocsin might be sounded, the districts assembled, and the citizens armed. Some electors assembled at the Hotel de Ville, and took the authority into their own hands. They rendered great service to their fellow-citizens and the cause of liberty by their courage, prudence, and activity, during ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... groaned Sir Pertinax, wiping moist brow. "Picture no more toothsome dainties to my soul lest for desire I swoon and languish by the way. I pray thee, let us haste, sire, so may we reach fair Canalise ere sunset—yet stay! Hearken, messire, hear ye aught? Sure, afar the tocsin soundeth?" ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... not, then, remember the tocsin of St. Germain l'Auxerrois?" said Henri, bitterly. "It seems to me that a husband whom they try to murder on the night of his marriage might think less of his dowry than of ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... though little divining that, it was to be their last. They first took alarm on perceiving that their jailer had removed his family, and then that he sent up their dinner earlier than usual, and removed all the knives and forks. By and by howls and shouts were heard, and the tocsin was heard, ringing, alarm guns firing, and reports came in to the prisoners of the Abbaye that the populace were ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... knew and loved, And every fibre of his soul was knit To see what passed. Then,—in a sun-white land, Where a great sea poured out through narrow gates To meet a greater,—came the clang of arms, And drew the nations like a tocsin peal, Till all the sun-white sands ran red, and earth Sweat blood, and writhed in fiery ashes, and Grew sick with all the reek and stench of war, And heaven drew back behind the battle-clouds. And ever, through the clamour of the strife, I heard the ceaseless wailing of ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... were writing of the bells, I could make you a list of all the famous bells, living and dead, that haunt the city, and the tale of what they have done would be a history of France. The bell of the St. Bartholomew over against the Louvre, the tocsin of the Hotel de Ville that rang the knell of the Monarchy, the bell of St. Julien that is as old as the University, the old Bourdon of Notre Dame that first rang when St. Louis brought in the crown of thorns, and ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... self-defense, while these official declarations, one on top of the other, in hiding from it the gravity of the danger, sink it deeper in its own timidity. At this same session the syndic-attorney of the department reports that the mob is ready, that 900 armed men had just entered Paris, that the tocsin would be rung at midnight, and that the municipality tolerates or favors the insurrection. At this same session, the Minister of Justice gives notice that "the laws are powerless," and that the government is no longer responsible. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... pretentions of the Negro without apology or equivocation. The old form of appeal has become insipid and uninspiring; the ear has become dull to its dinging. The old blade has become blunt and needs a new sharpness of point and keenness of edge. Where now is heard the tocsin call whose key-note a generation ago resounded from the highlands of Kentucky and Tennessee to the plains of the Carolinas calling the black youths, whose hopes ran high within their bosoms, to rise and make for higher ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... tocsin was sounded: the two villages joined forces, and with weapons in their hands marched along the road from Beaucaire to Nimes. At the bridge of Quart the villagers of Redressan and Marguerite joined them. Thus reinforced, ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... forced to admit that Mr. Crampton's conduct was "notoriously at war with the rights of neutrality and national honor." This was not altogether pleasant to some of the old Nestors of the Senate, who wanted once more to sound the war tocsin. General Cass, who had had a bad fall on the outside steps of the Department of the Interior, was "eager for the fray;" the valiant Clayton, of Delaware, saw an opportunity to wipe out the stigma cast upon his treaty; and although the patriarchal Butler (owner of men-servants and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... one feels that the tocsin of alarm, or the anti-slavery trump, must sound a louder note before they can hear it, one would think they must be very hard of hearing,-yea, that they belong to that class, of whom it may be truly said, 'they have stopped their ears that they ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... as a body declared attainted of treason, their hotel-de-ville was razed to the ground, their written privileges were seized and reduced to ashes. The bells that had sounded out the tocsin, at the outbreak of the insurrection, were for the most part broken in pieces and melted. One miserable man was hung to the clapper of the same bell that he had rung to call the people to arms. Others for the like crime were broken on the wheel or burned ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... toward the fort. The darkness of the night, the rattle of hoofs, the clash of the bells, the quick challenge of the guard, the failure to give the countersign, the sharp volley of the sentinels, and the wild cry, "to arms," followed in rapid succession. The tocsin sounded, also the slogan. The culverin, ukase, and door-tender were all fired. Huge beacons of fat pine were lighted along the beach. The whole slumbering host sprang to arms, and the crack of the musket was heard through the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... moisture from their faces until the sound of "Eis! meine Herrschaften!" "Bier! meine Herrschaften!" roused them from their lethargy. Ices and beer and cherries and peaches successively filled up the weary hours until "the tocsin of the soul, the dinner bell," carried joy to their hearts. I can never forget the rapturous look of anticipation and satisfaction which those stolid middle-class Teutonic countenances wore when "Mittagsessen" ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... and petulance in the long series of revolts which filled his reign with wearisome monotony from the moment when he first rode out to claim his duchy of Normandy, and along its southern frontier peasant and churl turned out at the sound of the tocsin, and with fork and flail drove the hated "Guirribecs" back over the border. Five years after his marriage, in 1133, his first child was born at Le Mans. Englishmen saw in the grandson of "good Queen Maud" the direct descendant of the old English line of kings of Alfred and of ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... Berlin the Commandants von Kracht and von Rochow declared themselves ready to place garrison and fortress entirely under his direction; Colonel von Goldacker, commandant of Brandenburg, had betaken himself to his post, and only awaited the count's word to sound the tocsin of war. In Koenigsberg the Court Marshal von Waldow was most energetically massing the friends of Schwarzenberg, and his brother, Sebastian von Waldow, traveled from place to place, to gain friends and partisans for Count John Adolphus, and to ask them to come to Berlin, that, in case of ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... while the need of Freedom's cause demands The earnest efforts of your hearts and hands, Urged by all motives that can prompt the heart To prayer and toil and manhood's manliest part; Though to the soul's deep tocsin Nature joins The warning whisper of her Orphic pines, The north-wind's anger, and the south-wind's sigh, The midnight sword-dance of the northern sky, And, to the ear that bends above the sod Of the green grave-mounds in the Fields of God, In low, deep murmurs of rebuke or cheer, The land's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in the mouth of an obscure alley which my companion whispered would bring us to his house; and here we paused to take breath and look back. The sky was red behind us, the air full of the clash and din of the tocsin, and the flood of sounds which poured from every tower and steeple. From the eastward came the rattle of drums and random shots, and shrieks of "A BAS COLIGNY!" "A BAS LES HUGUENOTS!" Meanwhile ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... fought for France with a sword (or gun) I should have been at her service from the first of August, 1914, when I heard her tocsin ring, saw her sons march away to fight and die on battlefields as familiar to me ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... almost immediately his father in the nominal sway of Russia. The new sovereign promised fealty to the Tartars, and feared no rival while sustained by their swords. His oppression becoming intolerable, the tocsin was sounded in the streets of Novgorod, and the whole populace rose in insurrection. The movement was successful. The favorites and advisers of Yaroslaf were put to death, and the prince himself was exiled. There is something quite refreshing in the energetic spirit ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... the two brothers, they were sore displeased, but they could do nothing,' says the chronicler; 'for the citizens who were in the plot straightway fell to sounding the tocsin, and gathering about the castle in great numbers, with arms and with sticks, were soon ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... themes forbear to tell— May never War awake this bell To sound the tocsin or the knell— Hush'd be the alarum gun. Sheath'd be the sword! and may his voice But call the nations to rejoice That War his tatter'd flag has furl'd, And vanish'd from a wiser world— Hurra! the work ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... pineapple surmounted by a cross. This stood on a pedestal in the centre of the square where was the violet or city hall. In front of the perron were proclaimed all the ordinances issued by the magistrates, or the decrees adopted by the people in general assembly. On these occasions the tocsin was rung, the deans of the gilds would hasten out with their banners and plant them near the perron as rallying points for the various gild members who poured out from forge, work-shop, and factory until ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... year for France. One day we had been over to have one of our occasional pitched battles with those hated Burgundian boys of the village of Maxey, and had been whipped, and were arriving on our side of the river after dark, bruised and weary, when we heard the bell ringing the tocsin. We ran all the way, and when we got to the square we found it crowded with the excited villagers, and weirdly lighted by smoking ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... arms, and also, perhaps, to find out up to what point they could count on the populace, the government arranged for the rumour to be spread throughout all the communes of France, that the "Brigands" led by the migrs, were coming to destroy all the new institutions. The tocsin was rung by all the churches; everyone armed themselves with whatever they could lay hands upon; a National Guard was organised; the country turned into an armed camp while it waited for these imaginary "Brigands" who, in every commune, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... first chapter of the 'Spirit of Whiggism'-a little book which I hope may be easily read and easily remembered. The Whig party have always adopted popular cries. In one age it is Liberty, in another reform; at one period they sound the tocsin against popery, in another they ally themselves with papists. They have many cries, and various modes of conduct; but they have only one object—the establishment of an oligarchy in this free and equal land. I do not wish this country ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... from its contrast. There is something very fairy-like in the cheerful voice of a bell sounding among the wilder scenes of nature, particularly where Time advances his claim to the sovereignty of the landscape; for the cheerfulness is a little ghostly, and might serve well enough for a tocsin to the elvish hordes whom our footsteps ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he can do for himself," added Eskew, "is deliverin' the Daily Tocsin on a second-hand Star bicycle and gamblin' with niggers and riff-raff! None of the nice young folks invite him to their ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... that hour, to accuse Robespierre and Danton of crime. Though thousands in France were horror-stricken at these outrages, the mob, who now ruled Paris, would rally instantaneously at the sound of the tocsin for the ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... If freedom be not a word that dies when spoken, If justice be not a dream whence men must wake, How shall not the bonds of the thraldom of old be broken, And right put might in the hands of them that break? For clear as a tocsin from the steeple Is the cry gone forth along the land, Take heed, ye unwise among the people: O ye ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of the officers whom he had stationed on the road, would march all night to their assistance; and they attributed his delay to the necessity of collecting a sufficient force to overpower the numerous troops of national guards whom the sound of the tocsin had summoned to Varennes. But at each instant they expected to see him appear, and the least movement of the populace, the slightest clash of arms in the streets, seemed to announce his arrival; the courier despatched to Paris by the authorities of Varennes to receive the orders of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... as the clock struck the hour, we went on to the balcony listening and saying: "It is the tocsin!" ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... rang out the sound of a tocsin—the stroke of a hammer upon a steel rim from a locomotive wheel, and which was hung aloft in ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... history, I am surprised that something has not been said about Bunker Hill. The Federal forces from Roxbury to Cambridge were under command of General Artemus Ward, the great American humorist. When the American humorist really puts on his war paint and sounds the tocsin, he can organize a ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... fellows. You may hide from your responsibilities, but the burden of them will lie heavy upon your conscience, the poison will penetrate sometimes into your most jealously guarded paradise. We are of the people's party, you and I, Mannering, and I tell you that the tocsin ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had a terrible alarm. The tocsin was sounded in the public square, and thousands have been running hither and thither to know its meaning. Dispatches have been posted about the city, purporting to have been received by the governor, with the startling information that the U. S. war steamer Pawnee is coming up ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... has failed to rule the world rightly, God will step in, and will cause famines, and plagues, and pestilence—even poverty itself—with His own Right Arm. But the cure was effected, and the country was on its road to a fair amount of prosperity, when the tocsin was sounded in America, and ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... immediately assembled and counselled the frightened and indignant populace to take up arms in their own defence. The tocsin was sounded, and in a few hours several hundred men had assembled near the Pont du Gard, ready to march upon Nimes and punish the wretches who had slain the innocent and defenceless. By unanimous consent the Marquis de Chamondrin was made one of the leaders of this hastily improvised ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... supporters. Camille Desmoulins and others harangued the crowd in all directions, calling it to the defence of liberty. They sounded the tocsin, organised a militia of 12,000 men, took muskets and cannon from the Invalides, and on the 14th of July the armed bands marched upon the Bastille. The fortress, barely defended, capitulated in a few hours. Seven prisoners were ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... various names in her far New England home by men whom she loved and venerated, and whose wisdom and patriotism she could not doubt. They had called it "a matchless inspiration" and "a mass of compromises;" "the charter of liberty" and "a league with Hell;" "the tocsin of liberty" and "the manacle of the slave." She felt quite sure that nobler-minded, braver-hearted men than those who used these words had never lived, yet she could not understand the thing of which they spoke so positively and so passionately. She ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... battle songs were chanted, And war's stirring tocsin pealed, By those songs thy heart was haunted, And thy spirit, proud, undaunted, Clamored wildly — wildly panted: "Mother! let my wish be granted; I will ne'er be mocked and taunted That I fear to meet our vaunted Foemen on ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... Bill of Rights. Mrs. Macaulay[3] has written against it. In Parliament their numbers are shrunk to nothing, and the session is ending very triumphantly for the Court. But there is another scene opened of a very different aspect. You have seen the accounts from Boston. The tocsin seems to be sounded to America. I have many visions about that country, and fancy I see twenty empires and republics forming upon vast scales over all that continent, which is growing too mighty to be kept in subjection to half a dozen ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... with coin of the realm, on the one condition that he should be allowed to insert articles of his own composition in the new organ which it was proposed to establish. There was no difficulty in conceding this trifle, and the 'Tocsin' was the result. The name was a suggestion of the oil merchant himself, and no bad name if Socialists at large could be supposed capable of understanding it; but the oil merchant was too important a man to be thwarted, and the argument by which he supported his ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... my hair rise on my head as these questions rang like a tocsin through my brain, and I think, at that moment, I had a foretaste of the chief agony ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... Constitution; and the recent measures of the country go to prove there is no real disposition, in the masses, to do otherwise. The attachment to the Union is very strong and general throughout the whole of this vast country, and it is only necessary to sound the tocsin to bring to its maintenance a phalanx equal to uphold its standard against the assaults of any enemies. The impossibility of the North-western States consenting that the mouth of the Mississippi should ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... upon the hills, there were far better opportunities afforded of indulging in wild independence. Should the halberded bands of the city be ordered out to quell, seize, or exterminate them; should the alcalde of the village cause the tocsin to be rung, gathering together the villanos for a similar purpose, the wild sierra was generally at hand, which, with its winding paths, its caves, its frowning precipices, and ragged thickets, would ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... at once the tocsin was rung, and when all the citizens were gathered together, a protest was read, stating that the Bishop had taken possession of his see without showing the papal bulls or the royal decree authorizing him to do so, and declaring that he must cease his ...
— Las Casas - 'The Apostle of the Indies' • Alice J. Knight
... house-top alone, and looked in that direction too; glanced down from behind his chimneys at the darkening faces by the fountain below, and sent word to the sacristan who kept the keys of the church, that there might be need to ring the tocsin by-and-bye. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Since the tocsin sounded we have gone from bad to worse. During the past summer (1877) laborers, striking for increased wages or to resist diminution thereof, seized and held for many days the railway lines between East and West, stopping all traffic. Aided by mobs, they took ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... to have sounded the tocsin for a general rummage after, and plunder of, old prints. Venerable philosophers, and veteran heroes, who had long reposed in unmolested dignity within the magnificent folio volumes which recorded their achievements, were instantly dragged forth from their peaceful abodes, to be inlaid by ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... words beat on Aubrey's ears like the brazen clang of a tocsin, for he knew they were true. But he held ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... sharpshooters through the woodlands on the right, the Chasseurs de Vincennes on the heights to the left. Avezzana, war minister, from the top of the cupola of San Pietro in Montori, on seeing the first sentinel advance, gave the signal for the ringing of the tocsin, which brought the entire populace to the walls, the Roman matrons clustering there to encourage their husbands, sons, and brothers to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... scrambling on to the heap of grain and frisking his tail against everything. To be brief, everywhere was the shrew-mouse received with honour by the pots, which kept a respectful silence, except two golden tankards, which knocked against each other like the bells of a church ringing a tocsin, at which he was much pleased, and thanked them, right and left, by a nod of the head, while promenading in the rays of the sun, which were illuminating his domain. Therein so splendidly did the brown colour of his hair shine forth, that one would have thought him a northern ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... barricade ten feet high and six feet thick had been erected with embrasures for cannon and a loop-holed platform for riflemen. Cannon were placed on the roof of the building where the old Monumental firebell had been installed as a tocsin of war. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Presently the tocsin call of "Clara!" sounded to the world the state of Miss Leeson's purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and muttered the menacing and ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... columns could not penetrate into the town at the same time, I ordered the suspension of the attack at nightfall, limiting myself to holding the ground conquered. In spite of that, the combat continued late into the night. On the 1st of April, in the earliest morning light, the tocsin was heard ringing with more fury than ever, and the insurgents reopened fire with an entirely new desperation. Considering the gravity of our losses, as well as the obstinacy and fury of the enemy, it was necessary to adopt a most rigorous measure. I ordered that no prisoners ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... on your heart no Christmas Peace can fall. The chimes shall be a tocsin, and the red Glow of the Yule-wood embers shall recall A myriad smouldering ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... a paroxysm of silent despair. Her words rung like a tocsin of the bright romance conjured up by the avowal of their love. It seemed to him, in that instant, they had no separate existence as distinguished from the great stream of human life—the turbulent river that flowed unceasingly from an eternity of the past to an eternity of the future. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... his enterprise. Though he failed to take Vitry from the allied garrison, yet near St. Dizier he fell on a Prussian convoy, captured 800 men and 400 wagons filled with stores. Everywhere he ordered the tocsin to proclaim a levee en masse, and sent messengers to warn his Lorraine garrisons to cut their way to his side. His light troops spread up the valley of the Marne towards Chaumont, capturing stores and couriers; and he seized this opportunity, when he pictured the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Ibsen's is partly a reminiscence of romanticism; and in Ibsen as in Balzac the romanticist is forever wrestling with the realist. There is in Ibsen's writing an echo of that note of revolt, which rings thruout all the romanticist clamor, a tocsin of anarchy, and which justified the remark of Thiers that the Romanticists of 1830 were the forerunners of the Communists of 1871. And the Communists were only putting into practise what Ibsen was preaching almost simultaneously ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... heard a cry, and thereafter the shattering blare of a trumpet upon the walls. And now from within the waking city rose a confused sound, a hum that grew louder and ever more loud, pierced by shout and trumpet-blast while high above this growing clamour the tocsin ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... before the tocsin of civil war had sounded there were mutterings of thunder in the halls of Congress, and the cloud, at first no bigger than a man's hand, was yearly gathering force, till it finally burst in a cyclone of passion and prejudice and tyranny, ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... business of life to the military drill, other nations will find too much reason for doing the same. Unless the War System is abandoned, all must follow the successful example, while the civilized world becomes a busy camp, with every citizen a soldier, and with all sounds swallowed up in the tocsin of war. Where, then, are the people? Where are popular rights? Montesquieu has not hesitated to declare that the peril to free governments proceeds from armies, and that this peril is not corrected even by making them depend directly on the legislative power. This is not enough. ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... The tocsin was rung in the Place d'Armes about 11.30 p.m. followed by heavy gunfire from our now more numerous defences. Almost simultaneously bomb explosions could be heard. We hastily wrapped up what patients were well ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... in the streets seemed to have increased in certain places to a battle, for the crash of the artillery grapeshot was constantly intermingled with the crackling of the infantry fire, and through it all the bells were sounding the tocsin, a wailing, warning sound, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... LaSalle to the world, she was always, and always would be, the Tocsin to him. Gone! A hand unclenched and passed heavily across his eyes and flirted the hair back from his forehead. She had taken her place in her own world again; her fortune had been restored to her, its management placed in ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... there, by his orders, the young prince was murdered, in the presence of his nurse and six other people, and buried from his mother's residence. This was in 1591. The lad's death was announced, of course. Indeed, it was known to nearly everybody in Uglitch, the tocsin having been sounded, and the population having gathered around the murdered boy, where they put to death a good many who were suspected of complicity with the murderers. But in publishing it abroad in Russia, Boris deemed it prudent to attribute it, some say to a fever, others to an accidental ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... tocsin, which was to call together the people of the village. They also very generally knew who was coming among them on that day, and the purpose for which they were corning; and at the first sound of the bell, all such as intended to shew themselves, came crowding on to the little space ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... cannon-mouths in the forts, magazines, arsenals, ammunition sufficient to carry out a Russian campaign; on the other a hundred and twenty Representatives, a thousand or twelve hundred patriots, six hundred muskets, two cartridges per man, not a drum to beat to arms, not a bell to sound the tocsin, not a printing office to print a Proclamation; barely here and there a lithographic press, and a cellar where a hand-bill can be hurriedly and furtively printed with the brush; the penalty of death against any one who unearths a paving stone, penalty of ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... was one of the most memorable days of the French Revolution. It was the day on which the French monarchy received its death-blow, and was accompanied by fighting and bloodshed which filled Paris with terror. In the morning before daybreak the tocsin had sounded, and not long after the mob of Paris, headed by the Marseillais, "Six hundred men not afraid to die," who had been summoned there by Barbaroux, were marching upon the Tuileries. The king, or rather the queen, had at last determined to ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... symbolical of national processes. In the contest between these forces, Andrew Jackson was the champion of the cause of the upland democracy. He denounced the money power, banks and the whole credit system and sounded a fierce tocsin of danger against the increasing influence of wealth in politics. Henry Clay, on the other hand, represented the new industrial forces along the Ohio. It is certainly significant that in the rivalry between the great Whig of the Ohio Valley and the great Democrat of its Tennessee tributary ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... yet a lad the crusade tocsin found her ready to respond, in accordance with her own convictions and her mother's faithful teachings. She gave a public address in the opera house at Auburn, and served for two years as the first president of the local union in that place, and ...
— Two Decades - A History of the First Twenty Years' Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of New York • Frances W. Graham and Georgeanna M. Gardenier
... hear the sound now as I heard it that calm evening when we were anchored off Gravesend. The "cling-clang, cling-clang!" of our tocsin, tolling and telling the hour, being echoed by the "pong-pang, pong-pang!" of the merchantman lying near us, and that again answered a second or so later by the "ting-ting, ting-ting!" of the other vessel further away, the different tones lingering on ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the late war. I will follow his example, and I shall tell you of mine. He basely insinuates that I was deaf to the voice of honor in that crisis. The truth is, I acted a humble part in that memorable contest. When the tocsin of war summoned the chivalry of the country to rally to the defense of the nation, I, fellow-citizens, animated by that patriotic spirit that glows in every American's bosom, hired a substitute for that war, and the bones of that man, fellow-citizens, now lie bleaching in ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... victim full of precepts, rules of conduct, moral maxims, and most miscellaneous counsel: all which he intuitively suspected at the time, and has ascertained by subsequent experience, to be utterly worthless. Now, when their hour has come, when the tocsin has sounded at last, and the Gaul is at the gate, they still appear to think that the old condition of things is to go on; unconscious, apparently, of atonement due, of retribution to be exacted, of wrongs to be avenged and of ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame |
