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Arson   /ˈɑrsən/   Listen
Arson

noun
1.
Malicious burning to destroy property.  Synonyms: fire-raising, incendiarism.



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"Arson" Quotes from Famous Books



... people concealed about their persons, had gone into the Bill Dalton business under the direct guidance—as they claimed—of their Deity, and were for some time eminently successful. Wholesale murder and robbery became their only industry, arson and oppression their recognized amusement. They had swiped up several cities—"leaving not a soul alive"—and were now grinding the snickersnee for Moab and Midian. The people of the petty nations ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... that he must by all means find Saint-Pol, and find him at once. He began to shout for Gaston. 'To horse, to horse, Gaston!' The court rang with his voice; to the clamour he made, which might betoken murder, arson, pillage, or the sin against the Holy Ghost, out came the vassals in a swarm. 'To horse, to horse, Bearnais! Where out of hell is Gaston of Bearn?' The devil of Anjou was loose in ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... and instrument of political parties; which can the less be excused, seeing that this procedure, while especially applied to political crimes proper, was applicable also to others, such as murder and arson. The evil was aggravated by the clumsiness of that procedure, which, in concert with the haughty republican contempt for non-burgesses, gave rise to a growing custom of tolerating, side by side with ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... criminal law is to punish those who have committed public wrongs, i.e. wrongs against the state or community. Crimes are of two types: first, felonies, including such grave offences as murder, arson, burglary, and larceny; and second, misdemeanors, including such lesser offenses as bribery, knowingly receiving stolen goods, libel, assault and battery, and disturbance of the peace. Usually felonies are punished either by death, or by a long prison sentence. Misdemeanors are ordinarily ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... terrors," in regard to the fires; that it was their duty to use "all lawful means" to discover the guilty parties, for there was "much room to suspect" that the fires were not accidental. He told them that there were many persons in jail upon whom suspicion rested; that arson was felony at common law, even though the fire is extinguished, or goes out itself; that arson was a deep crime, and, if the perpetrators were not apprehended and punished, "who can say he is safe, or where will it end?" The learned judge then went on to deliver a moral lecture ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... one extra passenger.] in the rear of the roof, from which he could exchange his own yarns with those of the guard. No greater offence was then known to mail-coaches; it was treason, it was lsa majestas, it was by tendency arson; and the ashes of Jack's pipe, falling amongst the straw of the hinder boot, containing the mail-bags, raised a flame which (aided by the wind of our motion) threatened a revolution in the republic of letters. Yet even this left the sanctity ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... altogether the loudest explosion of the Storm and Stress. The hero, Karl Moor, was conceived as a "sublime criminal." Deceived by the machinations of his villainous brother Franz, he becomes the captain of a band of outlaws and attempts by murder, arson and robbery to right the wrongs of the social order. For a while he believes that he is doing a noble work. When he learns how he has been deluded he gives himself up to the law. The effect of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... charge, Mr. MacTaggart, on whatna charge?" asked the writer, taking a confident, even an insolent, tone, now that he was on his own familiar ground. "Rape, arson, forgery, robbery, thigging, sorning, pickery, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... which I dreamed for three or four nights of the executioner and the revolting accessories. I have talked to men who were chained to trucks. Once when I was drinking tea in a mine, Borodavkin, once a Petersburg merchant who was convicted of arson, took a teaspoon out of his pocket and gave it to me, and the long and the short of it is that I have upset my nerves and have vowed not to ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... the farmer, starting from his chair. "Set fire to a barn! Why th' idea! Th' sheriff will git after you, sure pop. That's arson, man!" ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope

... myself a feudatory of the Holy See. Until then I render account to none but God and my conscience." And he pushed on, preceded by a black banner of death, scattering in true Hungarian fashion murder, rape, pillage, and arson through the smiling countryside, exacting upon the whole land a terrible vengeance for the ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... against the raiders was bitter and universal. Little vindictive, in general, the people clamored that arson and murder—as set forth in Dahlgren's orders—merited more serious punishment than temporary detention and highflown denunciation. The action of the Government in refusing summary vengeance on the cavalrymen captured, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... a mysterious act, and would perhaps have puzzled the proprietors of the store even more than it would a stranger. For a stranger would have said at once this is burglary, or else arson; but those acquainted with the place would have known that neither of those crimes was very practicable. This enterprising sailor could not burn down this particular store without roasting himself the first thing; and indeed he could ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... thing—there is no denying that. If he had been proven guilty of theft, arson, licentiousness, infanticide, and defiling graves, I believe they would have suspended him ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... I should treat of CARSON, His guns and rataplan, It's something worse than arson To smile at such a man; Since chaff would make his pulse stir— And this he cannot brook— The more he talks of Ulster The solemner ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various

... people whose fate is in his hands, for serious as is the material destruction which this method of warfare entails, the destruction to the orderly habits of mind and thought which, at bottom, are civilization, is even more serious. Robbery and brigandage, murder and arson follow ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... must say, if that Lawson gang has come down to burglary, as well as arson," observed Spider ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... off. The gradual encroachment of the composition may be traced in the Anglo-Saxon laws, /1/ and the feud was pretty well broken up, though not extinguished, by the time of William the Conqueror. The killings and house-burnings of an earlier day became the appeals of mayhem and arson. The appeals de pace et plagis and of mayhem became, or rather were in substance, the action of trespass which is still familiar to lawyers. /2/ But as the compensation recovered in the appeal was the alternative of vengeance, we might expect to find its scope limited ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... bear his trouble by sympathy, and perhaps by advice do away with it altogether. He could not even make a guess at the bishop's hidden trouble, and ran over all known crimes in his mind, from murder to arson, without coming to any conclusion. Yet something extraordinary must be the matter to move so easy-going, healthy a ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... especial importance. (1) In order to stop the slave trade each nation was to keep a squadron (carrying at least eighty guns) cruising off the coast of Africa. (2) It was agreed that any person who, charged with the crime of murder, piracy, arson, robbery, or forgery, committed in either country, shall escape to the other, shall if possible be seized and given up to the authorities of the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... (2) As long as there are persons whose habits and character predispose them to crime, as long as there are social inequalities and wants that provoke to criminal acts, and as long as there are attractive or easy victims, so long will thieving and arson, rape ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... round her—he knew not how; her head sank on his shoulder, she knew not why—faithlessness to her lord was as far from her thoughts as murder or arson; but for one poor little moment in a lifetime it is good to weep on someone's shoulder and to have someone's ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... the presence of the enemy, being armed; and, 4th, those who seize the property of any person who has done no wrong to the revolution, violate women and assassinate or inflict serious wounds on unarmed persons and commit robberies or arson. ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... and clamor, under and above the howling and the volleys and the roar of flames, sounded the steady thumping of the sacred war-drums. The whole sky glowed red. The Indian night was scorched and smoked and lit by arson. Hell screamed with the cooking of red mutiny, and throbbed with the thunder of the sacred temple-drums. And that was only one of the hells, and a small one. India glowed red that night from end ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... } An geall; } desirous, enamoured. An nasgaidh; for nothing, gratis. An t['o]ir; in pursuit. Araon; together. As an aghaidh; out of the face, to the face, outright. As a ch['e]ile; loosened, disjointed. Car air char; rolling, tumbling over and over. Cia mar; as how, how. C' arson; on account of what, why, wherefore. C' ionnas; what manner, how. Cha, cho; not. Comhla[80], mar chomhla, } Cuideachd; } together, in company. C'uime, for what, why. Do dheoin, a dheoin; spontaneously, intentionally. Dh' aindeoin; against one's will. Do ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart

... Judas Iscariot can't show hisself in Utiky with impunerty by a darn site!" with which observashun he kaved in Judassis hed. The young man belonged to 1 of the first famerlies in Utiky. I sood him and the Joory brawt in a verdick of Arson ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... at some distant point and try to get away. Sooner or later, Charley felt sure, the man would be captured and doubtless sent to prison for cheating the state. It made Charley feel bad to think that he did not have enough direct evidence to insure Lumley's conviction for arson as well. ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... hypothesis to be lightly dismissed. What had he better do to cut that fellow's claws? There was hope, of course, that he had worked off his spleen in firing the tannery, and also that a wholesome fear of being caught and convicted of arson might cool his spirit! Unless ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... dissensions. Labor was striking here, there, and everywhere; and where it was not striking, it was being turned out by the capitalists. The papers were filled with tales of violence and blood. And through it all the Black Hundreds played their part. Riot, arson, and wanton destruction of property was their function, and well they performed it. The whole regular army was in the field, called there by the actions of the Black Hundreds.* All cities and towns were like armed camps, and laborers were shot down like dogs. ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... punishable by death; but as this offense is defined and made punishable by the laws of the United States, not all the states take cognizance of it. If committed in such states, it is tried in the courts of the United States. In New York, murder, treason, and arson in the first degree, are punishable by death. Few states make more than these crimes thus punishable. In two or three states, the penalty of death has been abolished, and ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... liked it, but just as much she liked being with women. She never had any difficulties with men. Miss Thompkins insinuated at intervals that she flirted, but she had the sharpest contempt for flirtation, and as a practice put it on a level with embezzlement or arson. Miss Thompkins, however, kept on insinuating. Audrey regarded herself as decidedly wiser than Miss Thompkins. Her opinions on vital matters changed almost weekly, but she was always absolutely sure that the new opinion was final and incontrovertible. Her scorn of the old English ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... that the victims pleaded the king's protection. As vainly did they appeal to the humanity of the invaders. The brutal soldiery defied the one and laughed at the other. Finding that the promised pardon and mercy were synonymous with murder, arson, and rapine, such a revulsion of feeling had taken place that the authors of these cruelties were literally sleeping on a volcano; and where patriotism had so lately been invoked in vain, hope of revenge was now turning ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake

... distant, as the crow flies, some thirty-five to forty miles, lies the village of Paia, which for high crimes and misdemeanours, including murder, rapine, and arson, it was considered necessary to punish. Now punishment in the days of Cavignari not unusually meant waking up some fine morning to find that before breakfast it was either necessary to meet the Guides in a pitched battle, or to submit ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband

... dollars and cents constitute happiness, there is plenty for all: but can any one, who has read of the American doings in the late frontier troubles, and the daily disputes on the slave question, praise the GOVERNMENT of the States?—a Government which dares not punish homicide or arson performed before its very eyes, and which the pirates of Texas and the pirates of Canada can brave at their will? There is no government, but a prosperous anarchy; as the Prince's other favorite government is a prosperous ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... injuring the offending person's house—rural dwellings are mainly bamboo work and mud—by bumping into it with the heavy palanquin which is carried about the roadway at the time of the annual festival. If such a hint should prove ineffective, recourse may be had to arson. Finally, there is the pistol. I remember someone's remark, "A man does not lose a common mind and heart ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... ustulation^, calcination; cracking, refining; incineration, cineration^; carbonization; cupellation [Chem]. ignition, inflammation, adustion^, flagration^; deflagration, conflagration; empyrosis^, incendiarism; arson; auto dafe [Fr.]. boiling &c v.; coction^, ebullition, estuation^, elixation^, decoction; ebullioscope^; geyser; distillation (vaporization) 336. furnace &c 386; blanket, flannel, fur; wadding &c (lining) 224; clothing &c 225. still; refinery; fractionating column, fractionating tower, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... are undergoing sentence by military courts and have been imprisoned six months, except those who are under sentence for the crimes of murder, arson, or rape, and excepting those who are under sentence at the Tortugas, be discharged from imprisonment and the residue of their sentence remitted. Those who belong to the military service and their term unexpired will be returned to their command if it is still in service, and their release ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson

... They are all jealous as Kilkenny cats of one another, and when they come together, they scarcely ever lose an opportunity of getting up a bloody fight. They are even accused of doing occasionally a little bit of arson, so as to get the chance of a row. The people composing the companies are almost entirely rowdies, and apparently of any age above sixteen: when extinguishing fires, they exhibit a courage and reckless daring that cannot be surpassed, and they are never so happy as when the excitement of ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... deal prettier woman. What made me so sure, you know, was the infernally odd coincidence of the name; and then I only saw her off and on, you know, and I never heard her voice. Then, you know, I was mad with jealousy; and so I made myself worse and worse, till I was ripe for murder, arson, assasination, and all that sort ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... the time of the fire. He likewise procured a long array of facts tending to fix the burning upon the "merchant princes" who held the policies. To his mind, they were convincing. He therefore confronted these men, accused them of the arson, and demanded payment for his own loss. This was, of course, declined. Whereupon he gave them formal notice, that, if his demand were not liquidated within thirty days, never thereafter would an opportunity be afforded for a settlement. That the notice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... police court cases you find all sorts of professions and followings represented in the charge sheets, from actors down to editors, but have you ever heard of an assessor who defaulted, who committed bigamy, arson, larceny, murder, or neglected to pay his income tax? No, you have not. Also, you seldom hear of an unmarried assessor. They are known to be such steady, dependable men that they are always snapped up at once. Thus you can understand how pleased I ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... somehow contrived to pay the taxes thereon. He also lived and throve in bodily health in spite of evil ways, and his children were many. There seemed no way to dispose finally of Jim Simmons and his house except by murder and arson, and the village was a peaceful one, and such measures were ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... warrant for your arrest, on the charge of arson. So, if you are disposed to be reasonable, you'll come along with us quietly; if not, I'll clap ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various

... principal" was, in the minds of most thrifty New England women, a sin only second to arson, theft, or murder; and, though the rule was occasionally carried too far for common sense,—as in this case, where two elderly women of sixty might reasonably have drawn something from their little hoard in time of special ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... serious cases of arson, in which Suffragette literature and messages had been discovered among the ruins, besides a number of minor outrages. An energetic leading article breathed the exasperation of the public, and pointed out the spread of ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... The patriotic arson of our amiable allies cannot be sufficiently commended—nor subscribed for. Amongst other details omitted in the various [A] despatches of our eloquent ambassador, he did not state (being too much occupied with the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... had been used only to open a trunk, for the purpose of recovering a portrait and sundry gifts,—an act which by no means involved the further crime of murder. Whoever had committed the deed had attempted to hide it by arson, and had fired the bedding by a lighted candle, but a timely discovery ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... in the cottage of the former, M. Brianza, cure of Luserna, seated in the confessional, listened with horror and indignation to a tale of intended wholesale rapine, murder, and arson, which his ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley

... Arrears, in malantauxe. Arrest aresti. Arrival alveno. Arrive (on foot) alveni. Arrive (by vehicle) alveturi. Arrogance aroganteco. Arrogant aroganta. Arrow sago. Arsenal armilejo. Arsenic arseniko. Arson brulkrimo. Art arto. Artery arterio. Artful ruza. Arthritic artritulo. Artichoke artisxoko. Article artikolo. Article (commerce) komercajxo. Articulate elparoli. Articulation (anat.) artiko. Artifice artifiko. Artificial artefarita. Artillery ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... put our handkerchiefs to our faces. This floor is appropriated for such crimes as assault and battery; assault and battery, with intent to kill; refractory seamen; deserters; violating the statutes; suspicion of arson and murder; witnesses; all sorts of crimes, varying from the debtor to the positive murderer, burglar, and felon. We should have enumerated, among the rest, all stewards, (colored,) whether foreign or domestic, who are committed on that singular charge, "contrary to law." And it should ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... to fight well, the cries, the shouts, the imprecations, the fact that half a dozen people, inmates and attendants, joined in the confusion as if by magic, all this was nothing to Jones, nor was the subsidiary fact that one of the inmates, a quiet mannered clergyman, with a taste for arson, had taken advantage of the confusion and was patiently and sedulously at work, firing the thatch of the summer house in six different places, with a long concealed ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... anybody here but a fellow named Baker," he said. "I deported him from the Ellice Islands for sedition, bigamy, selling gin to the natives, suspected arson and receiving stolen goods. If he called himself a Deputy Commissioner he was a rank impostor, and had no more authority to annex this ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... on an Army or Fleet Is homicidal lunacy.... My son has been killed in the Mons retreat. Why is the Lord afflicting me? Why are murder, pillage and arson And rape allowed by the Deity? I will write to the Times, deriding our parson Because my ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling

... nearly every city in Europe and this country, though originating in Bombay, India, of Thugs and Burners. These are vowed to take every opportunity to do injury to the cause not only of religion, but of public and private virtue and order; by arson, assassination, and other crimes. Through the vigilance of well-organized police, they have, so far, been prevented from effecting very much mischief; but they constitute one of the worst of all the dangers of ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne

... he was a villain, double-dyed and beyond hope, yet he was the home of such courage, such virility, that her unconsenting admiration went out in spite of herself. He was, at any rate, a MAN, square-jawed, resolute, implacable. In the sinuous trail of his life might lie arson, robbery, murder, but he still held to that dynamic spark of self-respect that is akin to the divine. Nor was it possible to believe that those unblinking gray eyes, with the capability of a latent sadness of despair in them, expressed ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine

... police, "I arrest you for murder, burglary, arson, and conspiracy. You put up a splendid fight, old man, and I am only sorry that it is our painful duty ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... venture to remind you," the Duke retorted, "that dinner is almost ready, and that Claire is the sort of housewife who would more readily condone fratricide or arson than cold soup." ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... wherever the Teuton is in evidence, on the other hand, there is less respect for property; so that offenses against the person, such as assault, murder, and rape, give place to embezzlements, burglary, and arson. It might just as well be argued that the Teuton shows a predilection for offenses against property; the native Celt an equal propensity for crimes ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... murder an' theft, For battery, arson and hate, >From breakin' the Sabbath to coveting cows, An' false affidavits an' perjurin' vows, I'm adept at whatever the law disallows, And the gallowsmen gape at the noose that I left, For I flit ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... save arson could make a more legitimate call upon a body of citizen regulators than that of wife-beating and the abuse of small children. So it came about that after the wife had forgiven her indignities and returned to ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... cogitation as she rode up to the store and drew bridle, where in their shirt-sleeves the prominent citizens were gathered. She began to speak immediately. She did not mince matters; she enumerated them by name, dwelt coldly upon the law governing arson, and told them ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... subject to military law who commits manslaughter, mayhem, arson, burglary, robbery, larceny, embezzlement, perjury, assault with intent to commit any felony, or assault with intent to do bodily harm, shall be punished as ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... wouldn't look at bacon, unless you'd guarantee that the pig had been killed on a moonless Friday with the wind in the North, and as for pulled figs, if you couldn't swear that the box had been crossed by a one-eyed man whose father had committed arson in a pair of brown boots, you could go and ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... impossible. Only those phenomena will be indicated which lie to some degree on the borderland of the observed and hence may be overlooked. To this class belong, for example, anger against the object, which serves as explanation of a group of so-called malicious damages, such as arson, etc. Everybody, even though not particularly lively, remembers instances in which he fell into great and inexplicable rage against an object when the latter set in his way some special difficulties or caused him pain; and he remembers how ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... and it ain't arson, that's flat," observed that functionary; "but we don't draw no such fine distinctions in our profession. If we did, the judges would have nothing ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... day and night hideous with their drunken bellowings, terrorized everybody even suspected of love for the Union, plundered and burned dwellings, including a Colored Orphan Asylum, and added to the crime of arson, that of murdering the mob-chased, terror-stricken Negroes, by ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... to arson, We can't recommend a wooden parson: But if the Church any such appoints, They'd better at least have iron joints. In parts, not much by Protestants haunted, A figure to look at's all that's wanted— A block in black, to eat and sleep, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... distorted vision. This too is more apparent toward the close of his work, when he begins to show signs of fatigue and exhaustion. Nay, it is to be feared that we are still suffering from the outrage committed on Victorian literature by Mr. Mill's incendiary housemaid. We may yet note marks of arson in the restored volume. At the same time, there are large parts of his work which are as true historically as they are poetically brilliant. Part I.—"The Bastille"—is almost perfect. The whole description of Versailles, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... recognizance, and his surety to have forfeited his; and the said trader or factor, so convicted, shall be forever disabled from dealing in any of the said marts, unless the offence shall not be that of murder, maiming, arson, or stealing or surprising the person, and shall appear to the commissioners aforesaid to merit only, besides the penalty of his bond, a suspension for one year; and the said trader or factor, so convicted of murder, maiming, arson, stealing or surprising the person, shall, if a native, be delivered ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of his philosophy to prevent detection by murder, and the flames from the burning walls added a pleasure to his lustful eye. His march across Scotland was marked by slaughtered families and ruined houses. Plunder was the first cause of his exploits, but there is no doubt that death and arson were a solace to his fierce spirit; and for a while this giant of cruelty knew neither check nor hindrance. Presently it became a superstition with him that death was the inevitable accompaniment of robbery, and, as he was incapable of remorse, he grew callous, and neglected ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... sees fire after fire set through ignorance, carelessness or purpose, and so far from punishing the offenders accords them every privilege of business and society. In cities, however insignificant the damage, arson leads to the penitentiary. A forest fire may destroy millions and the cause not even be investigated. If, aggravated by a particularly inexcusable case of malice or carelessness, some property holder (seldom ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... prevalent in most metallic regions, where mines have been worked ab antiquo. The first report of the Dean Forest Commission, 1839, f. 12., adverts to a similar practice among the coal and iron miners in that forest. It seems to be an instance of the Droit des arsins, or right of arson, formerly claimed and exercised to a considerable extent, and with great solemnity, in Picardy, Flanders, and other places; but I know of no instance in which this wild species of metallifodine justice has been claimed to apply to anything but the culprit's local habitation ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various

... with the yellow head? Shouldn't you say she looks like an angel, and ought to be put on the altar to hear the prayers of sinners? Would you believe she is a mother? Arson is her hobby. She is a regular 'fire-bug'. She was adopted by a German couple, and one night, when the old farmer had come home with the money paid him for his sheep and hogs, she stole the last cent he had, pocketed ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... and me is departed shall I never have joy in my heart, and now He which I have taken unto my master, He be my help. And when he had said thus he took his body lightly in his arms, and put it upon the arson of his saddle. And then he said to the man: Canst thou tell me unto some chapel where that I may bury this body? Come on, said he, here is one fast by; and so long they rode till they saw a fair tower, and afore it there seemed an old feeble chapel. And then they alighted both, and put him into a ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... Mr. Paine's wit. Several striking examples might be cited; but two must suffice. Some years ago, when he was County Attorney, a man who had been indicted in Kennebec County for arson, was tried, and acquitted by the jury on the ground that he was an idiot. After the trial, the Judge before whom the case had been tried, sought to reconcile Mr. Paine to the verdict by some explanatory remarks. "Oh, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... aforementioned, named Captain von Papen, the German military attache, as the director of the plot. The accused were also said to have had the cooperation of the German Consul General at San Francisco. The indictments charged them, inter alia, with using the mails to incite arson, murder, and assassination. Among the evidence the Government unearthed was a letter referring to "P," which, the Federal officials said, meant Captain von Papen. The letter, which related to a price to be paid ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... machinery.—Henceforth these constitute the new leaders: for in every mob it is the boldest and least scrupulous who march ahead and set the example in destruction. The example is contagious: the beginning was the craving for bread, the end is murder and arson; the savagery which is unchained adding its unlimited violence to the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Committee of the British Labour Party and the daily messages of fearless British journalists, such as Mr Hugh Martin, establish it beyond possibility of contradiction—that when the "Black and Tans" were let loose on the Irish people they began a villainous campaign of cowardly murder, arson, robbery and drunken outrage, which should have made all decent Englishmen and Englishwomen shudder for the deeds committed in their name. Whenever the particulars are fully disclosed they will, I venture to say, horrify every honest man in the Empire. Not the ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... of the whole feudal system, which a year before had seemed endowed with perpetual vigour; an insurrection of the peasantry against their territorial tyrants, accompanied by every horror of pillage, arson, and bloodshed; the beautiful and stately Queen flying, half naked, for her life, amid the slaughter of her sentinels and courtiers; and the King himself virtually a prisoner in the very Court which, up to that moment, had seemed the ark and sanctuary ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... consummations, do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough; breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of furniture, if not arson itself? ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... wrongs, all these outrages, all these crimes of blood and deeds of horror, were committed to plant the accursed institution on the soil that had been, by a great national act, dedicated to freedom. But violence and arson, bloodshed and murder, failed. The black banner of slavery is trailing in the dust. The stars and stripes wave triumphantly over a free and joyous people. The heretofore invincible is conquered. I have borrowed the word "aggression" to express the conduct of the South toward the North. I ...
— Slavery: What it was, what it has done, what it intends to do - Speech of Hon. Cydnor B. Tompkins, of Ohio • Cydnor Bailey Tompkins

... George," said Harry. "Tales that we are terrible persons, who rejoice most in arson and murder, evidently have been spread pretty thoroughly through ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... all that time from the study of literature and art and other elegant and uncompromising subjects, could hardly keep from speaking of this and that incident of the war. Whereupon a discreet, or rather an embarrassed silence, as if a pardoned convict had playfully referred to the arson or burglary, not to say worse, that had been ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve

... committed for arson at Cowfold. Sit down in that room for a few minutes. Mr. Mortimer will attend to ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... righteous indignation against oppressions which ought to stir the blood of any man who is not a slave, and then watch results. A flaming spirit will presently appear in the midst of that meeting, and it will not be the flaming spirit of liberty, but of a Southern mob on arson and murder bent. Negro property will be burned and Negro blood will be shed, and that without stint or mercy. The Negro's Constitutional right to assemble to consider his wrongs is in reality too weak to resist the murderous violence of a Southern mob. The mob burns Negroes and their ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke

... also, that the exceptional ferocity of the forty years of uninterrupted war with the Indians that ensued was due in part to the long dereliction by the Quaker government of its duty of protecting its citizens and punishing murder, robbery, and arson when committed by its ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... back to Dangerfield on that fearful night, might have elucidated the mystery; but he had been kidnapped, and sent to the plantations. After many years he returned to England, and on his deathbed left a written statement, implicating Sir Hugh in the double crime of arson and murder. But long ere this the culprit had appeared before a tribunal which admits of no prevarication, and the pretty boy with the golden curls had become lord of Dangerfield Hall. The long corridor had been but partially destroyed. ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... his head. "Something must be done, but I doubt if that's it. It's tough to be—disgraced, to have a thing like this hanging over you. I wouldn't mind it half so much if I were up for murder or arson or any man's-sized crime. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... often misdirected by the worst of teachers, the Negro race naturally ran into excesses of petty criminality. Even under the reconstruction governments the proportion of Negro to white criminals was about ten to one. Theft was frequent; arson was the accepted means of revenge on white people; and murder became common in the brawls of the city Negro quarters. The laxness of the marriage relation worked special hardship on the women and children in so many cases deserted by ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... this day made oath before me, a justice of said court, that William Hohan Zollern, alias Wilhelm, has at various times and places between July, 1914, and November, 1917, committed murder, assault, and arson upon the bodies of various people and sundry properties, against the peace and dignity of the Government of the United States, the State of Virginia and ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... we must have you all at our marriage, and I say we can't. It will be at Christmas or New Years, when such a trip across the country would be equivalent to murder & arson & everything else.—And it would cost five hundred dollars—an amount of money she don't know the value of now, but will before a year is gone. She grieves over it, poor little rascal, but it can't be helped. She must wait ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sneak-thieving, arson, and perjury. And they are ripe for any deviltry, without compulsion. All I need to do is to show them a piece of money and ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... to make answer, "what simplicity in you to think so! If you have not broken one commandment, let us see whether we cannot convict you of the breach of another. If you are not a swindler or forger, you are guilty of arson or burglary. By hook or by crook you shall not escape. Are you to suffer or I? What does it matter to you who are going off the stage, to receive a slight additional daub upon a character so deeply stained already? But think of me, the immaculate lover of Truth, so observant ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... is a soulless corporation if there ever was one. They have the shrewdest lawyers in the country, and they get away legally with things that are flagrantly illegal, such as freezing out competitors, stealing patents, and the like. Report has it that they do not stop at arson, treason, or murder to attain their ends, but as Prescott said, they never leave ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... by German success, we should not discipline ourselves, which is the German lesson, so much as we should riot in the moral license of the German creed. Americans would worship at the altar of that queer "old German god," who apparently encourages rape, murder, arson, and tyranny in his followers. For in young America, with every social tradition in it seething blood, there is already an insidious tendency to accept this new-old religion of triumphant force. American ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... the linden boughs; Murder, bigamy, and theft; Travellers of goods bereft; Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,— Every thing but honest toil, Are the deeds that best define Every ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte

... along the alleys, wharves, and streets; but what cares the wolf triumphant for that? for the 30,000 homeless in London? The policeman's club, or the bayonet, is the only thing that keeps down riot and arson, and the uncertainty of the result is all that hinders the French, German, and Russian wolves from turning a continent into a pandemonium. Is Europe truly a civilized country? Not if tried by an ethical standard. VON MOLTKE, the great man of Germany, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... is any crime punishable by death or state prison. Felony covers murder, arson, larceny, burglary, etc. But congress may define piracy and felony to cover ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

... protection to property also presented some difficulties. The problem was to establish the principle of irreparable injury to the complainant's property. This was a simple matter when the strikers were guilty of trespass, arson, or sabotage. Then they damaged the complainant's physical property and, since they were usually men against whom judgments are worthless, any injury they might do was irreparable. But these were exceptional cases. Usually injunctions were sought to prevent not violence, but strikes, picketing, or ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... Mormons are taught that the Saints, the sole survivors of the day of judgment, will, with resurrected bodies, possess the purified earth. The lengths to which Mormon preachers have dared to go in illustrating this view find a good illustration in a sermon by arson Pratt, printed in the Deseret News, Salt Lake City, of August 21, 1852. Having promised that "farmers will have great farms upon the earth when it is so changed," and foreseeing that some one might suggest a difficulty in providing land enough to go round, he ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... easy to produce an unprovoked murder, an inexplicable arson, neither led up to nor followed by the ordinary human history of such acts, and therefore as arbitrary as the deeds of idiots or the insane. A villainous hate, an alleged love, a violent death, are flashed at us, without being in any sort of tableau logic. The public is ceaselessly played upon by ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... it, Bud, don't ever believe it. In this state ten years is the extreme limit for manslaughter, and the only complication is that if your train should happen to burn up they might soak you an extra ten years for arson; but a despatcher is usually handy around a penitentiary and can get light work in the office, so that he's thrown more with wife poisoners and embezzlers than with cutthroats and hold-up men. Then, too, you can earn nearly as much in State's prison as you can at ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman

... situation and lingered late in the season to enjoy the pleasures of Baiae, now found themselves roughly dragged away into captivity to enrich the freebooters by their ransoms. From pillage the pirates turned to arson, Demetrius in fact making no effort to control his men. First a fragile wooden summer-house caught the blaze of a torch and flared up; then a villa itself, and another and another. The flames shot higher and higher, great glowing, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... is not confined to murder. It may be inflicted for robbery with violence, homicide, wounds inflicted by children upon their fathers, mothers, and grand-parents, as well as for arson. This sounds a somewhat drastic blood code, but when I state that the average number of persons executed in Japan does not exceed thirty a year, it will be seen that either the crimes mentioned are infrequent or that the punishment of death is only ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... fires, street-car smash-ups, railroad wrecks, automobile collisions, runaways, explosions, mine disasters, strokes of lightning, drownings, floods, storms, shipwrecks, etc. In the list of crime will be placed murders, assaults, suicides, suspicious deaths, robberies, embezzlements, arson, etc. Of the accident class, the method of writing a fire story may be taken as a ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... to the United States. Many arrests were soon afterward made. A large number were dismissed at once because of a want of evidence against them; others were bound over to keep the peace; and a few were sent to Philadelphia for trial.[71] Two only were convicted of capital offences—one of arson, the other of robbing the mails—and these, because of palliating circumstances, were finally pardoned by the president. Most of the troops were speedily withdrawn from the disaffected counties and dismissed; but a body of twenty-five hundred, under General Morgan, remained encamped in the district ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... replied the king's attorney, as in an almost joyful manner he conducted her to the door. Then, turning to his desk, he said, striking the letter with the back of his right hand, "Come, I had a forgery, three robberies, and two cases of arson, I only wanted a murder, and here it is. It will ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... When any theft, assault, arson, or rape was discovered or complained of, immediately the bells Were rung, and the nearest detachment of soldiers of the brotherhood started on a pursuit which was carried to the boundaries of the next district, ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... deep, abiding hatred, the flannel bundle. She loathed the very smell of flannel before Theodora was six short weeks old, and the sight of the diminutive laundry, which hung upon the line between the cherry trees, almost drove her to arson. ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly

... And to the boot of all that, Gilliewhackit said, that, be the evidence what it liked, if he had the luck to be on Donald's inquest, he would bring him in guilty of nothing whatever, unless it were wilful arson, or ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... Square—the one belonging to the Sardinian, the other to the Bavarian Minister—were attacked, plundered, set fire to, and almost entirely destroyed. The military were sent for; they arrived too late to prevent the arson, but thirteen of the malefactors were seized and committed to Newgate, and for the night the mob was dispersed. It was not a bad day's work for the rioters. Parliament had been insulted, the Government and the very Throne menaced. In two parts of the town Catholic ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... and if you will give me sufficient time, I dare say I can become sufficiently expert in other and more criminal matters to please even your fancy. I cannot, I fear, commit a murder, nor would I choose to embark upon an attempt at arson; but I could easily learn to cheat at cards; or I could, if it would please you better, make shift to forge your own name to a bill for a hundred pounds. I confess, however, I am entirely in the dark as to why you choose to have me ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... fam'ly I reckon," said the captain, "kept a dry-goods store in New York city, and realised a handsome competency by burning his house to ashes. Same name, anyhow. David Polreath, Unchris'en Penrewen, John Tredgear, and old Arson Parvis." ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens

... to 1865, the homes and families of the masters who were fighting with the army that barred their way to freedom. If "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had portrayed the rule of slavery rather than the rarest exception, not all the armies that went to the field could have stayed the flood of rapine and arson and pillage that would have started with the first gun of the civil war. Instead of that, witness the miracle of the slave in loyalty to his master, closing the fetters upon his own limbs—maintaining and defending the families of those who fought against his freedom—and ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... same psychasthenic state before us when the obsession has impulsive character, from the mere abnormal impulse of lying, or making noise in a quiet place or crying in the dark, or touching certain places, to that of stealing, indecent speech, arson, and perhaps even murder. The symptoms might easily be mistaken for those of graver diseases. Yet the fact that the patient himself really does not will the effect at which he is aiming separates, mostly without difficulty, the diagnosis of psychasthenia ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... placed before me was a delight to the eye,—so adorned was it with spices, so crisply brown its outer coat; and a taste—that first tentative taste, before the sauce was added—was like a dream of Lucullus come true. I could forgive a good deal in a cook with that touch,—anything short of arson and assassination! ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... naivete, brutal simplicity of an utterly abandoned baby. Nothing mystical or beautiful about the Rat. He did not disguise from me in the least that there was no crime that he had not committed—murder, rape, arson, immorality of the most hideous, sacrilege, the basest betrayal of his best friends—he was not only savage and outlaw, he was deliberate anarchist and murderer. He had no redeeming point that I could anywhere discover. I did not in the least mind his entering my room when he pleased. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... fire to the doctor's house with sparks from his own electrical machine; thereby giving the man they called an incendiary and raiser of sedition against Church and King, an appropriately experimental illustration of the nature of arson and riot. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... place—a large log enclosure, full of strange inmates, such as wild guerillas in moccasins, grey-back Confederates and blue-coat Federals guilty of many a murder, arson, and much horse-stealing, desolate deserters, often deserving pity—the debris of a four years' war, the crumbs of the great loaf fallen ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... swear it— For militant Sinn Fein; I really cannot bear it When constables are slain; But if you mention CARSON I feel that for the spread Of murder and of arson A good ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various

... teaches its lesson. The times we live in are not without instruction. The American people must be taught—if they do not already feel—that treason is a crime and must be punished. The Government must be strong not only to protect but to punish. When we turn to the criminal code we find arson laid down as a crime with the appropriate penalty. We find theft and murder denounced as crimes, and their appropriate penalty prescribed; and there, too, we find the last and highest of crimes,—treason. . . . The people must understand that treason is the blackest of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... to go skylarkin' in!" he cried jovially. "A night for murder an' arson an' robbin' graveyards! Listen to her, boys! Hear her roar! Poke Drury, I'm tellin' you, I'm glad your shack's right where it is instead of seventeen miles fu'ther on. An' ... Where's the girl?" He had swept the room with his roving eye; now, dropping his voice ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... put the Hon. John through; so he got out a writ of the savagest kind—arson, burglary and false pretence—and a deputy sheriff was soon on the taps to smoke the Western member out of his boots. Upon inquiring at the United States Hotel, where the honorable gentleman had been wont to "put up," they found he had vacated weeks before and gone to Yohe's ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... at the last speaker as if he had proposed to cook a child for dinner. Cut a leaf out of a book! Murder, theft, and arson combined, would scarcely have been more horrible in ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... I found to my surprise that the guilt of the old man, though based wholly on circumstantial evidence, was established more clearly than that of his son—not indeed, as to the murders, but as to the arson, which served just as well to convict on. The handkerchief, which Joel had not been able to resist the temptation to steal, and the splinter of light-wood in his pocket, which fitted exactly into that found in the house, together with ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... never placed any restraint upon their passions, nor hesitated at anything, and it occurs to me that in all likelihood they have sought refuge in this cavern, where they fancy they can continue to defy the law with impunity, after a long series of crimes—robbery, murder, arson, and excesses of all descriptions committed together. In this case Back Cup is nothing but a lair of pirates, the Count d'Artigas is the leader of the band and Serko and Spade are ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne

... from Cayenne," suggested the doctor, "or like a man who is wanted by the police of three countries for crimes ranging from arson to wilful murder." ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... come under the exclusive cognizance of the Federal tribunals. It follows that if, in any State which denies to a colored person any one of all those rights, that person should commit a crime against the laws of a State—murder, arson, rape, or any other crime—all protection and punishment through the courts of the State are taken away, and he can only be tried and punished in the Federal courts. How is the criminal to be tried? If the offense is ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... less reprehensible than theft, highway robbery, cruelty to children and animals, obtaining money under false pretences, forgery, embezzlement, misappropriation of public money, betrayal of public trust, malingering, mayhem, corruption of minors, criminal libel, blackmail, contempt of court, arson, treason, felony, mutiny on the high seas, trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of unnatural vice, desertion from armed forces in the field, perjury, poaching, usury, intelligence with the king's enemies, impersonation, criminal assault, manslaughter, wilful and premeditated murder. As not ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... ages, a considerable branch of the revenue. The old Frisian laws consisted almost entirely of a discriminating tariff upon crimes. Nearly all the misdeeds which man is prone to commit, were punished by a money-bote only. Murder, larceny, arson, rape—all offences against the person were commuted for a definite price. There were a few exceptions, such as parricide, which was followed by loss of inheritance; sacrilege and the murder of a master by a slave, which were punished with death. It is a natural inference that, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Winchester shouldered muskets, shotguns, and other firearms. Warrants of arrest against the Tollivers on charges of murder, arson, and various other crimes and misdemeanors were issued and the date set for the arrest of the men was ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... trouble or bad odor of being prosecutors on public grounds. If the evidence of wilful firing, however, is conclusive, the insured, when he applies for his money, is significantly informed by the secretary, that unless he leaves the office, he will hang him. Though arson is no longer punished by death, the hint is usually taken. Now and then such flagrant offenders are met with, that the office can not avoid pursuing them with the utmost rigor of the law. Such, in 1851, was the case of a "respectable" solicitor, living in Lime Street, Watling ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.

... tiger might look at a lamb that was being taken away to get a little riper. "I cannot object to a reasonable continuance," he said sourly. "And I don't deny that you will need all the defense you can get. The case is an atrocious one, and I propose to do my small part toward putting down arson and riot in this unhappy town. You will appear ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage. Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by. Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot. Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought, Balefully glares red Arson—there-and there. The Town is taken by its rats—ship-rats. And rats of the wharves. All civil charms And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe— Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve, And man ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... farming out thereof, where, and in such manner as may be provided by law; but no convict shall be farmed out who has been sentenced on a charge of murder, manslaughter, rape, attempt to commit rape, or arson: Provided, That no convict whose labor may be farmed out, shall be punished for any failure of duty as a laborer, except by a responsible officer of the State; but the convicts so farmed out shall be at all times under, the supervision and control, as to their government. and discipline, ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... genus. He had more initiative, although he still presents a problem in inertia, and he is the only one of the three who had a feeling for literature, and read persistently, if vagariously. And Mr Polly did at last take his fate into his own hands, commit arson, desert his wife and wander off, an "exploratious adventurer," as he might have put it, to discover some joy and poetry in life after a heroic battle that he funked most horribly and might have avoided. This may sound rather a criminal record, ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford

... Merrill Clark, a lad about 15 years of age, was indicted for the crime of ARSON alleged to have been committed in Newburyport, was arraigned the same day, and pleaded not guilty. The day for his trial is not yet fixed.—The Court assigned him Leverett Saltonstall and John G. King, Esquires, for his counsel ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks

... York the unterrified democracy went to arson and murder, hand in hand with the immense majority of Irishry. Meagher, Nugent, Corcoran and thousands like you, are exceptions. The O'Connors, O'Gormans, etc., are the unterrified. For these bloody saturnalia the wedding was consecrated ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski

... thousand troops stationed in Kansas to make forged ballots good by real bullets; lovers of fair play, we have seen a cowardly rabble from the Slave States protected by Federal bayonets while they committed robbery, arson, and Sepoy atrocities against women, and the Democratic party forced to swallow this nauseous mixture of force, fraud, and Executive usurpation, under the name of Popular Sovereignty. We have seen Freedom pronounced sectional ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... interpretation by the Punjab Government. The murders in Amritsar were not due to any private quarrel between the murderers and their victims. The offence grave, though it was, was purely political and committed under excitement. More than full reparation has been taken for the murders and arson. In the circumstances commonsense dictates reduction of the death sentences. The popular belief favours the view that the condemned men are innocent and have not had a fair trial. The execution has been so long delayed ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... afford no pleasurable excitement. Work, work, work, without any intervals of moonlighting and landlord shooting. These Saxon settlers have no imagination. Like mill horses, they move in one everlasting round, unvaried even by a modicum of brigandage. An occasional murder, a small suspicion of arson, might relieve the wearisome monotony of their prosaic existence, but they lack the poetic instinct. They have not the sporting tastes of their Keltic countrymen. They are not ashamed of this, but even glory ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... M. Arson, engineer to the Paris Gas Company, published in 1867, in the Memoires de la Societe des Ingenieurs Civils de France, the results of some experiments on the loss of pressure in gas when passing through ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... negro was convicted, at the same term of the court, of the crime of arson, and ordered to be hanged, and afterwards consumed to ashes in the same fire with Maria, as appears by the ...
— The Trial and Execution, for Petit Treason, of Mark and Phillis, Slaves of Capt. John Codman • Abner Cheney Goodell, Jr.

... bridegroom, on a beautiful evening, to an ideal farm high up on the shore of Leman. In a very few pages M. Rod, as usual, kills the wife after subjecting her to exceptional tortures at the births of her children, and then settles down comfortably to tell us the ruin of the husband, who ends by arson of his own lost home and drowning in his own lost pond. The interval is all blunder, misfortune, and folly—the chief causa malorum being a senseless interference with the "servitude" rights of neighbours, whom he does not like, by stopping, for a week, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... get out of this pronto," Grief whispered to Peter Gee a few minutes later, "or we'll be a pair of boiled owls. Also, I am to be tried for arson, or heresy, or leprosy, or something, in a few minutes, and I ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... don't look at me as if I'd confessed to arson or burglary. Listen, Judge! If you have good taste in jewelry, I'll let you ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... being no evidence against the others. Of eighteen alleged offenders who were sent to Philadelphia, and marched through the streets, with the label "Insurgent" on their hats, but two were found guilty of crime. One was convicted of arson, another of robbing the United States mail, when the mail was intercepted with a view of capturing letters from the Federal officers in the western counties to the authorities at the capital. In both instances ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... forget what Lee owed to the fidelity of the negroes. Instead of insurrection, arson, pillage and murder in Southern towns and old homesteads, the Southern slave remained true to his mistress, and was the very soul of fidelity. Yet when the war was over, the town had become a wilderness, the plantation a desolation, and where there had been prosperity and even luxury, famine ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... from the smoke-house, the flour from the bin, the delicacies from the pantry. These things, though forbidden, are half excused by sympathy with the soldier's craving for variety of food. Yet, as the habit of measuring right by might goes on, pillage becomes wanton and arson is committed to cover the pillage. The best efforts of a provost-marshal with his guard will be useless when superior officers, and especially colonels of regiments, encourage or wink at license. The character of different commands becomes as notoriously different ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... get it out, if I have to pack it out in a canteen," said Roger. "High treason, arson, murder are nothing to stand between me and ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... were properly fed and screened from the sun, is rather a disgrace than a cruel mode of punishment. Death is said to be inflicted for aggravated robbery, robbery with murder, highway robbery, arson, and piracy, even without the form of a trial when the culprits are caught in flagrante delicto; but though it is a frequent punishment, it is by no means absolutely certain for what crimes ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... a dozen or fifteen miles off; and though in those days, when men were executed for horse-stealing, arson, and burglary, an assize seldom passed without a hanging, it was not likely that she could get access to the body of the criminal unaided. And the fear of her husband's anger made her reluctant to breathe a word of Trendle's suggestion to him or ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... effectually prevented, by the prohibition of intercourse amongst the inmates; and, above all, education, founded on a moral and religious basis, should be extended throughout society. Facts bear us out in asserting, that crimes of the greatest magnitude, such as murder, burglary, and arson, considerably diminish with the spread of civilization, which operates, like the circle formed by the pebble thrown into water, in extending its influence in proportion to its circumference. As philanthropists in many different countries ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... being a Quaker, a Presbyterian, which they punished with lash, with the gallows, and with exile. I do not refer to their inclusion of lawyers among keepers of disorderly houses, and people of ill-fame. I refer to what every people, savage or civilized, has forbidden by law: murder, arson, adultery, infanticide, drunkenness, theft, rape, sodomy, and bestiality. The standard of sexual morality among the unmarried youth was lower in Puritan England than it is today for ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... a philosophical review of his life. He began to think about Miriam, remotely and impersonally. He remembered many things that had been neglected by his conscience during the busier times, as, for example, that he had committed arson and deserted a wife. For the first time he looked these long neglected facts ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... He is a public offender. What has he been guilty of? Murder, manslaughter, arson, forgery, swindling, house-breaking, highway robbery, larceny, conspiracy, fraud? Which should you ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... over to expose the central page. "Here it is, and with your permission I will read it to you. Listen to this, Mr. Holmes. The headlines are: 'Mysterious Affair at Lower Norwood. Disappearance of a Well Known Builder. Suspicion of Murder and Arson. A Clue to the Criminal.' That is the clue which they are already following, Mr. Holmes, and I know that it leads infallibly to me. I have been followed from London Bridge Station, and I am sure that they are only waiting for the warrant ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle



Words linked to "Arson" :   arsonist, incendiarism, fire-raising, burning, combustion



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