"Coffin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time to sit upon his horse. He was buried this morning in a small circular opening in the timber near our camp. The battalion was formed in a hollow square surrounding the grave which had been excavated for the final resting-place of our deceased friend and comrade. There was neither bier, nor coffin, nor pall— ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... other lines trade may follow the flag, but in the Noah's ark industry it follows a belief in Noah and is known to every flag that has ever waved, paying allegiance to no particular banner. Before these fatiguing divines drive even a tack into Noah's coffin, let them provide us with a personage of equal interest and influence. If they are not permitted to move further in their scheme of destruction until they do this, Noah is safe. They can only try to kill; ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... what was perhaps the queer part of this strange service. The women in the tent, at least a large part of them up near the coffin, began to sing in a soft, tearful way, 'I was a wandering sheep.' Then while the singing was going on, one row of women stood up and walked slowly past the casket, and as they went by, each one placed a flower of some kind upon it. Then they sat down and another row filed past, leaving ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... Mr. Carfrae said, "that I broke down more than once to-day. This forenoon I was in Tillyloss, for the last time, and it so happens that there is scarcely a house in it in which I have not had a marriage or prayed over a coffin. Ah, sir, these are the scenes that make the minister more than all his sermons. You must join the family, Mr. Dishart, or you are only a minister once a week. And remember this, if your call is from above, it is a call to stay. Many such partings in a lifetime as ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the white covering and look at me," she found herself saying. "And they would wonder at me, and feel that I was far away. Oh, how they would wonder at me! And, at the very last, before they hid my face forever under the coffin-lid, they would all kiss me in that tender, solemn way,—all but Grif, who loved me best; and Grif ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and returned in a few minutes. The chest was carried in, and placed before the cupboard at the foot of the bed. Alas! the poor lady little thought it was her own coffin which stood ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the monument, proves it to be that of Nectanebo I., of the thirtieth dynasty, who reigned from B.C. 381 to 363. Its material is a breccia from a quarry near Thebes, and is remarkable for its hardness. A remarkable rectangular-shaped coffin of whinstone was that of Menkare, the Mycerinus of the Greeks, and the builder of the third pyramid; this interesting relic was found by Colonel Vyse in the sepulchral chambers of the third pyramid, but was unfortunately lost at sea while on its ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... screen, we could look down upon the chapel, and those that filled it. The congregation was both numerous and devout, and in the body of the pile, all were engaged in singing a requiem for a departed soul. On a bier in the middle aisle, stood a coffin, having a skull and cross-bones laid upon the pall, and over it hung a priest, whose gestures sufficiently indicated, that for the tenant of that narrow chamber he was supplicating. "This is some recent death?" demanded I; "some person of note is gone to his account, and you are praying ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... and make one less lonely. Through the grim, untwinkling windows, gaping sullenly the wrong way with iron shutters, came a discouraged light, strained through the narrow intervals of the dusty roofs above, to discover a large coffin-colored desk surmounted by ghastly busts of HERVEY, KEBLE and BLAIR;[3] a smaller desk, over which hung a picture of the Tomb of WASHINGTON, and at which sat a pallid assistant-editor in deep mourning, opening the comic contributions received ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... therefore, who has the family's interest at heart and knows their taste and purse, should go personally to the establishment of the undertaker, and not only select the coffin, but go carefully into the specification of all other details, so that everything necessary may be arranged ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... blood run cold; make one shudder. haunt the memory; weigh on the heart, prey on the heart, weigh on the mind, prey on the mind, weigh on the spirits, prey on the spirits; bring one's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave; add a nail to one's coffin. Adj. causing pain, hurting &c. v.; hurtful &c. (bad) 649; painful; dolorific[obs3], dolorous; unpleasant; unpleasing, displeasing; disagreeable, unpalatable, bitter, distasteful; uninviting; unwelcome; undesirable, undesired; obnoxious; unacceptable, unpopular, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... undoubtedly; And to that land again whereof he spake Unto our ancestors, will bring you back. And Joseph also made his brethren swear, That they would not inter his body there. And thus he ended his life's pilgrimage, Being an hundred and ten years of age; And was embalm'd, and in a coffin laid, In Egypt, till he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of those wonderful days from Tuesday morning till Sunday night, when the coffin containing the precious remains of our Army Mother lay at the Congress Hall, Clapton, and when more than fifty thousand people came to have a last look at ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... who that was. To which the officer replied, "Captain Blackburn." At this the prisoner, who had amid all the exciting scenes of his arrest and trial, and even up to the present moment, with his open coffin beside him, displayed marvellous fortitude, suddenly exhibiting deep emotion, piteously exclaimed, "Please hang me first, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... silence, hayle: Would'st thou haue laugh'd, had I come Coffin'd home, That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah my deare, Such eyes the Widowes in Carioles were, And Mothers ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... if you've money, my son, and know how to handle it and spread it, you can do anything. Now, you don't think it likely that a man who could do anything is going to wear his breeches out sitting in the stinking hold of a rat-gutted, beetle-ridden, mouldy old coffin of a Chin China coaster. No, sir, such a man will look after himself and will look after his chums. You may lay to that! You hold on to him, and you may kiss the book that ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Cambridge—ordered that military honours should be paid to the dead woman. It was a very unusual thing, but the honour was well-merited, and crowds lined the streets to see the coffin borne past on a gun carriage. Over the coffin was laid a Union Jack, and on this was placed the brave woman's Red Cross. The men who bore her from the gun carriage to her grave in Southsea Cemetery were six non-commissioned officers who had been wounded in the fight of December 20, 1880, ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... cushioned chair, with the old fiendish smile on still. Sir, I never thought that any human shape could look so dreadful. I don't know how long I stayed there, freezing with horror and detestation, and yet unable to take my eyes from the face. Did you see it in the coffin? Sir, there was a sneer of triumph on it that was diabolic ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... disappear within Southwark Gaol, then he returned sadly to Tadcaster Inn. That very night the corpse of Hardquanonne was brought out from the gaol and buried in the cemetery hard by, and Ursus, who had returned to the prison gate, watched the procession, and saw the coffin ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the ark (the same writer says) he took the body of Adam in a coffin with him, and when he left the ark restored it to the place he had taken ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... no pain, no discomfort even; for the sensation of intense cold had almost ceased, and my mind was active and clear, and I could hear and see, and yet was as powerless as if I had been buried in a marble coffin a thousand fathoms ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... at a foot's pace in the troop of men-at-arms, all in full armour, which glanced in the light of the sixteen hundred torches which were borne before, behind, and in the midst of the procession, which escorted the bier. Outside the coffin, arrayed in ducal coronet and robes, with the Golden Fleece collar round the neck, lay the exact likeness of the aged Duke, and on shields around the pall, as well as on banners borne waving aloft, were the armorial bearings ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... walk for the very first time. And in the illnesses of childhood, children sometimes get very close and real views of death. I remember, when I was nine years old, how every evening, when I lay down to sleep, I used for about a year to picture myself lying dead, till I felt as though the coffin were closing round me. I used to read at that period, with a curious feeling of fascination, Blair's poem, "The Grave." But I never dreamed of telling anybody about these thoughts. I believe that thoughtful children keep most of their thoughts to themselves, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... applause, expressions of amazement and cries of "Shame!" from the galleries, Brown told of the abuses laid bare by the prison commission. He told of prisoners fed with rotten meal and bread infested with maggots; of children beaten with cat and rawhide for childish faults; of a coffin-shaped box in which men and even women were made to stand or rather crouch, their limbs cramped, and their lungs scantily supplied with air from a few holes. Brown's speech virtually closed the case, although Macdonald strove to prove that the accounts of outrages were exaggerated, ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... can do nothing to lessen it. Before helpless grief I find myself abashed, afraid, as before a great mystery—which it is. Only one day last week, passing through a poor quarter of South London, my cab was delayed almost beside a solitary funeral coach which followed a hearse. The coffin bore one poor humble little wreath. In the coach sat a woman, a young woman, alone—and hers was the wreath upon the coffin, her husband's coffin. He had died after discharge from a military hospital; so much I learned from ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... rate, all that part of it was over, though neither of them could possibly believe that father was never coming back. Josephine had had a moment of absolute terror at the cemetery, while the coffin was lowered, to think that she and Constantia had done this thing without asking his permission. What would father say when he found out? For he was bound to find out sooner or later. He always did. "Buried. ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... I arrived at the Wolfsberg, and as I came near the Red Tower I saw that the gate was open. A little crowd of men with swords and partisans was issuing tumultuously from it. Then came six carrying a coffin. I stood aside to let them pass. And not till the last one brushed me did I ask what was their business abroad with a dead man at such a ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the solicitor exclaimed, goaded into a fury by Thurlow's repeated ejaculations of "That's no proof of the man's death;" "Really, my lord, it is very hard, and it is not right that you won't believe me. I saw the man dead in his coffin. My lord, I tell you he was my client, and he is dead." "No wonder," retorted Thurlow, with a grunt and a sneer, "since he was your client. Why did you not tell me that sooner? It would kill me to have such ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the shores of Byblos, had become entangled in the reeds that grew at the edge of the water, the divine power that dwelt in the body of Osiris imparted such strength to the shrub that it grew into a mighty tree, enclosing in its trunk the coffin of the god. This tree with its sacred deposit was shortly after felled, and erected as a column in the palace of the king of Phoenicia. But at length by the aid of Anubis and the sacred birds, Isis ascertained these facts, and then went ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... were at some distance from the dwellings. The graves were generally dug by the old women, as the young people abhorred this kind of work. If they had a coffin, it was placed in the grave empty. Then the corpse was carried out, lying upon a linen cloth, full in view, that the finery and ornaments, with all the effects left by the deceased, might appear to advantage. The funeral was accompanied by as great a number of friends as could ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... my hero (the subject matter of a story being always called the hero, however little heroic he may personally have been) married Dora Coffin on St. Swithin's day in the first year ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... might be with her first husband, Sir John Basset, at Umberleigh. Only it may be asserted without fear of contradiction, that it was not with the royal lord whom she had so bitterly lamented, and whose coffin lay, with many another as illustrious as his own, in the old Norman Chapel of the Tower. No stranger admixture can there be on earth, than among those coffins crowding that Norman Chapel,—from traitors of the blackest dye, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... should be removed under cover of the night, and as Guy knew the railway officials would object to taking it on any train, there was no alternative except to bury it in town, and so before the morning broke there was brought up to the room a closely sealed coffin and box, and Daisy helped lay Julia in her last bed, and put a white flower in her hair and folded her hands upon her bosom, and then watched from the window the little procession which followed the body out to the cemetery, where, in the stillness of the coming day, they buried it, together ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... you ought ter be that it ain't," cried Mrs Partridge, "after what I read in the paper only last week about people bein' buried alive oftener than dead, an' fair gave me the creeps thinkin' I could see the people scratchin' their way out of the coffin, an' sittin' on a tombstone with nuthin' but a sheet round 'em. It would cure anybody of wantin' ter die. I've told William to stick pins in me ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... preparatory to locking it up and starting to notify Anthony Croft. She would just run over and talk to him about ordering the coffin; then she could attend to all other necessary preliminaries herself. The remains had been well-to-do, and there was no occasion for sordid economy, so Aunt Hitty determined in her own mind to have the latest fashion in everything, including a silver coffin-plate. The Butterfield coffin-plates ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is no larger vessel. If you want one, for argument sake, you'll have to imagine the post to be it. The coffin is ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... twenty years ago by labourers employed on the railway near the town of Amiens, at a spot where other objects of the Gallo-Roman period were met with. The place may probably have been the cemetery of the town, when the masters of the world ruled there. The workmen found a leaden coffin of great thickness, which contained two skeletons, the smaller having within it many articles of female ornament. These consisted of a pair of gold ear-rings of very peculiar and original design; ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... saw her, he had sympathy for her and said to her, "Do not weep." And he came and touched the coffin, and those who carried it stood still. Jesus said: "Young man, I say to you, arise." And he who had been dead sat up and began to speak. And Jesus gave him back to his mother. And all the people were filled with fear and praised God, saying, "A great prophet has appeared among ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... any living thing in the miserable hovel, except the old fellow. On two low trestles, in the middle of the floor, lay a coffin with the lid on, on the top of which was stretched the dead body of an old emaciated woman in her graveclothes, the quality of which was much finer than one could have expected to have seen in the midst of the surrounding squalidness. The face of the corpse was uncovered, the hands were ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... appointed for him by God? Parnell had a back to him, but O'Connell stood alone. He fought a good war in the House of Commons. Parnell did a great deal, getting the land. I often heard he didn't die at all—it was very quick for him to go. I often wondered there were no people smart enough to dig up the coffin and to see what is in it, at night they could do that. No one knows in what soil Robert Emmet was buried, but he was made an end of sure enough. Parnell went through Gort one day, and he called ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... of the same material. Six rank and file of the grenadiers followed, under the command of a corporal, and behind these again, came eight men of the same company; four of whom bore on their shoulders a coffin, covered with a coarse black pall that had perhaps already assisted at fifty interments; while the other four carried, in addition to their own, the muskets of their burdened comrades. After these, marched a solitary drummer-boy; whose tall bear-skin ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... of the fighting airmen is somewhat reminiscent of that of America's greatest sea-fighter, Admiral Farragut. Always opposed to ironclads, the hero of Mobile Bay used to say that when he went to sea he did not want to go in an iron coffin, and that when a shell had made its way through one side of his ship he didn't want any obstacle presented to impede its passing ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... terribly, he uttered a piercing shriek; the blood gushed from his mouth, and he fell dead. The most strange part of the story is to come. We buried him in the church of St. Januario. In doing so, we took up his father's coffin; the lid came off in moving it, and the skeleton was visible. In the hollow of the skull we found a very slender wire of sharp steel; this caused great surprise and inquiry. The father, who was rich and a miser, ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reverently to rest in Calcombe churchyard. Poor old Mr. Oswald, standing bowed and broken-hearted by the open grave side, looked as though he could never outlive that solemn burial of all his hopes and aspirations in a single narrow coffin. Yet it was wonderful to Ernest to see how much comfort he took, even in this terrible grief, from the leader which appeared in the 'Times' that morning on the subject of the Pontresina accident. It contained only a few of the stock newspaper ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... The coffin was lowered, the ropes gave out a creaking sound, and there came a little thud—the last. Beauchene, supported by a relative, looked on with dim, vacant eyes. Constance, who had had the bitter courage to come, and had now wept all the tears ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... profligate fop Sir George Etheredge, gambler and lampooner, with drink and the devil all over him; solemn Thomas Thynne, murdered two years afterwards, for a woman's sake, by Count Conigsmark, who was hanged for it and lay in great state in a satin coffin; and last, my Lord Dover, with his great head and little legs, looking at the people through a tortoiseshell glass. The Court, or at least, some of it, enjoyed itself here, in spite of the character of the demonstration. Meanwhile out of sight a ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... superintended the cuisine, and filled his part to admiration; in fact, he was famous in this line, and between the services, he left his cooking and joined in the dance and song. He was strong, fresh, and gay as a lark. On leaving a wedding-party, he would go and dig a grave, or nail down a coffin—a task of which he acquitted ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... desire to thank Howard E. Coffin, Esq., of the Advisory Board of the Council of National Defence, for his hospitality on his sea island of Sapeloe, where most of ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... live, because there was no assurance of existence beyond. By the strangest of processes, I neglected the world, because I had so short a time to be in it. It is with absolute horror now that I look back upon those days, when I lay as if alive in a coffin of lead. All passions and pursuits were nullified by the ever-abiding sense of mortality. For years this mood endured, and I was near being brought down to the ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... only would, what a happy conclusion of this painful adventure! But he could see there was no such danger. The captain was as cheerful as a lark, and looked with kindling eye upon what Josiah regarded as his coffin. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... L'esprit n'est point emu de ce qu'il ne croit pas. It was replaced on the stage by an "urn" that Talma carried under his arm. A spectre is ridiculous; "ashes," that's the style! Are not the "ashes" of Napoleon still spoken of? Is not the translation of the coffin from St. Helena to the Invalides alluded to as "the return of the ashes"? As to the witches of Macbeth, they were rigorously barred. The hall-porter of the Theatre-Francais had his orders. They would have been received ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... who takes the khaki button—a pledge not to treat nor be treated to strong drink during the continuance of the war—is helping to knock a nail into the coffin of one of the silliest and most fatal delusions that has ever wrought havoc to ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... regarding his father's death. Peter's remains were exhumed—placed beside those of Catherine lying in state, to share all the honors of her obsequies and to be entombed with her; while Alexis Orlof, his supposed murderer, was compelled to march beside the coffin, ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... is; and of my grandfather, that were a boy when they laid, and was glad to lay, the exciseman deep as they could dig; for the sight of his sooty face in his coffin was ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... melancholy and impressive in a burial at sea: there is here no coffin or hearse, procession or tolling bell,—nothing that gradually prepares us for the final separation. The body is wound in the drapery of its couch, much as if the deceased were only in a quiet and temporary sleep. In these habiliments of seeming slumber, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... in command at Memphis, a funeral procession was allowed to pass beyond the Union lines. The coffin, however, was full of medicines for ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... parlour, astonished and irritated by the endless number of women that crowded into the house. They were everywhere, in the kitchen, the sleeping room back of the parlour; and in the parlour, where the dead woman lay in her coffin, they were massed. When the thin-lipped minister, holding a book in his hand, held forth upon the virtues of the dead woman, they wept. Sam looked at the floor and thought that thus they would have wept over the body of the dead Windy, had his fingers but tightened ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... graduated with a diploma from the Middlesex Mechanics Association. He served as a journeyman for two years, when, feeling that his education was not adequate to his wants, he left the mechanic's bench for the student's desk, entering the classical school of Professor Coffin at Ashfield, in the western part of the same State. Subsequently he resumed his mechanical labors, which he continued until 1833, part of the time as a journeyman, but during the greater part as a manufacturer on his own account. At that date ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... the majority of the other Sioux there, asked that Sitting Bull be not buried in this cemetery. His medicine had been bad. Therefore this same morning he was buried, wrapped in canvas in a neat coffin, in the military cemetery near ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... of this ominous letter was gruesomely decorated with a skull and cross-bones, a rough drawing of a dagger thrust through a bleeding heart, a coffin, and, under all, a huge black hand. There was no doubt about the type of letter that it was. It was such as have of late years become increasingly common in all our large cities, ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... the pleasure of meeting him, and the first news Dr. Watson gave me was that of his death. He was buried at Dowlish, a village where his family have a vault. Captain Grant, a fine fellow, put a wreath or immortelle upon the coffin as it passed us in church. It was composed of mignonette ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... and wicker-ware; 34 with articles de Paris. Journal des Economistes, Janv., 1853, 107. According to the industrial almanac of Birmingham, there are in that city manufacturers of buttons in gold, silver, metal, mother-of-pearl etc.; manufacturers of hammers, ink-stands, coffin-nails, dog-collars, tooth-picks, stirrups, fish-hooks, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... so that neither beasts of prey nor lemmings could get through. The planks appeared not to have been hewn out of drift-wood, but were probably brought from the south, like the birch bark with which the bottom of the coffin was covered. As a "pesk," now fallen in pieces, lying round the skeleton, and various rotten rags showed, the dead body had been wrapped in the common Samoyed dress. In the grave were found besides the remains of an iron pot, an axe, knife, boring tool, bow, wooden arrow, some copper ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... England is falling into decay. Our Cousin John is apt to complain. He has been accustomed to enlarge upon his debts, his church-rates and poor-rates, his taxes on air, light, motion, "everything, from the ribbons of the bride to the brass nails of the coffin," upon the wages of his servants both on the land and the water, upon his Irish famine and exodus, and his vast expenses at home and abroad. And when we consider how small is his homestead, a few islands in a high latitude inferior to those of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... rebukes anew, Saying, "Thou haggard Sin, go forth, and scoop Thy hollow coffin in some churchyard yew, Or make th' autumnal flow'rs turn pale, and droop; Or fell the bearded corn, till gleaners stoop Under fat sheaves,—or blast the piny grove;— But here thou shall not harm this pretty group, Whose lives are not so frail and feebly ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... dull blue cloth, the symbol of its serious import. He had not opened the book since they finished it and Mr. Severn had handed it over to him and told him to keep it, as he had another copy. He opened the book as if it had been the coffin of his beloved, and there between the dusty pages lay a bit of blue ribbon, creased with the pages, and jagged on the edges because it had been cut with a jack knife. And lying smooth upon it in a golden curve a wisp of a yellow ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... of the personal appearance of his company—in purchasing pompons—or new feathers—or whistles, when he was a voltigeur—in establishing his serjeants' mess on a more respectable footing—in giving his poor comrade a better coffin, or a richer pall:—these had been his foibles; and in indulging them, he had expended the wealth, that might have purchased him on to rank and honours. His eagle glance, his aquiline nose, and noble person, showed what he must have been in youth. His hair was now silvered, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... degenerated in the hand of man." In another place he breaks out: "Man is born, lives, and dies in a state of slavery. At his birth he is stitched into swaddling clothes, at his death he is nailed in his coffin; and as long as he preserves the human form he is held captive by ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... handkerchiefs were dipped in the Duke's blood; for by a large part of the multitude he was regarded as a martyr who had died for the Protestant religion. The head and body were placed in a coffin covered with black velvet, and were laid privately under the communion table of Saint Peter's Chapel in the Tower. Within four years the pavement of the chancel was again disturbed, and hard by the remains of Monmouth were laid ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... well, my friend," she murmured, sinking down with an air of exhaustion on the lid of an ancient stone coffin that lay half overgrown with ivy at our feet. "The danger will be averted if you act with courage; only keep your hold on my hand and the Unseen Influences have no power to hurt us! Now drink this." With these words she offered me a small bottle of a ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... brook beneath, which may be seen stretching its way through the broken arches. The only tomb in the church is that of a cross-legged knight, which lies near the grand tower, and represents one of the Mowbrays, who died at Ghent, in 1297. Near the altar is a stone coffin, in which, according to Dugdale, Lord Henry Percy was interred in 1315. Contiguous to the church is an extensive quadrangular court, which has been converted into a flower garden. On the east side is a line of beautiful arches, under one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... instances of such imagined sensations are given by Dr. Carpenter.[54] Here is one. An officer who superintended the exhuming of a coffin rendered necessary through a suspicion of crime, declared that he already experienced the odour of decomposition, though it was afterwards found that the ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... at the hospital, and left ten dollars, finding this to be the right amount for Jacob's coffin. He took a last look at the old man, so long his companion, and then, feeling that he could do no more, went on his way. He next went to a railroad office, on Broadway, and bought a through-ticket to ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... physically incapable of proceeding many steps with their burden, but for the support it received from the two younger men who sustained the feet of the saint, using some dexterity in adapting their strength so that the coffin ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... In the place where this field was fought, are yet seuen or eight hils, wherein the carcases of them that were slaine at the same field were buried: and one being digged downe of late, there were found two bodies in a coffin of stone, of which the one laie with his head towards the others feet, and manie chaines of iron, (like to the water-chains of the bits of horsses) were found in the same hill. But now to ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... he could remember he had had an unreasoning dread of coffins. Even now, big as he was, big enough to wear "'leven-year-old suits," nothing could tempt him into a furniture shop for fear of seeing a coffin. ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Slimak made a little coffin; carpentering came so easily to him that he could not help smiling contentedly at his own work now and then. But when he remembered what he was doing, he was seized with such passionate grief that he threw down his tools and ran out, he knew ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... are hangin' Danny Deever, they are marchin' of 'im round, They 'ave 'alted Danny Deever by 'is coffin on the ground; An' 'e'll swing in 'arf a minute for a sneakin' shootin' hound— O they're hangin' ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... Fr. le gros, but Grote represents Du. groot, great, probably unconnected with the French word. The Devonshire name Coffin, which is found in that county in the twelfth century, is the same as Caffyn, perhaps representing Fr. Chauvin, bald, the name of the theologian whom we know better in the latinized form Calvin. Here belongs probably Shovel, Fr. Chauvel. We also have the simple Chaffe, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... shot up beside them, a pointing finger. Down on the silent river below, coffin-like row-boats lay moored to the wall. Through a break in the trees the clock over the Houses of Parliament shone for an instant as if suspended in the sky, then vanished as the trees closed in. A distant barge in ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... chairs rested a coffin. The baby hands clutched the side—he drew himself up on tiptoe and looked down at the still, white face—the face of his mother. Her hands were crossed just so, and in her fingers was a spray of flowers—he recognized ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, we were able to distinguish a wooden shrine taking up the whole length of one side—where the mortal remains of the Hercegovinan lay. Another side was occupied by an open coffin containing the vestments and crucifix. On a chair sat a Greek priest who rose when we entered. At the foot of ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... against a lamp post as a funeral was passing by, was asked who was dead. "I can't exactly say, sir," said he, "but I presume it's the gentleman in the coffin." ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... the carefully-arranged white handkerchiefs, and, until lately, the pall-like funeral cloaks? During the last few years, a great and marked improvement has been made. The plumes, cloaks, and weepers have well-nigh disappeared. The grotesquely ghastly hearse is almost a thing of the past, and the coffin goes forth heaped over with flowers instead of shrouded in the heavy black velvet pall. Men and women, though still wearing black, do not roll themselves up in shapeless garments like sable winding-sheets, as if trying to see how miserable they ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... even colliginers doesna aye get their richts. Ae richt whiles rides upo' the tap o' anither. And Annie Anderson has a richt no to be disturbit, whan her uncle, honest man, 's jist lyin' waitin' for's coffin ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... discourse," said Monsieur de Bourbonne, after relating the incidents of the internment to Madame de Listomere when whist was over, the doors shut, and they were alone with the baron, "this Louis XI. in a cassock—imagine him if you can!—gave a last flourish to the sprinkler and aspersed the coffin with holy water." Monsieur de Bourbonne picked up the tongs and imitated the priest's gesture so satirically that the baron and his aunt could not help laughing. "Not until then," continued the old ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... welcome them, they presaged nothing good; and accordingly found that all the unfortunate men had breathed their last. The first, as has been seen, expired on the 16th of April 1634, and his comrades, having put his body in a coffin, deposited it in one of the huts. The remainder were conjectured to have died about the beginning of May, from a journal kept by them, expressing that, on the 27th of April, they had killed their dog for want of fresh provisions, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... the children to come to me for assistance, which they are very ready to do; and I find that after boys have had either a small or a full dose of Alger (we do not admit 'Optic'), they are very ready to be promoted to something more substantial— Knox, Butterworth, Coffin, Sparks, or Abbott. I find more satisfaction in directing the minds of boys than girls, for though I may and generally do succeed in interesting them in the very best of fiction, it is much more difficult to draw them into other channels, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... were children of an unpleasant age. Captain Semmes captured the Ariel once, and it is to be deeply regretted that that thrifty buccaneer hadn't made mince-meat of her, because she is a miserable tub at best, and hasn't much more right to be afloat than a second- hand coffin has. I do not know her proprietor, Mr. C. Vanderbilt. But I know of several excellent mill privileges in the State of Maine, and not one of them is so thoroughly "Dam'd" as he was all the way from ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... not belong to him, but to some party in Memphis, adding that in his barn was another belonging to the same party. They went to the barn, and there found a handsome city hearse, with pall and plumes. The farmer said they had had a big funeral out of Memphis, but when it reached his house, the coffin was found to contain a fine assortment of medicines for the use of Van Dorn's army. Thus under the pretense of a first-class funeral, they had carried through our guards the very things we had tried to prevent. It ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... rank with certain confections, which kept it from corruption better than do our unguents of Europa. They did not bury them except in the lower part of their houses, having placed and deposited them in a coffin of incorruptible wood. They placed some bits of gold in the mouth, and on the body the best jewels that they had. To that preparation they added a box of clothing, which they placed near them, and every day they carried them food and drink. They did not take especial pains ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... hurried out on my arrival. I felt, but scarcely saw them as I said: 'I want my mother.' Then some one burst in tears and pointed to the open parlor door. Merciless heaven! resting upon two chairs stood a long, brown box; a coffin. I gave one shriek, so wild, so full of agony that not one who heard it stayed to offer the hollow mockery of comfort. 'Merciful God! not ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... been sensible for some days, that his last hour was at hand. He conversed with his family and friends, with the utmost composure, of his departure, and gave directions concerning his coffin and his funeral. He was desirous that the latter should take place at Monticello, and that it should be without any display or parade. On Monday he inquired the day of the month? Being told it was the 3d of July, he expressed an ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... in which he praised the departed statesman and scientist, referring to him constantly as "our countryman." When he had finished, Jonas Lie, without anybody's invitation, stepped quietly up to the coffin and in the name of Norway bade his countryman a last farewell. "The spirit came over Lie," says his biographer, "and he spoke with ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... mother. I knew the man well, and he was always scheming what to do for his family when he got back: but this is the end of it!" That dead soldier was merely a private. Not one of his own particular comrades was present, but only the necessary fatigue party. No flag was flung over his coffin, no bugle sounded "the last post." No tear was shed. It was only a commonplace "casualty," one among thousands. But it was a tragedy all the same. These tragedies in humble life seldom find a trumpeter; but they are none the ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... 'Cowardly, hired assassin!' for the fourteenth time, he absolutely jumped off the stage, not even pretending to be on the point of death. Our indignant citizens then chased him all over the house, and he only escaped by jumping into the coffin which they bring on in Hamlet, Romeo, and Richard." The story has its humour, but is not to ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... two Englishmen the body rested for an instant, stretched out long and piteously flat, showing its thin shape through the mat of woven straw which wrapped it, only the head and feet being wound with linen. So, by and by, it would be laid, without a coffin, in its shallow grave in the Arab cemetery, out on the road ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... me to the performance of this terrible task!' exclaimed the rector, solemnly; and bending over the coffin, he held the lantern in such a position as enabled him to gaze into the interior of the skull, through the ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... shooting. This order I was obliged to obey. The brigade was drawn up on three sides of a square, with ranks opened facing each other, and in the centre of the fourth and open side a grave was dug and a coffin was placed beside it. The condemned soldier was marched between the ranks of the command, preceded by a drum and fife band, playing the "dead-march," and then was taken to the coffin, where he was blindfolded and required to stand in front ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... in England; Bear, purchased at St. Johns, Newfoundland, and the Alert, which was generously provided by the British Government. Preparations for the expedition were promptly made by the Secretary of the Navy, with the active cooperation of the Secretary of War. Commander George W. Coffin was placed in command of the Alert and Lieutenant William H. Emory in command of the Bear. The Thetis was intrusted to Commander Winfield S. Schley, to whom also was assigned the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... Oakes's house, and at her request the body of the boy, Angelo Eugene Ossoli, was carried thither, and kept for a day previous to interment. The sailors, who had all formed a strong attachment to him during the voyage, wept like children when they saw him. There was some difficulty in finding a coffin when the time of burial came, whereupon they took one of their chests, knocked out the tills, laid the body carefully inside, locked and nailed down the lid. He was buried in a little nook between two of the sand-hills, some distance ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... don't be glimflashy! You have not heard all yet! It seems that the only thing buffed hard against them was by a stout grazier, who was cried 'Stand!' to, some fifty miles off the town; so the queer coffin thinks of sending the poor fellows to the jail of the county where they ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... before the hearse—by that desolate, starving, woe-weary gentleman, shivering in his threadbare clothes, who seemed transfixed with a heart-wrung though silent emotion, ere he hurriedly drew from his sleeve a large white chrysanthemum, and throwing it beneath the coffin as it was lifted inward, disappeared in the crowd, which closed again like the sea upon this ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... I won't read the Washerwoman of Finchley Common," vowed Violet; and so saying, and avoiding a passage at the end of which a certain coffin was placed with a couple of watchers, and lights perpetually burning in the closed room, these young women came down to the family dinner, for which the bell rang ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... go out of her sight, Under the coffin lid—out through the door; Somebody finds only darkness and blight All through the glory of summer-sun light; Somebody's baby will ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the funeral, she lay in the library, still and cold in her coffin. I had gathered a few flowers, with which I was vainly trying to cheat death into looking more like life, by placing them on her bosom and in her stiffened fingers. Miss Eleanor sat at the foot of the coffin, almost as motionless as the form within it. I had finished my task and turned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... to Lovelace.— Brief account of his proceedings in Belton's affairs. The lady extremely ill. Thought to be near her end. Has a low-spirited day. Recovers her spirits; and thinks herself above this world. She bespeaks her coffin. Confesses that her letter to Lovelace was allegorical only. The light in which Belford ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... know it was Uncle Will or who it was, at first, but mamma read about it in the papers and Grandpa Coates went out to see if it wasn't Uncle Will. Grandpa 'dentified him and they brought him back here, but, what do you think, the doctor wouldn't allow them to open his coffin, and so grandma and mamma couldn't see him. He's buried up in the graveyard next Grandpa Kershaw, and there's a little monument there that tells all about how he died trying to save a little girl from drownin'. I can read it, but Mamie can't. She's ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... death took place at Hertford, August 23rd, 1358; but the Household Book twice records that it was on the 22nd. Fourteen poor men watched the corpse in the chapel at Hertford for three months, and in December the coffin (the entire cost of which was 5 pounds, 9 shillings, 11 pence) was brought to London, guarded by 40 torches, and buried in the Church of the Grey Friars. It may be stated with tolerable certainty that the Queen was not confined for life at Rising Castle, though she passed most ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... them immortelles in France,' said Rachel, in a cold strange tone, 'and make chaplets of them to lay upon the coffin-lids and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... behavior was so humble and resigned that even the executioner burst into tears, and was obliged to use strong cordials to support him in his terrible duty. Lord Kilmarnock himself was deeply impressed by the sight of the block draped in funereal black, the plain coffin placed just beside it, the sawdust that was so disposed as speedily to suck up the bloody traces of the execution, and the sea of faces surrounding the open enclosure kept for this his last earthly ordeal. It was certainly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... he'd almost give his other arm to be able to be present to-day and lay a wreath on the coffin of his gallant chief. As he couldn't come, he wrote these verses, which he wished me to post to the York Gazette. He said I might read them to you, Mr. Trueman, before I sent them." And the boy, ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... I'll do him scathe. There be too many haughty warriors by the Rhine, wherefore I will not counsel you to fight. They have full well thirty men to each of ours. Now God speed them, as they deserve of us. Stay ye here and bear with me my dole. When it beginneth to dawn, help me, ye lusty knights, to coffin ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... inscription on the lid of the coffin of Men-kau-Ra, king of the IVth, the Memphite Dynasty, (circa 3633-3600 B.C.,) and builder of the Third Pyramid at Gizeh; that some of the most elevated conceptions of the Per-em-hru, i.e., the so-called, Book of the Dead, were at that time in existence as accepted facts. The dead one ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... generally known as the "Book of the Dead," giving a most striking account of the conflicts and triumphs of the life after death; a whole copy or fragment of which every Egyptian, rich or poor, wished to have buried with him in his coffin, and portions of which are found inscribed on every mummy case and on the walls of every tomb. In front of one of the principal temples of the sun, in this magnificent city, stood along with a companion, long since destroyed, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... great state. The nation learned, without much surprise, that the poor little Prince—had fallen ill on the road and died within a few hours; so declared the physician in attendance, and the nurse who had been sent to take care of him. They brought the coffin back in great state, and buried him ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... I replied. "So narrow was it that they had my coffin all ready built for me. I have managed to weather upon Yellow Jack this time, however, thank God; and now, if I could only get to sea again, I believe I should soon pull round and ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... think of it, in putting on the long spectacled robe of a Brother of Pity, in walking before the staggering bearers of the great coffin with a tall crucifix in my hand, in thus taking advantage of their truce of God, I was, also, taking advantage of what was undoubtedly their honour—a thing that handicapped them quite as much as had mine when I ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... was soon over, and the company again seated themselves, waiting till the coffin should be placed in the hearse, which now ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... are pouring out these streams of liquid death over the land, and burning up your own neighbors, to enable them to pay their taxes and support religion! Why don't you set up a coffin factory, to create a brisker demand for lumber, and so help the farmers to pay their taxes; and then spread the smallpox among the people, that they may die the faster, and thus increase your business, and ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... the same sudden impulse stopped where they were standing when first they saw the hearse, and stood still without a word. The scene was the more strangely impressive because it was accidental and spontaneous. Meanwhile, the coffin was carried downstairs, and placed in the hearse, which moved off slowly across the court between the line of bareheaded and motionless mourners. It was thus that Daubeny left Saint Winifred's, and passed under the Norman arch; and till he had passed ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... come and do honour to his funeral; and they sent letters also to his sons-in-law, the Infantes of Aragon and Navarre, and to King Don Alfonso. And they moved on from Salvacanete and came to Osma, and then Alvar Fanez asked of Dona Ximena if they should not put the body of the Cid into a coffin covered with purple and with nails of gold; but she would not, for she said that while his countenance remained so fresh and comely, and his eyes so fair, his body should never be placed in a coffin, and that her children should see the face of their father; and ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... (for 'more than'); artiste (for 'artist'); aspirant; authoress; beat (for 'defeat'); bagging (for 'capturing'); balance (for 'remainder'); banquet (for 'dinner' or 'supper'); bogus; casket (for 'coffin'); claimed (for 'asserted'); collided; commence (for 'begin'); compete; cortége (for 'procession'); cotemporary (for 'contemporary'); couple (for 'two'); darky (for 'negro'); day before yesterday (for 'the day ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... the window. On the other side of the street far below them were some funeral carriages; at this precise moment the coffin was being ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... guest of the convention. The chairman of the Press Committee, Mrs. Mabel Craft Deering, reported that 203 newspapers were using all the suffrage matter sent them. The chairman of the State Central Committee, Mrs. Lillian Harris Coffin, said that all the labor leaders were standing for woman suffrage. It was announced that headquarters for pushing the submission of an amendment would be established in Sacramento as soon as the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... the unspeakable race was occupying the place in the family vault that he had been reserving for himself for years past at considerable cost, he became exceedingly annoyed; and when, through the medium of his relations, he learned of the first-class funeral, and of the oak coffin studded with silver, and the expensive full choral mass, and the requiem specially written for the occasion, and the marble monument, his wrath was such that in pre-war days, and before he had undergone the reducing influence of the German hunger-diet, he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... screwing tight the door of the engine-room, in order to safeguard the fireman in attendance on the donkey-boiler. Now that the screw-driving was actually in operation, it very unpleasantly reminded Courtenay of the fastening of a coffin lid. Neither Walker nor the man inside could guess the gruesome notion which held the captain in its chilly grip for an instant; indeed, the engineer looked ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... almost gone. Midnight will find you weaker still, and but little removed from the point of death. A few hours later a kind hand will close the lids of your half-shut eyes, which never again will behold the light. The coffin will inclose your body, and the last earthly journey begin. Now," the spirit continued, "you shall all use my sight instead of your own." The walls of the cave seemed to expand, till they resembled ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... years ago we had the small-pox, and she went all through that in just the same way. I don't believe she has ever had a day's illness in her life. She will be physicking this parish when my bones are rattling in my coffin, and she will be laying down the laws of literature long after your statue has become a familiar ornament of Westminster Abbey. She's a wonderful woman, but ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... wings again, overshadowing the altar of their vows in the hour of earthly marriage, if by some happy fate, marriage should be within their reach, or like the holy pinions of the goddess Nout, folded about a coffin, in the time of earthly death. But scant are the occasions, and few ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... Santa Croce, where he was buried. The younger artists bore the bier upon their shoulders, and the older ones carried torches to light the way. A great multitude followed the procession, and in the Sacristy of Santa Croce the coffin was opened; though three weeks had passed since his death, his face appeared as if he had just died; the crowd was very great, but all was quiet, and before morning it had dispersed. The Duke had thought that a public funeral would recall old memories, and might cause a disturbance; but Michael Angelo ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... of the older institution, founded by de Blois, wear black gowns, with the silver cross potent pinned on the left breast. On the death of a Brother the cross is placed on a red velvet cushion and laid on his breast in the coffin; but before burial the cross is removed and fastened by the Master on the breast of the Brother elected in place ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath
... on that second morning brought home the news from Acol, that Squire Boatfield had caused a rough deal coffin to be made by the village carpenter at the expense of the county, and that mayhap the stranger would be laid therein this very afternoon and conveyed down to Minster, where he would be ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... attendance at the "Saturday Club," but I recollect that he came after the trouble in finding words had become well marked. "My memory hides itself," he said. The last time I saw him, living, was at Longfellow's funeral. I was sitting opposite to him when he rose, and going to the side of the coffin, looked intently upon the face of the dead poet. A few minutes later he rose again and looked once more on the familiar features, not apparently remembering that he had just done so. Mr. Conway reports that he said to a friend near him, "That gentleman ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... shape, and Pearce states that he has frequently seen them in the ears of hyenas that have been caught or trapped, and confesses, that, although he had taken considerable pains to investigate the subject, he had never been able to discover how these ornaments came there; and Mr. Coffin, his friend, relates a story of one of these transformations which took place under his own eyes. [Footnote: Herodotus makes the same statement as to the Buda. "They are said to be evil-minded and enchanters," he says, "that for a day every year change themselves ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... be in pain. It is evil to carry a heavy heart. It is evil to be stripped of what we have long been accustomed to lean upon. It is evil to be crushed down by loss and want. It is evil to stand by the black hole that swallows the coffin that holds the light of our eyes. It is evil to have the arrows of calumny or hate sticking in our quivering spirits. It is evil to be battered with the shocks of change and doom in the world, to have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the Earl over the coffin, "who never feared the face of mortal man." "Morton," says Froude, "spoke only of what he knew; the full measure of Knox's greatness neither he nor any man could then estimate. It is as we look back over that stormy time, and weigh the actors in it one against the other, that he ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... propitious import, are common in China. With regard to girls their names are generally selected from flowers, fruits, or trees. Particular care is taken not to use a name which has a bad meaning. In Washington I once met a man in an elevator whose name was "Coffin". Was I to be blamed for wondering if the elevator would be my coffin? On another occasion I met a man whose name was "Death", and as soon as I heard his name I felt inclined to run away, for I did not wish to die. I am not superstitious. I have frequently taken dinner ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... in this church-yard, a parcel of people assembled at a funeral, before the grave was dug. The coffin, with the corpse in it, was placed on the ground, while the people alternately assisted in making a grave. One man, at a little distance, was busy cutting a long turf for it, with the crooked spade which is used in Sky; a very aukward instrument. The iron part of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... across the child's mind awful thoughts of death and of the grave. She struggled with them, but they clung with fearful tenacity to her fancy. All she had heard or read of mortality, of the coffin and the mould, came back with a vivid horror. She thought,—what if in a few weeks, a few days, the hand she held should be cold, lifeless; the form, whose faint breathings she listened to, should breathe no more, but be carried from her sight, and shut up in a grave—under a stone? And then ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... is one of the most ancient in France. About one hundred years since, in digging a vault, a body was discovered enveloped in a long robe; some very old coins were found in the coffin, and the habit in which the body was wrapped was of itself of the most ancient fashion. According to the French antiquaries, this was the body of one of the ancient dukes of Nevers. There are many other antiquities in the town, but I do not find that I have noted them, except ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... and the whole procession soon formed itself in the following order:—First came the large crucifix, then a boy bearing a banner on which was painted the figure of the Virgin; then came six other boys, followed by the same number of girls, all neatly and cleanly dressed; and then the coffin, hung with scarlet drapery, adorned with flowers, and having a small silver crucifix at its head. We were told it was the funeral of a girl of thirteen. Close upon the coffin came the minister, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... soldier of fortune and one of the most striking military adventurers of that day. A short sketch of him as given by Benson J. Lossing is as follows: "John Parke Boyd was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, December 21, 1764. His father was from Scotland, and his mother was a descendant of Tristam Coffin, the first of that family who emigrated to America. He entered the army in 1786, as ensign in the Second Regiment. With a spirit of adventure, he went to India in 1789, having first touched the Isle of France. In a letter to his father from Madras, ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... at sixty-five, very suddenly. Only a few hours before, she had exclaimed, as her children all came home together: "There never were such good boys as mine. You have repaid me a thousand-fold. God grant you all happy homes." They bore her coffin to the grave themselves. They would not let any other person touch it. In the evening they gathered around the old hearth-stone in the sitting-room, and drew their chairs together. No one spoke until Nate said, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... zen, bowls, cups, etc., are filled with vegetable food and are placed by his side, the chopsticks being put on the wrong, i.e. the left, side of the zen. At the end of forty-eight hours the corpse is arranged for the coffin by being washed with warm water, and the priest, while saying certain prayers, shaves the head. In all cases, rich or poor, the dress is of the usual make, but of pure white ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird |
