"Defenceless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... relatives against me. Though I am the legitimate daughter of Joseph Mirouet, band-master of the 45th regiment of infantry, my father himself was my godfather's natural half-brother; and therefore these relatives may, though without reason, being a suit against a young girl who would be defenceless. You see, monsieur, that the smallness of my fortune is not my greatest misfortune. I have many things to make me humble. It is for your sake, and not for my own, that I lay before you these facts, which to loving and devoted hearts are sometimes of little weight. But I ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... by disciplined troops. He stirred up the Wallachian peasants to take up arms against their own constitutional rights, and, aided by the rebellious Servian hordes, commenced a course of Vandalism and extinction, sparing neither women, children, nor aged men; murdering and torturing the defenceless Hungarian inhabitants; burning the most flourishing villages and towns, among which, Nagy-Igmand, the seat of learning for Transylvania, was reduced ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... the question. "I never did trust that nurse," said I. "But to steal the treasured capital of a defenceless infant!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... blacks; but at the same time I would point out to you that it is likely enough that the bush rangers, who certainly work with the blacks, will follow up this stroke. Therefore, it will not do to leave the stations defenceless. I do not want a large force with me. If we once overtake the blacks, I have no fear whatever of being able to give a good account of them. Therefore I would urge, upon all of you who are married men, that it is of the first importance that ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... of Commons recently Mr. Bonar Law announced that since the commencement of the war 14,250 lives had been lost as the result of enemy action by submarines and air-craft. A large percentage of these figures represents women, children, and defenceless citizens. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... practised; and we are happy to say that there is more of this than there used to be. It is only when incidents such as the Chengchiatun and Laihsikai affairs occur that the placid population is stirred to action. Even then, instead of turning and rending the many little defenceless communities—as European mobs would certainly do—they simply confine themselves to boycotting the offenders and hoping that this evidence of their displeasure will finally induce the world to believe that they are determined to get reasonable treatment. The Chinese as a ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... greensward, Marcolina was stretched on the grass, her hands clasped beneath her head, looking skyward while the shuttlecocks flew to and fro. Suddenly reaching upwards, she seized one of them in mid air, and laughed triumphantly. The girls flung themselves upon her as she lay defenceless. ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... of the shop was evident, for Miss Sarah was now heard remarking, "You left us defenceless, Caroline, and we surrendered soon ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... 1857 saw the commencement of the Indian Mutiny, a terrible outbreak of cruelty and fanaticism which, while it inflicted unspeakable anguish upon hundreds of our defenceless countrywomen and their children, desolated many an English home, and evoked the horror and compassion of the civilised world, was also the occasion of numberless acts of heroism and devotion, not only on the part of British soldiers and their native allies, ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... it. I have forgotten nothing. Alas! I shall forget nothing, not the anxious way in which you watched over me as a mother watches over her child, nor, and above all else, the noble confidence of our life as brother and sister, the delicacy of your conduct—winning charms, against which we women are defenceless. My lord, it is out of my power to ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... your hands and defend yourself. I hate to strike a defenceless man," said Denis, ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... refusez," said Blanche, savagely. "I will tell Harry at my own time, when we are married. You will not betray me, will you? You, having a defenceless girl's secret, will not turn upon her and use it? S'il me plait de le cacher, mon secret; pourquoi le donnerai je? Je l'aime, mon pauvre pere, voyez-vous? I would rather live with that man than with you fades intriguers of the world. I must have emotions—it m'en donne. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... might happen. I could not expose her defenceless in a hard world. Religion is fancy, but education is like an armor. I cannot tell what ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... lapsed; it was an object, then, for all those who, being in that miserable case, wished some day to be restored, to gain their promise of assistance, or their good-will. To these reasons was added, in Callista's case, the interest which naturally attached to a woman, young and defenceless. ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Shadow Witch bent her dark eyes upon him. "What matter that he is a stranger?" she cried confidently. "They who come from that bright land count themselves no strangers to the weak and the defenceless. They have, too, their own noble magic, before which ours is powerless. In a moment when you think not it will be upon you, and its spell will overcome you. This prince is my friend! I know it well! The hour of my deliverance is ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... o'clock in the morning, the council broke up, the Abbe Bernier had disappeared. What he did that night, God and he alone can tell; but at four o'clock in the morning a Republican detachment surrounded the farmhouse where Stofflet was sleeping, disarmed and defenceless. At half-past four Stofflet was captured; eight days later he was executed at Angers. The next day Autichamp took command, and, to avoid making the same blunder as Stofflet, he appointed the Abbe Bernier general agent. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... been seen prowling about them; though they kept up large camp-fires, they were in fear of a whole pack making their descent upon them, when they must all be devoured, in defending Sidney, or leave him to fall a defenceless victim. They found, to their dismay, that they were in a portion of the forest overrun by beasts, which no doubt, looked upon them as trespassing on their rights; the dislike of which proceedings they evinced, by threatening in plain ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... Mr. Fleet," she said, humbly, "and the need or danger of every defenceless woman is alike a sacred claim ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... testified to the excellent soldiership of the Turkish horsemen. With sabres and short muskets, they dashed in and out of the crowd of retreating Greeks, who, having no bayonets and no weapons adapted for close fighting, were utterly defenceless. He himself, having landed with Dr. Gosse to watch the operations from the shore, was so hard pressed by these formidable antagonists that he was only rescued by his own bravery and the daring of Dr. Gosse, who retained possession of the boat which was waiting for him on the shore ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... astonishment and wrath, Glendinning drew his sword and sprang at his companion, who, already full of indignation at the memory of what he had been so recently compelled to witness, could ill brook the indignity thus offered to the defenceless girl. His weapon flashed from its sheath on the instant, and for a few moments the two men cut and thrust at each other with savage ferocity. Wallace, however, was too young and unused to mortal strife to contemplate with indifference the possibility ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... The law was a great and terrible instrument, of which she knew nothing. It seemed to have swallowed up Aunt Margaret's money; it might very well have left her defenceless. Her stepmother seemed familiar with its powers, and able to evoke them at will; and though she did not trust her, there was something in her glib utterance that struck fear into the girl's heart. She did not answer, and Mrs. Rainham followed up ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... dangerous to wooden ships maintaining a close blockade at some Southern port. While there was much newspaper comment in England that the vessels were "new Alabamas," and in America that they were "floating fortresses," suitable for attack upon defenceless Northern cities, their primary purpose was to ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... streets always dirty, working, laboring, and mercantile streets. In short, the streets of Paris have every human quality, and impress us, by what we must call their physiognomy, with certain ideas against which we are defenceless. There are, for instance, streets of a bad neighborhood in which you could not be induced to live, and streets where you would willingly take up your abode. Some streets, like the rue Montmartre, ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... prepared for vengeance. In accordance with a custom common among the Indians, he had changed his name to Pemissapan, and now drew around him followers to aid in his scheme of death. Twenty or more were to surround the hut of Lane, drive him forth with fire, and slay him while thus defenceless. The leader destroyed, the rest of the colonists were to be gradually exhausted by starving, until they should fall an easy prey to the savages. But this well-concerted plan was betrayed to the English—a rencontre occurred, and several Indians were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... to think, a second Indian had sprung through the open window. A feeling of helpless rage swept over him at being cornered, defenceless; and, expecting every instant to be despatched with no more consideration than if he had been a rat, he stood at bay, determined not ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... and defenceless. It was a slaughter, and the most debauching and brutal I have ever known. I had hit out with the rest when it had been a question of defence, but from this I turned aside in a sick loathing. The men seemed possessed of devils, and of their unnatural energy. Perdosa cast aside the club and ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... cried the Russian's second, and I saw, to my dismay, Denviers's weapon suddenly twisted from his hand and flung into the air, while an exultant exclamation burst from Rachieff's lips as he rushed upon his defenceless opponent! Before he could make use of the advantage which he had unexpectedly gained, Marie Lovetski uttered a wild, mournful cry, and started forward from the pine forest, standing pale ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... rests at present, but more deaths will probably follow before the feud is ended. Both these murders were committed under circumstances of the utmost atrocity, the victims being surprised asleep unconscious of danger and perfectly defenceless, then aroused to find themselves treacherously attacked by numbers, who, after spearing them in many places, fearfully mangled the bodies ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... and our cattle have been driven—and you, gentlemen, have to bless God, that, coming from a milder and more civilized country, you expose only your own lives in this remorseless war, without apprehension that your enemies will visit with their vengeance the defenceless pledges you may ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... would be a thousand white people with a vast trail of native Christians following us, and calling on us not to abandon them and their children. Do you think we could run ahead, while a cowardly massacre by Boxers and savage soldiery was hourly thinning out the stragglers and defenceless people ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... yielded under the lateral pressure, and the rotten earth collapsed, bringing down the roof in its train. The digger fell forward on his face, his ribs jammed across his pick, his arms pinned to his sides, nose and mouth pressed into the sticky mud as into a mask; and over his defenceless body, with a roar that burst his ear-drums, broke stupendous ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... think of it all? Men made in God's image finding their highest enjoyment in slaughtering his creatures. Game Preserves where they can do it in luxurious leisure; fox hunts with their pack of hunters and hounds in full cry after one poor defenceless fox, and battle-fields where they tear each other limb from limb with Gatling gun and shells; and yet we call ourselves honorable gentlemen, and talk of the delights of the chase and the glories of war! Pshaw! ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... through the thickening smoke. Another Quabie rushed on. Hans and I received him on the points of our assegais, but so fierce was his charge that they went through him as though he were nothing, and being but light, both of us were thrown backwards to the ground. I scrambled to my feet again, defenceless now, for the spear was broken in the Kaffir, and awaited the end. Looking back once more I saw that Marie had either failed to get through the window or abandoned the attempt. At any rate she was standing near the chest supporting herself by her right hand. In my despair ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... deeply agitated and aroused the whole community; ingenuity was baffled in attempting even to conjecture a motive for the deed; and all the citizens were led to fear that the same fate might await them in the defenceless and helpless hours of slumber. For several days, persons passing through the streets might hear the continual sound of the hammer, while carpenters and smiths were fixing bolts to doors and fastenings to ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... man's high duty to keep harm from them. My father had gone out to battle, not alone to set free an enslaved race, but to make whole and strong a nation whose roots are in the homes it defends. So I, left to fill his place, must be the valiant defender of the defenceless. Such moments of exaltation come to the young soul, and by such ideals a life ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... poor, corrected the vicious, and forgave an enemy; by which he at once remitted the strongest provocations, and exercised the most ardent charity. Compassion was indeed the distinguishing quality of Savage: he never appeared inclined to take advantage of weakness, to attack the defenceless, or to press upon the falling. Whoever was distressed was certain at least of his good wishes; and when he could give no assistance to extricate them from misfortunes, he endeavoured to soothe them by ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... a felling blow, which however had not felled her. She staggered, but she stuck on her legs. It seemed a shame—one of those crude, spectacular shames which make the blood boil—that the gallant, defenceless creature should be so maltreated by ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... And then this feeling gave way to another; and as he watched the expert choppers swinging their bright axes in steady rhythm, and adding wound to wound in the gaping trunk so skilfully that the defenceless monster fell just where they wished, his heart thrilled with pride at man's easy victory over nature, and he longed to seize an axe himself and attack the ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... in silent thanksgiving. She had not, it was evident, run across the American, and the cat was still safely in the bag; but how much longer it could be kept there the saints alone knew. He was feeling—very properly—guilty in regard to this latest escapade; but what can a defenceless waiter do in the hands of an impetuous young American whose pockets are stuffed with silver ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... if they were true in all their horrid details, they would fall far short of the cruelties that have been dealt out by the savage foe to the inhabitants of this defenceless frontier. If you knew the history of this land for the last ten years; its massacres and its murders; its tears and its burnings; its spoliations; whole provinces depopulated; villages given to the flames; men butchered on their own hearths; women, beautiful women, carried into captivity ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... [that wherewithal] God made him forget all that He had decreed [unto him],[FN72] and he said to the cook, 'Why dost thou this thing, O man? Be mindful of God the Most High and fear Him. Seest thou not that I am a stranger? And indeed [I have left] behind me a defenceless woman. Why wilt thou slay me?' Quoth the cook, 'Needs must I slay thee, so I may take thy good.' And Selim said, 'Take my good, but slay me not, neither enter into sin against me; and do with me kindness, for that the taking of my money is lighter[FN73] ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... both cruel and cowardly," she exclaimed, suddenly descending to vituperation. "Two to one. Two men—GENTLEMEN—against one defenceless girl. Of course I am not able to argue with you. Of course you can get the best of me. It is so easy to ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... siege was with the Imperialists, not with us. A division under Webb and Rantzau was detached into Artois and Picardy upon the most painful and odious service that Mr. Esmond ever saw in the course of his military life. The wretched towns of the defenceless provinces, whose young men had been drafted away into the French armies, which year after year the insatiable war devoured, were left at our mercy; and our orders were to show them none. We found places garrisoned by ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gentlemen who took part in this divan were Catholics, and all of them stanch Jacobites, whose hopes were at present at the highest pitch, as an invasion, in favour of the Pretender, was daily expected from France, which Scotland, between the defenceless state of its garrisons and fortified places, and the general disaffection of the inhabitants, was rather prepared to welcome than to resist. Ratcliffe, who neither sought to assist at their consultations on this subject, nor was invited to do so, had, in the meanwhile, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... question of what Vanno may want," he said, with a very evident effort not to be harsh to a woman, defenceless if guilty. "You don't seem to realize, Miss Grant, that—both he and I owe something to our father—to our forefathers. The men of our family have done things they ought not to do. History tells of them. But history tells also ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Hangs my helpless soul on thee Leave, ah! leave me not alone! Still support and comfort me. All my trust on thee is stay'd, All my help from thee I bring; Cover my defenceless head Beneath the shadow ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to find Don John's body most certainly where it lay on the marble floor, with the death wound at the breast. Her instinct—she could not have reasoned then—told her that her father must have found the lovers together, and that in sudden rage he had stabbed Don John, defenceless. ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... pressing through the bushes, and bounding down the bank toward the actors in this nineteenth-century tournament, wherein an armed knight and a doughty squire were set against a weak, defenceless woman. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... moment both boys became guilty of serious breaches against time-honoured school etiquette. Bauer struck the defenceless Keith square in the face with his clenched fist, and Keith burst into tears. Quick as a flash one of the older boys grabbed Bauer by the scruff of his neck and hurled him halfway across the yard, while another one plucked Keith from the ground and shoved him toward ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... dress of the sixteenth century, and wearing a singular collar of jewels, stepped out from behind a curtain, attended by two other men, who, by their dress, were, or seemed to be, of inferior rank. Without a word, these three threw themselves upon the unarmed and defenceless painter with the fury of wild animals pouncing on prey. There was a brief and breathless struggle—three daggers gleamed in air—a shriek rang through the stillness—another instant and the victim lay ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... dreamily, when they had moved away. He was thinking that when all the rest had turned their backs upon him, it would be pleasant to have this little creature adoring him and nestling against him. The absence of presumptuous self-conceit in Tito made him feel all the more defenceless under prospective obloquy: he needed soft looks and caresses too much ever to ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Marc Dupre loosed Maren, the trembling lessening as the danger passed. That sight of the defenceless girl among the Indians had shaken him like a leaf in the wind, had nerved his arms with iron, had worked in him both with ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... that their local position enabled them to reap a rich harvest by plundering vessels in passing this great highway of nations, commenced their piratical career. The small coasting vessels of the gulf, from their defenceless state, were the first object of their pursuit, and these soon fell an easy prey; until, emboldened by success, they directed their views to more arduous enterprises, and having tasted the sweets of plunder in the increase ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... old man paused, and in the limpid clearness of the Australian atmosphere, I saw the child he thus praised standing by the garden-gate, looking towards us, and though still distant she seemed near. I felt wroth with her. My heart so cherished my harmless, defenceless Lilian, that I was jealous of the praise taken from her to be ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... about our Northern and Southern States. No doubt, the Rebel Government may send to England and purchase swift steamers like the Alabama, and man them with the reckless outcasts of every nationality, and send them forth to prey like pirates upon defenceless commerce. No doubt, in their hate, the Rebels may build sea-monsters like the Merrimack, or the Arkansas, or those cotton-mailed steamers at Galveston, and make all stand aghast at some temporary disaster. These things ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was finished, the Know-Nothings, or Native American Party, by way of celebrating in a fitting manner the independence of the United States, burst upon the defenceless Catholics, July 4, tore down their houses, destroyed their furniture, dragged their sick out of bed into the streets, and finally riddled the beautiful stained glass windows of the church. For these ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... child, which he thinks first kindled his love for birds. It was an encounter between a pet parrot and a tame monkey kept by his mother. One morning the parrot, Mignonne, asked as usual for her breakfast of bread and milk, whereupon the monkey, being in a bad humour, attacked the poor defenceless bird, and killed it. Audubon screamed at the cruel sight, and implored the servant to interfere and save the bird, but without avail. The boy's piercing screams brought the mother, who succeeded in tranquillising the child. The monkey was chained, and the parrot buried, but ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... his plan but postpones the operation of causes of discord it fails to eradicate; and that, if the war has taught us nothing else, it has taught us this,—spreading it out indeed before all eyes in letters of fire and blood,—that no conciliation is possible which sacrifices the defenceless, and that no peace is permanent which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... went, creeping cautiously on all fours after the gipsy woman. When they were about halfway in, a hand was laid on Dandie Dinmont's heel, and it was all the stout farmer could do to keep from crying out—which, in the defenceless position in which they were placed, might well have cost them all ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... time and waste; glorious and devastating things, magnificent and bleak, at once rapture and terror and immense, heart-cleaving longing. She felt small and dreadfully alone. She felt uncovered and defenceless. Instinctively she pulled her wrap closer. With this thing of chiffon she tired to protect herself from ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... the French at Blenheim; but through the war their chiefs seem constantly to have been afraid of assaulting entrenched Continentals afterwards; else why, from July to March, hesitate to strike an almost defenceless enemy? Why the hesitation at Long Island, when the Continental army was in our hand? Why that astonishing timorousness—of Howe before Valley Forge, where the relics of a force starving, sickening, and in rags, could scarcely man the lines, which they held before a great, victorious, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Roman slave was, in the eyes of the law, only a thing,—no more than an ox or a horse. He had neither property, family, nor personality; he was defenceless against his master's cruelty, folly, or cupidity. 'Sell your oxen that are past use,' said Cato, 'sell your calves, your lambs, your wool, your hides, your old ploughs, your old iron, your old slave, and your sick slave, and all that is of no use to you.' When no market could ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... stupendous villain, in the diabolical malignity of his nature, derived a fierce pleasure from ill-treating and outraging that frail, but to him inoffensive woman. Her defenceless situation might have excited compassion in the breast of a less brutal ruffian; but when had his stony ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Carr was still about. She was getting at Joe through his business side, going to his office. She had asked him to sell her house on Long Island, and through this transaction she had tangled him into her affairs. A lone woman, defenceless in business, needing the aid and advice of a man. "Oh, I can almost hear her lay it on—her helplessness!" And Ethel fairly ground her teeth. For Fanny, only the day before, having called and noticed that a sofa and a rug were missing, ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... animals whose rapid flight enables them to escape his clutches. Sometimes, however, after the exercise of prodigious patience on his part, by lying in wait the whole day, at a spot where he knows they will be certain to pass when the sun goes down, a defenceless roebuck will ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... to myself? When you so far forgot yourself a fortnight ago as to hint at your outrageous ideas regarding me, I forced myself to remember that you were not an Englishman, that perhaps in your country there may be a social code which permits a man to dishonour his home and to annoy a defenceless woman. I cannot forgive you a second time. Let me pass! Let me pass, I tell you, or I ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... the earth by fire and sword. They are only too ready to obey this order. Already steeped in blood from the combat outside the walls, they continue to gather in the harvest with dripping scimitars. The defenceless are fastened together with chains and ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... But surely he would understand that she must have sent Maule away. What more can a wife do in the case of an over-insistent lover? And how should a husband expect an explanation when he had literally thrown her into her lover's arms, or at least had left her defenceless against his solicitations! Had he treated her differently after the Wombo episode in the beginning, she might have told him the truth about her former relations ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... general," cried Gotzkowsky, "this is my request: Spare the poor and needy of this town. Order your soldiers to be humane, and do not forget mercy. Let your warriors neither murder nor plunder; let them not deride the defenceless and conquered. Give to the world the example of a generous and ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... unmerited dislike for the girl. Sally knew nothing of Miss Woodhull's dislike for Admiral Seldon because he had presumed to question her policy, nor could a girl of Sally's sweet nature possibly understand the smallness of one which would take out upon a defenceless young girl the resentment which she harbored toward her older relative. Nevertheless, that was precisely the situation, and Miss Stetson and Miss Bayliss were Miss ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... scoundrel) against my character and conduct, such as they may be; still, my sense of justice does revolt from this most cavalier and careless exhibition of me to a whole people, as a traveller under false pretences, and a disappointed intriguer. The better the acquaintance with America, the more defenceless and more inexcusable such conduct is. For, I solemnly declare (and appeal to any man but the writer of this paper, who has travelled in that country, for confirmation of my statement) that the source from which he drew the "information" so recklessly ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... brothers O'Gorman—I had made their acquaintance some time previously at Keighley—and they agreed to walk back with me to Stockton-on-Tees. The girl's uncle and her three cousins made the party into eight—a veritable cavalcade in quest of a poor, defenceless woman. We got to Stockton all right, and the uncle and his sons took the girl in charge, while I was left with my three friends, the O'Gormans, to do as I liked. What was more, I was robbed of all opportunities of communing with the "erstwhile ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... grave without bequeathing a heritage of love; on whose sod no refreshing dew of sorrowing affection descended. Lonely as his relics in the sepulchre, his spirit wandered in the dreaded region of probation; alone he was left defenceless, prayerless, friendless to settle his awful score with unmitigated justice. It is this feeling, unrivalled for poetic beauty, that gives color and tone to the second division of Dante's poem. The five or six cantos, at the opening, have all the milk of human nature that ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... Ireland' in the following words: 'The wild and barbarous savages of the wilderness have been solicited by gifts to take up the hatchet against us, and instigated to deluge our settlements with the blood of defenceless women and children.' ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... he was bound and I was free, that I was armed and he defenceless, there was perhaps more humour than the prisoner saw in his picture of me upon my knees to him. Not that I saw it all at once myself. I was too busy wondering whether there could be anything in his clock-winding story after all. Certainly it was inconsistent with the big bribe ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... am compelled to accept such an estimate of the Dyak character with reservations. From all that I could learn, head-hunting is a sport, like fox-hunting in England. Nor does it, as a rule, involve any great risk to the hunters, for the head-hunting raids are usually mere butcheries of defenceless people, the Dyaks either stalking their victim in the bush and killing him from behind, or attacking a village when the warriors are absent and slaughtering everyone whom they find in it—old, men, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... happening, inside. Had they only waited, they would have seen all the soldier garrison march away, leaving the women and children and a few grandfathers—and the fort would have been seized without trouble except to the defenceless families. ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... then for the departed General as he looked at his photograph. It was intolerable, he had thought then, that a man should have those large, full eyes, that straight, manly look and bearing, who had gone to his grave having deliberately planned that his dead hand should so deeply wound a defenceless woman, and that woman his sweet, young wife. Murray's mind was so full now of relief at the idea that Sir David had done his best at the last, that in his relief he almost forgot that, in a woman's mind the main fact might still ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... four hundred and fifty-six miles from the port of Hispaniola called Beata, where preparations are generally made for voyages of discovery. Immediately on landing, Hojeda attacked the scattered and defenceless natives. They had been conceded to him by royal patent because they had formerly treated some Christians most cruelly and could never be prevailed upon to receive the Spaniards amicably in their country. Only a small quantity of gold, and that of poor quality, was ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... real bearing on the organization of the state as resting upon the civil and military service of its citizens. England consented to arbitrate with the powerful United States, but refused to arbitrate with defenceless Nicaragua in a far less important matter. Congress has seriously considered exterminating the remnant of the beautiful herd of seals that once played in our Northern Pacific waters, because British subjects have continued, in violation of the ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... his disordered brain, swift as lightning flashes. In a moment Canidia was forgotten, and he was Pentheus, struggling with Agave and her demented crew. They were tearing him to pieces, their fingers were at his throat. Then he was in the East, a defenceless traveller in the tropical desert, surrounded by Thugs. He pointed to one particular spot where he saw his insidious foe—he described the dusky supple figure, the sinuous limbs, gliding serpent-like towards him, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... very serious," said he, slowly. "When I came here it was with the painful feeling that the house contained boys so cowardly and unprincipled as to waylay a defenceless man in the dark, and to treat him as Mr Bickers has been treated. But it is tenfold worse to believe that it contains boys cowardly enough to involve the whole house in their own disgrace and punishment. (Sensation.) I will not mince matters. Your house is deeply disgraced, and cannot pretend ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... of thorns and grass in the heart of an extensive jungle. The elephant awoke before they could distinctly see its form, owing to the extreme thickness of the covert, but the fight commenced. There was a considerable difference between the attack upon defenceless villagers, who fled before it in hopeless panic, and a stand-up fight with two experienced European shikaris armed with the best rifles; the terror of the district quickly showed its appreciation of discretion, and, badly wounded, it retreated ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... a contemptuous cheer after him; they thought they had beaten him off. But Dodd knew better. He was but retiring a little way to make a more deadly attack than ever: he would soon wear, and cross the Agra's defenceless bows, to rake her fore and aft at pistol-shot distance; or grapple, and board the enfeebled ship ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the axes of their fathers that felled the trees, to sell for fuel, and the billhooks of their mothers that hacked away the bushes and grubbed up their very roots to burn on the household cooking hole. Then the torrential rains of the south-west monsoon came down on the naked, defenceless, parched and cracked soil and swept it in muddy cascades down to the sea, leaving flats of bare rock, strewn thick with round stones, sore to the best-shod foot of man and cruel to the hoofs of a horse. About and ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... pledged themselves not to allow the adherents of the Salonica Government to take advantage of the withdrawal of the Greek troops into the Peloponnesus in order to invade by land or by sea any part whatever of Greek territory thus left defenceless, or to permit the installation of Venizelist authorities in any territories actually in the possession of the Royal Government which they might see fit to occupy hereafter for military reasons. Lastly, they signified their readiness to raise the blockade as soon as special delegates should judge ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... himself. It went against his heart to beat a creature so defenceless; and, for the life of him, he knew no other way to rid himself of this unwelcome and, as he began to think, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seeing by the expression of the officer's face that he had won the day: "Come now, Count von Hemelstein, let's be friends. I would not have liked you had you not resented my remarks, and I was a cad to take advantage of your absolutely defenceless position." ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... as she flew to do Jacob's bidding. She had a terrible fear of London streets, at night, as well she might, and the open country beyond was even worse to her excited imagination. And Cherry was so pretty, so simple, so credulous, and withal so utterly defenceless should there be any sort of attack made upon her. Keziah's hands shook as she lighted the lantern; and as minutes were fast slipping away and still there was no sign of the truant, she was rather relieved than terrified to hear the sharp accents of her aunt's voice mingling with ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... to occupy the intervening time in an exploration of the ancient town and its surroundings. Having passed the half of one day and the whole of one night in that delectable place,—during which night I was set on and nearly annihilated, while lying defenceless in my bed, by a myriad of Carolina big-bugs,—I found it so intolerably dull that, to escape a siege of 'the blues,' I hired a horse and a negro driver at a livery-stable, and started ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the ice-bound river, past the quay where rough soldiers were brutalising a number of wretched defenceless women, to that grim Chatelet prison, where tiny lights shining here and there behind barred windows told the sad tale of weary vigils, of watches through the night, when dawn would bring ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... who thereby but half fulfilled his vow of vengeance against the republic. And when did it occur?" he continued with rising fury. "Was it not shortly after the day in which that heartless villain, the Proveditore Marcello, captured the woivode's wife, and hung her, unoffending and defenceless, unshriven and unabsolved, upon a tree ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... to point out to you that you are inconsequent. If I, as a Christian, care for the weak and defenceless, I do so by the doctrine of Christ; but you, from a standpoint of a struggle-for-life existence, ought to see it in a different light: they are weak, they are foolish, consequently bound to succumb; it is a capital law of nature,—let the weaker go to perdition. Why is it you do not take ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the duke of Savoy marched with expedition from the Var, he would have found Toulon defenceless; but he lingered in such a manner as gives reason to believe he was not hearty in the enterprise; and his operations were retarded by a difference between him and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... father's notion of the thing, and began to think that it would, after all, turn out very little better than a hoax, or something for the public to laugh at. I own I did not like the object of the expedition much; neither did I relish the idea of going to draw my sword upon a defenceless, unarmed multitude; but my father turned it all into ridicule—he said we were only old-woman frighteners, and he quoted first some farwell lines of Pope's Homer, addressed by Hector to Andromache, before he went out ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... an amphibian?" said the toad. He came from the centre of a grass-tuft, and spoke with solemn deliberation. "Not one of you is more persecuted than I. From time immemorial I have been the loadstone of credulity, and—I am altogether defenceless. I am never worth eating, for the shock of capture opens every pore on my skin, drenching me with what the poets class as venom. So I am usually thrown aside with a broken back. For centuries I was thought ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... nameless runaway. In the play he has slain Patroclus, but has not stripped him of the armour of Achilles, which, in Homer, he is wearing. Achilles then meets Hector, but far from rushing to avenge on him Patroclus, he retires like a coward, musters his men, and makes them surround and slay the defenceless Hector. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... similar instances which occurred to others; but I shall only state one more, as occurring to a defenceless woman. My maternal grandmother occupied at the time of that rebellion the castle of Dungulph, in the county Wexford, the family residence. It was an old stronghold regularly fortified and surrounded by a moat, with a drawbridge; ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... you far enough before I allowed you to try, Mr. Rowley!" I cried. "Why, you would be quite defenceless! A footpad that was an infant child could rob you. And I should probably come driving by to find you in a ditch with your throat cut. But there is something in your idea, for all that; and I propose we put it in execution no farther forward than the next corner ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... petition of the men living on the "Banks," who had asked to be excused from enlisting. The dwellers on the coast were exposed to attacks from the enemy, and should the husbands and fathers of that section of the county be forced to the field, their homes would be defenceless. How great the danger was had been realized a few days before Jarvis wrote this letter, for a British ship had entered the inlet, burned two vessels belonging to the patriots, and killed the cattle in the nearby marshes. The Governor ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... of view of those by whom he was led. In the new life of bloodshed and adventure he seemed to delight. Like the free-lance in all ages, he seems to have squandered his booty as soon as it was acquired, and then to sea once more, to face the desperate hazard of an encounter with the knights, to raid defenceless villages, to lie perdu behind some convenient cape, dashing out from thence to plunder the argosy of the merchantman. Intolerable conditions of heat and cold he endured, he suffered from wounds, from fever, from hunger and thirst, from hope deferred, from voyages when ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... British and French funds and in the various German states. And yet all the time this rich and prosperous country was surrounded by powerful military and naval powers, and, having no strong natural frontiers, lay exposed defenceless to aggressive attack whether by sea or land. It was in vain that the stadholder, year by year, sent pressing memorials to the States-General urging them to strengthen the navy and the army and to put ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... such a case, a scruple of prejudice will go farther than a hundredweight of argument. In assuming to be the champion of the downtrodden whites against the domineering blacks, Mr. Cushing enlists on his side the sympathy and admiration which are sure to follow the advocate of the weak and the defenceless. He comes home to New England, finds his own color proscribed, and at once takes the part of amicus curiae for the weak against the strong in the forum of Humanity. We do not wonder, that a gentleman, who has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... Pignaver's agents must have seized her as soon as he himself had been taken away, and he dared not think of what would happen when they brought her back to Venice and delivered her up to her uncle. That they would murder the defenceless girl he did not believe, and besides, it was much more likely that Pignaver would prefer to torment her to death at his leisure, after assassinating her lover. Stradella guessed as much as that from what he knew of the ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... from Suffolk to cut the Weldon Railroad. He also sent out detachments to destroy the railroad between Petersburg and Richmond, but no great success attended these latter efforts. He made no great effort to establish himself on that road and neglected to attack Petersburg, which was almost defenceless. About the 11th he advanced slowly until he reached the works at Drury's Bluff, about half way between Bermuda Hundred and Richmond. In the mean time Beauregard had been gathering reinforcements. On the 16th he attacked ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... that you should try to terrorise a defenceless man to gratify your own vanity and humiliate me," she answered angrily. "As for being afraid, the remote prospect of having to marry ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... is for the poor House of Commons, whom he represents as naked and defenceless, when the Crown, by losing this prerogative, would be less able to protect them against the power of a House of Lords. Who forbears laughing when the Spanish Friar represents little Dicky under the person of Gomez, insulting the Colonel that was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... brute—a good deal of an animal—but animals have their affections, and he loved Julia as well as it was in his nature to love anything. It was ingrained in him by nature and by years of unquestioned domination to bully and browbeat all defenceless people; but Julia, the most defenceless of his surroundings, had been treated always with a lighter hand. Childlike, she had taken advantyage of her immunity in many little ways, and though Samson had never forborne to bluster at her girlish insubordination, ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... were friendless and were earning very low pay. Eighteen per cent of those who were reported without the use of a sitting-room were under twenty-five. The housing or food, or both, were reported as bad for a number of these perilously defenceless young women.[16] ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... man"; unarmed, or defenceless. "Had I but serv'd my God with half the zeal I serv'd my king, he would not in mine age Have left me naked ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... fierce and brutal passions. Cabrera, moreover, was a dastardly wretch, whose limited mind was incapable of harbouring a single conception approaching to grandeur; whose heroic deeds were confined to cutting down defenceless men, and to forcing and disembowelling unhappy women; and yet I have seen this wretched fellow termed by French journals (Carlist of course) the young, the heroic general. Infamy on the cowardly assassin! The shabbiest corporal of Napoleon ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... him to do so, the former beheld the chance which Fortune had so kindly afforded him for fortune and happiness glide out of his reach; so that when he stood at length in the street with the liberated Gertrude, there was no one near them. Totally forgetting the defenceless situation of his companion, he was about to spring away in pursuit of the Boar of Ardennes, as the greyhound tracks the deer, when, clinging to him in her despair, she exclaimed, "For the sake of your mother's honour, leave me not ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... now and again plant and weave for their children: but in the main, and in most societies, the division of labour was just, natural, beneficial; and it was inevitable that such a division should take place. Were today a band of civilised men, women, and infants thrown down absolutely naked and defenceless in some desert, and cut off hopelessly from all external civilised life, undoubtedly very much the old division of labour would, at least for a time, reassert itself; men would look about for stones and sticks with which to make weapons ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... themselves to be in a very exposed and defenceless condition; and Willy, who had become tangled in the bedclothes, and had been a little hurt in falling, now that the strain was somewhat ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... doubted whether the forbearance, fortitude, and magnanimity displayed in her latter years, do not redound more highly to her praise than all that preceded. Elizabeth wished for some plausible pretext to take away the life of the unhappy Mary, whom, though so defenceless, she regarded as a dangerous rival. The Duke of Norfolk made offers of marriage to Mary, to which she consented, in case she should be liberated. His scheme also was to favor the Catholic cause, and on its being discovered he was thrown into ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various |
