"Ransacked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never will confederate on his principles." The convention grew nervous and excited over this seemingly irreconcilable antagonism. The discussion was kept up with much learning and acuteness by Madison, Ellsworth, and Martin, and history was ransacked for testimony from the Amphiktyonic Council to Old Sarum, and back again to the Lykian League. Madison, rightly reading the future, declared that if once the proposed union should be formed, the real danger would come not from the rivalry between large and small states, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... I ransacked my brain for recollections of Hoffmann, and quickly decided to work up his Bergwerke von Falun. The moulding of this fascinating and marvellous material succeeded as admirably as I could wish. Dessauer also felt convinced that the topic was worth his while to set ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... volume on "The Gold-Mines of Midian," the popular Hebrew sources of information—the Old Testament and the Talmud—were ransacked for the benefit of the reader. It now remains to consult the Egyptian papyri and the pages of the mediaval Arab geographers: extracts from the latter were made for me, in my absence from England, by the well-known Arabist, the Rev. G. Percy Badger.[EN44] I ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... at Penzance the Custom House there had been openly defied by John Carter, the famous smuggler of Prussia Cove; that once, when Carter was absent on an expedition, the Excise officers had plucked up heart, ransacked the Cove, carried off a cargo of illicit goods and locked it up in the Custom House; that John Carter on his return, furious at the news of his loss, had marched over to Penzance under cover of darkness, broken in the Custom House and ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... guilt of that lays claim sir, to yourself For being, by you, ransacked of all my fame, Robbed of mine honour and dear chastity, Made, by your act, the shame of all my house, The hate of good men and the scorn of bad, The song of broom-men and the murdering vulgar, And left alone ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... examined and registered the immigrants, placed at their disposal physicians, money changers, transportation agents, and advisers, and extended to them a helping hand. The Federal Government was represented only by the customs officers who ransacked their baggage. ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... lay the man by the heels who ransacked your place, we might be able to get a clue ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... at the Golden House, we lost no time in instituting a thorough inquiry into the state of the public finances. We ransacked the house from top to bottom and found nothing! Was it possible that the President had carried off with him all the treasure that had inspired our patriotic efforts? The thought was too horrible. The drawers of his escritoire and the safe that stood in his library revealed nothing ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... receiving homage from a conquered foe. He assures the trembling wretch that, 'acting on information received,' he must search his dwelling for the missing goods, and that his women's apartments will have to be ransacked, and so annoys, goads, and insults the unfortunate man, that he is too glad to purchase immunity from further insolence by making the policeman a small present, perhaps a 'kid of the goats,' or something else. The guardian of the peace ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... fell upon the jumble and began to overhaul it. The object sought defied his fevered efforts to unearth it and with teeth set, he ransacked the studio, resentfully flinging a melee ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... their lives and taken their lives. One lord of Beaurepaire, hotly pursued by his feudal enemies, made for the tree, and hid himself partly by a great bough, partly by the thick screen of leaves. The foe darted in, made sure he had taken to the house, ransacked it, and got into the cellar, where by good-luck was a store of Malvoisie: and so the oak and the vine saved the quaking baron. Another lord of Beaurepaire, besieged in his castle, was shot dead on the ramparts by a cross-bowman who had secreted himself unobserved ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... up by Augustus within the precinct of the palace of the Caesars; and Octavia built another near the Tiber in memory of the young Marcellus. The gloomy Domitian restored the library at the Capitol, which had been struck and fired by lightning. Trajan ransacked the wealth of the world for his collection in the 'Ulpiana,' which, in accordance with a later fashion, became one of the principal attractions of the Thermae ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... command, they despatched the court constable, with soldiers, to look for the provisor in order to arrest him. They registered all the house of the archbishop, and the house of the provisor himself, sequestered his goods, broke off the locks of the cupboards and writing-desks, and ransacked his papers, but did not find him, for he had hidden in the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... say) so much since then, Given up myself so many times, Gained me the gains of various men, Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes; Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, Either I missed or itself missed me: And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope! What is the ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... days of pageants and royal progresses these old castles were the scenes of very lively exhibitions of rustic histrionic talent. The stories of Greek and Roman mythology were ransacked to provide scenes and subjects for the rural pageant. Shepherds and shepherdesses, gods and goddesses, clowns and mummers, all took part in the rural drama which kings and queens delighted to honour. When Queen Elizabeth visited the ancient and historic castle of ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... ditch-water. They saw oats and wheat flung down to be trodden into a slough of mud and filth. They saw the walnut presses in their kitchens broken open, and their old heirlooms of silver, centuries old, borne away as booty. They saw the oak cupboard in their wives' bedchambers ransacked, and the homespun linen and the quaint bits of plate that had formed their nuptial dowers cast aside in derision or trampled into a battered heap. They saw the pet lamb of their infants, the silver earrings of their brides, the brave tankards they had drunk their marriage wine ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Paul, "I gave the strictest orders that there was to be no such useless extravagance. I objected to have the kitchen and housekeeper's room ransacked to make a set of rascally boys ill for a ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... an ill temper, for I was seriously offended with Lawson, and also seriously alarmed. He was either very unwell or going out of his mind, and it was clear, too, that he would resent any anxiety on his account. I ransacked my memory for rumours, but found none. I had heard nothing of him except that he had been extraordinarily successful in his speculations, and that from his hill-top he directed his firm's operations with uncommon skill. If Lawson was sick or mad, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... he was obliged to make a precipitate retreat. Our dinner-party of yesterday did not break up in any such fracas, nor was the conversation so unhappily restricted. Yet the company was hardly better assorted. To bring it together, Harrington ransacked his immediate circle, and Fellowes unconsciously recruited for him in the university town. Our host had provided for our mutual edification an Italian gentleman, with whom he had had some pleasant intercourse on the Continent, (by ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... patriotism with which he had inspired her gratified him; he tried to set matters right by numerous presents." The Empress of Austria was compelled to conceal her ill-will. She was present almost every morning when Marie Louise was dressing, ransacked her step-daughter's laces, ribbons, stuffs, shawls, and jewels, and carried something off almost ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Who was Evelyn? And to whom did this voice belong, in a house which had already been ransacked in vain for other occupants? It seemed to come from the roof, and, sure enough, when Mr. Gryce looked up he saw, swinging in a cage strung up nearly to the top of one of the windows I have mentioned, an English starling, which, in seeming recognition of the attention it had drawn upon itself, ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... made. Twice burglars in my pay ransacked her house. Once we diverted her luggage when she travelled. Twice she has been waylaid. There has ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... who loitered behind, commenced a general pillage of the poor little village. The inhabitants had all fled at our approach, save one old man. All the hut-doors were violently torn away and the insides ransacked. The spoils were leben, bowls or calabashes, bows and arrows, axes, and some other trifles. Of live-stock, all the fowls were seized and slaughtered on the spot; also a lamb. My interpreter tells me that all the slaves of the Government of Bornou ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... rebels. Wat Tyler, John Ball, and Jack Straw were successful in keeping their followers from stealing and in giving some semblance of a regular plan to their proceedings. On the morning of Friday, the 14th, the king left the Tower, and while he was absent the rebels made their way in, ransacked the rooms, seized and carried out to Tower Hill Simon Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury, who was Lord Chancellor, Robert Hales, Grand Master of the Hospitallers, who was then Lord Treasurer, and some lower officials. These were all put through the ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... seems to me that we have ransacked every hole and corner in which there is a chance that the ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... was sunny May. The little church of Grenville was crowded. I noticed in one of the seats a lady plainly but neatly attired. There was nothing remarkable in the face with its mournful brown eyes, and decided looking mouth and chin. I ransacked my memory to find who the lady was. Suddenly a vision of the poor widow came. This, then, was the little girl, little Nellie Mason. 'We will read a part of the 14th chapter of St. John,' the minister ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... time stated, Burton, Lady Burton, Dr. Baker and Lisa took steamer for Brindisi, where they visited Virgil's house, and then made for Malta. On December 20th they were at Tunis, and Sir Richard ransacked the bazaar and button-holed people generally in order to get manuscripts of The Scented Garden, but without success. Nobody had ever heard of it. [612] At Carthage he recalled that rosy morning when Dido in "flowered cymar with ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... lapidary to whom he gave orders to mount his new acquisition pronouncing it to be merely a bit of crystal. The mortification and rage of the despot were unbounded. He immediately caused the palace of the King of Cabul to be invested, and ransacked from top to bottom. But for a long while all search was vain; at last a slave betrayed the secret;—the diamond was found concealed beneath a heap of ashes. Runjeet Singh had it set in an armlet, between two diamonds, each the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... and followed her like a child. With superhuman energy, she ransacked the house and gathered the most valuable articles. Plate, linen, dresses, Parian ware, books, furs, and jewelry were packed, as securely as the time allowed. A carriage and a baggage-wagon were ordered, and in an incredibly short period ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... of temperament, I could master only a rather restricted amount of mental material. My father's library was once more ransacked. I found not much that was of any use to me, for it contained chiefly theological works; but I seized with the greatest enjoyment on a book which had come out some ten years before in Gotha, a general view of all the sciences ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... colours and patterns, and looked and thought themselves very fine. Nothing could surpass the magnificence of the child's robe. All the knowledge of embroidery possessed by the whole ship's company had been expended on it, and every chest and bag had been ransacked to find coloured beads and bits of silk and worsted and cotton of different hues to work on it. The devices were curious. There were anchors and cables twisting about all over it, and stars and guns, ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... of gigantic birds, that had thus alighted by the shore of the little lake, were, to say the least, uncouth creatures; for the whole ornithological world might be ransacked without finding a ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... loves had been fully discussed between his friend and Miss Waddington—between his Caroline and another man. To the pride of his heart nothing could be more revolting. It was as though his dearest possession had been ransacked in his absence, and rifled and squandered by the very guardian to whom he had left the key. There had been sore misgivings, sore differences between him and Caroline; but, nevertheless, she had had all his heart. Now, in his absence, she had selected his worldly friend Harcourt, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... is not a man of letters, simply is not one; it is not too audacious a paradox to affirm that doing will not avail him who fails in being. 'Lay your deadly doing down,' sang once some old hymn known to Calvinists. Certain poets, a certain time ago, ransacked the language for words full of life and beauty, made a vocabulary of them, and out of wantonness wrote them to death. To change somewhat the simile, they scented out a word—an earlyish word, by preference—ran it to earth, unearthed it, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... might be fulfilled," is usually connected with the words, "I thirst," as if the meaning were that He had said this fifth word in fulfilment of some prediction that He would do so; and the Old Testament is ransacked, without much result, for the prophetic words which may be supposed to be alluded to. It is better, however, to connect the phrase with what goes before—"Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished." ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... a green silk purse—Lord! it reminds me of the Peninsula. Do you know those Prussians are mere barbarians, haven't a notion of civilized war. Bless your heart, my fellows in the Legion would have ransacked the whole coach, from the boot to the sword-case, in half the time they took to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... hour passed away, but Waqua returned not; and Arundel began to fear that his companion had taken some offence, either at himself, or at what had occurred the evening previous. He ransacked his memory, for the purpose of discovering if he had said or done anything to which exception could be taken, or had omitted any courtesy or attention; but he could find nothing to reproach himself with. ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... topsy-turvy, the press open and ransacked. A lamp still burned before the "kivott"[56] equally empty; but a small looking-glass hanging between the door and window had not been taken away. What had become of the inmate of this simple maiden's cell? A terrible apprehension crossed ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... stream against us, and made but little way, and it vexed me very much to hear him talk so loud as he did, as the Indians must have heard him, and I thought would follow us along the coast; but he ransacked the whole book of martyrs, telling me how one had his body sawn in two, another was pinched to death; this one burnt, that tortured; every variety of death he entered upon during the whole of that day ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... Ile du Vaches, in the part where now stands the port of La Greve, were furnished with little towers. The design of these has for a long time been shown at the house of Cardinal Duprat, the king's Chancellor. The constable ransacked his brains, and at the bottom, from his finest stratagems, drew the best, and fitted it so well to the present case, that the gallant would be certain to be taken like a hare in the trap. "'Sdeath," said he, "my planter of horns ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... you? She had certainly taken her seat in the boat: that was sure. Nobody, in the general confusion, was certain of having seen her on coming ashore. The sea was searched for her—the forests were ransacked. The sea made no answer—the forests gave up no sign. I have a conjecture of my own; but her brother soldiers were lost in sorrow and confusion, and could never arrive even at ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... way they had entered, and made his way around the out-buildings to the avenue. Fronklyn stole up the stairs, after he had removed his shoes, and looked into half a dozen rooms on the first floor. The carpets had been partly torn up, the furniture overturned and broken up, the closets ransacked, and abundant other evidence that the search for money or other valuables had been completed in this part of ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... Atlantic tonnage was occupied with carrying the materials of construction: rails, engines, concrete, lumber, and all the thousand and one things that go to the housing of armies. This accounts for America's delay in starting fighting. For three years Europe had been ransacked; very much of what America would require had to be brought. Such work does not make a dramatic impression on other nations, especially when they are impatient. Its value as a contribution towards defeating the Hun is all ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... more than one instance that it is not impossible. That queens in that very age were capable of profligacy was proved, but a few years later, by the confessions of Catherine Howard. I believe history will be ransacked vainly to find a parallel for conduct at once so dastardly, so audacious, and so foolishly wicked as that which the popular hypothesis ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... last two years he has quietly extinguished sixty millions of his debts in terminable annuities. He has improved his outlying lands of Scotland and Ireland, ransacked the battle-fields of Europe for bone-dust and the isles of the Pacific for guano, and imported enough to fertilize four millions of acres, and, not content with the produce of his home-farm, imports the present year more than four ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... equip a sufficient force. Hubert the justiciar, Randolph of Chester, William the marshal, and most of the great barons personally shared in the expedition, and the ports of the Channel, the North Sea, and the Bay of Biscay were ransacked to provide adequate shipping. Many Norman vessels served as transports, apparently of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... extemporized well and had skilfully treated her bewildered patients. Questioned and complimented both, Miss Ray blushingly admitted that she had studied "First Aid to the Wounded" and had had some instructions in the post hospitals of more than one big frontier fort. Passengers had ransacked bags and trunks and presented spare clothing to the few recruits whom the garments would fit. But most of the men were shoeless and blanketed when morning dawned, and all were thankful when served with coffee and a light breakfast, though many ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... did prove too small, and Patty frenziedly ransacked the bureaus of a dozen of her absent friends in the vain hope of unearthing pink footwear. In the end, she had reluctantly to permit Harriet's appearing in her own simple cotton hose and patent ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... they searched the grounds and the neighbourhood; they ransacked Azalea's belongings in hope of some old letter or clue of some sort. But nothing gave so much as a hint of anything that could have happened to her, that made her ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... stifled, in this foul lurking-place, while the Indians, furious at his escape, ransacked the settlement in vain to find him. They came off to the vessel, and so terrified the officers, that Jogues was sent on shore at night, and led to the fort. Here he was hidden in the garret of a house occupied by a miserly old man, to ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... of one of the real monarchs of the day, was an event of transcendent importance, and was treated so. The vocabulary was ransacked to find adjectives glowing enough to describe his enterprise, foresight, sagacity and integrity. Much elaborated upon was the fiction that he had increased his fortune by honest, legitimate means—a fiction still ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... "that homage with the mouth which the heart would fain deny, but dares not." Mr. Hastings has received that homage, and that homage we mean to present to your Lordships: we mean to present it, because it will show your Lordships clearly, that, after Mr. Hastings has ransacked Bengal from one end to the other, and has used all the power which he derives from having every friend and every dependant of his in every office from one end of that government to the other, he has not, in all those panegyrics, those fine high-flown Eastern encomiums, got one word ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of the churches or religious houses should suffer injury of any kind, all of which were preserved from violation by the appointment of guards for their protection. But the rest of the town, either from the want of that precaution, or owing to the cupidity of our people, was rifled and ransacked by the soldiers and mariners, who scarcely left a single house unsearched, taking out of them every thing that struck their fancy or seemed worth carrying away, such as chests of sweet wood, chairs, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... a fellow down here in my employ," continued Mr. Thurwell, lighting a fresh cigar, "who turns out to have been a spy or detective of some sort. Of course I knew nothing of it at the time—in fact, I've only just found it out; but it seems he ransacked Falcon's Nest and discovered some papers which he avowed quite openly would hang Mr. Maddison. But what's become of him I ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the artistic regeneration of our sordid life before? Never mind, we would make amends for lost time by spending more money! In very truth the years following the Centennial witnessed an extraordinary awakening of worship of beauty, almost religious in its fervor. Passionate pilgrims ransacked Europe and the Orient; a prodigal horde of their captives, objects of luxury and of art, surged into galleries and museums and households. No cold, critical taste weeded out these adorable aliens. The worst and the best conquered, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... denied this completely. Curiously, the great cry on the part of these was that he was insane, must be, and that he was all alone in his schemes. His life on Broadway, on Long Island, in his studio in New York, were ransacked for details. Enough could not be made of his gay, shameful, spendthrift life. No one else, of course, had ever been either gay or shameful before—especially not the ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... German theologian and biblical critic, born in Hesse-Darmstadt; produced a critical revision of the text of the New Testament, the chief labour of his life, for which he visited and ransacked the various libraries ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... "dangerous to sleep with one's mouth open, lest a mouse might mistake it for his hole, and pop in." Whether, however, such a suffocating casualty would occur or not, the wee animals chased each other along the logs, ransacked the closet, scampered across the beds, nibbling at everything that tempted their sharp little teeth; even the clergyman's books and papers were ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... had occupied it a fortnight earlier. Now it was placid, sleepy, and deserted, and bore no outward signs of having suffered from their occupation. I learned, however, that although they had refrained from demolishing buildings, there had been scenes of debauchery, and private houses had been ransacked. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... polluting with detestable lust, or drenching with human blood, the streets, the palace, and the habitations of private families; and, to crown his enormities, setting fire to Rome, while he sung with delight in beholding the dreadful conflagration. In vain would history be ransacked for a parallel to this emperor, who united the most shameful vices to the most extravagant vanity, the most abject meanness to the strongest but most preposterous ambition; and the whole of whose life was one continued scene of lewdness, sensuality, rapine, cruelty, and folly. It is emphatically ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... not love anybody so much as not to dwell with complacence on the vices of the existing clergy. This they have not done. They find themselves obliged to rake into the histories of former ages (which they have ransacked with a malignant and profligate industry) for every instance of oppression and persecution which has been made by that body or in its favour, in order to justify, upon very iniquitous, because very illogical, principles of retaliation, their ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... has various interior chambers and passages, but it was long ago ransacked by the Persians, and later by the Romans and Arabs, so that of whatever treasure it may once have contained, nothing now remains but the huge stone sarcophagus or ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... magazine which Miss Russell took in for the school library there was an announcement of a competition which offered a prize to children under thirteen for the largest number of poetical quotations descriptive of wild flowers. Both Lindsay and Cicely were anxious to try, and ransacked all the volumes of poetry they could get hold of for ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... which any record remaining occurred—is the last and the newest of the revolutions of the globe. And in proportion as physical geography—which is the geology of our own epoch—has grown into a science, and the present order of nature has been ransacked to find what, 'hibernice', we may call precedents for the phenomena of the past, so the apparent necessity of supposing the past to be widely different from the present ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... triumphed over every other feeling, rendering the wretched people callous to the dangers and sufferings of others. Still worse was the conduct of the half savage peasantry. They hastened into the towns like vultures to their prey. Instead of helping the sufferers, they ransacked the smoking ruins for plunder, robbed the persons of the dead, and of those entangled alive among the rubbish. They robbed the very injured who would have paid them handsomely for rescuing them. At Polistena, a gentleman had been buried head downward beneath the ruins ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... out her hand to him with a smile, and he pressed it fondly to his lips. There were twinkling jewels upon the slender fingers; for the prettiest shop in Brighton—the brightest shop in Brighton—had been ransacked that morning by the fond, frivolous, happy husband, as pleased to bedeck his wife as a child to ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... magistrates' clerks, bailiffs, came to the house. They sealed each box and closet; they did not ask the ladies for permission to visit them; unannounced they bounced in at any hour of the day, ransacked the rooms, and gave vent to reproaches and curses on the dead man, so loud that the mourning women could not but hear them. All they found in the house was taken out in turn and appraised, down to the pictures, with and without their frames; even the wedding-dress, without a bride, did ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... confounded, stupefied, and listened as at the theatre. Never had she heard disdain hurled down from so lofty a height, contempt so tear itself to tatters and gush forth in laughter, a woman's words express such a fierce thirst for vengeance against a man. She ransacked her memory: such play of feature, such intonations, such a dramatic and heart-rending voice as that voice of a consumptive coughing away her life, she could not remember since the days ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... my opinion, then, that there lay a vast field, rich with a harvest of material almost virgin, for the romancer's use, in the history of classic ages. And this at a period when the annals of every century and nation since the Christian era have been ransacked, and reproduced, in endless variety, for the entertainment of the hourly increasing reading world, is ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... spirit of opposition shown by Schaunard, it was once more agreed that the next day all the shops of the neighborhood should be ransacked to the advantage ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... little is generally due to the desire to attain an end which cannot be attained by any of the means for which there exists a perceived precedent in the memory. When this is the case, either the memory is further ransacked for any forgotten shreds of details, a combination of which may serve the desired purpose; or action is taken in the dark, which sometimes succeeds and becomes a fertile source of further combinations; or we are ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... him a slave who should kill him when his hour had come; anarchy had been continuous; but now Rome was at rest and its sovereign wished to laugh. Made up of every nation and every vice, the universe was ransacked for its entertainment. The mountain sent its lions, the desert giraffes; there were boas from the jungles, bulls from the plains, and hippopotami from the waters of the Nile. Into the arenas patricians descended; in the amphitheatre there were criminals ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... the pressure at the door was even greater than before. The loss incurred during the first attack had caused all but the bravest and most determined to hang back somewhat; now, however, that it seemed that the silversmith's stores could be ransacked without danger, all were anxious to have a hand in it. Presently one of the leaders appeared at a casement on the first floor and waved his arms for silence. The roar of voices ceased and the ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... been introduced into the London world by the Duchess. The Duchess had replied to Lady Janet, that if earth could be ransacked, a more suitable wife for Graham Vane than Miss Asterisk could not be found; she was well born—an heiress; the estates she inherited were in the county of—(viz., the county in which the ancestors of D'Altons and Vanes had for centuries established their ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thought of these things the neighboring house was ransacked from top to bottom. He heard the men cursing because their search was fruitless. They brought out the wife, Lugena, and two of her children, and coaxed and threatened them without avail. A few blows were struck, but the wife and children stoutly maintained ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... eggs of their hens as well as quantity. Quantity rests with the hen, but quality—like the "sluttishness" of Touchstone's sweetheart—may come hereafter. In order that there might be no excuse for and no degeneracy on the part of the hens, shops were ransacked for nest eggs of proper proportions. These were placed in spots conspicuous to the hens, who, of course, understood that they were expected to lay up to them. In other words, these were patterns for the hens to lay by. No self-respecting, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... with lateen sails and a couple of guns, and a most villainous crew, in poverty-stricken garments, rusty cutlasses in their hands and stilettos and pistols stuck in their waistbands. The pirates thoroughly ransacked the vessel, opened all the trunks and portmanteaus, but found little that they wanted except brandy and provisions. In releasing the vessel, the ragamuffins seem to have had a touch of humor, for they gave the captain a "receipt" for what they had ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... should have been a wood-chopper), and was suffering under an attack at medicine. The question for debate on one occasion was—Is conscience an infallible guide? Being expected to take part in the discussion, he was bent on thorough preparation, and ransacked his preceptor's professional library—(almost as poor a place as a lawyer's) for a work on conscience. He found abundance of matter, however, for a lengthy chapter on the subject, as he supposed, occurring ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... audacious policy, the humor of which is delicious. It would have been infinitely droll to see how the British Commissioners would have hailed such a proposition, by way of appropriate termination of a conflict in which the forces of their nation had captured and ransacked the capital city ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... hour Ramabai came to Bruce, much alarmed. During his absence with Pundita at some palace affair his home had been entered, ransacked, and ten thousand rupees had been stolen. His real fortune, however, was hidden securely. The real trouble was that these ten thousand rupees would practically undo much of what had been accomplished. He was certain ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... across the plains, for the possession of which they were to clash in mortal fight at Solferino and Magenta. All is peaceful now. It is hard to picture the waving cornfields trodden down, the burning villages and ransacked vineyards, all the horrors of real war to which that fertile plain has been so often the prey. But now ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... in the carriage, loaded with true thanks from every one of the family. Osborne ransacked the houses for flowers for her; Roger had chosen her out books of every kind. The squire himself kept shaking her hand, without being able to speak his gratitude, till at last he had taken her in his arms, and kissed her as he would have ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... came to go over the house, it had been thoroughly ransacked. Every bit of silver, from the old-fashioned tea-pot and coffee-pot and the great flat porringer which Grandmother Graham's mother had brought over from Scotland to the cup which had belonged to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... before anybody knew it. The family festival was quiet and very pleasant, but almost overshadowed by the grander preparations for the next day. Carol and Elfrida, her pretty German nurse, had ransacked books, and introduced so many plans, and plays, and customs, and merry-makings from Germany, and Holland, and England, and a dozen other countries, that you would scarcely have known how or where you were keeping ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Rutherford County, a good farmer and a good liver. He had a lot of nice bacon hams, and, expecting the raiders, he buried his hams in the house yard, fixed it up like a fresh grave and put up a headboard, marked Daniel. The troopers came, ransacked the premises and inquired about that grave in the yard. Smith told them that a faithful old servant had died a few days before, and his last request was to be buried in the yard, and, loving him so well, had complied. This explanation seemed to satisfy them, and they were ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... great was his nervous terror—strong, broad fellow that he was—of that pent-up fury in her, which a touch might have unloosed, that he never questioned her. At last the inevitable end came. He got home one summer evening to find the house empty and ransacked, the children—little things of five and two—sitting crying in the desolate kitchen, and a crowd of loud-voiced, indignant neighbours round the door. To look for her would have been absurd. Louise was much too clever to disappear and leave traces behind. Besides, he ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you and I can go into the flying proposition thoroughly.... No. The detectives have apparently not got any clew to the murderer, nor even discovered any motive for the crime. They have taken me into No. 17. In fact, I was there when your call was made.... The murderer ransacked the place thoroughly, but did not touch money or jewelry, I understand. The only peculiar thing, if I may so describe it, about the place, is the scent of a burnt joss stick. It clings to the passage and the bedroom in which the body was found.. . ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... sciences has been ransacked for such arguments, and especially has every new discovery been hailed by skeptics as an ally to their cause, until further acquaintance has demonstrated that the stranger, too, was in alliance with religion. Thus, when a few years ago, Geology began to upheave his titanic form, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the writing-table, ransacked all the drawers, rummaged the papers, and at last lost her head so completely that Charles earnestly begged her not to take so much trouble about those ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... word. So—with a mightier struggle than he had yet sustained—he held his Geneva cloak before his face, and hurried onward, making no sign of recognition, and leaving the young sister to digest his rudeness as she might. She ransacked her conscience—which was full of harmless little matters, like her pocket or her work-bag—and took herself to task, poor thing! for a thousand imaginary faults, and went about her household duties with ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mountains of Cobonas, through the Monomotapa, the Monoemugi, the Nosseguais, the Maracates; that they have traversed Abyssinia, Nubia, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, the whole of our Europe; that they have overthrown everything, ransacked everything; there will still remain a few bakers, a few cobblers, a few tailors, a few carpenters: the necessary arts will survive; only luxury will be annihilated. It is what was seen at the fall of the Roman Empire; the art of writing even became very rare; almost all those which ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... Paris durst not oppose such fury as this. "Do what you please," said he. The mob ran to look for the constable Armagnac and the chancellor de Marle in the Palace-tower, in which they had been shut up, and they were at once torn to pieces amidst ferocious rejoicings. All the prisons were ransacked and emptied; the prisoners who attempted resistance were smoked out; they were hurled down from the windows upon pikes held up to catch them. The massacre lasted from four o'clock in the morning to eleven. The common ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... his greetings sadly, and a few of them told him of their trouble. Something they said of Ben Aboo, that he demanded a hundred dollars which they could not pay, and something of the Sultan, that he had ransacked their houses and then gone on with his great army, his twenty wives, and fifteen tents to keep the feast at Tetuan. But Israel hardly knew what they told him, though he tried to lend an ear to their story. He was thinking out a wonderful scheme for the future. With Naomi he was ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... them was easy enough, for on that particular evening Arthur and Dig were roosting on the big arch of Wellham Abbey, in no condition to interfere if all their worldly goods had been ransacked. The remainder ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... the Good Samaritan's privilege and ransacked your belongings—Miss Margery and I—thinking that there might be relatives or friends who ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... and for a long time he ransacked his odds and ends. Finally he found the Northwest Passage, as I regarded it—he found the long lost record of that beef contract—he found the rock upon which so many of my ancestors had split before they ever got to it. I was deeply moved. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mystification of the chief, more money was found in the big office safe at the depot quartermaster's than was necessary to cover his accountability. The General and his inspector were fairly puzzled. They personally questioned the bank cashier and the quartermaster's clerks. They ransacked that safe and pored over the books, both there and at the bank. The only queer thing discovered was that a large sum of money, five thousand dollars or so, had been withdrawn from the bank in cash one day and within the week replaced. Then the General had to turn back to Cheyenne ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... baulk it? I told him that the House of Commons would address the King against a Tory Ministry. I feel assured that it would do so. I feel assured that, if those who are bidden will not come, the highways and hedges will be ransacked to get together a reforming Cabinet. To one thing my mind is made up. If nobody else will move an address to the Crown against ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... were published in London) came out full to the throat of well-printed matter. They were greedily bought by the whole public, who, of course, like the Government, expected a manifesto in them. But they found no word of reference to the great subject. It seemed as if their editors had ransacked their drawers for articles which would have been in place forty years before, under the technical name of educational articles. Most of these were admirable and straightforward expositions of the doctrines and practice of ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... wandering listlessly round the room and paying little attention to what he was saying. She explored the book-cases, ransacked the writing-table and looked ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... her own rooms papered with white satin paper and very delicately outlined in gold; she ransacked the Jarvis heirlooms to find appropriate furniture for such a setting, and succeeded very well. The bills for her various suggested improvements passed through Mr. Jarvis' hands, and he commented on them to Mabel with a ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... next door in an apartment house is almost the same thing as miles away. She ransacked her brain, trying to remember some acquaintance who might be likely to know the Hoffs, but failed utterly to recall any one. She reviewed all possible means of getting acquainted but could find none that seemed practical. Never in her life had she spoken to a man without having been introduced ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... a man and a writer are so many and so great that I have not hesitated to make much of his defects. Indeed, I have with malice aforethought ransacked his works to find them. But after they are all charged up against him, the balance that remains on the credit side of the account is so great that they ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... He has ransacked Italy in vain for a portrait of Monsignor Giovanni Guidiccioni, President of Romagna, painted by Luca Longhi in 1540. This portrait possesses more than ordinary interest, since (to use the words of Armenini, author of Veri Precetti della Pittura) "fu predicato per maraviglioso in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... He had ransacked the history of Hollingshead and others to illustrate on the stage the civil wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, known as the war of the Red and White Roses, with canker and thorn to pester each royal ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... Harry," said my uncle, cheerfully. "We must all watch, for the Indians will not be satisfied till they have thoroughly ransacked ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... them seizing the horses' heads, the two other attacked the postilion, who fell lifeless at their feet, his skull split open by a sabre-cut. At the same instant—before he had time to utter a word—the wretched courier was stabbed to the heart by the false Laborde, who sat beside him. They ransacked the mail of a sum of seventy-five thousand francs (L.3000) in money, assignats, and bank-notes. They then took the postilion's horse from the chaise, and Durochat mounting it, they galloped to Paris, which they entered between four and five ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... a week Conroy remained shut up in his study. Bob was kept busy. He spent a good deal of time in writing plausible explanations of Conroy's failure to keep his social engagements. He ransacked the shelves of booksellers for works dealing with contemporary Irish politics. He harried the managers of press-cutting companies for newspaper reports of speeches on Home Rule. These were things for which there ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... was white and still: she did not move and he could not guess that behind the brows gathered as if she were in pain, her mind ransacked her home for a weapon that might kill him, and saw the carving-knife worn to a slip of steel that would glide into a man's body without a sound. She meant to use it: she was kept quiet by that ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... everything like vandals. Everything has been searched. Outside, throughout the country, the spectacle of the inhabitants who have been shot defies any description. They have been shot at such short range that they are almost decapitated. Every house has been ransacked to the furthest corners, and the inhabitants dragged from their hiding places. The men shot; the women and children locked into a convent, from which shots were fired. And, for this reason, the convent is about to be set fire to; it may, however be ransomed if it surrenders the guilty ones and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... at Wolf Larsen showed me that he had not moved. A bright thought struck me. I stole into his state-room and possessed myself of his revolvers. There were no other weapons, though I thoroughly ransacked the three remaining state-rooms. To make sure, I returned and went through the steerage and forecastle, and in the galley gathered up all the sharp meat and vegetable knives. Then I bethought me of the great yachtsman's knife he always carried, and I ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... dismay when I saw the hard, cushionless seats, despatched an officer to try to find a cushion for me. Apparently, however, cushions were souvenirs our friends had forgotten to bring with them from other residences. Judging from the time we waited, the officer must have ransacked the whole house, but had found nothing better than a couple of bed-pillows, with which he appeared, carrying one under each arm, to the great amusement of the beholders. I mounted this grotesque equipage, the ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... reader, is a work of such colossal force that to render justice to its abysmal greatness we have ransacked the vocabulary of superlative laudation in vain. SWINBURNE, compared to the needs of the situation, is as a shape of quivering jelly alongside of the Rock of Gibraltar. And here, O captious critic, is a Wonderwork which not only disarms ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... country in which he had fixed his home; the joyous elasticity of its atmosphere; the freshness of its primitive, pastoral life; the strangeness of its scenery, with a Flora and a Fauna which have no similitudes in the ransacked quarters of the Old World. And the strong impulse seized me to transfer to the solitudes of that blithesome and hardy Nature a spirit no longer at home in the civilized haunts of men, and household gods that shrank from ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to lose my faithful preceptress, as did the philosophers of the town the white crow of her profession. For besides that she never ransacked her customers, whose tastes too she ever studiously consulted, she never racked her pupils with unconscionable extortions, nor ever put their hard earnings, as she called them, under the contribution of poundage. ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... legitimate German methods of plunder the whole country had been pillaged. In many towns systematic pillage began as soon as the Germans took possession. At Louvain the pillage began on the 27th of August, 1914, and lasted a week. In small bands the soldiers went from house to house, ransacked drawers and cupboards, broke open safes, and stole money, pictures, curios, silver, linen, clothing, wines, and food. Great loads of such plunder were packed on military baggage wagons and sent to Germany. The same conditions were reported from town ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... in the darkness, in escaping by the back door, and in finding his way to the house of his son-in-law. The mob broke in, ransacked his house in every corner, poured down their own thirsty throats a large quantity of brandy which they found there, and dispersed without ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... workmanship. To that feast of fifty revellers no less than seventy cooks had contributed the inventions of their art, but under one great master, to whose care the banquet had been consigned by the liberal host, and who ransacked earth, sky, and sea for dainties more various than this degenerate age ever sees accumulated at a single board. And the epicure who has but glanced over the elaborate page of Athenaeus, must own with melancholy self-humiliation that the ancients must have ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... accumulated all, they bestowed nought; they were the arch-misers of the wealth of letters. Wrapped in obscurity, in some sheltered nook, remote from the great stir of men, they passed a life at once unprofitable and glorious; the least part of what they ransacked would appal the industry of a modern student, yet the most superficial of modern students might effect more for mankind. They lived among oracles, but they gave none forth. And yet, even in this very barrenness, there seems something high; it was a rare and great spectacle—Men, living aloof ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... peninsula—with these things haunting our minds it still resulted only in a deepening resolution to escape. O, but she was brave and patient! She who had never faced hardship and exposure had courage for herself—and me. We went to and fro seeking an outlet, over a country all commandeered and ransacked by the gathering hosts of war. Always we went on foot. At first there were other fugitives, but we did not mingle with them. Some escaped northward, some were caught in the torrent of peasantry that swept along the main roads; many gave themselves ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... days, the Countess returned to her country seat and found her home occupied by soldiers, who had ransacked it and reduced it to a common tavern to which admittance was denied her. Her two children were nowhere to be found, and all her servants had been driven away. It was late at night, and she knew not what to ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... to send some possession of her "very own" out to the other end of the world; there was a vase with flowers; a parti-coloured pin-cushion of very gay silks, probably the parting gift of an old nurse; and a curious old-fashioned essence bottle, with eau-de-cologne; the surrounding country had been ransacked to procure a piece of scented soap. The only thing to remind me that I was not in an English cottage was the opossum rug with which the neat little bed was covered. The sitting-room looked the picture of cosy comfort, with its well-filled ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... again to force his attentions upon her, to take advantage of her helplessness as he had when he had held her hand so tightly and, as he now believed, against her wishes. Although she did not show it, she must have thought him a bumpkin, an oaf, an underbred cur. He groaned as he ransacked his vocabulary ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... reason for the inadequacy of these notices lies in the fact that no one library contains anything like a complete collection of Mrs. Haywood's innumerable books. In pursuit of odd items I have ransacked the British Museum, the Bodleian, and several minor literary museums in England, and in America the libraries of Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and Brown Universities, the Peabody Institute, and the University of Chicago. The search has enabled me to correct many ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... kafa tou kathestotos)—a new crime invented to meet a new constitutional situation. It extended to the utmost confines of the kingdom. As the farmers were at work in the fields, gendarmes raided and ransacked their cottages for such portraits; butchers and fishmongers were haled before courts-martial for like indications of ill-will; and—matter for laughter and matter for tears are inseparable in modern Greek history (perhaps in all history)—one met a cabman beaten ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... at the Doloneia in passing, and every ballad-editor does as much to Auld Maitland. {19a} Professor Child excluded it from his monumental collection of "English and Scottish Popular Ballads," fragments, and variants, for which Mr. Child and his friends and helpers ransacked every attainable collection of ballads in manuscript, and ballads in print, as they listened to the last murmurings of ballad tradition from the lips of ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... and search, Gurr. Suppose we did go and ransacked the place, and hurt everybody's feelings, and then found nothing, what should we look ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn |
