"Rapier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the arms of those behind, and as he fell he dropped his rapier, which rolled almost to Crispin's feet. The knight stooped, and when again he stood erect, confronting the rebels in that narrow passage, he held a sword ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... as they might for the time: and heaving their planks overboard, took them such poor weapons as they had: viz., a broken pointed rapier, one old visgee, and a rusty caliver: JOHN DRAKE took the rapier, and made a gauntlet of his pillow, RICHARD ALLEN the visgee, both standing at the head of the pinnace, called Eion. ROBERT took the caliver and so boarded. But they found the frigate armed round ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... sayd: That if their Graces and Greatnesses would giue me leave to play at mine owne Countrey Weapon called the Quarter Staffe, I was then ready there an Oposite, against any Commer.' When a 'hansome and well Spirited Spaniard steps foorth, with his Rapier and Poniard,' Peeke explained that he 'made little account of that One to play with, and should ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... saw," he replied. "I had no wonderful adventures. This isn't the day of the rapier ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... private room, the walls richly adorned with carving and tapestry, sat at a dark oak writing table a gentleman in a black velvet suit, having a black cap of the same material on his head. On a high-backed chair near him hung his cloak and rapier, while at his side he had a short dagger, with a jewelled hilt, ready for use. He was still young, but his features were grave, and his brow full of thought. His figure was tall and slight, though perhaps somewhat too stiff to be graceful. He was ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... forget the sardonic Scaramouche, who fights equally well with tongue and rapier, who was "born with the gift of laughter and a sense that ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... Marion stuck her great arms upon her haunches, and held the whole room in play. This country girl possessed in perfection that rude and ready humour which looks mean and vulgar on paper, but carries all before it spoken: not wit's rapier; its bludgeon. Nature had done much for her in this way, and daily practice in an inn ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... up, withdrew and returned in a short while with a rapier-cane, which he unsheathed; Roberto looked in every direction for something with which he might defend himself, and found a carter's stick; Tabuenca aimed a thrust at Roberto, who parried it with the stick; then another thrust, and Roberto, as again he parried it, smashed the lantern at the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... doing here, Tom Thorne, on the white top-knot o' the world, Where the wind has the cut of a naked knife and the stars are rapier keen? Hugging a smudgy willow fire, deep in a lynx robe curled, You that's a lord's own son, Tom Thorne — what ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... former was a dashing looking blade, of not more than forty, attired in blue, slashed coat, ornamented with gilt buttons, and bedecked at collar and cuffs with a profusion of lace. A saffron colored waist-coat failed to conceal his richly beruffled shirt, and the hilt of a rapier was rather prominently displayed. Such dandies were frequently enough seen, but it was this man's face which made marked contrast with his gay attire. He was dark, and hook-nosed, apparently of foreign birth, with black moustache tightly clipped, so as to reveal the thin firmness of his lips, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... he drew a long poniard which he always carried about him; and not imagining that his adversary had any arms he threw himself upon Candide: but our honest Westphalian had received a handsome sword from the old woman along with the suit of clothes. He drew his rapier, despite his gentleness, and laid the Israelite stone dead upon the ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... extended in a feint in tierce, was bearing so heavily on his opponent's rapier that his right foot slipped, and he stumbled badly. At once Marigny struck with the deadly quickness and certainty of a cobra. His weapon pierced Medenham's breast high up on the right side. The stroke was so true and furious that the Englishman, ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... at table he did not seem especially devoted to Ellen in her father's jealous eyes. He joked Lottie, and exchanged those passages or repartee with her in which she did not mind using a bludgeon when she had not a rapier at hand; it is doubtful if she was very sensible of the difference. Ellen sat by in passive content, smiling now and then, and Boyne carried on a dignified conversation with Mr. Pogis, whom he had asked to lunch at his table, and who listened with one ear to the vigorous ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had struck a sturdy caird, As weel as poor gut-scraper; He taks the fiddler by the beard, An' draws a roosty rapier— He swoor, by a' was swearing worth, To speet him like a pliver, Unless he would from that time forth Relinquish ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the staff he carried and which served as a sheath, a rapier, upon which in another instant he had thrown himself. There he lay on the ground, bleeding profusely, the point of the blade appearing through his back, when his many friends came running to give him aid. Don Quixote lifted up his head, and they found that he was still breathing. Some ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... three to three," said the lesser Highlander, glancing his eyes at our party: "if ye be pretty men, draw!" and unsheathing his broadsword, he advanced on me. I put myself in a posture of defence, and aware of the superiority of my weapon, a rapier or small-sword, was little afraid of the issue of the contest. The Bailie behaved with unexpected mettle. As he saw the gigantic Highlander confront him with his weapon drawn, he tugged for a second or two at the hilt of his shabble, as he called it; but finding it loth to quit the sheath, to ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... hearing something stirre, He whips his Rapier out, and cries a Rat, a Rat, [Sidenote: Whyps out his Rapier, cryes a] And in his brainish apprehension killes [Sidenote: in this] ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... apparatus. They started across the fields toward Denny's roadster, several hundred yards away—Jim, blond and bulking, a hundred and ninety pounds of hardy muscle and bone; Denny wiry and slender, dark-eyed and dark-haired. The sledge-hammer and the rapier; the human bull, and the human panther; the one a student kept fit by outdoor studies, and the other a careless, rich young time-killer groomed to the pink by the big-game hunting and South Sea sailing and other adventurous ways of ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... resembled was the then recently-published analysis of egotism in "Leviathan." But the cool and atrocious periods of what Sir Leslie Stephen calls "the unblushing egotism" of Hobbes have really little in common with the sparkling rapier-strokes of La Rochefoucauld, except that both these moralists— who may conceivably have met and compared impressions in Paris— combined a resolute pessimism about the corruption of mankind with an epicurean pursuit ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... understanding between them, which, correctly interpreted, meant: You and I understand these things! But a young rope-maker, who had once been a trumpeter in a military band, considered this giving of a verdict without consulting him a personal slight and declared that he "would be hanged if it wasn't a rapier!" The consequence was a fight which transformed the place into a bear-garden, dense with dust and ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... in surprise. "I had taken you for well-nigh two years older. I have but just come from the Palazzo Giustiniani, and my young kinsman, Matteo, tells me that in the School of Arms there are none of our young nobles who are your match with rapier ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... before how many words could be spoken in three short hours. At any rate, it was glorious. The more his opponents grew excited, the more Ernest deliberately excited them. He had an encyclopaedic command of the field of knowledge, and by a word or a phrase, by delicate rapier thrusts, he punctured them. He named the points of their illogic. This was a false syllogism, that conclusion had no connection with the premise, while that next premise was an impostor because it had cunningly hidden in it the conclusion that was being attempted to be proved. This was an ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... dawn is brief, as it is beautiful. One after one, the snow-peaks passed from the pallor of death to the glow of life. Then, sudden as an inspiration, the full splendour of morning broke, sublime as the eternity from which it came. Rapier-like shafts of light pierced the purple lengths of shadows that engulfed the valley. Threading their way through fir and deodar and pine, they flung all their radiant length across a rock-studded carpet of fir-needles and moss, and rested, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... and dashing at them he brought it down on the side of one of their heads with such a swashing blow, that had it not been for his stiff hat the man would never have uttered oath again. As it was, he dropped like a log upon the stones of the yard, while his companion whipped out his rapier and made a vicious thrust; but my father, who was as active as he was strong, sprung aside, and bringing his cudgel down upon the outstretched arm of the officer, cracked it like the stem of a tobacco-pipe. This affair made no little stir, for it occurred at the time ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that something more than a prima-facie case had been made out against the promoter, who, being assumed to live upon the members' subscriptions, was harried in the paper from its first volume, chiefly at first by the slashing pen of Jerrold, and—in small paragraphs—by the more delicate rapier of Horace Mayhew. These charges of mal-administration and other offensive imputations against a semi-public man whose chief faults seem to have been an over-sanguine temperament and a slight disposition towards self-advertisement, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... match, the captain (in rank defiance of the sumptuary laws then existing) sported trunk hosen of pale pink satin, a richly embroidered and padded satin doublet of the same hue, confined at the waist by a belt of green satin heavily broidered with gold thread, from which depended on one side a long rapier and on the other a wicked-looking Venetian dagger with jewelled hilt and sheath, while, surmounting his grizzled and rather scanty locks, he wore, jauntily set on one side, a Venetian cap of green velvet adorned with a large gold and cameo brooch which secured a long green feather drooping ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... up, get up! I have lost my money as well as thou hast done; let us therefore go fight lustily together, grapple and scuffle it to some purpose. Thou mayest look and see that my tuck is no longer than thy rapier. The Gascon, altogether astonished at his unexpected provocation, without altering his former dialect spoke thus: Cap de Saint Arnault, quau seys to you, qui me rebeillez? Que mau de taberne te ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... that in the case of a proud, earnest gentleman like Colonel Winwood the tempting emendations of typescript would not do. In what Miss Winwood called his subtle Italian way, he induced his patron to discuss the speeches before the process of composition. These discussions, involving the swift rapier play of intelligences, Colonel Winwood enjoyed. They stimulated him magically. He sat down and wrote his speeches, delightfully unconscious of what in them was Paul and what was himself; and when he delivered them he ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... hollow groove along the back, as it does with the Leucospis. This scabbard holds the latter half of the inoculating filament, which extends below the animal to the base of the abdomen. In short, its utensil is that of the Leucospis, with this difference, that its lower half sticks out like a rapier. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The fencing has gone on for some time; suddenly one of the combatants, feeling himself wounded and understanding that the matter is no joke but concerns his life, throws down his rapier, and seizing the first cudgel that comes to hand begins to brandish it. Then let us imagine that the combatant who so sensibly employed the best and simplest means to attain his end was at the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... marked-out, breast high upon one of the supporters of the chimney-piece, which happened to be a massive half-nude figure, the shape of a heart—the figure being about four inches in diameter. Apparently satisfied with his work, he drew back a few feet, turned up his right sleeve, and grasping his rapier by the handle, made the thin blade whistle as he waved it through the air and dropped gracefully at once into position, as if prepared to assault or receive an enemy, the enemy being the dark oak, chipped and much rubbed, semi-classic ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... in the De Chenier quartering," thought the Count whimsically. "It is obviously the weapon of the family." And he drew the rapier forth. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... mean, Merton took them as far as Belgium, and then Lieutenant West and I carried them to London. D'Artagnan's share was a bad rapier-wound." ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... without notice, without preparation. My nerves are permanently shattered. You tell me, a man; I behold a tower, a mountain, Atlas crowned with clouds! Thousand thunders! what bulk! what sinews! and of my race! Amazing effect of—what? Climate? occupation? In France, this race shrinks, diminishes; a rapier, keen if you will, but slender like a thread; here, it swells, expands, towers aloft,—a club of Hercules. And with my father, who could sit in my pocket, and my grandfather, who could sit in his! Figure to yourself, Jacques, that I am called le grand ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... call changelings," saith [1264]Scheretzius, part. 1. c. 6. make men victorious, fortunate, eloquent; and therefore in those ancient monomachies and combats they were searched of old, [1265]they had no magical charms; they can make [1266]stick frees, such as shall endure a rapier's point, musket shot, and never be wounded: of which read more in Boissardus, cap. 6. de Magia, the manner of the adjuration, and by whom 'tis made, where and how to be used in expeditionibus bellicis, praeliis, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... practised this device often. Once when I had a quarrel with one of my lady Veritas' naked knaves, and had 'ppointed him the field, I conveyed into the heart of my buckler an adamant, and when we met, I drew all the foins of his rapier, whithersoever he intended them, or howsoever I guided mine arm, pointed still to the midst of my buckler, so that by this means I hurt the knave mortally, and myself came away untouched, to the wonder of all ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... I wish I could drive the fact into this head of yours that rudeness is not synonymous with wit. I shall not have lived in vain if I teach you in time to realize that the rapier of irony is more effective an instrument than the ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... uttering their hollow sighs through empty casements, merely because they were "one mile two furlongs from the Castle." But the new stone tablet which told you so seemed to mock their misery, and looked like a fresh stab into their poor old sides; as if the rapier of a king had ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... as were the features of Mr. Gladstone, I looked upon him with astonishment. For he stood before me with epaulets on his shoulders and a rapier at his side, as military in his aspect as if he had been Lord Wolseley, to whom I was introduced a short time afterwards. I was fortunate enough to see and hear Mr. Gladstone on a still more memorable occasion, and can afford to leave saying what were my impressions of the very ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... gallants looked on his person with envy, and on his light rapier with mistrust. In sooth, he was a proper man for stealing a lady's heart, either in hall or bower. Many had been his victims;—many were then in the last extremities of love. But of him it was currently spoken that he had never yet ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... representative—that is eternal—but the spectacle of adventure of which he is the hero. No more fascinating idea. Had the age admitted of Don Juan, I should have written out his soul long ago. I love the idea. With duelling and hose picturesqueness has gone out of life. The mantle and the rapier are ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... Roberts removed for the time a potential cause of failure, namely, the uncertainty, to which perhaps the escape of De Wet at Poplar Grove may be due, whether a battle was to be fought with the Commander-in-Chiefs rapier or with ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... uncle, who a short time before would not speak to him, as Tom passed under my lord's coach window, his lordship going in state to his place at Court, while his nephew slunk by with his battered hat and feather, and the point of his rapier sticking out of the scabbard—to his twopenny ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... down the passageway Alaire identified him without the aid of his insignia, for he stood head and shoulders above his companions and bore himself with an air of authority. He was unusually tall, at least six feet three, and very slim, very lithe; he was alert, keen; he was like the blade of a rapier. The leanness of his legs was accentuated by his stiff, starched riding-breeches and close-fitting pigskin puttees, while his face, apart from all else, would have ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... better courtier still - who wore a blade but two feet long, whereat the people laughed, much to the disparagement of his honour's dignity. Then came a third, a sturdy old officer of the army, girded with a rapier at least a foot and a half beyond her Majesty's pleasure; at him they raised a great shout, and most of the spectators (but especially those who were armourers or cutlers) laughed very heartily at the breakage which ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... found credible and charming, and thanked heaven for her sake that Paul married his Princess. It is indeed a romance gone wrong. Perhaps it is a more difficult thing plausibly and readily to sustain one's fancy in a modern setting, with modern folk, than in the fair realm of Tushery with rapier-wielding demigods. Yet I think that the dead HARLAND and the living HOPE (himself no mean Tusher) might have brought off their Paul. As a matter of fact, so I believe could Mr. LOCKE; that is just the pity of it. I merely record the fact that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... rental-book. Weel, away he trots to the castle to tell his story, and there he is introduced to Sir John, sitting in his father's chair, in deep mourning, with weepers and hanging cravat, and a small walking-rapier by his side, instead of the auld broadsword that had a hunderweight of steel about it, what with blade, chape, and basket-hilt. I have heard their communings so often tauld ower that I almost think I was there ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... extortions, murders, robberies, and other outrages. Hence divers proclamations had been published in his majesty's name, commanding that no person of what condition soever, travelling on horseback, should presume to carry more arms than one sword or rapier and dagger; and that no person travelling on foot should carry any weapons at all. Twenty days were allowed for giving the arms to the proper officers. If the proclamation was not obeyed within that time, the arms were to be seized ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... the words 'wives,' 'women,' lifted them into an atmosphere of awe and solemnity, and his tone in speaking of 'rape' and 'torture' gave them an ineffable loathsomeness. It seemed as if so much soul had never been put into a Saxon speech. Keen satire, rasping rebuke, an avalanche of indignation, rapier-like thrusts to the vital fibre of the situation, and withal the invincible cogency of argument against the Turkish Government, gave the oration a primary place amongst ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... equally experienced. The one appealed to justice and truth; the other to the prejudices of the House and the pride of a nation of classes. One was armed with a heavy dragoon sword; the other with a light rapier, which he used with extraordinary skill. Mr. G.W.E. Russell, in his recent "Life of Gladstone," quotes the following passage from a letter of Lord Houghton, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... my bosom and a-morn doth moan * The Voice, ah Love, who shows strength weakness grown! His lashes' rapier-blade hath rent my heart; * That keen curved brand my me hath overthrown: That freshest cheek-rose fills me with desire: * Fair fall who plucketh yonder bloom new-blown! Since love befel me for that ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... find in modern collections, and which are probably of native invention. It will be noticed that they are all more remarkable for force and for a peculiar grim, sardonic humor than for delicacy of wit or grace of expression. Instead of neatly running a subject through with the keen flashing rapier of a witty analogy, as a Spaniard would do, the Caucasian mountaineer roughly knocks it down with the first proverbial club which comes to hand; and the knottier and more crooked the weapon the better pleased he seems to be with the result. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... my light rapier, worn about the garrison, while he was armed with his heavy campaign blade. I was already a dead man, or so I felt, for there was no spirit in me for the fight. Our blades crossed, and immediately he ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... questions have been replaced to-day by others; but nothing has quite replaced the Simple Discours, the Petition pour les Villageois, the Pamphlet des Pamphlets, in which the ease of the best sixteenth and seventeenth century prose is united with a deft rapier-play like that of Voltaire, and with the lucidity of the writer's ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... off the undaunted soul of this man as a ball from the scales of a crocodile; he started out this morning bravely, at break of day, to traverse the forest, with his pink silk hose, his rapier at his side, and a staff to frighten the serpents. He is still there, without doubt, at this hour, for the road to Devil's Cliff is not ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... out of it, said, "'You have torn his coat, for I heard it tear.'—'Whereabouts?' said I. 'On one side,' said she. Then we came into the house of Lieutenant Ingersoll; and I went into the great room, and Abigail came in and said, 'There he stands.' I said, 'Where? where?' and presently drew my rapier." Then Abigail said, he has gone, but "'there is a gray cat.' Then I said, 'Whereabouts?' 'There!' said she, 'there!' Then I struck with my rapier, and she fell into a fit; and, when it was over, she said, 'You killed her.'" Poor Hutchinson ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... crook-back prodigy, Dicky your boy, that with his grumbling voice Was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies? Or, with the rest, where is your darling Rutland? Look, York; I stain'd this napkin with the blood That valiant Clifford with his rapier's point Made issue from the bosom of the boy, And, if thine eyes can water for his death, I give thee this to dry thy cheeks withal. Alas, poor York! but that I hate thee deadly I should lament thy miserable state. I prithee, grieve to make me merry, York; Stamp, rave, and fret, that I may sing ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... exclamation was caused by Cahusac's sword, which flew from his hand to a distance of twenty paces. D'Artagnan and Cahusac rushed to pick it up, but D'Artagnan reached it first, and put his foot upon it. Cahusac ran to the guardsman whom Aramis had killed, took his rapier, and was returning to D'Artagnan; but on his road he met Athos, who had taken breath during the moment's respite which the latter had procured him, and now recommenced the fight, fearing that the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... POWERS.—Thackeray's excellences are manifest: he was the master of idiomatic English, a great moralist and reformer, and the king of satire, all the weapons of which he managed with perfect skill. He had a rapier for aristocratic immunities of evil, arrows to transfix prescriptions and shams; and with snobs (we must change the figure) he played as a cat does with a mouse, torturing and then devouring. In the words of Miss Bronte, "he was the first ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... squinting eyes rapacious, Took it in his arms paternal, Paid me then two golden ducats— Someone else may now redeem it! I became a saucy fellow, Wandered much o'er hill and valley Clinking spurs and serenading. If I ever caught one sneering, Quickly grasped my hand the rapier: 'Fight a duel! draw your weapons! Now advance!' That whistled nicely Through the air; on many smooth cheeks Wrote my sword so sharp and steady A memento everlasting. I, however, must confess here, ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... is. We are very narrow, I know. But we like wit—practical again! Or in your words (when I really think they generally come to my aid—perhaps it is that it is often all your thought); we 'prefer the rapier thrust, to the broad embrace, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tendency to that sort of wit which consists in veiled allusion to a very open secret. Each mail feels that there are heavy forces behind a small point, as the weight of the fencer is behind the point of the rapier. And the point can be yet more pointed because the politics of the city, when I was there, included several men with a taste and talent for such polished intercourse; including especially two men whose experience and culture would have been ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... anything more interesting than a little brass cannon, two or three inches long, which had been a toy of the unfortunate Dauphin, son of Louis XVI. There was a map,—a hemisphere of the world,—which his father had drawn for this poor boy; very neatly done, too. The sword of Louis XVI., a magnificent rapier, with a beautifully damasked blade, and a jewelled scabbard, but without a hilt, is likewise preserved, as is the hilt of Henry IV.'s sword. But it is useless to begin a catalogue of these things. What a ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of touch, of delicacy in the small sword-play of conversation. In fencing, all should be done, the masters tell us, with the fingers. Scott works not even with the wrist, but with the whole arm. The two-handed sword, the old claymore, are his weapons, not the rapier. This was plain enough in the word-combats of Queen Mary and her lady gaoler in Loch Leven. Much more conspicuous is the "swashing blow" in the repartee of "St. Ronan's." The insults lavished on Lady Binks are ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... enormous shovel hat and particularly shabby cassock, came toward us, followed by a motley crowd of Mexicans, prominent among whom was a pompous old man clad in a seedy Mexican uniform and wearing a trailing rapier at his side. The rest of the procession was brought up with a crowd of shy women, dark-eyed and tawny and all poorly clad, though otherwise comfortable enough in condition. These hung back and wonderingly looked at the strange faces, ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... these wild sons of Hagar were creating a perfect furor by the shrillness and discord of their voices. Never was such terrific music inflicted upon mortal ears. It went through and through you, quivering and vibrating like a rapier; but the common classes of Russians delight in it above all earthly sounds. They deem it the very finest kind of music. It is only the dilettante who have visited Paris who profess to ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... encouraged those ragged individuals to meet in Cato Street are not far off, they are not on the other side of the river, in the Borough, for example, in some garret or obscure cellar. The very first to confront the Guards and runners are Thistlewood and Ings; Thistlewood whips his long thin rapier through Smithers' lungs, and Ings makes a dash at Fitzclarence with his butcher's knife. Oh, there was something in those fellows!—honesty and courage!—but can as much be said for the inciters of the troubles of '32. No; they egged on poor ignorant mechanics ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... peculiar to the French cadets and younger sons of noble families in North America at the time, an accentuation of the French at home, and to some extent a survival of the spirit which Richelieu partially checked. Even in the forest he wore a slender rapier at his belt, and his hand rested now upon its ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... return he would show her the last mercy. His knife-sheath hung from his girdle; he drew out the blade and drove it home just behind the glossy black shoulder. Night shuddered and lay still. The knife had sunken deep, and Constans had to exert all his strength to withdraw it. The bare point of a rapier touched him meaningly on the arm; he stood up and ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... on the spot, however, impaled on a rapier as an unscrupulous entomologist would impale a beetle, could hardly be regarded as the fault of his opponent. The thrust was directed to the place where the centre of the body of the Frenchman should have been, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the street, and a sallow-faced man with a slender malacca cane held in his hand as if it were a rapier, came to the door of the room and said something in French, indignant that he should be disturbed. He waved the cane menacingly after Meeker and ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... pistol shots and swordsmen on the Continent, and that if I had any particular regard for my epidermis I would cease my attendance on the Princess at once. This, of course, made me more attentive than ever; for I can hold my own with any man when it comes to pistols, and I can handle the rapier with ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... confusion, while the king's falcon flew wildly about the turret till James set his foot on its chain, the man with the dagger vanished. The Master was slain by two of James's attendants; the Earl, rushing with four or five men up the turret-stair, fell in fight by Ramsay's rapier. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... weapon." He thereupon raised his club, which was big enough to have knocked down an ox, intending no doubt to have knocked me down with it, as probably he would have done, had I not, in the twinkling of an eye, whipped out my rapier, and made a pass upon him. I could not have failed running of him through up to the hilt had he stood his ground, but the sudden and unexpected sight of my bright blade glittering in the dark night, did so amaze and terrify the man, that, slipping aside, he avoided my thrust, and ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... the four Bergwachts had its leader. The captain of the first was director of the whole game, and instead of a lance wore a rapier. I considered it a great honour when this dignity was conferred on me. One of its consequences was that my portrait was sketched by "Old Unger" in the so-called "Bergwacht Book," which contained the likenesses ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... silence was more hideous than sound. Stiff as were my old joints with disuse, I drew my sword and lay about me lustily, striving to get between the villains and my young master (which is no credit to me, as I was so wrought with rage that I verily believe I would have no more felt the thrust of a rapier than Marian's housewife the prick of a needle). But there was no method in aught, neither could anything be seen; for the moon had withdrawn behind the clouds, and we seemed to be fighting underneath clear ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... Republican he least liked, hardly indeed a genuine Republican at all, though driven to a desperate attempt for Republicanism as his final shift, So it had happened, however. Milton and Lambert may be remembered together as the last opponents of the avalanche. Lambert had fronted it with a small rapier; Milton had wrestled with it ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... The groans of the wounded man were silenced by a thrust with a rapier, and Morton, disencumbered of his weight, was speedily raised and in the arms of the faithful Cuddie, who blubbered for joy when he found that the blood with which his master was covered had not flowed from his own veins. A whisper in Morton's ear, while his trusty ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... overhears the Count de Carojac, a hardened roue and a duellist, speaking of Lilian in such terms as no honorable man should speak of a modest woman. Routledge, with a studio in Rome, and having been educated at a German university, is familiar with the use of the rapier. A duel is arranged. Lilian hears of it thru a female friend, and Strebelow, also, thru the American second of Mr. Routledge. The parties meet at the Chateau Chateaubriand, in the suburbs of Paris, at midnight, ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... Christopher Playter to Mr. Kytson, in 1572, which contains the following: "At Chris-time here were certayne ma^{rs} of defence, that did challenge all comers at all weapons, as long sworde, staff, sword and buckler, rapier with the dagger: and here was many broken heads, and one of the ma^{rs} of defence dyed upon the hurt which he received on his head. The challenge was before the quenes Ma^{tie}, who seemes to have pleasure therein; for when some of them would have sollen ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... grave;— Glaring into that dark abyss, Where hideous monsters dart and hiss, And ship wreck'd seamen, far from home. Toss amid the briny foam; Till the proud wave, with one stern sweep, Buries the secrets of the deep; Revealing far, on upper land, A lawless bandits' wand'ring band, With sword and rapier, stain'd with blood, Still thirsting for the crimson flood; They show no mercy on their kind, But kill or plunder all they find. Then dies the flash, as ocean's moan Sends back a low, sepulchral groan, Leaving ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... to find here and there an English face, an English figure, dressed in the triangular cockade, the long Hessian pigtail, the scarlet coat with fold-back tails, the knee-breeches, the yellow stockings, the low shoes, and the long, slender rapier of a George III. courtier. >From here we visit other rooms, glittering rooms, all mirror-work and white stucco. Into rooms we go whose walls consist of myriads of tiny squares of rich stained glass, worked into intricate patterns and geometrical designs, but which are now rapidly falling into decay; ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... hot-headed Mercutios of those fiery days of the duello, when even to crack a nut too loud was enough to make your tavern neighbour draw his sword. John Turner, the master, jealous of his professional honour, challenged the tyro with dagger and rapier, and, determined to chastise his ungenerous assailant, parried all his most skilful passadoes and staccatoes, and in his turn pressed Sanquhar with his foil so hotly and boldly that he unfortunately thrust out ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... but had merely come with some one. The question was not flattering. His hand went up to his chin a little awkwardly. She noted how large yet how well-shaped it was, or, rather, she remembered afterwards. Then it dropped upon the hilt of the rapier he wore, and he answered with good self-possession, though a little hot spot showed on his cheek: "The governor must have other guests who are no men of mine; for he keeps an envoy from Count Frontenac ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... those y^t should find him. The Indeans came to y^e Gov^r here, and tould wher he was, and asked if they might kill him; he tould them no, by no means, but if they could take him and bring him hither, they should be payed for their paines. They said he had a gune & a rapier, & he would kill them if y^ey went aboute it; and y^e Massachuset Indeans said they might kille him. But y^e Gov^r tould them no, they should not kill him, but watch their opportunitie, & take him. And so they did, ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... College, dressed much in the fashion of half a century earlier; namely, coat and waistcoat with broad flaps, small-clothes, ruffles at his bosom and wrists, a cocked hat of the old style, and a steel-hilted rapier at his side. Ten years afterwards, one of the best governors the Commonwealth has ever had, Mr. Lincoln, who served the State in this capacity for nine several terms, wore also a distinguishing costume, but more conformable to modern ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... done, I perceived a change in his external appearance which somewhat startled and surprised me. Montreuil had always hitherto been remarkably plain in his dress; but he was now richly attired, and by his side hung a rapier, which had never adorned it before. Something in his aspect seemed to suit the alteration in his garb: and whether it was that long absence had effaced enough of the familiarity of his features to allow me to be more alive than formerly to the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an unspeakable scoundrel, and the same principle holds good when it comes to actual physical fighting. If a French gentleman were to call me out, I daresay I should go to the encounter twirling my moustache, bowing down to the ground, all smiles and compliments; and that I should select my rapier with a pleasant kind of feeling, like that experienced by the satirist about to write a brilliant article while picking out a pen with a suitable nib. On the other hand, if a murderous brute with ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... the wall, as he often did for practice. If any one mentioned the story, he thought, he had the means to silence them, quickly and for ever. His eyes flashed suddenly at the idea of action—any action, even fighting, which might be distantly connected with Corona. Then he tossed down the rapier and threw himself into his chair, and sat quite still, staring at the trophies of armour upon ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... use. In his hands it loses most of its sensuous and lyrical elements and makes up for the loss by the cultivation of point. Above all, it becomes the instrument of satire, stinging like a wasp where the satirist pure and simple uses the deadlier weapons of the bludgeon and the rapier. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... enter the ring, receive, unmoved, from their opponents blows which would prostrate a man not prepared, by hard training, for the trial. But even such blows, in the end, sometimes prove mortal; and what should we say of substituting for the human fist a sharp-pointed rapier, and expecting that the tension of the nervous system would render impenetrable the skin of the combatant? Finally, it is to be admitted, that flexible weapons, especially if loaded, as the cat-o'-nine-tails, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... his anger, Brian forced the attack savagely; then a sharp thrust against his jack showed him that O'Donnell was armed with a rapier, and he fell to the point with some caution. With the first moment of play, he knew that he faced a master of fence; yet almost upon the thought his blade ripped into ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... came on, and Marion's heart thrust suddenly at her like a rapier, and left her for dead, staring in ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... accomplished, with a wit Lambent yet bland, like summer lightning; Venomless rapier-point, whose "hit" Was palpable, yet painless. Brightening E'en, party conflict with a touch Of old-world grace fight could not ruffle! Faith, GRANVILLE, we shall miss thee much Where kites and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... the handle of his rapier in one hand, with the other he twisted up his blond moustache, as he looked fiercely around; but meeting no glance which returned the defiance of his own, he slowly withdrew, left foot foremost, and strolled along the dark, narrow streets ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... our mother (vnaduised) Gaue you a daunsing Rapier by your side, Are you so desperate growne to threat your friends? Goe too: haue your Lath glued within your sheath, Till you know better ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the upper lip slightly covering the under one at the corners, he at once arrests your attention, and your eye unconsciously follows him as he makes his way through the crowd, with a friendly word for this man and an elegant rapier-thrust for that. His predominant mood, however, is a cheerful good-nature; his wit and irony belong rather to the diplomatist than to the man. There is no sounder or more prudent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... The rapier point handed by the King to Laertes, was dipped in deadly poison, so that it but touch the flesh of Hamlet certain death prevailed, and even of the wine cups set on the table to quench the thirst of the artistic fencers, one was poisoned and ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... the Italian newcomers, who sought to take possession of the French stage. The matter became a natioual quarrel, and it was considered an insult to France to prefer the music of an Italian to that of a Frenchman—an insult which was often settled by the rapier point, when tongue and pen had failed as arbitrators. The subject was keenly debated by journalists and pamphleteers, and the press groaned with essays to prove that Rameau was the first musician in Europe, though his works were utterly unknown outside of France. Perhaps no more valuable ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... valiant soldier, With his blunderbuss on his shoulder, Cocks his pistol, draws his rapier; Pray give us something for his sake here. A stick and a stake, for our good king's sake: If ye won't give one, I'll take two, The better for me, and ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... often daringly disagreeable. There was indeed something almost fine in her splendid disdain of the civility of the so-called popular person. She could wound; but she did it with the grace of a duellist of old days, who wiped his rapier with a handkerchief of cambric and lace when he had killed his opponent, and would probably expect a man to die as he himself would die, with a jest on his lips and a light laugh at the flowing blood. Mrs. Ogilvie slew exquisitely, and she never hated her opponent. She smiled ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... of a second Bruce stared into Smaltz's scared face. "You were paid," he repeated slowly. "Who—" and then the word came rapier-like as had ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... elsewhere noted, a Persian unto Persians, and a Romany among Roms, and a professional among the hanky-pankorites, is likewise on the cards, as surely as that he knows the roads and all the devices and little games of them that dwell thereon. Though elegant enough in his court dress and rapier when he kisses the hand of our sovereign lady the queen, he appears such an abandoned rough when he goes a-fishing that the innocent and guileless gypsies, little suspecting that a rye lies perdu in his wrap-rascal, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... boy, dressed in court clothes of velvet, his fair hair in long curls, his three-cornered hat held beneath his arm, his court rapier hanging at his side, bright silver buckles at knees and on shoes, advanced down the walk to the little lady who was waiting for him. She was in flowered satin, her long, yellow hair falling to her ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... the beautiful socketed celt, which appears on the scene in the last, or fifth, division of the bronze age (900-350 B.C.). It was during the age of bronze that spears came into general use, as did the sword and rapier. The early spear-heads were simply knife-shaped bronze weapons riveted to the ends of shafts, but by degrees the graceful socketed spear-heads of the late bronze age ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... he had leased to Sir Henry Glenham, Knight. {201a} He further leaves to her, as executrix, "10 pounds to be good and to my poor sister Margarette." To his brother Simon he bequeaths "the best apparrell of my bodie, with riding furniture, and my baie gelding, rapier, dagger, and pistol," and further bequests. The testator was son of Christopher Ayscough, of Bliborough, and married, apparently without issue, Margaret, daughter of Symon Battell, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... knowledge that God spake to Moses, but by the admission that even their knowledge did not reach to the determination of the question of the origin of Jesus' mission, lay themselves open to the sudden thrust of keen-eyed, honest humility's sharp rapier-like retort. 'Herein is a marvellous thing,' that you Know-alls, whose business it is to know where a professed miracle-worker comes from, 'know not from whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes.' 'Now we know' (to use your ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... rescue. I think that neither Mr. Gisborne nor the mutinous group of plebeians owed me much gratitude for my interference. He had planted himself against a wall, in a skilful attitude of fence, ready with his bright glancing rapier to do battle with all the heavy, fierce, unarmed men, some six or seven in number. But when his own soldiers came up, he sheathed his sword; and, giving some careless word of command, sent them away again, and continued his saunter ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... up, looked out over the throng to the mountains, studied for a moment their long, clean line, then dropped his glance and spoke in a changed tone, with a fiery suddenness, a lunge as of a tried rapier, quick and startling. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... darting at Andy's face, as if they knew where to strike; and suddenly, while he was laughing at their rage, he got a thrust in his forehead, and another in his neck, and a third under his sleeve, where a courageous little soldier had rushed in and resolutely driven in his rapier up to the hilt! Andy, who had no idea such little weapons could hurt so, was terrified, and began to scream with pain. And now, strange to see! the fairies were no longer fairies, but a nest of bumblebees; it ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... merry came from a painted spinnet covered with faded roses; some gilt Spanish leather had got up on the wall and laughed; a Dresden mirror was tripping about, crowned with flowers, and a Japanese bonze was riding along on a griffin; a slim Venetian rapier had come to blows with a stout Ferrara sabre, all about a little pale-faced chit of a damsel in white Nymphenburg china; and a portly Franconian pitcher in gres gris was calling aloud, "Oh, these Italians! always at feud!" But nobody listened to him at all. A great number of little Dresden ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... be the shortest,' rejoined the Other, drawing his Rapier; 'Come on, Segnor Bravo! ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... strange springs and ridiculous causes. What ruin did our last Duke of Burgundy run into, for the quarrel of a cart-load of sheep-skins?... See why that man doth hazard both his honour and life on the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him tell you whence the cause of that confusion ariseth, he cannot without blushing; so vain and frivolous is ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... sword, n. rapier, saber, scimiter, brand, curtana, claymore, smallsword, glaive, broadsword, cutlass, Damascus blade, spadroon, creese. Associated Words: scabbard, sheathe, unsheathe, forte, hilt, sheath, foible, foil, fence, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... D'Artagnan's frank contempt, Athos' magnificent disdain, the righteous (I had almost said honest!) horror of the ultra-fashionable Aramis, and the supercilious indignation of the bourgeois Porthos. What! this a hero? Where, then, was his rapier, his glittering baldric, his laces, his dancing plumes, his ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... the shoe is hardly yet worn out, though thrown aside for some two centuries past. And next, among these Puritans and Roundheads, we observe the very model of a Cavalier, with the curling lovelock, the fantastically trimmed beard, the embroidery, the ornamented rapier, the gilded dagger, and all other foppishnesses that distinguished the wild gallants who rode headlong to their overthrow in the cause of King Charles. This is Morton of Merry Mount, who has come hither to hold a council with Endicott, but will shortly be his prisoner. Yonder pale, decaying figure ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Colonel Bludyer, as he wiped his rapier on the grass. "If he ever gets over it, he won't forget that "plongeant" thrust in tierce. I never knew it fail, Thornton—never, with a man under thirty." So the Colonel put his coat on, and drove off to breakfast; ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... awful pause. The sword brought over from Ireland would, in weight and cubic capacity, have made ten of the rapier to which ERSKINE of Cardross had significantly called attention. When, later, it peacefully rested behind doorkeeper's chair, its mighty hilt rose above topmost height like the cross on a cathedral spire. Sword-Bearer looked at LORD MAYOR; Mace-Bearer grasped with both hands shaft of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... oaths and laughter. He addresses himself to ladies with the wagging of his lock, and complements like Euphues or the knights of the Sun; yet his phrase is the worst apparalled thing about him, for it is plain fustian.[ED] His thigh is always well apointed with a rapier, yet peaceable enough, and makes[EE] a wound in nothing but the scabard, yet[EF] rather than point the field, hee'l pull it out in the street. He is weaponed rather in the street, than the highway, for he fears not a ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... many varieties, as Bardolph, Nym, Pistol, Peto, and the other companions of Falstaff, men who had their humours, or their particular turn of extravaganza, had, since the commencement of the Low Country wars, given way to a race of sworders, who used the rapier and dagger, instead of the far less dangerous sword and buckler; so that a historian says on this subject, "that private quarrels were nourished, but especially between the Scots and English; and duels in every street maintained; divers sects and peculiar titles passed unpunished ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... ran against me On the first landing, going at full speed; Dressed like the Spanish captain in a play, With his long rapier and his short red cloak. Why hurry through the world at such a pace? Life ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... old swords, the greater part of which are mere rubbish, and never made at Toledo, yet for such they will give a large price, whilst they would grudge two dollars for this jewel, which was made but yesterday"; thereupon putting into my hand a middle-sized rapier. "Your worship," said they, "seems to have a strong arm, prove its temper against the stone wall;— thrust boldly ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... a hundred fine farms, with a castle or two thrown in, to say nothing, perhaps, of a palace," I said, reaching out my hand and touching the rapier which he was just in the act of depositing on ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Bologna with Clement VII., and was crowned Emperor in S. Petronio on December 5, 1529. One day he was in S. Domenico admiring the works of art, and, doubting that the tarsie were made of tinted wood, as he was told, drew his rapier and cut a bit out of one of the panels, which has always remained in the state in which he left it in memory of his act. Desiring to see how the work was done he determined to visit Fra Damiano's studio. Accordingly, ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... anxiety for the souls of such heathen as they might encounter, but even these men were not unfamiliar with the use of the sword; some were physicians, as ready to kill as to heal; some were botanists, who knew as much about the rapier and the poniard as they did about the stamens, pistils, and petals of the flowers; and some were reporters, men selected to write the history of the expedition. As it turned out, these reporters were entirely faithful to their trust They told all that happened with a fidelity that leaves nothing ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... them, no doubt), her extreme kindness will pardon them. A commonplace example of flattery this? Well, perhaps not. One somehow sees, across the rhetoric, the blue eyes of Anne Genevieve and the bristling mustachios and "swashing outside" and mighty rapier of Georges; and the thing becomes alive with the life of a not ungracious past, the ills of which were, after all, more or less common to all times, and its charms (like the charms of all things and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... rental-book. Weel, away he trots to the Castle, to tell his story, and there he is introduced to Sir John, sitting in his father's chair, in deep mourning, with weepers and hanging cravat, and a small walking rapier by his side, instead of the auld broadsword, that had a hundred-weight of steel about it, what with blade, chape, and basket-hilt. I have heard their communing so often tauld ower, that I almost think I was there mysell, though ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... be a good deal better. I suppose Lost Valley agrees with you." She had swung down on the other side of the horse, and her glance at him across the saddle seat was like a rapier thrust. ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... not be a Journalist-at-Arms? Life for that paladin hath poignant charms. Whether in pretty quarrel he shall run Just half an inch of rapier—in pure fun— In his opponent's biceps, or shall flick His shoulders with a slender walking-stick. The "stern joy" of the man indeed must rise To raptures and heroic ecstacies. Oh, glorious climax of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend Which is the mightier: In his lawless fit, Behind the arras hearing something stir, Whips out his rapier, cries A rat, a rat! And, in this brainish apprehension,[2] kills The unseen good ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... of affection; indeed poor Anna Bland had secretly admired the curate at Isleworth, and hated Mr. Caresfoot and his glittering eye. But she married him for all that, to feel that till she died that glance was always playing round her like a rapier in the hands of a skilled fencer. And very soon she did die, Mr. Caresfoot receiving her last words and wishes with the same exquisite and unmoved politeness that he had extended to every remark she had made to him in the course of their married life. Having satisfactorily eyed Mrs. Caresfoot off ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Wuerttemberg during Schiller's childhood. It furnished him with his dramatic 'mythology', as it has been called. The name may be allowed to pass, only it should be remembered that this mythology was simply history. The rapier-thrusts of the dramatist were not directed against wind-mills of the imagination, but against political infamies that make one's blood boil in the reading and that would have moved a more spirited people to hang their rulers to the nearest tree. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... like a stormy sunset cloud, glowing through the gray network of the thin trees, and the prince in his cardinal's robes reemerged on to the pathway. Brain had had half a notion that the prince might have gone to look for the lost rapier. But when he reappeared he was carrying in his hand, not ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... modulated instrument we mean—simply legs for leg-work, dumb as the brutes. Our cavalier's is the poetic leg, a portent, a valiance. He has it as Cicero had a tongue. It is a lute to scatter songs to his mistress; a rapier, is she obdurate. In sooth a leg ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the coat, seeming quite unable to allow so precious a thing to pass out of his own hands. At length, however, I created a diversion by producing the belt and bayonet, withdrawing the latter from its sheath and explaining that it was used as a sort of rapier. This also received its due meed of appreciation, but the royal glances still clung fondly to the tunic; therefore I produced the cocked hat with its plume of feathers, putting it upon my own head for a moment to show how it ought to be worn, and then handing it to ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... complement of women and children, and one contained three young fellows of twenty who had probably smuggled themselves into the car and who cringed when my Polish interpreter lunged on them with his rapier of light and retreated into a corner where two cows stood with necks crossed in affection. These youths knew they had no business in that car, for even in the chaos of retreat the word had been passed among the civilian refugees: "Women, children, and old men first in the cars; young ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... forming a shape like a parachute. Each leaf is full five yards in length, and of the kind called pinnate—that is divided into numerous leaflets, each of which is itself more than a foot and a half long, shaped like the blade of a rapier. Under the shadow of this graceful plumage the fruit is produced, just below the point where the leaves radiate from the stem. The fruit is a nut, about the size of a pigeon's egg, but of a regular oval form, and growing in ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... cavalier," he remarked. "I pierce and am pierced. Here is my rapier. I clink steel. This is a blood-stain over my heart. I can emit hollow groans. I am patronized by many old Conservative families. I am the original manor-house apparition. I work alone, or in ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... reclined for a moment upon Robert's astonished breast. Then recovering himself with equal gravity he paused, lifted his hand with gentle warning, marched to a recess in the corner, unhooked a rapier hanging from the wall, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... a coat of mail, Which was made of a fish's scale, That when his foe should him assail, No point should be prevailing: His rapier was a hornet's sting, It was a very dangerous thing, For if he chanced to hurt the King, It would be long ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... armed pirates. They rowed toward the Plymouth Adventure and there were enough of them to carry her by boarding. In addition to this, she was directly under the guns of Blackbeard's powerful ship. One valorous young gentleman passenger whipped out a rapier and swore to perish with his face to the foe, but Captain Wellsby kicked him into the cabin and fastened the scuttle. This was no time ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... studded with gold; his cap covered over with gold buttons. Over all he wore a loose robe or gown of black velvet, in the French fashion, trimmed all round with gold lace. From his neck hung a triple chain of gold enamelled, from which depended a golden whistle. His rapier and dagger, which were borne by a page, had handles of pure gold. Two lackeys preceded him in splendid attire and six trumpeters with silk flags. He was also accompanied by a band of wind instruments, in a small boat In another boat were ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... latter fell into Shakespeare's hands and pleased him; he drew from it the plot of "As you like it."[155] Coming before the literary public, Lodge does not altogether forget his profession of corsair, and in order to deprive the critics of the temptation to sneer, he is careful to brandish his rapier from time to time, and to write prefaces that make one's hair stand on end. "Roome for a souldier and a sailer, that gives you the fruits of his labors that he wrote in the Ocean!" he cries to the reader ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... at his commaund, and some ten or twelue others that followed him, most of them his owne seruants; the rest, surprised with feare, fled, whom, neither with his perswasions, nor threatning with his rapier ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... Italian nature, open to every gust of feeling, over which impressions came and went like summer clouds, could turn at a moment's notice from the hand-to-hand grapple of a deadly duel to the lightest and most delicate rapier practice ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... natural that such a knight should have squires of high degree, as Francisco the Basque and the two Antonios, Gypsy and Greek. Antonio the Greek left Borrow to serve a count as cook, but the count attacked him with a rapier, whereupon he gave ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... a tall man with an enormous mustache and a long rapier, "bravo, fair Paulet, it is high time to put little Voiture in his right place. For my part, I always thought his poetry detestable, and I think I know ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... portentous solemnity was too much for him. Sticking pins into a man or an ape is a pleasant sport. They have skins of reasonable density. It is dull work pricking a rhinoceros, even with a rapier. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... hand a parrot green Sits unmoving and broods serene. Hold up the canvas full in view,— Look! there's a rent the light shines through, Dark with a century's fringe of dust,— That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust! Such is the tale the lady old, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... run, I leapt from the poop to pursue them, Mr Tomkins following my example. At this time a Turk came out of the cabin, who wounded him grievously, and they lay tumbling over each other on the deck. On seeing this, I ran the Turk through the body with my rapier, and our skipper thrust him down the throat into the body with a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr |
