"Gunpowder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... steal?" he asked with dull apathy. "The gold vessels from the Catholic Cathedral of Quebec, after—after trying to blow up Government House with gunpowder." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... years, and were destined to battle for three-quarters of a century longer. Yet, although other affairs might be discussed, those two points were to be reserved for the more conclusive arbitration of gunpowder. The result of negotiations upon such a basis was easily to be foreseen. Breath, time, and paper were profusely wasted and nothing gained. The Prince assured his friend, as he had done secret agents previously sent to him, that he was himself ready to leave ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to go by way of Short Creek, where you will help put up a blockhouse. Then you go to Fort Pitt. There you will embark on a raft with the supplies I need and make the return journey by water. You will probably smell gunpowder before ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... in the army, sir, when I was with Sir Edward. It's done by gunpowder. It can do no harm, and will at any time durin' his life make him known among millions. It can do no harm, at ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... battles, and the abstruse library which the "Harleian Miscellany" still records;—leave him to hunt and play at tennis, serve in the Hudson's Bay Company and the Board of Trade;—leave him to experiment in alchemy and astrology, in hydraulics, metallurgy, gunpowder, perspective, quadrants, mezzotint, fish-hooks, and revolvers;—leave him to look from his solitary turret over hills and fields, now peaceful, but each the scene of some wild and warlike memory for him;—leave him to die ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... beneath two invalids, who had got under the altar in the night, with no other design, as they declared, than a childish and obscene curiosity. The report instantly spread that the altar of the country was undermined, in order to blow up the people; that a barrel of gunpowder had been discovered beside the conspirators; that the invalids, surprised in the preliminaries to their criminal design, were well known satellites of the aristocracy; that they had confessed their deadly design, and the amount of reward promised on the success of their wickedness. The mob ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... with gunpowder, it appeared, had been laid beneath its vaults by Demdike, with a view to its destruction at some future period, and this circumstance being known to Nance, she had ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... C. he goes in fer the war; He don't vally principle more 'n an old cud; Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood? So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall vote fer ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... officer? Were not my comrades there along with me? In default of true courage, had I not the instinct of self preservation to spur me on, without reckoning the excitement of the shouts and tumult of battle, the smell of the gunpowder, the flourishes of the trumpets, the thundering of the cannon, the ardor of my horse, which bounded beneath me as if the devil were at his tail? Need I state that I also knew that the emperor was present, with his eye upon every one—the emperor, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... apprehension of violence, Dr. Johnson had provided a pair of pistols, some gunpowder, and a quantity of bullets: but upon being assured we should run no risk of meeting any robbers, he left his arms and ammunition in an open drawer, of which he gave my wife the charge. He also left in that drawer one volume of a pretty full and curious Diary ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... vagaries of the captain and his troop, and to supply them with a fine and handsome horned ram, which was led back in triumph. On their return into Ramerupt they set up shouts at the door of the cure, the procurator fiscal, and the collector of taxes, and, after the invention of gunpowder, fireworks were let off. They then went to the market-place, where they danced round the ram, which was decorated with ribbons. No doubt this was a relic of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... offers some danger (which is not so) I should like to ask whoever proffers the objection, to tell me what thing we use that is not dangerous? Is it steam? gunpowder? railways? ships? electricity? automobiles? aeroplanes? Are the poisons not dangerous which we, doctors and chemists, use daily in minute doses, and which might easily destroy the patient if, in a moment's ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... "Ticker," the "Eight Day Machine," the "Little Exterminator," and the "Bottle Machines." The "Ticker" is in appearance like a piece of lead, a foot long and four inches thick. It contains an iron or steel tube full of a kind of gunpowder invented by Holgate himself. That gunpowder, in appearance like any other common stuff of that name, has, however, an explosive power two hundred times stronger than common gunpowder; the "Ticker" ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... the charm for them being in her fine outlines, her stature, carriage of her person, and unalterable composure; particularly her latent daring. She had the effect on the general mind of a lofty crag-castle with a history. There was a whiff of gunpowder exciting the atmosphere in the anecdotal part ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it was thought that a good way to strike a decisive blow would be to send a vessel loaded with shells and gunpowder into the harbor of Tripoli by night, and explode her there. This might result, it was thought, in the destruction of the forts and ships, and possibly part of the town, and so terrify the Bey that he would come to terms. Lieutenant Somers, who had been foremost ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... I was mixing the ingredients of my grand substitute for gunpowder, when somehow it blew up, and set the curtains ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton
... of phrases like "nitrous powder" or "smutty grain" for "gunpowder," and "optic glass" or "optic tube" for the telescope or "perspective," are instances of the approximation. A certain number of these circuitous phrases are justified by considerations of dramatic propriety. When Raphael describes the artillery used in Heaven, he ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... short time, when it was agreed to evacuate the town and retire to the warf—a large wooden building of six rooms. Our greatest danger at this time arose from having, in one of the rooms where many were to sleep, and all of us were continually passing, several hundred barrels of gunpowder, to which, if fire should be communicated accidentally by ourselves, or mischievously by others, we should all perish at once. But, through the kind care of our Heavenly Father, we were preserved alive, and nothing of importance occurred until the morning of Thursday, a little ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... silence—that is, the suspension of all faculty of hearing or feeling or thinking—succeeded for the moment. Sight and sound were blown out, as the flame of a candle is blown out by an ordinary gunpowder explosion. Then the sudden and complete silence was succeeded by a crashing of bells in the ears, by a flashing of furnaces in the eyes, by a limpness of every limb, a relaxation of every fibre, by a ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... on this coast, that they must provide a powerful rip-saw to rip in two the larger logs before they are small enough for a circular saw to manage. Indeed, occasionally the huge logs are split with wedges, or blown apart with gunpowder, in the logging camps, because they are too vast to be floated down to the mill in one piece. The expedients for loading vessels are often novel and ingenious. For instance, at Mendocino the lumber is loaded on cars at the mill, and ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... ALDER-TREE.—This is a valuable tree for planting in moors and wet places. The wood is used for making clogs, pattens, and other such purposes; and the bark for dyeing and manufacturing some of the finer kinds of leather. This wood is of considerable value for making charcoal for gunpowder. In charring it a considerable quantity of acetic acid is extracted, which is of great value for the purpose ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... of Bender realized on the Delaware. Scheme after scheme, and force upon force were tried and defeated. The garrison, with scarce anything to cover them but their bravery, survived in the midst of mud, shot and shells, and were at last obliged to give it up more to the powers of time and gunpowder than to military superiority of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... metaphysicians still adhere to it. The assertion is that only like can act upon like; but although it is true that like produces (causes) like, it is also true that like produces unlike; thus fire produces pain when applied to our bodies; explosion when applied to gunpowder; charcoal when applied to wood; all these effects are unlike the cause." We cannot help thinking that in this instance, the usually thoughtful Lewes has either confused substance with its modes, or, for the sake of producing a temporary effect, has descended to mere sophism. Spinoza's proposition ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... boat, three Indians rushed out of the wood with a hideous shout, at about the distance of a hundred yards; and as they ran towards us, the foremost threw something out of his hand, which flew on one side of him, and burnt exactly like gunpowder, but made no report: The other two instantly threw their lances at us; and as no time was now to be lost, we discharged our pieces, which were loaded with small shot. It is probable that they did not feel the shot, for though they halted ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... sidewalk; there were the two hundred police, under Crawford's orders, scattered everywhere through the crowd, and good-naturedly jostling and pushing to create distraction. Without haste, I got into my machine. I calmly met the gaze of those thousands, quiet as so many barrels of gunpowder before the explosion. The chauffeur turned ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... nothing. Nor of that supreme "attack on the intrenchments:" blowing-up of the very Bridges; cavalry posted in the woods; host doing its very uttermost against host, with unheard-of expenditure of gunpowder and learned manoeuvre; in which "the Fleet" (of shallops on the Elbe, rigged mostly in silk) took part, and the Bucentaur with all its cannon. Words fail on such occasions. I will mention only that assiduous King August had arranged everything like the King of Playhouse-Managers; ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... of every year. It is held by way of a general rejoicing over what the people believe to be a total annihilation of the ills of the past twelve months. The destruction is supposed to be effected in the following way. A large earthenware jar filled with gunpowder, stones, and bits of iron is buried in the earth. A train of gunpowder, communicating with the jar, is then laid; and a match being applied, the jar and its contents are blown up. The stones and bits of iron represent the ills and disasters of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... was in no condition to pursue. By the neglect of the authorities he had been ill-supplied with gunpowder, and was forced to return to England for a fresh supply. But for this deficiency he possibly might, in the distressed condition of the Spanish fleet, have forced a surrender of the entire Armada. As it was, his return ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... with great solemnity at Pembroke College, and exercises upon the subject of the day were required[181]. Johnson neglected to perform his, which is much to be regretted; for his vivacity of imagination, and force of language, would probably have produced something sublime upon the gunpowder plot[182]. To apologise for his neglect, he gave in a short copy of verses, entitled Somnium, containing a common thought; 'that the Muse had come to him in his sleep, and whispered, that it did not become him to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... huts; and being drawn oblique from the north-west to the south-east, made our city a triangle. Behind the bank or line our huts stood, having three other huts behind them at a good distance. In one of these, which was a little one, and stood further off, we put our gunpowder, and nothing else, for fear of danger; in the other, which was bigger, we dressed our victuals, and put all our necessaries; and in the third, which was biggest of all, we ate our dinners, called our councils, and sat and diverted ourselves with such conversation ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... mouthpieces, for our rescued Chinaman was a pipe-mender by trade. There wasn't much else in the room except the smell, and that seemed to fill it choke-full. The smell seemed to have all sorts of things in it—glue and gunpowder, and white garden lilies and burnt fat, and it was not so easy to breathe as ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... a night!" cried he. "The wind blows a gale, and wherever it whirls the flames, the roofs will flash up like gunpowder. Every pump is frozen up, and boiling water would turn to ice the moment it was flung from the engine. In an hour, this wooden town will be one great bonfire! What a glorious scene for ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... distinct and tremulous motion. The current was playing principally against the southern approach of the bridge, and soon the usually dry arch, at its further end, burst with a loud report; its fragments, mixed with water, being blown into the air as if by gunpowder. The boats had all been swept away, and the fishermen's houses were already one mass of ruin. The centre of the main stream was hurried on at an elevation many feet higher than the rest of the surrounding sea of waters; ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... bye, that chap must have had his soldiers in tight order); but it is, 'Do this, d—n your eyes,' and then it is done directly. The order to do just carries the weight of a cannon-shot, but it wants the perpelling power—the d—n is the gunpowder which sets it flying in the execution of its duty. Do you comprehend ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... the existence of great caves to the southwestward and that they have brought back from them wonderful stalactites and stalagmites and also dust from the cave floors. I find that this dust is strongly impregnated with niter; from niter we obtain saltpeter and from saltpeter we make gunpowder. We need not send to Virginia for our powder, we can make it here in Kentucky ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... their brilliancy may perhaps decay with time, being thus fixed in the flesh, are of course indelible, just as much as the marks of a similar nature which our own sailors frequently make on their arms and breasts, by introducing gunpowder under the skin. One effect, we are told, which they produce on the countenances of the New Zealanders, is to conceal the ravages of old age. Being thus permanent when once imprinted, each becomes also the peculiar ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... with the Leyden jar, made an electrical battery, killed a fowl and roasted it upon a spit turned by electricity, sent a current through water and found it still able to ignite alcohol, ignited gunpowder, and charged glasses of wine so that the drinkers received shocks. More important, perhaps, he began to develop the theory of the identity of lightning and electricity, and the possibility of protecting buildings by ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... covered with sulphurous matches which had been forced into his flesh under the nails, between the fingers, in the nostrils, in the lips, and all over the body, and then lighted; Daniel Rovelli had his mouth filled with gunpowder, which, being lighted, blew his head to pieces;... Sara Rostignol was slit open from the legs to the bosom, and left so to perish on the road between Eyral and Lucerna; Anna Charbonnier was impaled, and carried thus on a pike from San ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... been well said that "Feudalism was ruined by gunpowder." The old-fashioned feudal castle was no longer proof against cannon, and with the new order of things, threatening walls and serried battlements gave way as if by magic to the pomp and grace of the Italian mansion. High roofed gables, rows of windows and glittering ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... latest description; and though many talked, few dreamed that the mind of the country, growing more compressed in thought, and inflammable in nature every day, was rapidly becoming like a huge magazine of gunpowder or dynamite, which at a spark would explode into that periodically ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... in the New World, as in the Old, an armed police and fire-department, to protect property as it grows more worthless by being selfishly clutched in fewer hands, and keep God's fire of manhood from reaching that gunpowder of the dangerous classes which underlies all institutions based only on the ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... have him peacemaker general between all the gunpowder Highlanders in the army? I beg your pardon, Flora, your brother, you know, is out of the question; he has more sense than half of them. But can you think the fierce, hot, furious spirits of whose brawls we see much and hear more, and who ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... deep, dark canons coming into the main stream, and at one place, where the rock hung a little over the river and had a smooth wall, I climbed up above the high water mark which we could clearly see, and with a mixture of gunpowder and grease for paint, and a bit of cloth tied to a stick for a brush, I painted in fair sized letters on the rock, CAPT. W.L. MANLEY, U.S.A. We did not know whether we were within the bounds of the United States or not, and we put on all the majesty we could under ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... all Egyptians, and it would be hard to find a poorer lot; they never worked, save under compulsion, and they stole whatever they could. I examined their packs during the homeward cruise, and found that many of them had secreted Government gunpowder:— ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... very few of the things which she wrote to amuse us in our MS. "Gunpowder Plot Magazine," for they chiefly referred to local and family events; but "The Blue Bells on the Lea" was an exception. The scene of this is a hill-side near our old home, and Mr. Andre's fantastic and graceful illustrations to ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... sauer kraut, essence of malt, vinegar, salt, a new suit of sails, some spars, a kedge anchor, iron-work and an armourer's forge, canvas, twine, various small stores, four-and-a-half barrels of gunpowder, two swivels, and several muskets and pistols, with ball and flints. A few sheep were also rescued. When they were being driven on to the reef under the supervision of young John Franklin, they trampled over some of Westall's drawings. Their hoof-marks ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... a lofty and abstruse nature, developing itself in wonderful inventions—gunpowder, for instance, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... INDIANS.—Before the coming of the Europeans the Indians had never seen horses or cows, sheep, hogs, or poultry. The dog was their only domesticated animal, and in many cases the so-called dog was really a domesticated wolf. Neither had the Indians ever seen firearms, or gunpowder, or swords, nails, or steel knives, or metal pots or kettles, glass, wheat, flour, or many other articles in common use among ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Babington's conspiracy, but was released because he was godson to Queen Elizabeth. Soon after, however, he was imprisoned a second time, and condemned to death on the charge of having concealed some of the Gunpowder-plot conspirators; but was pardoned through the interest of Lord Morley. His uncle, however, was less fortunate, suffering death for his complicity with Babington. The poet's mother, the daughter of Lord Morley, was more loyal than her husband or his brother, and is said to have written ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... approbation. The Secretary would give no such order, but said the prisoners must not be permitted to escape under any circumstances, which was considered sanction enough. Capt. —— obtained an order for, and procured several hundred pounds of gunpowder, which were placed in readiness. Whether the prisoners were advised of this I know not; but I told Capt. —— it could not be justifiable to spring such a mine in the absence of their knowledge of the fate awaiting them, in ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... commodity, are similarly determined. Or, turning to a somewhat different order of illustrations, we might dwell on the multitudinous changes—material, intellectual, moral,—caused by printing; or the further extensive series of changes wrought by gunpowder. But leaving the intermediate phases of social development, let us take a few illustrations from its most recent and its passing phases. To trace the effects of steam-power, in its manifold applications to mining, navigation, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... only in the outermost porch of the temple, I was a faithful, devoted, self-sacrificing worshipper of the goddess; and therefore, because earnest fidelity has ever its crown of reward, it happened to me to make a grand discovery,—a discovery more momentous, it may be, than that of gunpowder or the telescope,—ten million hundred times more worth than the vaunted great achievement of M. le Professeur Morse. Not that its whole import came to me at once. No, Monsieur, it is full twenty years now since the first light of it glimmered upon Cesar Prevost's mind, and he gave ten years of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... breakfast was ready. In the dining-room they met three other officers of lower rank—a lieutenant, Otto von Grossling, and two sub-lieutenants, Fritz Scheuneberg and Baron von Eyrick, a very short, fair-haired man, who was proud and brutal toward men, harsh toward prisoners and as explosive as gunpowder. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... circumstances supposed, though the four kings might be unable to see their way clearly without the help of gunpowder to any decision upon Joanna's intention, she—poor thing!—never could mistake her intentions for a moment. All her love was for France; and, therefore, any glove she might drop into the quadrivium must be wickedly missent by the post-office, if ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... not the courage to fight the way Christ did are about to be shut up by society; no one will harm them, of course, innocent, afraid persons, who have to protect themselves with gunpowder, but they will merely be set one side after this, where they will not be in a position to spoil the fighting of the men who are ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... gate-keeper, informing him that Miss Drake was having the pond at the foot of her garden emptied into the Lythe by means of a tunnel, the construction of which was already completed. They were now boring for a small charge of gunpowder expected to liberate the water. The process of emptying would probably be rapid, and he had taken the liberty of informing Mr. Faber, thinking he might choose to be present. No one but the persons employed would be ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... addition to the president's message being full of gunpowder, the report made to congress by its committee on the state of the foreign affairs of the United States, conveys sentiments of such decided hostility towards England, that I feel justified in recommending such precaution as may place you in a ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... surrounds them, and selling the mass to the manufacturers of nitre? No sentiment of reverence for the sepulchres of their fathers incites them to resist the inroads of foreign pirates,—for they manufacture their fathers' bones into gunpowder. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... News of the two white men alone in the northern forest spread like wild-fire to the different Sautaux and Ojibway encampments; and Radisson invented another protection in addition to the bells. He rolled gunpowder in twisted tubes of birch bark, and ran a circle of this round the fort. Putting a torch to the birch, he surprised the Indians by displaying to them a circle of fire running along the ground in ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... man's intelligence, it seems occasionally to have caught glimpses of a heaven far beyond the range of its ordinary ken and vision. It caught a glimpse of the path which leads to military supremacy when it invented gunpowder, some centuries before the discovery was made by any other nation. It caught a glimpse of the path which leads to maritime supremacy when it made, at a period equally remote, the discovery of the mariner's ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Arrhigi was there. Either to spare life, or because no one was found bold enough to lead the forlorn hope in storming the entrance, it was resolved to blow up the cave. The engineers set to work, a shaft was sunk from above, a barrel of gunpowder was lodged in it—the explosion was ineffectual; it left the massive vault and sides of the narrow cavern as firm as ever. It was too deep to be reached without regular mining. Besides, the night was bitter, and the whole party ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... on this wild spot, with a leg smashed by a shot or perhaps with a bullet in your side. It might happen. A star might fall. I have watched stars falling in scores on clear nights in the Atlantic. And it was nothing. The flash of a pinch of gunpowder in your face may be a bigger matter. Yet somehow it's pleasant as we stumble in the dark to think of our Senora in that long room with a shiny floor and all that lot of glass at the end, sitting on that divan, you call it, covered ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... drachms of gunpowder into the cup, he filled it about half full of water, and setting it near the hot coals under the red hot cylinder, soon dissolved the explosive, forming an inky fluid. From the ammunition bucket he drew ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... facilities of life, were substantially those of the civilization which developed eighty centuries ago on the banks of the Nile and later on the Euphrates. Man had indeed increased his conquest over Nature in later centuries by a few mechanical inventions, such as gunpowder, telescope, magnetic needle, printing-press, spinning jenny, and hand-loom, but the characteristic of all those inventions, with the exception of gunpowder, was that they still remained a subordinate auxiliary to the physical strength and mental skill of man. ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... of the churches, the great Coffee-House, the Library, were closed. Of four daily newspapers, only one continued to be published. Some people constantly smoked tobacco,—even women and children, did so; others chewed garlic; others exploded gunpowder; others burned nitre or sprinkled vinegar; many assiduously whitewashed every surface within their reach; some carried tarred rope in their hands, or bags of camphor round their necks; others never ventured abroad without a handkerchief or ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Valentine's house. The truth was, that this worthy creature knew nothing whatever about Raphael; and, considering "Madonna" to be an outlandish foreign word intimately connected with Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, firmly believed that no respectable Englishwoman ought to compromise her character by attempting to ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... entire day with undaunted bravery. Their leader was mortally wounded, and Taylor took the command. The garrison at last retreated into a cellar into which the only access was a narrow flight of stone steps, and where nine barrels of gunpowder were stored. Taylor declared he would blow up the place if life were not promised to those who surrendered. Carew refused, and retired for the night, after placing a strong guard over the unfortunate men. The following morning he sent cannon-ball ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the world. But, in almost every case on record, it was the beauty of the fair disturbers, that, inflaming the spirit of rivalship, set men a-fighting with so much zeal; and true it seems to be, that, when beauty went into disrepute, and gunpowder came into fashion—both much about the same time—we have never had what may be called a bona fide heroic battle. But the part which the Border fair ones had in the bloody scenes of that distracted section of the country, is represented to have been ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... twenty-fold heroes, but had to retreat; babbling about shells and mortars, battalions, manoeuvres, angles, fascines, and other items of military art; for war had filled the whole brain of the people, and enveloped the whole thought of man in a mist of gunpowder. ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... worth of Du Guesclin, the first great leader of mercenaries in France, a grim fighting-man, hostile to the show of feudal warfare, and herald of a new age of contests, in which the feudal levies would fall into the background. The invention of gunpowder in this century, the incapacity of the great lords, the rise of free lances and mercenary troops, all told that a new era had arrived. It was by the hand of Du Guesclin that Charles overcame his cousin and namesake, Charles of Navarre, and compelled him to peace. ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... in this world of young men and gray-beards! But he is still in the future, and in the future the decision rests. In the mean time we prepare. If may be we shall have such a start that we shall prevent him growing. You know, because he was better skilled in chemistry, knew how to manufacture gunpowder, that the Spaniard destroyed the Aztec. May not we, who are possessing ourselves of the world and its resources, and gathering to ourselves all its knowledge, may not we nip the Slav ere he grows a ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... in Convocation, and he always regarded its revival as a misfortune. He proposed, however, in it a petition for the discontinuance of the use of the State services commemorating the martyrdom of Charles I., the restoration of Charles II., the discovery of the gunpowder plot, and the Revolution of 1688; and Parliament soon after adopted his view. He also sat on the Royal Commission in 1864 for considering the subject of clerical subscription. He took on this occasion a characteristic line, advocating a complete abolition of the subscription ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... repeatedly says that he was then actuated by two important considerations: to maintain tranquillity in Moscow and expedite the departure of the inhabitants. If one accepts this twofold aim all Rostopchin's actions appear irreproachable. "Why were the holy relics, the arms, ammunition, gunpowder, and stores of corn not removed? Why were thousands of inhabitants deceived into believing that Moscow would not be given up—and thereby ruined?" "To preserve the tranquillity of the city," explains Count Rostopchin. "Why ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... singularly strong building, and for a day and a half resisted every effort to pull it down, being eventually reduced to ruins by blasting the walls with bags of gunpowder. It consisted of a large central hall, with walls made of baked clay, three feet in thickness, and an external corridor running round the whole circumference of the inner apartment. The roof, conical in shape, was supported ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... his band carried off with them to their magazine at Bouquet all the arms, ammunition, and provisions they could find, and before leaving they set fire to the castle. There must have been a large store of gunpowder in the vaults of the place besides what the Camisards carried away, for they had scarcely proceeded a mile on their return journey when a tremendous explosion took place, shaking the ground like an earthquake, and turning back, ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... bonnet, with a bow and arrows, and had provided the same for himself and his countryman, that the people, if they saw us, should not determine who we were. All the first night we spent in mixing up some combustible matter, with aqua vitae, gunpowder, and such other materials as we could get; and having a good quantity of tar in a little pot, about an hour after night we ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... compressed air, for example—if such resistance possesses little or no inertia to be brought into play; contrariwise, the smallest inertia opposed to the explosion of a mixture subjected to instantaneous combustion is equivalent to an insurmountable obstacle. Thus a small quantity of gunpowder, or a detonating mixture of air and hydrogen, may without danger be ignited in a large closed vessel full of air, because the pressure against the sides of the vessel exerted by the explosion is not more than ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... individual endowments between the two men would remain the same, but that difference would be reduced to relative unimportance by the prodigious equal addition made to the product of both alike by the social organism. Or again, before gunpowder was invented one man might easily be worth two as a warrior. The difference between the men as individuals remained what it was; yet the overwhelming factor added to the power of both alike by the gun practically equalized them as fighters. Speaking of guns, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... waters, relate, they verily thinke there is gunpowder in them, and that now and then ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... "Of brandy and gunpowder. Both vessels are employed by the same house, and take out the same freight. You must, however, please yourself, Mr. Lyndsay. The Flora has a great number of passengers of the lowest cast,—is old and crank; with the most vicious, morose captain that sails from this port. I know him only too ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... bewildered and stunned by the dreadful din, Harry Archer struggled on with his company. His voice was hoarse with shouting, though he himself could scarce hear the words he uttered. His lips were parched with excitement and the acrid smell of gunpowder. Man after man had fallen beside him, but he was yet untouched. There was no thought of fear or danger now. His whole soul seemed absorbed in the one thought of getting into the battery. Small as were the numbers who still struggled on, their determined ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... a castle stood on the site in very early times appears from many old books of charters. In its prime it was such a masterpiece of fortification as to be the wonder of the world, and it was thought, before the invention of gunpowder, that it never could be taken by any force ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... remember that the result of several communications which appeared in our columns on the subject of the celebrated Treatise of Equivocation, found in the chambers of Tresham, and produced at the trial of the persons engaged in the Gunpowder Plot, was a letter from a correspondent (J. B., Vol. ii., p. 168.) announcing that the identical MS. copy of the work referred to by Sir Edward Coke on the occasion in question, was safely preserved in the Bodleian ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... with little or no salt for a very long period without becoming rancid. The cheesy matter contains nitrogen; and nearly all the substances into which this element enters as a constituent are remarkably prone to decomposition. Yeast, and ferments of every kind—gunpowder, fulminating silver, chloride of nitrogen—and almost every explosive compound, contain this element. The cheesy matter is a very nitrogenous body, and in presence of air and moisture not only rapidly decomposes, or decays, itself, but ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... reality of money), with Jesuit Dignitaries, Church and Quasi-Church Officialities, resident among them: population, high and low, is inclined by creed to the Queen of Hungary. Commandant Roth has only 1,200 regular soldiers; at the outside 1,600 men under arms: but he has gunpowder, he has meal; experience also and courage; and hopes these may suffice him for a time. One of the most determined Commandants; expert in the defence of strong places. A born Silesian (not Saxon, as some think),—and is of the Augsburg Confession; but that circumstance is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... were no doubt forthwith executed, and of Flint and Rhuddlan little now remains. At Hawarden gunpowder has been used to blow up portions of the Keep. Sir William Glynne, son of the Chief Justice, twenty or thirty years later, carried further the work of destruction. Sir John Glynne, too, is said to have made free with the materials ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone
... taken that the cavity for the powder be entirely filled with it, so as to leave no space between the powder and the ball. For the same reason, if the bottom of a large tree is to be shivered with gunpowder, a space must be left between the charge and the wadding, and the powder will tear it asunder. But considering the numerous accidents that are constantly occurring, from the incautious use of fire arms, the utmost care should be taken not to place them within the reach ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the cause of their destruction. Cromwell when in power recognised their strength; they were too dangerous, these castles, and must be destroyed. His cannon-balls had rattled against their stone walls without much effect during the war; but their fate was sealed with that of their King, and the gunpowder of Cromwell's soldiers was soon employed in blowing up the walls that resisted him so long, and left them ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... she's been to Lupex to-day at that house he goes to in Drury Lane. She had a terrible scene there. He was going to commit suicide in the middle of the street, and she declares that it all comes from jealousy. Think what a time I have of it—standing always, as one may say, on gunpowder. He may turn up here any moment, you know. But, upon my word, for the life of me I cannot desert her. If I were to turn my back on her she wouldn't have a friend in the world. And how's L. D.? I'll tell ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... owner thereof." It was believed that this man had divers powerful enemies, and, in order that he might secure his position, he contrived to bring certain of his foes into his house, having first made a mine of gunpowder under the portico, and set a match thereto. But for some reason or other the plot miscarried the night when he destined to carry it out. Gramigna went to see what was amiss, and at that very moment the mine ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... Jerusalem and thence to Jaffa. I had much to tell also of those Bedouins; how they were essentially true to us, but teased us almost to frenzy by their continual begging. They begged for our food and our drink, for our cigars and our gunpowder, for the clothes off our backs, and the handkerchiefs out of our pockets. As to gunpowder I had none to give them, for my charges were all made up in cartridges; and I learned that the guns behind ...
— A Ride Across Palestine • Anthony Trollope
... her mission—and, as she said to herself, brought gunpowder into the enemy's camp—Lucy retired, wondering that she did not feel more satisfied. Agnes and her sister had a very long talk, the end of which was that they returned home a short time after Irene and Rosamund had ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... succeeded in producing a bottle of ardent spirits. This induced one Quintal to 'alter his kettle into a still,' and the natural consequence ensued. Like the philosopher who destroyed himself with his own gunpowder, M'Coy, intoxicated to frenzy, threw himself from a cliff and was killed; and Quintal having lost his wife by accident, demanded the lady of one of his two remaining companions. This modest request being refused, he attempted to murder his countrymen; but they, having discovered his intention, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... shoulders). The times are past, my lord, when armies fought under the guidance of celestial leaders. Since gunpowder was invented angels ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the fact that the desire had been growing in Hadria to test her powers of attraction to the utmost, so as to discover exactly their range and calibre. She felt rather as a boy might feel who had come upon a cask of gunpowder, and longed to set a match to it, just to see exactly how high it would blow off the roof. She had kept the growing instincts at bay, being determined that nothing avoidable should come between ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... upon me, and receive my soul.' Then they fetched fresh faggots, but that fire was spent also. He did but say softly, 'For God's love, good people, let me have more fire.' This was the worst his agony could wring from him. The third fire kindled was more extreme, and reached at last the barrels of gunpowder. Then, when he saw the flame shoot up toward them, he cried, 'Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me! Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!' And so, bowing forward his head, he died at last as quietly as a child in his bed." ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... drinking, praying, preaching, sporting, gambling and scrambling. On the thirteenth, the double urn, with its melancholy moral, was removed from the pyramid, and the inner one, with the grating, was laid on a bed of fragrant sandalwood, and aromatic gums, connected with a train of gunpowder, which the king ignited with a match from the sacred fire that burns continually in the temple Watt P'hra Keau. The Second King then lighted his candles from the same torch, and laid them on the pyre; and so ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... engines, diving-bells, which we have regarded with so much complacency as our peculiar property, worked their wonders in the teeming brain of an old monk who lived six hundred years ago. Printing, stereotypes, lithography, gunpowder, Colt's revolvers and Armstrong guns, Congreve rockets, coal-gas and chloroform, daguerreotypes, reaping-machines, and the electric telegraph are nothing new under the sun. Hundreds of years ago the idea was born, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... broken into in several other places, and the battle became now as fierce and continuous down in the cellars as it had before been on the breach. By the light of torches, in an atmosphere heavy with the fumes of gunpowder, surrounded by piled-up barrels of wine, the defenders and assailants maintained a terrible conflict, men staggering up exhausted by their exertion and by the stifling atmosphere while others took their places below, and so, night and day, the ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... profoundest satisfaction to accomplish the foray successfully; nevertheless, being a comparatively educated person, I should most assuredly not give myself that satisfaction, though there were not an ounce of gunpowder, nor a bayonet, in all France. I have not the least mind to rob anybody, however much I may covet what they have got; and I know that the French and British public may and will, with many other publics, be at last brought to be of this ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... Lord. There was an old Miracle Play which was performed at Easter; for we find in the churchwardens' books at Kingston-upon-Thames, in the reign of Henry VIII., certain expenses for "a skin of parchment and gunpowder for the play on Easter Day," for a player's coat, stage, and "other things ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... resolved to use up all the gunpowder without delay, a perpetual display of fireworks is inaugurated at Vienna, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, and London, the show in the last-named capital including a gigantic set-piece of the Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, which is given five ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... delivered the anonymous letter winch revealed the Gunpowder Plot to Lord Salisbury, the second person to whom the latter confided the transaction was ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... O'Blaney insulted your shister with his vile proposhals, you'd no more ask the loan of his horse!—and I in dread, whenever I'd be left in the house alone, that that bad man would boult in upon me—and Randal to find him! and Randal's like gunpowder when his heart's touched!—and if Randal should come by himself, worse again! Honor, where would be your resolution to forbid him your presence? Then there's but one way to be right—I'll lave home entirely. Down, proud stomach! You must go to service, Honor McBride. There's Mrs. Carver, kind-hearted ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... service to control the prices of those articles and graduate the supplies to the wants of the Government, as well as to regulate their quality and insure their uniformity. The same reasons induce me to recommend the erection of a manufactory of gunpowder, to be under the direction of the Ordnance Office. The establishment of a manufactory of small arms west of the Alleghany Mountains, upon the plan proposed by the Secretary of War, will contribute to extend throughout that country the improvements which exist in establishments ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... point. They were sent to New York by their chief on private business; something of importance, but perfectly legitimate,—nothing to do with arms or anything of the kind. Well, Carlos did not tell Rita the object of his coming, and she instantly saw fire and gunpowder, treason and plot,—in short, cooked up a whole melodrama to suit herself,—and believed it, I have no doubt, an hour after she invented it. She wrote Carlos mysterious letters, imploring him to come to her secretly; that her fate and that of her country depended upon his faithfulness and ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... you? I'll blow her up like gunpowder in a copper. We must stay here to-night;—for there's Peregrine, that king of good fellows, we must stay here till he comes back, from a little ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... that he had been the friend of Essex. He was not commonly called upon in such prosecutions. He was not employed by Cecil in the Winchester trials of Raleigh, Grey, and Cobham, three years afterwards, nor in those connected with the Gunpowder Plot. He was called upon now because no one could so much damage Essex; and this last proof of his ready service was required by those whose favour, since Essex had gone hopelessly wrong, he had been diligently seeking. And Bacon acquiesced in the demand, apparently without surprise. No ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... brought away something or other; but particularly the third time I went, I brought away as much of the rigging as I could, as also all the small ropes and rope-twine I could get, with a piece of spare canvass, which was to mend the sails upon occasion, and the barrel of wet gunpowder; in a word, I brought away all the sails first and last, only that I was fain to cut them in pieces, and bring as much at a time as I could; for they were no more useful to be sails, but as mere ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... often rough doings, between the town boys and bull-dogs; free vent was given to spite, and a broken or bruised head, or body, might be the result; but we made no complaint; as loyal subjects we had done our duty in protesting against all such underhand doings as "Gunpowder Plot;" and, after a hearty supper, given by our kind Head Master, we enjoyed the rest, well earned by the exertions ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... come as a pilgrim," said their amins, "and we have fed you with kouskoussu. If you were to come as a chief, wishing to lay his authority on us, instead of white kouskoussu we should treat you to black kouskoussu" (gunpowder). ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... aye made what they call an anniversary of our wedding-day, which happened to be the fifth of November, the very same as that on which the Gunpowder Plot chances to be occasionally held—Sundays excepted. According to custom, this being the fourth year, we collected a good few friends to a tea-drinking; and had our cracks and a glass or two of toddy. Thomas ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... are the leading idea in France. It is manufactured at Bourges and is said to be a hundred times as powerful as gunpowder, or ten times nitroglycerine, and reduces what it strikes to a fine powder. They have also a new rifle powder ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... and other plots and attempts, but Robespierre and other Jacobins defended him, and he escaped even imprisonment. During 1793 and 1794, he monopolized the contract for making and providing the armies with gunpowder; a favour for which he paid Barrere, Carnot, and other members of the Committee of Public Safety, six millions of livres—but by which he pocketed thirty-six millions of livres—himself. He was, under the Directory, menaced with a ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... General Franklin was captured but afterwards made his escape. Some damage was done to the track and Gunpowder Bridge was partially burned. The Cavalry heavily loaded with plunder came within six miles of Baltimore, then turning southward they joined the force near Washington which had been sent in that direction to guard against surprise; part of it halted before ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... fed it to a slave. Children go to bed hungry. Droves of brutal negroes roam at large, stealing, murdering, and threatening blacker crimes. We are under the heel of petty military tyrants, few of whom ever smelled gunpowder in a battle. At the approaching election, not a decent white man in this country can take the infamous test oath. I am disfranchised because I gave a cup of water to the lips of one of my dying boys on the battlefield. My slaves are all voters. ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... in another an orderly arrangement of tin cans upon a shelf, and the ashes of a fire, where sat a Dutch oven. The sight of this last whetted Kerry's hunger; he almost ran to the shelf, and groaned as he found the first can filled with gunpowder, the next with shot, and the third containing some odds and ends ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... painful discoveries—the pair being now rumoured to be keeping a lodging-house together somewhere in Australia. A word to good old Broadmorlands would produce the effect of a lighted match on a barrel of gunpowder. It would be the end of Ffolliott. Neither would it be a good introduction to Betty's first season in London, neither would it be enjoyed by her mother, whom he remembered as a woman with primitive views of domestic rectitude. He smiled the awful smile as he took out of his pocket the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... him. The one much accusing the other, insomuch that the Friar could not reconcile nor take up the controversy between them, at last, and after long debate, the Friar said, "I know a way soon to discover the truth of this cause," and commanded that two barrels of gunpowder should be set in the midst of the market-place at Buda, and said unto the parties, "He that will maintain his Doctrine to be right, and the true Word of God, let him sit upon one of these barrels, and I will give fire unto it, and he that remaineth living and unburned, ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... wooden mortar with recess to receive a ball is shown. Two wires enter the base but do not touch. On placing the ball in position and passing a spark from a Leyden jar across the interval between the wires, the heat and disturbance are enough to project the ball. Gunpowder may be used, the discharge being passed through a wet string to ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... The fifth of November, Gunpowder treason and plot; I see no reason Why gunpowder treason Should ever ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... Mademoiselle Fifi WOULD HAVE A MINE, and on that occasion all the officers thoroughly enjoyed themselves for five minutes. The little marquis went into the drawing-room to get what he wanted, and he brought back a small, delicate china teapot, which he filled with gunpowder, and carefully introduced a piece of German tinder into it, through the spout. Then he lighted it, and took this infernal machine into the next room; but he came back immediately and shut the door. The Germans all stood expectantly, their faces full of childish, smiling curiosity, and ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... curse of a 'burnt father' might attach to his children." General Pollock also determined to destroy the Char Chouk, the principal bazaar in Cabul, where the remains of the unfortunate Sir William M'Naghten had been exposed to insult. This bazaar was destroyed by gunpowder; and indeed the whole city, with the exception of the Bala Hissar and the quarter of the Kuzzilbashes, was laid in ruins. About this time General Pollock was joined by General Nott from Candahar; and on the 12th of October ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... into,' said the doctor, 'and a couple of men catch one moment's glimpse of a boy, in the midst of gunpowder smoke, and in all the distraction of alarm and darkness. Here's a boy comes to that very same house, next morning, and because he happens to have his arm tied up, these men lay violent hands upon him—by doing which, they place his life in great ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... messenger with instructions to bring him away. The parties who held him were, however, not disposed to part with him without a ransom, the amount of which was fixed at nearly L70, which was paid by Captain Laing in broadcloths, gunpowder, and other articles, and which was subsequently refunded by the African Society. Lander arrived in England on the 30th April 1828, on which occasion we were introduced to him by the late Captain Fullerton, from whose papers ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... by lofty circular bastions, and between these and at the four corners were a series of low bastions which gave an admirable flanking fire. The wall on the western flank was of similar construction, but had been considerably damaged at the northern end, evidently by an explosion of gunpowder. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... satisfaction, and then took leave of each other. Aunt Fanny kissed Helen, and George, too, in spite of his blushes, and told them to bottle up their patience so that it would last for one whole week, observing that she was thankful that curiosity was not made of gunpowder, and there was no danger of their blowing up before the great ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks, Part First - Being the First Book • Sarah L Barrow
... gunpowder once, shortly after our escape from Phutra and at the beginning of the confederation of the wild tribes of Pellucidar. He said that some one, without any knowledge of the fact that such a thing might be concocted, had once stumbled upon it by accident, and ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Feudalism was at best an organized anarchy, suited to rude and barbarous times, but so well was it adapted to existing conditions that it became the prevailing form of government, and continued as such until a better order of society could be evolved. With the invention of gunpowder, the rise of cities and industries, the evolution of modern States by the consolidation of numbers of these feudal governments, and the establishment of order and civilization, feudalism passed out with the passing of the conditions which gave rise ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... a lower shaft whilst two fuses were fired in an upper. The anticipation of the shock was worse than the realisation. Each of us carried a candle, and the concussion blew them all out; but beyond that, the smell of gunpowder, and smoke, we experienced no harm, and as we had matches and the candles were soon relit, we had not to grope ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... straight and fair, to be blighted in her beauty—no, not for a moment. But Chrissy was cruel enough to cherish a passing wish that, by some instantaneous transformation, Bourhope might be pitted with smallpox, or scarred with gunpowder, or have premature age brought upon him as with the wave of a wand—the soul within ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... mountains of California, and consecrating them as the future abode of millions upon millions of the sons of liberty. The merchant and whale ships lying at anchor, catching the enthusiasm, joined in the salute; and for a time the harbour and bay in front of the town were enveloped in clouds of gunpowder smoke. ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... advantage of and exploited to the saving of their lives. When they had reason to expect an attack on their villages, the Pueblo laid numerous mines and torpedoes on all the approaches and streets of their towns. While these mines did not possess the destructive power of dynamite or gunpowder, they were equally effective and powerful, and never failed to repulse the enemy, especially if reinforced by hand grenades of like ammunition, thrown by squaws and pappooses from the flat roofs of their houses. By some ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... great natural fortification, which among military men is regarded as the key to the Mediterranean Sea, abounds in caverns, many of which are natural, while others have been made by the explosion of gunpowder in the centre of the mountain, forming great vaults of such height and extent that in case of a siege they would contain the whole garrison. The caverns (the most considerable is the hall of St. George) communicate with the batteries established all along the mountain by a winding road, passable ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in the vestry. It would seem, from all that can be learned, that two hundred years ago there were in England viragoes so virulent, women so gifted with gab and so loaded and primed with the devil's own gunpowder, that all moral suasion was wasted on them, and simply showed, as old Reisersberg wrote, that fatue agit qui ignem conatur extinguere sulphure ('t is all nonsense to try to quench fire with brimstone). For such diavolas they had made—what the sexton is just going to show ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... have begun," I said. "From this point I may be able to help you, and we will get on. At the word 'gunpowder' Veronica pricked up her ears. The thing by its very nature would appeal to Veronica's sympathies. She went to bed dreaming of gunpowder. Left in solitude before the kitchen fire, other maidens might have seen pictured in the glowing coals, princes, carriages, ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... hear what the enterprise is. I trow that it will quell even thy brave spirit, burning though it be with valor. This night some of our ships covered over with rosin and pitch and filled with sulphur, gunpowder and other combustibles, are to be sent into the midst of the Spanish, fired and set adrift amongst them. 'Tis fraught with great danger and peril to the lives of those ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... required to pay for them, and they naturally preferred the public rejoicings, which cost them nothing. They were particularly fond of illuminations and fireworks, which are of much later origin than the invention of gunpowder; although the Saracens, at the time of the Crusades, used a Greek fire for illuminations, which considerably alarmed the Crusaders when they first witnessed its effects. Regular fireworks appear to have been invented in Italy, where the pyrotechnic art ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... up alive, floating on fragments of the wreck. It sank almost directly the boats got up to the spot. What had caused the catastrophe no one could tell, but the brig certainly must have had a larger amount of gunpowder on board her than was supposed. Mr Schank therefore, as before, continued to act as our First-Lieutenant. Once or twice we returned to the Hoogley to refit, and on one occasion we were sent round to Madras and Bombay on special service. We were running down the Coromandel coast; the wind fell, ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... him yesterday and presented the packet; but you should have seen him start, when I happened to mention its contents. Not the captors of Guido Fawkes bounced with more consternation, when that eminent pyrotechnist proposed to touch off his gunpowder for their especial gratification and amusement. "What!" exclaimed our mutual friend—"Have you lived so long in America, as to have forgotten the laws of a civilised and Christian land! Would you have me seized as a smuggler; posted in every newspaper as an importer of contraband goods; brutally ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... in the ordinary way, through all the intermediate stages. Nor would I alter the arrangement with regard to spiritual growth. It is best to learn a lesson at a time. You might raise the dough quicker by gunpowder than by leaven or yeast; but I prefer to see it raised in the ordinary way. I am content to grow in grace and knowledge, as people grow in strength and stature. It is God's plan, and I like it. If anybody can pass from ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... a match to the gunpowder of Billy's fears. Her self-control was shattered instantly ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... fought out in France and not in England.[20] Then, in 1346, he won his famous victory of Crecy against overwhelming numbers of his enemies. It has been said that cannon were effectively used for the first time at Crecy, and it was certainly about this time that gunpowder began to assume a definite though as yet subordinate importance in warfare. But we need not go so far afield to explain the English victory. It lay in the quality of the fighting men. Through a century and a half of freedom, England had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... people whose era begins nearly 4,600 years back (2697 B.C.). A people so accurate, and by whom some of the most important inventions of modern Europe and its so much boasted modern science were anticipated—such as the compass, gunpowder, porcelain, paper, printing, &c.—known and practiced thousands of years before these were rediscovered by the Europeans, ought to receive some trust for their records. And from Lao-tze down to Hiouen-Thsang their literature is filled with allusions and references to that ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... fire applied to gunpowder produce an effect more instantaneous than did these two words. Jeanne de Belfiel started up in all the beauty of twenty, which her awful nudity served to augment; she seemed a soul escaped from hell appearing to, her seducer. With her dark eyes she cast fierce glances ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... hams and dry filh, which conftituted part of our victualling. Divine service alfo was performed on deck. In the afternoon the wind was foutherly, with frefh gales, but dry, fo that we were able the following morning to clean between decks, and alfo to fumigate the fhip with gunpowder. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... showed no creek or river that promised to impede us, and the Indians were not likely to annoy us while the camp and the remains of the barque afforded any plunder. Accordingly we packed up, and having destroyed what muskets and weapons we did not want and thrown our spare gunpowder into the sea, shortly after noon began our march through ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... my house. The man in the house said: 'Why waste your tears and regrets on Mrs. Lincoln?' An hour afterward the husband and wife went out to make a call, doubtless to gossip about me; on their return they found their young boy had almost blinded himself with gunpowder. Who will say that the cry of the 'widow and fatherless' is disregarded in His sight! If man is not merciful, God will be in his ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... discharged, or reduced to hodbearing, and an Architect is hired, and on all hands fitly encouraged: till communities and individuals discover, not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a generation by Knowledge can rank on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces by Gunpowder; that with Generals and Fieldmarshals for killing, there should be world-honoured Dignitaries, and were it possible, true God-ordained Priests, for teaching. But as yet, though the Soldier wears openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I have travelled, did the Schoolmaster ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... in port yet, Mr Higgins; and I must insist upon it you do not fire. You have taken my gunpowder, and I cannot allow it to be ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... away. The season was remarkable for its severity: the Thames was frozen over, and the supply of water entirely inadequate. So great hogsheads of ale were hoisted up from the cellars and the liquor fed to the clumsy hand-engines of the period. When the ale gave out, recourse was had to gunpowder,—buildings in the track of the flames being blown up; but in this dangerous work the Temple library was demolished. In the end, however, the Temple was the gainer by this fire: much better structures took the place of the old rookeries, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... been anything, it could only have been a wild spark of the mad meteor from which he sprang; and as Heaven in its wisdom forbade that, I think it much of its mercy that it extinguished him early and utterly, and did not leave him to flare and flicker and burn himself out with foul gunpowder smoke, and smell of dead men slain in battle, in the middle of the smoldering ashes ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... In many ways money is as dangerous to handle as gunpowder. You can't be too careful either as to who you are working with. Anyhow there was a mighty flashy burst up, a sensation, and—his familiar haunts knew him no more. But before he vanished he went to see Miss Moorsom. That very fact argues for his innocence—don't ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... pounds of sugar. Besides these necessary supplies for subsistence on the road, we took with us twenty-four pack-saddles, one heavy square cart, two spring carts, with harness for nine horses, four tents, a canvas sheepfold, twenty-two pounds gunpowder, one hundred and thirty pounds shot, a quarter cask of ammunition, twenty-eight tether ropes (each twenty-one yards long) forty hobble chains and straps, together with boxes, paper, etc., for preserving specimens, firearms, cloaks, blankets, tomahawks, and ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... But gunpowder changed all that. In the chase it gave weak men their innings beside the strong. Man could kill at long range, with little danger to himself, or even with none at all. And then in the wild beast world the great final struggle for existence began. Man's flippant phrase,—"the survival ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... him for having wronged him. Good Powers! How I have been hating him for these months past! Oh, Harry! I was in a fury at the tavern the other day, because Mountain came up so soon, and put an end to our difference. We ought to have burned a little gunpowder between us, and cleared the air. But though I don't love him, as you do, I know he is a good soldier, a good officer, and a brave, honest man; and, at any rate, shall love him none the worse for not wanting to ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... trained to neat habits by my father. The Oulton seamen had given me a taste for doing clever neat work, such as plaits or pointing, so that I was not such a bungler at delicate handicraft as most boys of my age. I even took the trouble to hide the tar marks on my wads by smearing wetted gunpowder all over them. When I had hidden all the letters, I wrote out a few pencilled notes upon leaves neatly cut from my pocket-book. I wrote a varying arrangement of ciphers on each leaf, in the neatest hand I could command. I always made neat figures; ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... inflammable had every thing there become, under the scorching sun of the preceding fortnight, which had been relieved by neither rain nor cloud, that, the instant the fire touched the tinder-like leaves, it flashed up as from a parcel of scattered gunpowder; and, bursting with almost explosive quickness all around, and swiftly leaping from bough to bough and treetop to treetop, it spread with such astonishing celerity that he found it hard on his heels, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... European history, before modern chemistry had provided the cheaper and more expeditious method of producing potassium nitrate for the manufacture of gunpowder and fireworks, much land and effort were devoted to niter-farming which was no other than a specific application of this most ancient Chinese practice and probably imported from China. While it was not until 1877 to 1879 that men of science came to know that the processes ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... of Elizabeth's fleet, but kinsman to Thomas Winter of Huddington, who at the close of this reign was constantly aiding the Spanish Romanists in their intrigues here, and eventually took part in the Gunpowder Plot. Such tradition is highly to the credit of the Forest timber of those days, if not to the iron as well. Both must have been renowned for supplying an important portion of the materials used in the Royal dockyards, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... antecedents; something else was needed to bring down a picture. Unconditionality also distinguishes a true cause from an invariable antecedent that is only a co-effect: for when day follows night something else happens; the Earth rotates upon her axis: a flash of gunpowder is not an unconditional antecedent of a report; the powder must be ignited in a ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... is so tough that engineers would much rather excavate the most obdurate rocks than attempt to remove it from their path. Hard rocks are more or less easily assailable with gunpowder, and the numerous joints and fissures by which they are traversed enable the workmen to wedge them out often in considerable lumps. But till has neither crack nor joint; it will not blast, and to pick it to pieces is a very slow and laborious process. Should streaks of sand penetrate it, water ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... Battalion Headquarters blessed the hand of S. Francis. In the monastery garden on the hill-top the Battalion rested for three days, that is, rested from fighting and marching, but the time was not wasted. The Division set to work on the Roman Road with pick and shovel and gunpowder and in the three days made it passable for 60-pounder ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... were tangled and knotted with burs; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral, but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it. Still he must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a favorite steed of his master's, the choleric Van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own spirit into the animal; for, old and broken-down as he looked, ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... steadily. Then he went up to Rachel, and taking her hand, raised it to his lips. There was in his manner a boundless reverent adoration that was to Lady Newhaven's jealousy as a match to gunpowder. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... supposes (to use his own expression) "that the salutary truths, which he inculcates, are making their way into their bosoms." Their bosom is a rock of granite, on which falsehood has long since built her stronghold. Poor truth has had a hard work of it with her little pickaxe. Nothing but gunpowder will do. As a proof, however, of the progress of this sap of Truth, he gives us a confession they had made not long before he wrote. "Their fraternity" (as was lately stated by themselves in a solemn report) "has been the brotherhood ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke |
