"Stiletto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her father to alight, whilst the others surrounded Guerra as he set his foot on the ground, pinioning his arms and plunging their hands into his pockets, from whence they drew two small pistols and a black mask, such as was worn at the carnivals; besides these weapons, he carried a stiletto in his bosom. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... fastened my attention was this vague, unfocussed, roving, quasi-introspective vision flashing with panther-like suddenness into a directness that seemed to burn and pierce one like the thrust of a hot stiletto, His face was clean-shaven, save for a mere thumb-mark of black hair directly under the centre of his lower lip. This Iago-like tab and the almost fierce brilliancy of his concentrated gaze gave to his countenance ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... was guillotined a few days after Vaillant. A month or so later, June 25, President Carnot arrived at Lyons to open an exposition. That evening, while on his way to a theater, he was stabbed to death by the Italian anarchist, Caserio, on the handle of whose stiletto was engraved "Vaillant." ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... delicious afternoon is blowing without there, wasting for ever; and never a glimpse of it. Delicate work this! Here's a needle might serve for a genuine stiletto! No matter,—it is the cause,—it is the cause that makes, as my mother says, each stitch in this clumsy fabric a grander thing than the flashing of the bravest lance that brave ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... over and over stitch forming a smooth, round edge. Like satin stitch, all outlines are run with an even darning stitch, except the very small eyelet holes, made with a stiletto. Long or oval openings must ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... absurd!" interposed Myra. "Are you suggesting that Don Carlos may murder me? Do you anticipate his plunging a stiletto or some sort of Spanish dagger into my heart, or committing suicide on our nice clean doorstep, because I do not reciprocate ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... noises of caroches, waggons, mechanick and base workes, workshoppes, also sights, pageants, spectacles of outlandish birds, fishes, crocodiles, Indians, mermaids; adde quarrels, fightings, wranglings of the common sort, plebs, the rabble, duelloes with fists, proper to this island, at which the stiletto'd and secrete Italian laughs.) Withdrawing myselfe from these buzzing and illiterate vanities, with a bezo las manos to the city, I begin to inhale, draw in, snuff up, as horses dilatis naribus snort the fresh aires, with exceeding ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... they were to guard. The habit of wearing arms in private life exercised a kindred influence. So long as this habit continued, society was darkened by personal combat, street-fight, duel, and assassination. The Standing Army is to the nation what the sword was to the modern gentleman, the stiletto to the Italian, the knife to the Spaniard, the pistol to our slave-master,—furnishing, like these, the means of death; and its possessor is not slow to use it. In stating the operation of this system we are not left to inference. As France, according to Sir Thomas More, shows "how ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... tokens. Gonsalvo, who was his intimate friend, could tell many things if he chose. Sebastiano had brilliant triumphs. Once he had even been in great danger because the woman who loved and sought him was of such rank that her relatives would have resorted to the stiletto rather than allow her infatuation ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... all the persons in the room, she was possibly the only one completely cheerful. She was used to these situations and enjoyed them. Her mind, roaming into the past, recalled the night when her cousin Warminster had been pinked by a stiletto in his own drawing-room by a lady from South America. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... then passes the unction upon the sick person with the stiletto or the extremity of his right thumb, which he dips each time in the oil. This unction should be made especially upon the five parts of the body which nature has given to man as the organs of sensation, namely: the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... hastily clicked something under the table, while Helen turned pale, but quickly drew a small stiletto from a fold of ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... a one-sided romance. Romance is an atmosphere breathed by two, not an emotion felt by one. To be sure, he was the most appallingly in earnest lover woman ever had. He wept for a kiss with his fingers twiddling on the hilt of his stiletto. Dear heart, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... physical sufferings were as nothing compared with those he experienced mentally. He had hoped to be in fair fighting condition within a week at the latest. Wrapped in paper and tucked away in the back of the ship's safe he had a silver-hilted stiletto he had taken away from a cutthroat who had tried to rob him once in Valparaiso—and with this weapon he had planned to cut away the lock on the state-room door. And ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... lord, allow me to touch upon a more delicate subject; allow me to enquire the cause why our men display so little military ardour. They expose their lives freely when impelled by love and hatred; and a stab from a stiletto given or received in such a cause, excites neither astonishment nor dread. They fear not death when natural passions bid them brave its terrors; but often, it must be owned, they prefer life to political interests, which seldom affect them because they possess ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... the Countess Fulvia has crept in, a stiletto in her hand. She leans over the Regent and stabs her ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... near a brook Darragh lighted his pipe and sat him down to examine the booty in detail. Two pistols, a stiletto, and a blackjack composed the arsenal of Mr. Sard. A large wallet disclosed more than four thousand dollars in Treasury notes—something to reimburse Ricca ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... his sound constitution and abstemious habits stood him in good stead. Very important among the qualities which restored him to health were his optimism and cheerfulness. An early manifestation of the first of these was seen when, on regaining consciousness, he called for the stiletto which had been drawn from the main wound and, running his fingers along the blade, said cheerily to his friends, "It is not filed." What this meant, any one knows who has seen in various European collections the daggers dating from the "ages ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... night out, But the stubborn wind resisted, And, for spite, dasht through the crevice Of the window. "Foolish girl, then, Thus to wait for me!" he muttered. When a shriek—so wild, so piercing— Weirdly wild—intensely piercing— Struck him like a sharp stiletto. Then another—and another! Purging clear his turbid senses. "Blanche!" he cried; and sprang towards her Just in time to save her falling; And her child fell from her bosom, Like a snow-fall from the house-top To the earth. "Blanche! Blanche!" he gaspt ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... questioners, "they were five,—rushing out from the dark of the convent wall against him when he came alone down the steps of the Ponte della Pugna,—the villains held the others down. And Fra Paolo lay dead on the Fondamenta—stabbed in many places, as if one would cut him in bits—and the stiletto still in his forehead! And ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... round or long patterns. Trace first the outline of the hole, cut away a small round piece of material, not too close to the outlines (when the button-hole is very small merely insert the point of the scissors or a stiletto into the material), fold the edge of the material back with the needle, and work the hole in overcast stitch, inserting the needle into the empty place in the centre and drawing it out under the outline. Some button-holes are worked separately; ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... souvenir and bent over it. A fine bit of Oriental workmanship that any museum might have valued; the haft was of silver, exquisitely chased, the blade was straight and slender, narrowing to a needlelike point, so that it belonged rather to the stiletto type than the dagger. An inscription ran lengthwise down the steel, which was of a distinct bluish tinge where it was not darkly stained. About an inch from the tip a tiny triangular nick had been made in one of ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... and odious instincts have been the bane of humanity. They have given us the stiletto, the Morgue, the bowie-knife. Our race must inevitably in the end outlive them. The test of man's plane in the scale of being is how far he has outlived them. They are surviving relics of the ape and tiger. But we must let the ape and tiger die. We must cease to be Calibans. ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... camp was prone to be a scene of loud revel and sudden brawl. They were, withal, of great pride, yet it was not like our inflammable Spanish pride: they stood not much upon the 'pundonor,' the high punctilio, and rarely drew the stiletto in their disputes; but their pride was silent and contumelious. Though from a remote and somewhat barbarous island, they believed themselves the most perfect men upon earth, and magnified their chieftain, the Lord Scales, beyond the greatest of their grandees. With all this, it must be said of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with a pledge to her father that she shall have a dowry of ten thousand lire when she marries. The father is pleased, the daughter is not. She sits and cries. She talks of herself getting at him with a stiletto." ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... had caused the Count to be kidnapped one evening and brought to the palazzo bound with cords. And there in one of the large halls, before freeing him, he compelled him to confess himself to a monk. Then he severed the cords with a stiletto, threw the lamps over and extinguished them, calling to the Count to keep the stiletto and defend himself. During more than an hour, in complete obscurity, in this hall full of furniture, the two men sought one another, fled from one another, seized hold ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... built that way can be destroyers, but we can look as near it as we can. Let me explain to you, Sir, that the stern of a Thorneycroft boat, which we are not, comes out in a pretty bulge, totally different from the Yarrow mark, which again we are not. But, on the other 'and, Dirk, Stiletto, Goblin, Ghoul, Djinn, and A-frite—Red Fleet dee-stroyers, with 'oom we hope to consort later on terms o' perfect equality—are Thorneycrofts, an' carry that Grecian bend which we are now adjustin' to our arriere-pensee—as the French ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... prayer, wherein two clerics led our devotion, one Master Mungo Law, a Lowlander, and the other his lordship's chaplain—Master Alexander Gordon, who had come on this expedition with some fire of war in his face, and never so much as a stiletto ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... sketch—it is the portrait of a woman who once lived. But the peculiar mark of depravity is the eye: this woman looks at you with a cold, calm, calculating, brazen leer. Hidden in the folds of her dress or in the coil of her hair is a stiletto—she can find it in an instant—and as she looks at you out of those impudent eyes, she is mentally searching out your most vulnerable spot. In this woman's face there is an entire absence of wonder, curiosity, modesty or passion. All ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... there they stabbed her in the left breast, turning the poignard in the wound, and asking her with savage insults if her heart was pierced. Her last words were, 'Jesus, I pardon you.' Then they turned to Flaminio, and left him pierced with seventy-four stiletto wounds. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... occasioned all French Catholics to earnestly desire her conversion. I have stated already that the grade of Templar-Mistress is concerned partly with profanations of the Eucharist. For example, the aspirant to this initiation is required to drive a stiletto into the consecrated Host with a becoming expression of fury. When Miss Vaughan visited Paris in the year 1885, where Miss Walder had sometime previously established herself, she was invited to enter this grade, and accepted the offer. A seance for initiation was held accordingly, but Miss Vaughan ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... the Pole, while you, who are in the very town where Catherine de' Medici was born, and within a stone's throw of Rome, where Borgia and his holy father sent cardinals to the other world by hecatombs, are surprised to hear that there is such an instrument as a stiletto. The papal is now a mere gouty chair, and the good old souls don't even waddle out of it ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... his resolution and his movements might not be hampered by their presence and their fears, he found means to persuade his wife to take the children for a visit to their grandfather, and setting his affairs in order and providing himself with two revolvers, a bowie knife, and an Italian stiletto, he even began to look forward to the approaching struggle with something of that pleasure which man experiences in the anticipation of any contest; and there is indeed a certain keen zest in playing the game where ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... the generous Maecenas; for observe, I should be sorry to fare like my foolhardy colleagues and cousins, who, armed with stiletto and pocket-pistol, hold their court in gloomy ravines, or mix in the subterranean laboratory the wondrous polychrest, which, when taken with proper zeal, tickles our political noses, either too little or too much, with ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... 'stiletto' would, from their significations, appear to be radically very different words; and yet they are something more akin than even cousins-german. 'Style' is known to be from the [Greek: stylos], or stylus, which the Greeks and Romans employed in writing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... black locks, which he sacrificed pitilessly, however, and adopted a Brutus, as being more revolutionary: finally, he carried an enormous club, that was his code and digest: in like manner, De Retz used to carry a stiletto in his pocket by way ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could prolong so exhausting a struggle. It was not doubtful now which of the two would come off victorious. During the whole course of the fight Gascoyne had acted entirely on, the defensive. A small knife or stiletto hung at his left side, but he never attempted to use it, and he never once tried to throw his adversary. In fact it now became evident, even to the widow's perceptions, that the captain was actually playing ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... personality is generous; like Murat's kingly garments, it attracts danger. But Conti's duplicity will be known only to the women who love him. In his art he has that deep Italian jealousy which led the Carlone to murder Piola, and stuck a stiletto into Paesiello. That terrible envy lurks beneath the warmest comradeship. Conti has not the courage of his vice; he smiles at Meyerbeer and flatters him, when he fain would tear him to bits. He ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... brought from the ship on a subsequent visit were a stiletto that had originally been given to me by my mother. It was an old family relic with a black ebony handle and a finely tempered steel blade four or five inches in length. I also got a stone tomahawk—a mere curio, obtained from the Papuans; and a quantity of a special kind of wood, also taken ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... lovely and easy. Then Mr. Victim introduces a few specialties. Picks a gun from somewhere around his shirt-front, shoots the garroter over his shoulder; kills the man in front, who is at him with a stiletto, ducks a couple of shots from the gang, and lays out two more of 'em. The rest take to the briny. Tally: two dead, one dying, one wounded, Mr. Guest walks to the shore end, meets two patrolmen, and turns in his gun. 'I've done a job for you,' says he. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... began to whistle. Hearing his whistling, the good woman went suddenly into the queen's chamber, and took from a place known to her therein, a sharp stiletto. Then, when the duke followed her to ascertain what this flight meant, "When you pass that line," cried she, pointing to a ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... But the thin stiletto of Macchiavelli is a more effective weapon than these fantastic arms of his. He had not the secret of compression that properly belongs to the political thinker, on whom, as Hazlitt said of himself, "nothing but abstract ideas makes any impression." ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... asked by any editor to do this reportorial stiletto work, let me urge you to take to professional burglary, rather than consent to write what such an ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... as I am concerned, take him, comrade, and free of cost. Only I warn you, watch him well or you will find a stiletto in your back.' ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... and a half inches long; in the mud his feet had left tracks that were fifteen inches from tip to tip. He was fat, and sleek, and powerful. His eyes, no larger than hickory nuts, were eight inches apart. His two upper fangs, sharp as stiletto points, were as long as a man's thumb, and between his great jaws he could crush the neck ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... bracket, was pasted the order for general mobilisation. And on the sidewalk at the base of the wall lay a man, face downward, his dusty shoes crossed under the wide flaring trousers, the greasy casquet still crowding out his lop ears; his hand clenched beside a stiletto which lay on the stone flagging ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... diamond. This, the fairy said, was to hold the water of immortality, which would break any vessel made by the hand of man. By the side of the vial Graceful found a dagger with a triangular blade—a very different thing from the stiletto of his father the fisherman, which he had been forbidden to touch. With this weapon he could ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... Antonio Perez adopted another plan, viz., that we should kill him some evening with pistols, stilettoes, or rapiers, and that without delay. I started, therefore, for my country, to find one of my intimate friends, and a stiletto with a very thin blade, a much better weapon than a pistol for murdering a man. I travelled post, and they gave me some bills of exchange of Lorenzo Spinola at Genoa, to get money at Barcelona, and which, in fact, I ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... fingers under his nose then stooped, picked up the stiletto, and swiftly restored it to its sheath. Her hands resting upon her hips, she came forward, until her dark evil face almost touched the yellow, smiling ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... stayed, persisting in keeping me company. This was the first time I had suffered from these cannibals, and such were my torments, I almost wished some blood-thirsty Italian would come and put an end to them with his stiletto. ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... of various adventures, the band got diminished in numbers, they stuck no handbills on the walls to invite people to elect new brigands to fill up the vacant places; they simply chose among the vagabonds and such like individuals those, who seemed to them, the most capable of dealing a blow with a stiletto or stripping a traveller of his valuables, and the band, thus properly reinforced, went about its usual occupations. The devil! Messieurs, one must say what is what, and call things by their names. Let us call a cat a cat, and Pilotel a thief. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... shrowk at close quarters. It was about thirty feet long. Its bright-coloured skin was shining, slippery, and leathery; a mane of black hair covered its long neck. Its face was awesome and unnatural, with its carnivorous eyes, frightful stiletto, and blood-sucking cavity. There were true fins on its back ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... at the top of the stair, chatting pleasantly about every new-comer, when he suddenly stopped. "Hulloa," he said, "here's Morosine, as smooth as a glass stiletto. He'll amuse you. I'll ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... firmly that she would not divulge anything, a struggle took place for a paper which she picked off a table; and before her attendants could come to her assistance she received a severe cut from a stiletto. The assassin was seized, condemned, and ordered for execution, without the last offices of ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... feet by a gray ball of fury that leaped at him wielding a stiletto-thin knife. He caught at the Rumi's arm with both hands but the creature was not only fast but strong. It twisted out of his grasp and slashed at him and only a quick sideward roll saved him. Desperately he brought his fist down ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... made of the use of pits and traps in warfare. In addition to these it is customary for a returning war party to conceal in the trail many saonag, small stiletto-shaped bamboo sticks, which pierce the feet of those in pursuit. A night camp is effectively protected in the same manner ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... deliverer. Twenty assassins rushed upon me and aimed at my breast. The grenadiers of the legislative body, whom I had left at the door of the hall, ran forward, and placed themselves between me and the assassins. One of these brave grenadiers (Thome) had his clothes pierced by a stiletto. They ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... some respect beyond the ordinary, but wishes not to show himself otherwise than as an ordinary mortal with ordinary knowledge. The pretender is on the offensive, challenging attention: the dissembler is on his defence against notice. "Simulation," says Bolingbroke, "is a stiletto, not only an offensive but an unlawful weapon, and the use of it may be rarely, very rarely, excused, but never justified. Dissimulation is a shield, as secrecy is armour: and it is no more possible to preserve secrecy in the administration ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... appearance of the ambassadress with the customary offering of trinkets from the lover to his promised spouse. This old Caprese custom has disappeared, but the girls still pride themselves on the number and value of their ornaments—the "spadella," or stiletto which binds the elaborately braided mass of their ebon hair; the circular gold earrings with inner circles of pearls; the gold chain or lacetta, worn fold upon fold round the neck; the bunch of gold talismans suspended on the breast; the profusion of heavy silver rings which load ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... cardinal, in order that he might instruct her in the duties of the devout. This wicked shepherd found the lamb so magnificently beautiful that he attempted to debauch her. Theodora instantly stabbed herself with a stiletto, in order not to be contaminated by the evil-minded priest. This adventure, which was consigned to the history of the period, made a great commotion in Rome, and was deplored by everyone, so much was the daughter ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... formidable instruments when used against their schoolmasters. Afterward they came to be employed in all the bloody relations and uses to which a 'bare bodkin' can be put, and hence our acceptation of 'stiletto.' Caesar himself, it is supposed, got his 'quietus' by means of a 'stylus;' nor is he the first or last character whose 'style' has been his ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the throat, with a pertinacity and acharnement of malice that would have caused me to laugh immoderately, had it not been for one intolerable wound to my feelings. These mercenary libellers, whose stiletto is in the market, and at any man's service for a fixed price, callous and insensible as they are, yet retain enough of the principles common to human nature, under every modification, to know where ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... spite of long training in the kind of warfare attaching, of necessity, to Circulating Libraries, was very near to tears—also murder. She would have been delighted to pierce Joan's heart with a bright stiletto, had such a weapon been handy. She saw the softest, easiest, idlest job in the world slipping out of her fingers; she saw herself, a desolate and haggard virgin, begging her bread on the Polchester streets. She saw...but never mind her visions. They were terrible ones. She had recourse ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... however, two excellent knife-shops in the Boulevard du Palais, where every description of stiletto may be purchased, where, indeed, the enterprising may buy a knife which will not only go shrewdly into a foe, but come right out on the other side—in front, that is to say, for no true Corsican is so foolish as to stab anywhere but in the ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... worse than look at you, if you come any nearer me," she threatened. "Do you think I ride all over the desert where I've a mind to without protection? I guess not." She lifted her skirt with a quick movement and drew a long knife, keen as a stiletto, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... this stiletto?" asked the young woman, in a changed voice; "it frightens me to see you ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... his action. He wore a jerkin lined with red, a dark yellow waistcoat, blue breeches, a breast-pouch with fifty cartridges, four pistols, and a small hanger by his side. In his breeches-pocket he kept a small stiletto. He also bore a long gun. On his head he wore continually a net, and upon that his hat. His wife followed him in all his excursions, and he greatly esteemed and loved her. He remained some time in the mountains near Rome, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... In 1853 the French began to take strong measures, and, under the Prefect Thuillier, they hunted the bandits from the macchi, killing between 200 and 300 of them. At the same time an edict was promulgated against bearing arms. It is forbidden to sell the old Corsican stiletto in the shops, and no one may carry a gun, even for sporting purposes, unless he obtains a special licence. These licences, moreover, are only granted for short and precisely ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of terror that echoed through the cavernous woods, Pedro sprang to his feet, while his hand reached for the stiletto that he always carried. But quick as he was, he was not as quick as the bear, for, with a motion like lightning and a grip like steel, Black Bruin pinioned his arms to his sides and held him as though in ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... taken from the aura of a rough and partially intoxicated man in the East End of London, as he struck down a woman; the flash darted out at her the moment before he raised his hand to strike, and caused a shuddering feeling of horror, as though it might slay. The keen-pointed stiletto-like dart (Fig. 23) was a thought of steady anger, intense and desiring vengeance, of the quality of murder, sustained through years, and directed against a person who had inflicted a deep injury on the one who sent it forth; had the latter ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... breakfasts would end tragically, and tried to calm all those violent natures with his kindly, conciliatory smile. But Paganetti reassured him. According to him, the vendetta, although still kept alive in Corsica, very rarely employs the stiletto and the firearm in these days. The anonymous letter has taken their place. Indeed, unsigned letters were received every day at Place Vendome, after ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of literature we are startled at discovering genius with the mind, and, if we conceive the instrument it guides to be a stiletto, with the hand of an assassin—irascible, vindictive, armed with indiscriminate satire, never pardoning the merit of rival genius, but fastening on it throughout life, till, in the moral retribution of human ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... legs, and it wore a gold ball with a frill round it like a crown. You would never have guessed what was inside it. You touched a spring in its waistband and it flew open, and then it was a workbox. Gold scissors and thimble and stiletto sitting up in ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... was the motion with which this girl snatched the mask from the face of the Judge, (he stood as if appalled,) that, ere he had gained his self-possession, she drew from her girdle a pearl-hilted stiletto, and in attempting to ward off the dreadful lunge, he struck it from her hand, and into her own bosom. The weapon fell gory to the floor-the blood trickled down her bodice-a cry of "murder" resounded through ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... to be in just a little while," she put in, following the confident assertion with a query that came as suddenly as a stiletto stab: "Who ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... paled at this threat, for the Swiss are a peace-loving people, and he told his daughter sadly that she was going to bring her father's grey hairs in sorrow to the grave through the medium of her lover's stiletto. This feat, however, would have been difficult to perform, as the girl flippantly pointed out to him, for the old man was as bald as the smooth round top of the Ortler; nevertheless, she spoke to her lover about it, ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... a serious quarrel they are prone to decide it with the stiletto, or, if they belong to the class which subscribes to the code, they meet on the field of honor with rapiers or pistols; Anglo-Saxons are accustomed to settle their disputes in a court of law or with their fists; ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Lucien began to understand the sour look which seemed to add to the bleak expression of envy on Vernou's face; the acerbity of the epigrams with which his conversation was sown, the journalist's pungent phrases, keen and elaborately wrought as a stiletto, were at once explained. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... there—calm, composed, serene. The inanimate clay was clothed in the simple black of a citizen of the Republic; the only mark of office being the red silken sash that covered the spot in the breast where the stiletto-stroke of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... The stiletto-beard, oh, it makes me afear'd, It is so sharp beneath, For he that doth place a dagger in 's face, What ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... you want to. You have the keys of heaven; and without a doubt St. Peter will not close the door in your face. But for myself, I avow I should need potent protection if, being only a poor prince, I had slept with my daughter, and if I had used the stiletto and the cantarella as often as ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... upon the hearth. It was the fragments of the toy stiletto, broken by an uncontrollable twitch of the small fingers that ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... was subject to fits of tender melancholy, and, like Miss Cornelia, adored moonlight, pensive music, and sentimental poetry. But she would have shrunk from contact with a brigand, in a sugar-loaf hat, with a carbine slung across his shoulder, and a stiletto in his sash, with precisely the same kind and degree of horror and disgust that would have affected her in the presence of a vulgar footpad, in a greasy Scotch-cap, armed with a horse-pistol and a sheath-knife. Her romantic tastes differed in many respects from her Aunt Cornelia's. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... and children. Unless the sharks devoured them, their bones are yet about three feet under the floor of that iron foundry. Under the lee of the Northernmost promontory, near a rock marked with peculiar crosses made by the point of the stiletto which I constantly carried in my red silk sash, I buried tons of plate, and doubloons, pieces of eight, pistoles, Louis d'ors, and galleons by the chest. At that time galleons somehow meant to me money pieces in use, though since then the ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... of his right ear. Only the point of it stuck up; the rest was clipped as clean as a rat-terrier's. Some fight to a finish, I thought; some quick upper-cut of the razor of a frenzied negro writhing under the viselike grasp of this man-gorilla with arms and hands of steel; or some sudden whirl of a stiletto, perhaps, which had missed his heart and taken his ear. I did not ask then, and I do not know now. It was a badge of courage, whatever it was—a badge which thrilled and horrified me. As I looked at the terrible mutilation, I could ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... band. Miss Horsman, Mr. Craw, my dear Mrs. Ravenswing, shall we begin the trio? Silence, gentlemen, if you please; it is a little piece from my opera of the 'Brigand's Bride.' Miss Horsman takes the Page's part, Mr. Craw is Stiletto the Brigand, my accomplished pupil is the ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "A long blade. A stiletto—perhaps a kitchen knife. A long narrow blade. It gleamed. And his eyes gleamed. His white teeth, too. I could see them. He was very ferocious. I thought to myself: 'If I hit him he will kill me.' How could I fight with him? He had the knife and I had nothing. I am nearly seventy, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... and he took six darkies on the Orpheum circuit. Five of them were boys he had grown up with; the other was the little mulatto, Babe Divine, who was a wharf nigger round New York, and long before that a plantation hand in Bermuda, until he stuck an eight-inch stiletto in his master's back. Almost before Carlyle realized his good fortune he was on Broadway, with offers of engagements on all sides, and more money than he had ever ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... he is flighty and empty,—if, instead of striking those fifths and sevenths, those harmonious discords, often so much better than the twinned octaves, in the music of thought,—if, instead of striking these, he jangles the chords, stick a fact into him like a stiletto. But remember that talking is one of the fine arts,—the noblest, the most important, and the most difficult,—and that its fluent harmonies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a single harsh note. Therefore conversation which is suggestive rather than argumentative, which lets out the most of each ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... servant, rushing from the parlour, fired a pistol at the Count; the ball of which struck, but did not injure him. It, however, so much surprised him as to throw him off his guard, when the wretch struck him with a stiletto between the shoulders. The Count at first reeled on the step of the door, but instantly rushed up stairs, as is supposed, to get arms from his bed-chamber, which he reached, but only to fall dead on the ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... Perforator. — N. perforator, piercer, borer, auger, chisel, gimlet, stylet[obs3], drill, wimble[obs3], awl, bradawl, scoop, terrier, corkscrew, dibble, trocar[Med], trepan, probe, bodkin, needle, stiletto, rimer, warder, lancet; punch, puncheon; spikebit[obs3], gouge; spear &c. (weapon) 727; puncher; punching machine, punching ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... murder. But Maggie passed him, pushing him out of the way with the watering-pot, threatening to water him too, until one day he drew a revolver. She screamed, and the revolver was put away, but on the next occasion a stiletto that he had brought from Italy was produced, and with a great deal of earnestness life was declared to be a miserable thing. It was absurd, no doubt, but at the same time it was not a little pathetic; ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... assent, when Duroc stepped between them, seized her by the arm, and dragged her to an adjoining room, whither Bonaparte, near fainting from the sudden alarm his friend's interference had occasioned, followed him, trembling. In the right sleeve of Madame Encore's gown was found a stiletto, the point of which was poisoned. She was the same day transported to this capital, under the inspection of Duroc, and imprisoned in the Temple. In her examination she denied having accomplices, and she expired on the rack without telling even her name. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... cast your eye over the motley collection of unredeemed articles. There are pistols of every pattern and almost of every age, the majority of them loaded. There are daggers in infinite variety, including the ingenious fan stiletto, which, when sheathed, may be carried in the hand without arousing suspicion; for the sheath and handle bear; an exact resemblance to a closed fan. There are entire suits of clothes, beds and bedding, tea, sugar, clocks—multitudes ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... or metal coated over with wax, upon which the ancients wrote with a stylus, or iron pen, or point rather, for it was a solid sharp-pointed instrument, some 6 to 8 inches in length, like a lady's stiletto upon a large scale. In the middle of each leaf there appears to have been a button, called umbilicus, intended to prevent the pages touching when closed, and obliterating the letters traced ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... jokes too, but some sort of false shame, some sneaky shyness before the boys, hinders me. I am leaning my elbow on the soft fur of the rug, and my head on my hand, and am staring up at the stars, cool and throbbing, so like little stiletto-holes pricked in heaven's floor, as they steal out in systems and constellations on ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... mentioning that if he wanted to hear the words over again, should meet him in Lobby to-night after questions. Nothing nearer REDMOND'S heart's desire. At five o'clock Colonel, accompanied by another military gentleman, carrying his cloak, a pair of pistols, a stiletto, a bottle of eau de Cologne, a sponge, and a clothes-brush, sternly strode into Lobby. Carefully counted paces till he was standing as nearly as possible on centre tile; folded arms, and wished that Night ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various
... his mind, that, come what might, enemy or no enemy, live or die, he would solve the mystery of Elsie Venner, sooner or later. He was not a man to be frightened out of his resolution by a scowl, or a stiletto, or any unknown means of mischief, of which a whole armory was hinted at in that passing look Dick Venner had given him. Indeed, like most adventurous young persons, he found a kind of charm in feeling that there might be some dangers in ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and the dead meat must show no gaping thrusts or cuts. My teeth are not like yours when you are fasting—even cooked food must not be too tough for them to chew it, now-a-days. If you soak yourself in drink and fail in your blow, and I am not ready with the poisoned stiletto the thing won't come off neatly. But why did not the Roman let his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... its centre the Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes,—the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them,—a crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children,—every ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... better class of hotel keepers, and was always called the "Dodger" by them, being viewed in much the same light as the treacherous miscreant was by the Italian nobleman of the dark ages, who, because he was skilled in the use of the stiletto, was employed to ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... did a dressing in the ward that morning. He had been in to see Augustus Baird, and he felt uneasy. He vented it on Tony, the Italian, with a stiletto thrust in his neck, by jerking at the adhesive. Tony wailed, and Jane Brown, who was the "dirty" nurse—which does not mean what it appears to mean, but is the person who receives the soiled dressings—Jane ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... villages. No doubt some of our readers have come across the old pin poppets which boys and girls carried with them to the village school half a century or more ago. The girls filled them with pins and needles, bodkin and stiletto, and the boys with pencils and pens. In Fig. 75 two curious old pin boxes are illustrated. The pins shown on the same page are, however, of much older date; they are, in fact, merely thorns; these interesting and authentic relics of the "common objects of the home," ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... in its center the Austrian bands play during the time of vespers their martial music jarring with the organ notes—the march drowning the miserere and the sullen crowd thickening round them—a crowd which if it had its will would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children—every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... ascertain whether the interview was preliminary or subsequent to the corpse's kiss was not acute enough to induce him to buy the book. There was another about a kiss, Bacio Infame, on which a lady with a stiletto was defending herself from a bad man. All these were enticing, but we hoped to do better, and I began to blush for the somewhat thin plot of Tristram Shandy and to be thankful that my copy was not ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... hurt Monte's arm a good deal. In fact, with every bump he felt as if Hamilton were prodding his shoulder with a stiletto. Besides being unpleasant, this told rapidly on his strength, and that was dangerous. Above all things, he must remain conscious. Hamilton was quiet because he thought Monte still had the gun and was still able to use it; but let him sway, and matters would be reversed. So Monte gripped ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... both literary and personal, and mentions one occasion on which he beat him, and took away his pistol. His temper was Italian rather than English, and one would conceive of him as quicker with the stiletto than the fist. His connection with the stage ceased in 1613, after he had produced a number of dramas, of which nine have been preserved. He died about twenty years afterwards, in 1634, seemingly in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... curtains draping the big French windows, which opened upon a balcony. The silver stiletto rays darted a greeting to him. ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... I took a better look at this honey. Face it, he was an oily snake, cleaned up as much as possible, but not enough. No amount of dude ranch duds, gold spurs or Indian jewelry could hide his stiletto mentality. He was just a Tenderloin hoodlum with some of the scum scraped off. Well, I should ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... victim of mad tornadoes, which blow me into chaos. Almighty love still reigns and revels in my bosom; and I am at this moment ready to hang myself for a young Edinburgh widow, who has wit and wisdom more murderously fatal than the assassinating stiletto of the Sicilian banditti, or the poisoned arrow of the savage African. My highland dirk, that used to hang beside my crutches, I have gravely removed into a neighbouring closet, the key of which I cannot command in case of spring-tide paroxysms. You ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... admiration; but his open adversaries are, like Mr. Jeffrey, less formidable than his unprincipled Friends. When Greek and Trojan meet on the plain, there is an interest in the combat; but it is hateful and painful to think, that a hero should be wounded behind his back, and by a poisoned stiletto in the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... one side and then on the other. The borders of embroidered muslin collars, &c., are usually finished with buttonhole stitch, worked either the width of an ordinary buttonhole, or in long stitches, and raised like satin stitch. Eyelet holes are made by piercing round holes with a stiletto, and sewing them round. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... letters were useful as far as I employed them; and I like both the place and people, though I don't trouble the latter more than I can help She manages very well—but if I come away with a stiletto in my gizzard some fine afternoon, I shall not be astonished. I can't make him out at all—he visits me frequently, and takes me out (like Whittington, the Lord Mayor) in a coach and six horses. The fact appears to be, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Mexican a mere dark lump on the ground, apparently asleep, but keeping a wary eye on all around. Imperceptibly he crept nearer to where Jo was sitting, but he did not have the weapon he would have preferred in his hand, the stiletto, which was as natural to him as the fangs to ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... knew a pang of jealousy, like a stab of a stiletto. What "he" was of such interest to Marcia that he should send her telegrams announcing his return home, or his failure to come? And why should this person, whoever he might be, also telegraph Ydo? His thoughts reverted involuntarily to the gray-haired man "that ordinary, middle-aged person," who ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... (like JANET) identifies sandwiches with biscuits. She then tries two assumptions (s 1, b 2/3, and s 1/2 b 5/6), and (naturally) ends in contradictions. Then she returns to the first assumption, and finds the 3 unknowns separately: quod est absurdum. STILETTO identifies sandwiches and biscuits, as "articles." Is the word ever used by confectioners? I fancied "What is the next article, Ma'am?" was limited to linendrapers. TWO SISTERS first assume that biscuits are 4 a penny, and ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... a joke more than they feared a hit, would run the risk of an occasional thrust of the doctor's stiletto, for the sake of enjoying the mangling he gave other people; and such rollicking fellows as Murphy, and Durfy, and Dawson, and Squire Egan petted ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... stimulus. And if his style is still impeccably correct, cold-blooded, impersonal, as impersonal as that of Scott himself, it does but conduce the better to his one exclusive aim. It is like the polish of the stiletto Colomba carried always under her mantle, or the beauty of the fire-arms, that beauty coming of nice adaptation to purpose, which she understood so well—a task characteristic also of Merimee himself, a sort of fanatic joy in the perfect pistol-shot, at its height in the ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... was very sensitive, very high-spirited, very impulsive, very patriotic, and singularly truthful. The letter of Mr. Seward to such a man was like a buffet on the cheek of an unarmed officer. It stung like the thrust of a stiletto. It roused a resentment that could not find any words to give it expression. He could not wait to turn the insult over in his mind, to weigh the exact amount of affront in each question, to take counsel, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... When the melamed spoke of the fish Leviathan, so large that the whole world stood on it, and which, in the day of the Messiah, the scholars would eat from the head and the ignorant from the tail, a smile appeared on Meir's thin lips. It was a smile similar to the stiletto. It pierced the one on whose lips it appeared, and it seemed as though it would like to pierce the one who caused it. Ber answered this smile by a sigh. But the four young men who sat opposite Meir noticed it, and on their faces Meir's smile was reflected. After a period of silence, ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... so. I knew it. The accursed one! Oh that I had him here again! I would bury my stiletto in his heart! Over the white hilt I would bury it! I would wash my hands in his blood, and think them blessed ever afterwards! Stay till daylight, Roberto. I have ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... their prey, blind and deaf to everything but their own passions; but the great crowd that had made the threat of disaster so ominous had disappeared. One of the mad group about them, teeth bared, was creeping closer to Torrance, a long stiletto held aloft. But as it jerked back to strike, the hand that held it opened nervelessly, and a spurt of blood covered ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... forwards stealthily. I reached the steward's pantry in the deckhouse amidships, without being seen and secured some polenta and a baraca of water; when, as I was creeping aft again and close to the poop, that villain of a mate caught hold of my arm, pointing a stiletto in my face at the same time, and threatening to stab me if I uttered a cry. But, before I could open my mouth, he shoved a gag in it and then proceeded to drag me to the side of the ship, lashing me to the spot whence your two ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... all spread out on the table I told the tailor that I would blow out his brains if he told anybody about it, and then taking a stiletto I proceeded to cut and slash the coats, vests, and trousers all over, to the astonishment of the tailor, who thought I must be mad to treat such beautiful clothes in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... lonely herdsman, motionless as a statue, with his long, slender pike tapering up like a lance into the air; or, beholds a long train of mules slowly moving along the waste like a train of camels in the desert; or, a single herdsman, armed with blunderbuss and stiletto, and prowling over the plain. Thus the country, the habits, the very looks of the people, have something of the Arabian character. The general insecurity of the country is evinced in the universal use of weapons. The herdsman in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... of sharp quills, from ten to twelve inches in length, each of which can pierce like a little stiletto, does not sound like a particularly comfortable thing to have for a mother. But the baby porcupines were quite happy, and their mother, clumsy as she was, was clever enough never to let any of the quills touch her little ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... their keen enthusiasm for the competitions, their interest in petty local elections, their advertising instincts, their insatiable fondness for scribbling on walls and pillars, whether in paint or with a "style," a sort of small stiletto with which they commonly wrote on tablets. The ancient world becomes very near when we read, side by side with the election notices, a line from Virgil or Ovid scrawled in a moment of idleness, or a piece of abuse of a neighbouring and ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... not handle that frightfully concentrated load. In the same fleeting instant of time every molecule of substance in that beam's path flashed into tenuous vapor—no conceivable material could resist or impede that stabbing stiletto of energy—and the main control panel of the Vorkulian wall-screen system vanished. Time after time, as rapidly as he could sight his beam and operate his switches, Brandon drove his needle of annihilation through the fortress, destroying the secondary controls. Then, the walls unresisting, ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... beautiful-shaped heads that Caper could only compare to a quail's; her jet-black hair, smoothed close to her head, was gathered in a large roll that fell low on her neck behind, and held by a silver spadina or pin, that, if occasion demanded, would make a serviceable stiletto; her full face was brown, while the red blood shone through her cheeks, and her lips were full and ripe. Her eyes of deep gray, shaded with long black lashes, sparkled with light when she was aroused. Her sisters resembled ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... with her taper, fan-like fingers. The signal was answered. She had scarcely withdrawn her hand inside the reja when a dark, scowling face made its appearance at her side, her hand was rudely seized, and with a scream she disappeared. The young officer fancied he saw the bright gleaming of a stiletto within the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... thought likely to interest the Ancient Egyptians. Anthea brought dolls, puzzle blocks, a wooden tea-service, a green leather case with Necessaire written on it in gold letters. Aunt Emma had once given it to Anthea, and it had then contained scissors, penknife, bodkin, stiletto, thimble, corkscrew, and glove-buttoner. The scissors, knife, and thimble, and penknife were, of course, lost, but the other things were there and as good as new. Cyril contributed lead soldiers, a cannon, a catapult, a tin-opener, a tie-clip, and a tennis ball, and a padlock—no key. Robert collected ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... the dangers to be met with in superstitious countries, these mydratic alkaloids are among the worst. They offer a chance for crimes of the most fiendish nature—worse than with the gun or the stiletto. They are worse because there is so little fear of detection. That crime is the production ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... face, and put it in the best light the room afforded, and coiled himself again on his chest, with his eye, and stiletto, glittering. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... fisherman of the Lagunes of sufficient importance to be struck by a stiletto? Do thy work, then!" he added, glancing at his brown and naked bosom; "there is ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... these tidings must have already arrived, but her fatal letter gave the first intelligence, and no other letter, at that period, found its way to me. She sent hers, I think, by some trusty returned prisoner. She little knew my then terrible situation ; hovering over my head was the stiletto of a surgeon for a menace of cancer yet, till that moment, hope of escape had always been held out to me by the Baron de Larrey— hope which, from the reading of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... contending with the assassin's dagger. I should like to see the huntress grappling with an imposing adversary, one as crafty as herself, an expert layer of ambushes and, like her, bearing a poisoned dirk. I should like to see the bandit armed with her stiletto confronted by another bandit equally familiar with the use of that weapon. Is such a duel possible? Yes, it is quite possible and even quite common. On the one hand we have the Pompili, the protagonists who are always victorious; on the other ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... kind of hidden poniard, a keen, triangular stiletto of genuine steel, capped by a large glass pearl that ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... he has no stomach for a fight. He will only strike if he can get in a secret blow. The leader of the gang has the furtive air of the criminal, his chin sunk on his breast, and his cap slouched over his brows. His right hand holds a stiletto, his pockets bulge with weapons or plunder, his left hand is raised with the air of a priest encouraging his flock. And his words are the words of religion—"God with us." At the sign the motley crew will ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... publication is delayed only by the Index: when published, I will send you a copy, but I do not know that you will care about it. Parts, as on the moral sense, will, I dare say, aggravate you, and if I hear from you, I shall probably receive a few stabs from your polished stiletto of a pen." ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... while it conceded a legislative council, made its members and all officers appointive, and divided the province. A delegation of Creoles went to Washington to protest against this inconsiderate treatment. They bore a petition which contained many stiletto-like thrusts at the President. What about those elemental rights of representation and election which had figured in the glorious contest for freedom? "Do political axioms on the Atlantic become problems when transferred to the shores ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... a long Italian stiletto. I felt myself a seaman indeed, nay, more than a seaman, a secret agent, with a pair of such boots upon me, "heeled," as the sailors call it, with such a weapon. "Go ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... The guard who brought in his food was a Sicilian, and was evidently of a talkative disposition, for he had several times entered into conversation with the captives. In addition to a long knife, he carried a small stiletto in his girdle, and Francis thought that, if he could obtain this, he might possibly free himself. Accordingly, at the hour when he expected his guard to enter, Francis placed himself at his window, with his face against the bars. When he heard the guard come in, and, ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... do, I'll kill you!" said Cassy, drawing a small, glittering stiletto, and flashing it before the ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... old France that money could buy. And you can guess the end." He shrugged his shoulders. "There was a Japanese servant in the bungalow. He saw it. Said she did it with the proper spirit of the Samurai. Took a stiletto—no thrust, no drive, no wild rush for annihilation—took the stiletto, placed the point carefully against her heart, and with both hands, slowly and ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... mantilla about her, she followed the messenger to the street; then, as acting under sudden impulse, left him waiting for a moment, while she returned to bolt a door. In that moment, unseen by the messenger, she slipped a sheathed stiletto into the bosom of ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... can endure them and smile. Others recur at intervals, occasioned by some unimportant detail like a man on the street selling roasted chestnuts, which reminds one of saffron woods in late October. Such pain is like the stab of a sharp stiletto. ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... word—I snatched forth a stiletto, put by the sword which trembled in his hand, and buried my poniard in his bosom. He fell with the blow, but my rage was unsated. I sprang upon him with the blood-thirsty feeling of a tiger; redoubled my blows; mangled him in my frenzy, grasped him by the throat, until with reiterated wounds ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Dobree pledges himself to cure me.—Carry, you are the witness of it. If I die, he has been my assassin as surely as if he had plunged a stiletto into me." ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... even begging to labour, wanders over Europe and America, uttering execrations against all monarchs in general, and his own in particular, and, when you shake your head at his oft-told tale of fictitious patriotism, as he replaces his stereotyped memorial in his pocket, exhibits the handle of a stiletto, with a savage smile of ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... before, thrusting her hand into her bosom, she had sprung to her feet, and a stiletto whizzed past his ear, and stuck quivering in the wall close to his head. Her supple body was still in motion, her face was pale, and her eyes were flashing: then with a sudden transition she threw herself back ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... stiletto from the folds of her dress, placed its point upon her heart and said: "It is not necessary that a gypsy should live; but it is necessary ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... some to set their love's desire on edge, Are cut and prun'd like a quickset hedge; Some like a spade, some like a fork, some square, Some round, some mow'd like stubble, some stark bare; Some sharp, stiletto fashion, dagger-like, That may with whisp'ring, a man's eyes outpike; Some with the hammer cut, or roman T, Their Beards extravagant, reform'd must be; Some with the quadrate, some triangle fashion, ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... certain types of women; even in her own house she was often aware of being furtively watched by hostile eyes; or she found herself suddenly the goal of some sharp little pleasantry that pricked like a stiletto. She supposed that she was often forgetful and indiscreet. Perhaps the large court she held so easily on these occasions beneath the trees or in the great drawing-rooms of the old house had more to do with the matter. If ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of business, and we excuse them heartily from blame. But show us a miserable, unbreeched, human entity, whose whole profession it is to take a tub for a fortified town and a shaving-brush for the deadly stiletto, and who passes three-fourths of his time in a dream and the rest in open self-deception, and we expect him to be as nice upon a matter of fact as a scientific expert bearing evidence. Upon my heart, I think it less than decent. You do not consider how little the child sees, or how swift ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his voice into a meaning whisper. "In Venice," said he, "this upstart might be mastered without an army. Think you in Rome no man wears a stiletto?" ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... they showed cuts and bruises and demanded their money, saying that a joke had been played on them. When Owen refused one of them drew a stiletto and the ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... detestation and has consequently been more frequent. No man, who is at all aware of the operation of moral motives, can doubt for a moment, that if every murder in Italy had been invariably punished, the use of the stiletto in transports of passion would have ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... the police for skullduggery. There is a fellow now on my hands who is threatenin' suicide. I wish to Gog and Magog that he would take to the reef or find a stick of dynamite. Monsieur Lontane, that busy French gendarme, found him tryin' to borrow a revolver or a stiletto, and thought he was going to kill a Frenchman. He put him in the calaboose and brought his effects to me. They consisted of a book of poems and a ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... portentous, seems strangely barren and bloodless set down in naked words. Yet the mountain peak that tops the great ranges is but a shoulder over its neighbor, though it may be the apex of a continent. A misconstrued word has caused the spilling of the blood of millions; the needle-point of a stiletto has severed kingdoms. Between temptation and consequence there is but little space, yet it is deep and wide enough for all the poison in the tongues of all the world's serpents. To-day, a simple peasant, humble, gentle, is an insignificant atom in the great Russian Empire, and ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... from the wicked uncle of the folk tale. The cruel stepmother is disguised as a haughty, scheming marchioness in The Sicilian Romance. The ogre drops his club, assumes a veneer of polite refinement and relies on the more gentlemanlike method of the dagger and stiletto for gaining his ends. The banditti and robbers who infest the countryside in Gothic fiction are time honoured figures. Travellers in Thessaly in Apuleius' Golden Ass, like the fugitives in Shelley's Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, find themselves in robbers' caves. The Gothic castle, suddenly ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... others on the spurge, when its stems begin to shoot, and its sombre flowers open in the sunlight? "It is the work of an insect. It is the shelter in which the Cicadellina deposits her eggs. What a miraculous chemist! Her stiletto excels the finest craft of the botanical anatomist" by its sovereign art of separating the acrid poison which flows with the sap in the veins of the most venomous plants, and extracting therefrom ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... them, child." The woman's face had set in grim determination. She went to the dresser and took out a small stiletto, which she quickly concealed in the bosom of her dress. "Get right in, just as you are! I will take care of Diego, if he ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... God mend me) t' have gone to the choir, When straight I perceived myself all on a fire; For the two forenamed things had so heated my blood, That a little phlebotomy would do me good: I sent for chirurgeon, who came in a trice, And swift to shed blood, needed not be called twice, But tilted stiletto quite thorough the vein, From whence issued out the ill humours amain; When having twelve ounces, he bound up my arm, And I gave him two Georges, which did him no harm: But after my bleeding, I soon understood It had cooled my devotion as well as ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the threats which immediately succeeded, that 'Old Abe Lincoln' should never live to be inaugurated! 'He shall not!' cried the South. 'He shall!' replied the North. To us who knew something of the Spanish knife and the Italian stiletto, the probabilities seemed to be that he would never live to reach Washington. Then the mutterings of the thunder grew deeper and deeper, and some disruption seemed inevitable, evident to us far ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... ocean instructed a crocodile to carry Hohodemi to his home. This was accomplished, and in token of his safe arrival, Hohodemi placed his stiletto on the crocodile's neck for conveyance to the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... grizzled-bearded man appeared, in square black velvet cap and long gown, which half hid a closely fitting black velvet doublet and silken hose. He was armed, according to the custom of the time, with a long rapier balanced by a stiletto at his girdle, and as he dropped the curtain, his hands moved as if involuntarily to these occupants of his belt and rested there. It was not a pleasant face that watched the sword-play, for the wrinkles therein were not those of age, but ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn |
